The Klingon Language and those who speak it...

This sounds awesome...

But I'm a geek, so that works out that way. And recently, on the recommendations of JM and Spence I'm watching the Star Trek Deep Space 9, having never really seen it. I mean, when you've got Spenser for Hire's Hawk as a Starfleet captain, you can't really go wrong.

But I digress.

Fortean Times: Interviewing Earthlings

David Sutton talks to director Alexandre Philippe and producer David Marchiori about their new documentary focusing on the evolution of the Klingon language and the people who speak it, Earthlings: Ugly Bags of Mostly Water.

FT: Can you describe the genesis of the film and how you came across the Klingon language.

AP: ...I was at Denver International Airport on my way to Europe to visit my family, and had a little time to kill, so I went to one of their bookstores; and that’s where I found a copy of The Klingon Hamlet. I remember looking at this book, and thinking: “This is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.” And I made the decision, basically on the spot, to somehow make a movie about this.

Originally, I thought it would be wild to do a film version of The Klingon Hamlet; but then, I searched the web and discovered the Klingon Language Institute, located in Philadelphia. So, I picked up the phone, and talked to the Institute’s director, Dr Lawrence Schoen, and convinced him to let us film and interview them during their annual qep’a’ (or conference).

...The real question is: am I wasting my talents making films? Are you wasting your talents editing Fortean Times? Are sports fans wasting their talents watching football on TV? I don’t think so. Earth is a strange place, and it’s up to us to give meaning to our lives. If it’s meaningful to them to learn Klingon – because they have a good time, because it’s a great intellectual exercise, or because that’s how they want to make friends – who are we to say they’re wasting their time? I’d like people to be a little more introspective before they poke fun at Trekkies or Klingon speakers. To me, there’s nothing wrong with doing something you’re passionate about – especially if it doesn’t hurt of offend anyone.

And the Klingon language is, indeed, a fascinating cultural and linguistic phenomenon. It’s the first constructed language based on popular culture that has thrived to the point of being spoken in 55 countries around the world.

So, to me, the question isn’t “Why spend any time learning Klingon when there are so many other languages around” but “why not learn Klingon?”

FT: The interviewees in the movie are a pretty friendly and articulate bunch from a surprisingly wide range of backgrounds. Were they representative of Klingon speakers as a whole?

DM: Everyone we met during the filming process, and all the Klingons we have met since, are virtually the same – gentle, intelligent people. Many of them are genuine Trek fans and this is their way of exploiting their love of the franchise. Many are linguists and language experts; in some cases Klingon is the sixth or seventh language they speak. And many of them are in it for the social aspects. I will say that while KLI members for the most part don’t indulge in dressing the Klingon way, they do take on a different persona when in Klingon mode. The large groups of people who like to dress as Klingons really take on different personalities while in the role. They act boisterous and aggressive... but when they change back, all is normal.

Earthlings: Ugly Bags of Mostly Water will be available on DVD from 16 October.

What America increasingly stands for, if you didn't know...

The Case of Maher Arar

After a two-year investigation, the Canadian government issued a report this week regarding the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was abducted by the Bush administration during a layover at JFK Airport on his way home to Canada, and then brought to Syria to be "interrogated." He was kept in a tiny cell for the next 10 months in Syria and was repeatedly tortured. All along, he was guilty of nothing and had no ties of any kind to terrorism.

[..]Despite the stonewalling and coverup by the Bush administration, the Canadian report was able to conclude "categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense." It also found that both the American government and the Syrian government lied to Canada about Arar’s whereabouts because they knew the Canadians would object to their citizen being brought to Syria to be tortured. Put another way, our government abducted a completely innocent Canadian citizen and deliberately caused him to subjected, in Syria, to the most brutal and inhumane treatment imaginable (where, among other things, he confessed under torture to training in an al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan even though he was never in that country)...

The wisdom of Jet Li

Jet Li: Not retiring, reinventing

..."I've tried to retire many times," said Li, a devoted Buddhist since 1997. "But I've met many masters, many high monks who have said, `You cannot hide on a mountain for three years. That's not you. Just do your job and then you'll have space to talk to people about what you believe.'"

"Fearless," Li said, perfectly fits his vision of wushu as more than just self-defense but a path to self-discipline and spiritual peace.

Herein lies the central dichotomy: the Chinese characters for wushu are Zhi (meaning "stop" or "do not") and Ge (meaning "fight" or "war"). Together, Li said, they translate to "stop fighting."

...The answer, Li decided, would be to ramp up charity work for his One Foundation (www.one-foundation.com) and to infuse his work with his Buddhist worldview.

"This is the perfect story to match my philosophy," Li says, referencing "Fearless."

