I've been over at MINDFUTURES reading Marcus T Anthony's Censoring the Future of Knowledge?

http://www.mind-futures.com/censoring-th...

And this was my response

Marcus it seems to me a crisis's arising in science similar to that arising in the media/arts world over copyright and in politics over extending state monitoring and control of society.

Thanks to the emergence of cleverer and cleverer technology those who're supposed to protect and serve us're now no longer content to monitor our existences as closely as they like on every conceivable level storing every tiny detail until such time as they can find a use for it they're now in the process of bypassing the whole judicial process of detection and conviction and evolving algorithms designed to identify potential bad minds and evolve non-attributable anticpatory ad hoc remedies.

Similarly artists like Bono and JK Rowling who during their youth quite happily learned their trades by freely acquainting themselves with the works and ideas of their heroes and predecessors by such means as borrowing and lending cassette copies of their heroes' albums and books all the time poo-pooing the nonsense this constituted theft now not only use every legal means to pulverise anyone daring to even remotely taking advantage of them or theirs but they're seeking to extend into infinity the copyright of work no less derivative than William Shakespeare's but of infinitely inferior quality while all the time happily endorsing the development of technology which'll ultimately mean books'll no longer be readable or music playable unless you happen to have DNA identical to the original purchaser and even then useage'll be limited to a fixed period of time.

Under such a regime Bono and JK Rowling themselves'd never be capable of emerging never mind truly talented world shaking artists like Shakespeare.

Similarly at a time when technology means as you point out we essentially have both the highest numbered and most sophisticated population in the history of the world there're those who want to use the endless possibilities of all this new technology to prune back that sophistication by restricting the types of ideas the technology can access even though the sort of ideas they want to excise from Western if not indeed World Civilization're precisely those that fascinated the minds of individuals like Shakespeare Newton Darwin and Einstein.

And now with the advent of neural interfacing we must be approaching the endgame because if we can get past this need the affluent powerful and influential feel to protect themselves by controlling and restricting what the rest of us're allowed to think own or do then a truly golden age civilization capable of exponential evolution can emerge.

If we don't get past this stage a new Borg like hive mind robotic culture'll emerge instead which'll ban all independent thought or artistry as mental illness and we won't have to worry about upsetting the likes of Bono and JK Rowling by infringing their eternally precious copyrights because theirs'll be the only stuff legally allowed down our neural interfaces.

Over at Who Forted I'm reading Jasper T. Woodmans' Fox in the Hen House! The Ghastly Possession of the Nuns of Loudun

http://whofortedblog.com/2013/03/22/fox-...

and this was my response

Jasper speaking from personal experience the bodily contortions of the nuns and the business with the tongues's almost certainly true.

During what I dubbed at the time my Three Stooges phase I spent several months getting twatted off the four walls of my bedroom by what felt like huge bolts of electricity [I've been electrocuted several times since I was a kid] and it always amazed me how it was possible to get thrown in the air and literally land upside down on my neck with a horrendous sounding crunch yet somehow never seemed to get injured.

At times I'd have the sense these bolts of 'electricity' or even lightning' were being launched at me from somewhere very far away but a lot of the time they seemed to go spontaneously go off inside me usually hurtling upwards from the direction of my groin to bust their way out my solar plexus and at the time it felt exactly like a physically real solid steel battering ram was try'n'o pound its way out my chest though the image it always conjured in my mind was that scene from Alien where it busts its way out John Hurts chest.

Sometimes though the flow seemed to reverse and I'd feel like the matter in my spine was liquefying to the point of boiling as things started hurtling in the opposite direction down my spine causing me to lose control of my limbs to the point of having my heels completely of their own accord somehow snap backwards and wallop the back of my head with such violent force it bleedin' well hurt I can tell y'u.

Actually I'd been having intermittent versions of milder version of the same sorts of bodily phenomena most of my life but during that Three Stooges stage circa the Millennium it got so bad it was scaring my kids and other family members so I allowed them to call an ambulance out in case I really was having a heart attack or some sort of brain seizure but after watching the heart monitor calmly going through its paces while simultaneously watching my chest and body covered in various frozen goods out the fridge buck and bronk and convulse like I was having a massive fit I stopped worrying.