The subject of the movie, Huo, turned martial arts into a sport, promoted it as a spiritual discipline and took on all challengers to defend China's martial honor in a series of high-profile exhibition fights against foreigners.

But will "Fearless" really be Li final martial arts movie? Yes, Li said, but with an addendum.

"People always change their minds," he said. "That's humanity, always changing."

Weird Al's got some skills...

This was pretty awesome.

And sadly, struck close to home on occasion.

And sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

http://www.sinfest.net/

Welcome Enkai

For a brand new Fukutsu City ALT. Much food and entirely too much drink was had by all.


Couple more pics here.

Best Full Series Trailer in the Firefly Trailer contest at Fireflyfans.net

Douglas Rushkoff gives good interview

I really dug his books Nothing Sacred and Coercion. This interview covers a bunch of stuff, including his new comic book series Testament.

Suicide Girls Interview w/ Douglas Rushkoff:

The idea of this comic is that the god God of Torah doesn’t really exist, but Adonai Eloheinu, that God, Yahweh, was a creation of three demigods. If you read Torah in order, you see God starts out as this fire-breathing god. Then he calms down and then becomes more of a human god. Then he becomes more of the Indian God as more influences came through and the various Prophets talked to different holy men of different regions. I have three gods come up with the great, big, unknowable God as a way of thinking they could make peace in the God world. That way we won’t have to fight. It’s in the way of having a corporation, having a nameless entity through which we’ll pledge allegiance to this thing and how humanity will create this Bible that has that God in charge of everything. It’s this great idea, but what ends up happening is that they repress the feminine because it’s abstract and it’s not based on Earth. It’s a theological system based in scarcity, abstractness and ideas, rather than abundance, the ground and fertility. What has to happen in my story is that in order for our characters to really liberate themselves from Torah, without just being Satanists or anti-Torah, punk reactionaries, is they’ve got to somehow create a marriage between this whole male culture and the female culture that got repressed. If you look in Torah, you can see all the matriarchs in Torah are actually sacred priestesses. All of them along with Sarah and Rebecca are temple prostitutes. There are little hints by the things that they do, who they’re having sex with other than the husband and when husbands are offering their wives up to strangers who come to the door. This isn’t just you offering up your wife because since these are temple priestesses it’s a blessing. But that whole aspect of history ended up getting repressed. I look around the world now and I actually see things like SuicideGirls as efforts to reclaim some of the power. The survival of the species is about that, whether or not we’re going to reintegrate what we call the feminine archetype back into our understanding of the world.

The voices in MY head tell me that this is okay.

You can tie this into the way the bicameral mind communicates between hemispheres and the ideas that in times past, the corpus callosum was far less developed than it is today... and that the "gods" men heard was the process of thinking we know today, but in a completely different context.

The voices, like Socrates' daemon, were seen as positive until the advent of Christianity and the voices became the work of "Satan and his minions."

Eurekalert.org:

Can hearing voices in your head be a good thing?

...The University of Manchester investigation – announced on World Hearing Voices Day (Thursday, 14th September) – comes after Dutch researchers found that many healthy members of the population there regularly hear voices.

Although hearing voices has traditionally been viewed as 'abnormal' and a symptom of mental illness, the Dutch findings suggest it is more widespread than previously thought, estimating that about 4% of the population could be affected.

Researcher Aylish Campbell said: "We know that many members of the general population hear voices but have never felt the need to access mental health services; some experts even claim that more people hear voices and don't seek psychiatric help than those who do.

"In fact, many of those affected describe their voices as being a positive influence in their lives, comforting or inspiring them as they go about their daily business. We're now keen to investigate why some people respond in this way while others are distressed and seek outside help."

TED

There are some fascinating downloads and lectures here:

Each year, TED hosts some of the world's most fascinating people: Trusted voices and convention-breaking mavericks, icons and geniuses. The talks they deliver have had had such a great impact, we thought they deserved a wider audience. So now - with our sponsor BMW and production partner WNYC/New York Public Radio we're sharing some of the most remarkable TED talks with the world at large. Each week, we'll release a new talk, in audio and video, to download or watch online. For best effect, plan to listen to at least three, start to finish. They have a cumulative effect...

The differences between men and women are profound.

What Would Tyler Durden Do?

"The problem is, for girls “rough” means the handsome pirate with the long windswept mane of hair ripping the buttons on her blouse as he holds her captive in a velvet blindfold, for guys it means a donkey punch and calling her a whore."

Don't think about it too much. It'll make you crazy.

Seriously.

Cards from an Illuminati Conspiracy card game first sold in 1995.

In part in inspired by The Illuminatus Trilogy, that fictional conspiracy satire sci-fi comedy written by one of my favorite authors, Robert Anton Wilson back in the early 70's. [A terrorist attack on the Pentagon actually takes place in the book, btw, blowing out one of the walls...]