I started worrying again though when during a later phase my tongue started leaping so far out my mouth turning almost black while making this horrendous braying sound it felt like I was being turned inside out. In fact it shot so far out my mouth even I could see this sort of cluster of tortured nerve ends forming the tongue's root vibrating insanely in front of my face like one of those party favours you blow in to make them uncurl and razz I had to allow my family to call out an ambulance again only to have this initially deeply alarmed looking ambulance guy suddenly screech "You're puttin' that on!" to which I could only respond in between explosive tongue convulsions "You cheeky fucking bastard the only reason I allowed them to call you out in the first place was because as you can see with your own eyes I'm gettin' me fuckin' innards turned inside out here and you're giving me bad theatrical reviews?"

Anyway I put this here because like that ambulance guy a lot of people'll read your Possessed Loudun Nuns piece and say ah they were puttin' it on.

Well I'm here to state they almost certainly weren't even right down to the demonic possession stuff but that's not the same thing as saying they were really were undergoing demonic possession.

What a cosmic joke.

While various groups're facing off over who're the delusional parties in matters of science politics religion philosophies art music ways of life belief systems etc etc events in Cyprus're exposing the brutal truth our political leaders've forgotten they're supposed to be our elected SERVANTS not our feudal overlords and continued belief in the sacred inviolability of mere concepts like money property and laws is more delusional than wondering whether there's such things as ghosts UFOs cryptids etc etc.

And the fact the British government for instance're talking about helping out British Squaddies hit by all the account sequestering rather than roaring "NO!" only goes to show it's a card they'll play themselves at some stage.

Many people find the whole idea proposterous reality's only a construct.

Maybe though they're now beginning to realise how civilization itself's merely such a construct the continued existence of which depends on the collective will of EVERYONE the main reason our overlords're more nervous about the large scale strategic pruning and relocation of past eras apparently envisaging a program of beguilement entwined with anxiety and willpower breaking underpinned by the constant background implication of brutal suppression failing all else.

This's the main reason why we need every shade of believer/unbeliever in every conceivable realm of belief/unbelief because the moment one lot starts thinking their vision of a better world's so superior it justifies the forced conversion or removal of those who beg to differ's the moment people start getting splattered all over the place by human bombs or remote controlled drones.

If though you've still to be persuaded how virtual your existence really is set yourself wondering for instance who really owns the peripherals to your existence such as 'your' car with I've Got The Power (Snap! 1990) by Dave over at Trade With Dave http://tradewithdave.com/?p=13092 and find out why it justly gets what Dave calls an absurd amount of traffic.

By a curious coincidence the new Pope's name's jorge MA rio ber GOG lio.

I've been over at Paranormalia reading Robert McLuhan's blog Cuddly Humanism and this was my response.

Robert believing in God or gods or believing there isn't any God or gods it's all just belief.

[This's why some religious people move onto mysticism once belief's no longer enough precisely because it claims to provide methods to verify its claims which's also why atheists ignore or poopoo its existence].

Similarly believing in or disbelieving the scientific method's also all just belief and the simple proof of that's not only is the scientific method utterly dependent on the technical limitations of the day but the data produced by those technical limitations's subjected to committees who vote much like the Catholic cardinals currently voting on who's to be the next Pope on whether the data produced's actually acceptable then what that data actually means.

And it was precisely that 'scientific' voting process which recently decided by a majority rather than a unanimous verdict that animals are indeed conscious.

And this's why I laugh when humanists like Al-Khalili pronounce they're winning 'the argument' because even as we speak chimps and gorillas are solving iPad number based IQ tests at speeds so great no HUMANS're thought capable of competing hence the spectacle of humanist scientists now scrambling to reintrepret the implications of those phenomenal results in such a way they can be used as scientific proof of our supposed SUPERIORITY over ape kind.

And the even bigger laugh's if scientists'd been able to credit never mind test the possibility animals were not only conscious but in their own way as intelligent as us say even a mere fifty years ago then humanists might now be having to call themselves humani-chimpi-gorilla-ists [or chimps and gorillas humans].

But of course they couldn't because they were humanists and therefore KNEW as a scientific FACT* apportioning equality never mind superiority to anything other than humanity was at best an insult to their lofty towering genius at worst a sign of their suspiciously heretical evidence gathering detractors' psychoses.

But as's normal with humanity even while our glorious loftily omniscient supermen and women're pronouncing their latest intellectual achievement the final victory of the scientific FACT* humanism over its rivals reality and on this occasion non-humanity's got completely other ideas.

* FACT a thing manufactured or made

I've been over at Who Forted? reading Greg Newkirk's The Clear Face of Bigfoot? Screens from Secretive Sasquatch Project Leak and this was my response

To me Greg the most compelling pics and accounts of Sasquatch're the ones which represent them as having broad oblongular areas round their eyes and nose devoid of hair/fur. It's these naked slot shaped regions which detractors immediately point to as proof of masks forgetting that but for modern grooming habits most human males and even some females would look pretty similar. It's the complete absence of any sort of slot on the pics above which convince me this's a hoax.

What tends me towards believing the whole Erikson Project's also a complete load of bollocks is the fact if THEY can so easily monitor and catch Sasquatch there're OTHERS out there infinitely more rich and powerful who'd quite happily shell out unspeakable sums of money and resources simply to indulge a desire to participate in the incredibly exclusive activity of hunting down and killing creature that supposedly don't exist before holding parties even presidents can't get invited to simply to swank away in front of Sasquatch heads they'll've hacked off themselves before having them mounted on plaques alongside the heads of other species also killed because they're on the verge of extinction.

In fact I've long held the suspicion the reason Sasquatch became if anything even more elusive is precisely because their numbers were being seriously depleted by the sort of bored powerful pillars of society who can arrange to have numerous undergound cells built under council houses in the centre of Belgian cities so known child molestors like Marc Dutroux can act as the concierges of the rape hotels they freely visit to torture and murder god knows how many young girls snatched off the street on their way to school.

The sort of all powerful individuals in fact who freely slake their demonic appetites by vanishing forever any trace of thousands of young women snatched each year off the streets of certain Mexican towns and cities even as anyone who dares to publicly question this order of things is invariably found mangled to death themselves.

The sort of individuals indeed who have the power to casually brush aside decades of allegations of Irish orphanages being used as paedo and snuff factories while arranging for some absurd superannuated clownish DJ figure called Jimmy Saville to freely come and go without question any time of the day or night at homes for delinquent schoolgirls hospitals for poorly children and homes for the senescent elderly not to mention the keys to every lock in insane asylums containing the likes of the Yorkshire Ripper.

The only good side to this possibility if there's any truth to it being maybe Sasquatch [and the Russian Alma and the Chinese Yeren given the newly emerging super rich in those regions] much like the undernourished foxes me and our kid've observed foraging in Liverpool City centre waste bins will be forced to come more and more out into the open if they're to have any chance of surviving such hypothetical world wide onslaughts.

I've been over at Out Of Darkness reading The False Memory Monster Elsie Conner's response to Steven Ross Pomeroy's Scientific American blog How to Instill False Memories and this's my response.

Elsie might I suggest the scientific terminolgy appropriate to Steven Ross Pomeroy's observations is he's talking complete bollocks.

What he's trying to do is renew Carl Sagan's old attempt to discard problematical accounts of high strangeness by reestablishing and retrenching the idea certain people're highly susceptible to memory implantation but what him and the late Carl Sagan seem incapable of realising is how much what passes for memory in ordinary life is also pure implantation.

For instance if they're anything like most of the rest of humanity the reason Sagan and Pomeroy believe that's what their names are's because once upon a time two pairs of complete strangers introduced themselves to them when they were born claiming to be their parents and telling them their names were Carl Sagan and Steven Ross Pomeroy.