9/11 'Predicted' by Illuminati Card Game in 1995

Just a coincidence, right? Has to be.... otherwise.... [fair warning, you start down that path, you never really come back.]

Have fun.

Hail Eris.

”Invisible Space Daddy says I should hug you, infidel.”

Esteemed comic book auteur, and one of my fave writers, Warren Ellis continues his breakdown of the new NBC show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and delivers the pull-quote of the month... nay, the year... on all those rational and loving religious consersative types.

Studio 60 looks awesome, btw. But I've dug Sorkin's writing since Sports Night.

STUDIO 60: 2

And who are those occupying powers? Judd Hirsch’s [Who's plays the Exec Producer of an SNL-type show who loses his shit, a la Howard "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" Beale in Network, on live TV. - Rob] rant at the top of STUDIO 60 1.01:

“We’re all being lobotomized by the country’s most influential industry which has thrown in the towel on any endeavor that does not include the courting of 12-year-old boys. And not event the smart 12-year-olds, the stupid ones, the idiots, of which there are plenty thanks in no small part to this network.

“…there’s always been a struggle between art and commerce, but now I’m telling you art is getting its ass kicked, and it’s making us mean, and it’s making us bitchy, and it’s making us cheap punks and that’s not who we are. …We’re eating worms for money, ‘Who Wants to Screw My Sister’, guys are getting killed in a war that’s got theme music and a logo. That remote in your hand is a crack pipe…

“…and it’s not even good pornography. They’re just this side of snuff films, and friends, that’s what’s next ’cause that’s all that’s left. And the two things that make them scared gutless are the FCC and every psycho-religious cult that gets positively horny at the very mention of a boycott. These are the people they’re afraid of, this prissy, feckless, off-the-charts greed-filled whorehouse of a network you’re watching. This thoroughly unpatriotic– ”

What interests me is that Sorkin’s working in a country that takes its television a hell of a lot more seriously than it takes its government. He could catch a lot of flak if he really goes after his theme. And plopping in Harriet Hayes, the WEST WING/Ainsley Hayes (hey!) character there to remind us that middle America is full of good honest downhome sensible conservatives and non-insane people of faith (”Invisible Space Daddy says I should hug you, infidel”), as a shield against knee-jerk rightist criticism just isn’t going to soak it all up.

I’ll be watching STUDIO 60 because Sorkin can write very well, even though the eventual produced pilot is a little slicker than I’d like. The thing that’ll keep me watching is whether or not Sorkin strips the thorns off the rose before he proffers it as his Valentine gift to television.

But the President said we were safer, so really, isn't that all that matters?

Too Much Information

Say what you will about Joseph Stalin, but at least the man ran a top-notch crime control apparatus. Freed of the petty constraints of due process and human rights, the crack investigative team at the KGB ran down leads swiftly and diligently. When they found someone with information, they tortured him, quickly generating accurate information and keeping the authorities ahead of the curve. Stalin's Soviet Union had its problems, to be sure. Bad weather, economic deprivation, a certain absence of political freedom, etc. But the criminal justice system -- that was solid.

Well, no.

It wasn't like that at all. Pervasive surveillance, an absence of due process, and widespread use of torture, shockingly enough, didn't actually create an effective law enforcement system. Instead, you got the madness of the Great Purge. Thousands upon thousands of supposed traitors and saboteurs were arrested and sent away to the GULAG for, essentially, no reason at all...

From the regime's perspective, this arrangement wasn't pointless by any means... And while the widespread deployment of torture didn't generate anything in the way of accurate information, it did generate confessions by the bushel. Confessions were, of course, precisely what Stalin was after, as they validated the existence of the alleged conspiracy that justified the purge. The system worked, after a fashion, but it certainly didn't work as a system for solving crimes or cracking conspiracies. It worked as a component of the dictator's imposition of totalitarian rule on the country.

Which is all just to say that there are two closely related reasons we find the idea of torture depraved. On the one hand, the deliberate infliction of cruelty is simply a depraved act. On the other hand, though, it's simply the sort of thing that only depraved people do -- as an actual investigative technique, it sucks. It's a way of encouraging people to tell interrogators whatever it is the interrogators already happen to believe.

This is why you don't see torture associated with low-crime jurisdictions. You see it associated with brutal dictatorships seeking to cow the population into submission. You see it associated with purges, witch hunts, and inquisitions. Wherever phony confessions are required as an instrument of policy, you'll find your torture chambers.