And maybe they were their parents but then again can they or indeed any of us really be sure because in Argentina for instance a huge number of kids raised during the Seventies by their fascist ruling class parents as haters of leftists and leftist political causes're only now finding out not only their real parents were leftist freedom fighters but their fascist upbringers were implicated in their real parents tortures and murders and now those poor bastarding kids're as confused as hell because they're realising their entire lives were effectively implanted fairy tales meaning they no longer know or have a sense of who they really are or what truth even is.

In other words everyone of us including Carl Sagan and Steven Ross Pomeroy from the moment we're born goes along with various stories we're fed and continue doing so until the moment we die unless some critical detail emerges which suddenly slams on the breaks forcing us to realise everything we thought we knew were only implanted beliefs.

At this point Pomeroy and the ghost of Sagan rush forward and claim oh but that has no bearing on everything else because we all know Darwin and Einstein existed blah blah blah but you try telling that to them Argentinians who now find themselves questioning the whole of reality.

And the truth is we don't know Einstein or Darwin existed because we never met them or interacted with them. The only reason we know about them in the first place's because someone told us about them in my case the very same people who actually claimed they made me before calling me alan but I only have their word for any of that.

And the reason any of that implanting's even possible's because we actually have several different memory systems which for simplifications purposes boil down to three basic forms 1) real experiential or 'video' memory which's where we actually recall or even reexperience memories on a sensorial basis ie a certain waft of scent evokes scenes of that dreamy student who took our fancy that first night at the freshers' ball or that strange smell which suddenly conjures up images of how gran'ma's legs'd abruptly burst apart and her eyes'd roll in opposite directions whenever she reached the stage where she'd drunk too much hair lacquer mixed with Toilet Duck and

2) list memory which isn't related to real memory at all but is dedicated to theoretical constructs we assemble for memorising routines like learning times tables or protocols for operating computers or cars until our third type of memory can kick in

3) physical or bodily [or as it's also been called zombie] memory which's the capacity of our bodies to learn to operate or function independently of our minds providing us with 'reflexes' that catch objects before we've even noticed they've been knocked over and removing the need to keep having to recall how to drive or even pay as much attention anymore to driving our cars enabling us to concentrate on ogling any totty in nearby vehicles as well as discuss via our mobiles why that new My Bloody Valentine album's so utterly amazing/complete crap.

So when Steven Ross Pomeroy talks about planting memories that's what he's really refering to type 2 memory list memory which not only isn't real memory but isn't even that easy to implant otherwise we'd all learn everything instantly.

But just in case Steven Ross Pomeroy himself's really as suggestible as he supposes others to be I beseech anyone who's known him 5 or more years to start implanting false memories in him.

Maybe that way he might get an inkling what it was like until only recently to have 'experts' like him go round asserting only suggestible fools would imagine there really was such a thing as synesthesia enabling them to 'see' sounds or 'hear' colours or for that matter homosexuality was anything more than a product of a fevered imagination because even if a form of it really had existed once upon a time the inherent impossibility of progeny meant Evolution would've quickly selected it out of existence therefore claiming to see members of the same sex as being sexually attractive's just another form of seeing things and therefore as delusional as believing men from Mars kidnap you.

I've been over at Mysterious Universe reading my hero Nick Redfern's UFOs, Clouds and Secret Experiments about an alleged mysterious Russian's claims in 1947 UFOs were down to secret Soviet esoteric hi-tech experiments and this was my response.

To me Nick this reads somewhat like what I call a Devil's Verse the original Verses of course being the supposed forgeries projected into Muhammed's consciousness by Shaitan pandering to his hope the Three Sisters he'd been brought up to worship as a kid could be adopted into the new religion as angels.

For instance at one point I myself experienced a highly detailed download which on hindsight resembled 911 but at the time I became possessed by the almost overwhelming imperative I had to do something about it until it suddenly occurred to me there was probably hundreds if not thousands of others receiving exactly the same stuff and anyway do what?

Another one was about Rupert Murdoch supposedly toying with the idea of setting up Tony Blair in a new political party and again there was this almost overwhelming compulsion to do something about putting a stop to it but by this time I'd learnt to let stuff like that wash over me.

I suspect though this sort of thing's much more common than people suppose because during the Eighties and Nineties I was periodically bombarded by this kind of 'propaganda' to the effect the world was inherently unfair and it had to be the case weaklings like kids the poor and young women got exploited abused raped or even murdered otherwise how would elites like the rich and the powerful thrive and have the strength and influence to steer the world to greater and greater achievements and on each occasion these broadcast'd always be accompanied by such a crushing devastating sense of the inevitability of it all I'd find myself going along with it until I'd suddenly think hang on these aren't even my thoughts and several people I've mentioned these experiences to've admitted to me "Oh my god that's exactly what kept happening to me but I thought it was just my imagination!"

The last time I experienced it was round about the first or second New Year's Eve after the Millennium when I found myself watching Zardoz for the first time and there's this much mocked time lapse picture gallery sequence at the end where Sean and Charlotte start a family grow old then die at which point something seemed to suddenly descend on me and try to viciously bully me into accepting this was how life had to be only this time instead of allowing the despair and fear to even get started on crushing me I simply shrugged it off and said quite calmly "No...I disagree" and for a moment whatever I was dealing with seemed so incredibly infuriated I thought uh-oh there's go'n'o be a kick-off then all a sudden there was this huge bang like a bomb going off and the front window exploded spraying glass everywhere. A couple of Cops from the police station down the road even turned up and normally y'never seen sight nor sign of the sods wanting to know what the hell'd happened but I didn't think they were ready to hear my story or how I'd defiantly jumped to my feet shaking my fist and shouting at the top of my voice "Y'stupid bastard whatever y'u are y'just let the old world out and the new one in!"

I'm over at Robert McLuhan's Paranormalia reading Fuck-Off Atheism and this was my response.

Robert Mcluhan "I'm struck by their immense confidence."

Actually Robert I'd argue their heightened screeching's exactly the reverse of confidence.

Nearly every religion from Buddhism to Islam starts out as a small esoteric group investigating apparently astounding revelations then gradually spreads out in an increasingly watered down form until it's taken possession of by the masses in a form that's not so much dumbed down as more and more misunderstood in the rush to reduce it to the level of one size must be made to fit all.

It's because these growing masses sense the former power and glory of the material they're dealing with they become enchanted by it but the intoxication quite quickly wears off so they need to regain the buzz by converting others.

After a while though various parties become aware their own doubts're growing in the face of constant upgrades to their belief system in order to maintain the illusion the original version of belief system's not failing under pressure from new facts [viz Darwinian Evolution confronted by the likes of horizontal gene transfer between unrelated species or grandparental life histories effecting their grandchildren's genes instead of their kids or dark matter dark energy and now dark flow to prop up astronomy's failed theories].

It's at this stage the 'immense confidence' [I'd say panic filled hysteria] kicks in as it's noticed other rival paradigms once considered barely worthy of attention're suddenly gaining ground if not in danger of overtaking and suddenly the hellfire preachers witchfinder generals and Torquemadas/Randis start emerging.

As for Hume they quote him on religion but ignore him on things like the observation when we disapprove of an observation we claim it's just a coincidence but make all kinds of allowances when it suits.

Viz 'science' claims the same cause produces the same effect so striking a match on a box to make it burst into flames 'proves' the power of science but when it fails to ignite that's just because there was something wrong with the sandpaper the match or the striker's technique.

During the middle of Nineties I spent two years going through scientific research papers in every conceivable field and found writing off between 20 and 40% of undesirable results as 'spoils' so widespread as to be almost the norm.

And when those faster than the speed of light neutrino results first emerged it took over a year to explain them away as due to the peculiar coincidence of a cosmic ray shower occurring at precisely the same moment a plug was not quite properly inserted [the even more amazing thing being they proved the plug's condition with the even more amazing coincidence photographs were taken at precisely the same moment the cosmic ray shower was falling].