Under the Bush administration, we've seen much the same thing. Contrary to what the president claimed last week, torturing Abu Zubaydah hasn't made the country safer from terrorism. Rather, it made the president vaguely safer from public embarrassment. When Zubaydah was captured, Bush proudly claimed it as a crucial win in the war on terrorism. It turned out that he just wasn't very important -- he was kind of crazy, handled minor logistical matters, and didn't know anything about terrorist plots. But that’s not what his interrogators thought, so they tortured him until he told them about plots. The leads were duly tracked down and resulted in . . . nothing.

The brutally obvious for anyone who's been paying attention.

Sadly... that's surprisingly few, apparently.

The Question Never Asked

The question which is never asked is "why?" Why did so many American citizens die on American soil that day? Why would people want to attack us in such a vicious and grandiose fashion?

No answer? That is because the question is never asked. The reason it is never asked is because most Americans are like my father-in-law. When asked yesterday why he thinks people hate us, his response is that he does not care why and does not want to know. Sadly, neither do most Americans.

Certainly the government does not want you to know the answer to that question. That is why it offers up its own canard: "They hate us because we are free." Yet, a simple examination of other nations which are free demonstrates how thread-bare this explanation is. Canada, Switzerland, Austria, New Zealand: they are all free, and they are all free of "the threat." We are back to "why?"

...Of course the easiest source for the answer is to ask the people behind the movement. They are hardly shy, and have on many occasions expressed their motivations for their campaign against this country. Even the Pentagon knows the painful answer to the question of "why?"

"Muslims do not hate ‘our freedom,’ but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objection to what they see as our one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states…"

Motivational Posters I can get behind.

Some of these are just brilliant. Many more at the link, via the crazy bastards at Something Awful .

"You've seen them before, at the doctor's office waiting room or maybe physical therapy, motivational posters promoting Preserverance or Enthusiasm or some other one-word pick-me-up with a witty one-liner underneath that's supposed to make you want to just deadlift the coffee table and ask out the receptionist right there.

You haven't, however, yet seen what a motivation poster would look like for your typical, cunning villain. Knowing full well they probably won't get the girl like the heroes do, they've gotta get the motivation to wear those ridiculous costumes from somewhere..."

DANGER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

More likely that a cop will kill you than a terrorist gets you. But let's not let the facts get in the way of America's current highly-honed sense of paranoia.

But I'm sure the wars on falling, walking down the street and electricity are on their way.
One Million Ways to Die

With that in mind, here's a handy ranking of the various dangers confronting America, based on the number of mortalities in each category throughout the 11-year period spanning 1995 through 2005 (extrapolated from best available data).

S E V E R E - Driving off the road: 254,419, Falling: 146,542, Accidental poisoning: 140,327

H I G H - Dying from work: 59,730, Walking down the street: 52,000, Accidentally drowning: 38,302

E L E V A T E D - Killed by the flu: 19,415, Dying from a hernia: 16,742,

G U A R D E D - Accidental firing of a gun: 8,536, Electrocution: 5,171,

L O W - Being shot by law enforcement: 3,949, Terrorism: 3,147, Carbon monoxide in products: 1,554

The Essence of Wisdom Distilled [in less than 10 minutes.]

Pretty much all you ever need to know about everything.

You're welcome.

"Who is Robert Anton Wilson?"

"If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about."

Oh, really? Some cognizant responses via ask.metafilter.

http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/39312

"If I'm not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me."

"Because the government gets to define what's wrong, and they keep changing the definition."

"Mind if I make a video of you fucking your wife then?"

"That's not what the Constitution says. You should read it sometime."

"So you trust the government completely? Not just this administration, but all of them? You trusted Nixon?"

"So it doesn't bother you that within the last few years the US has held a few hundred people without charge or access to the courts, and then released them when it decided they'd done nothing wrong?"

"So it doesn't cause you concern that people are released from death row all the time after it's found they've done nothing wrong?"

"In the Maltese Falcon the district attorney tells Sam Spade, "If you have nothing to hide, why are you concerned?", and Sam answers back, "Everyone has something to hide.""

For those who brush those reasons off I tend to ask a few very personal questions... "How much money did you make last year?" "How many sex toys do you own?" "Your wife, does she spit or swallow?" That kind of stuff tends to drive the point home that most people have stuff they'd rather not have everyone know.

"You're right, the government would never make trouble for an innocent person. I'm just going to call the Department of Homeland Security and tell them that you're a terrorist who plans to blow up the White House, okay? I'm sure it'll only take a few minutes to clear up the misunderstanding."

"And all along I thought you were a conservative who didn't trust government, didn't like big government, and believed in limiting the power of the state. When did you change your political philosophy, and why? Does this mean you'll start voting differently, too?"

"No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

"If you've got nothing to hide, why don't you post your credit card statements on the Internet?"

PostSecret is worth reading every week.

My fav from this week.

(PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.)