In spite of which not a cheep was heard over the Higgs Boson Large Hardon Collider's plugs because of course they don't want to believe the speed of light can be exceeded but they're desperate to 'prove' the Higgs Boson.

It's in the face of all this I suggest that like all religions Atheism's even resorting to setting up churches where its members can shelter from the reaities of a world increasingly hostile to their most precious beliefs and obsessions.

I've been over at Loren Coleman's new CRYPTOZOONEWS blog reading Are Zooforms Cryptids? and this was my response.

Loren I've always admired the terrific way you've negotiated the potential hazards of cross-contamination between your twin interests in the realms of noumenon and zoomenon as it were.

With this piece though it seems you're not only visibly fully expanding your garuda like wings as you emerge from the limitations of the 'egg' you inhabited over at Cryptomundo but you seem to be declaring an intention to more willingly openly explore precisely the interface the two areas inevitably share even if only to make a clearer demarcation between the two.

I hope though you won't just concentrate on the matter of demarcation because when you say an outsider's bound to be confused by media leaping from eyewitness accounts concerning the likes of hairy bipeds or Lake/Sea Monsters to stories about phantom dogs or glowing swamp creatures I'd suggest its scholars like yourself from other fields who're more likely to be confused or more likely I suggest irritated by the apparent lack of scholastic discipline.

The vast majority of consumers of such media though're more likely to wolf down whatever they're served up so long as it gets their goosebumps going and in many ways they're more important because it's precisely from those legions the next Loren Coleman will emerge since even born scholars have to learn whatever currently passes for 'good' scholarship and even to this day what usually passes for 'good' scholarship is the renouncing of precisely all this "hokey cryptid nonsense".

ps

John Downes 'maintains that many zooform phenomena result from complex psychosocial and sociological phenomena, and suggests that to classify all such phenomena as “paranormal” in origin is counterproductive'.

I'd add to that even the tag "paranormal" can be so vague as to become almost nonsenical.

For instance I've been known in my time to make jokey statements along the lines me and Nick Redfern believe Sasquatch have secret ninja X-men superpowers because of course there are reports almost to that effect.

The thing is though based on numerous personal experiences with 'ordinary' animals not to mention research conducted with such animals by the likes of Rupert Sheldrake [as well as historic accounts of the likes of witches purportedly having paranormal interactions with 'ordinary' animals] those claims may not be quite as outlandish or even paranormal as they initially seem.

For instance ever since I was a kid I've had these phases where something's woken me up in the middle of the night or summoned me to another nearby location solely to come to the rescue of some poor distressed insect like a cockroach [even though my poor white trash early childhood existence consisted of being bombarded on all sides by an insistence such critters should be mercilessly stomped on a task me Dad used to pursue with relish].

But I'm also celebrated in certain quarters for knowing when a spider's present no matter how well hidden because I seem able to detect them throwing out the command to be so frightened or nervous enough of them to avoid any contact [which might explain some animal based phobias].

How this's done I don't know. It might be electromagnetic it might be pheromonal it might even be telepathic but a sensitivity to creatures who can produce this effect may explain some accounts of 'Sasquatch' seemingly mentally ordering people to be scared for their very lives.

It may also explain something that seems to be happening an awful lot lately.

Friends relatives and acquaintances who've hitherto had little or no knowledge of alanborky's nutcasery've suddenly started anxiously bombarding me or people known to me with tales how normally when they're suspicious an intruder's on the premises they improvise a weapon and raise their voices yet on certain recent occasions they've sensed an unseen 'presence' moving about their house or even their bedroom projecting at them such seething menace they not only couldn't get out of bed to protect their kids but they actually pulled the sheets over their heads and shamefully cowered there as if they were little kids for hours on end until the dawn finally arrived.

Then again maybe me an' Nick're right and Sasquatch [and spiders] really DO have secret ninja X-men superpowers!