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News Briefs 20-08-2015

Rest in peace, Anne…

Quote of the Day:

“On the anniversary of my burst aneurysm in October of 2004, many people have asked me what I’ve learned. I’ve written about this extensively in many of my earlier diaries, but I thought I’d sum it up here. You might even call this diary “What I Learned from the Sick Year” (to paraphrase of the diet book I am posting, one chapter at a time, every week on this website).
I guess the simplest way to put it is, you must live out of love. You must operate from a basic platform of loving other people. This must be your stance as you go through life.”

~Anne Strieber, “You Must Live Out of Love”

  1. news
    Kodak digital: That first paragraph made me feel old and I’m 28! I’ve worked with a manual Asahi camera from the 1970s and I now can say I’ve worked with a Brownie Hawkeye (don’t laugh) Flash camera. None of which I would define as a slow process. It sadly doesn’t surprise me that Kodak would hide this technology. They still don’t know how to do business. Their film is crap, Fujifilm is superior and I had to hand develop it in a darkroom. They were in near bankruptcy in 2007 if I recall, it was a hot topic in my photography classes in college. And their digital photo kiosks are dreadfully outdated. Give up Kodak you lost, Japan does it better. Sheesh…

    KXL Pipeline: If Trump becomes President he may just send a militia to kill these poor people. Fuck we are doomed! *grabs popcorn*

    8 foot prenup: Obvious ancient women were smarter than many of today’s celebrities. I’d like to think that today’s equivalent they’d have to scroll the prenup along the grand canyon.

    Beams of light: Thou shall not tryith to givith a perfectly good explanation to people on Facebook! It’s near pointless.

    Hypnotize animals: I have seen this done before, especially to chickens, several times on YouTube. Nothing special, just that some animals’ brains kind of shut off when you lay them a certain way. Sharks and alligators do this too.

    13 times in 10 years: Jesus that’s depressing. I want to feel bad for her since I imagine Chinese prison isn’t sunshine and rainbows. At the same time it seems like it would have been easier to fake your death and flee the country. Where all the pregnancies aborted? Because using pregnancy to get out of prison and then eliminating the fetus seems cruel.

    Atlantis: Shut up and take my money! It seems like it’s been a while since a good Science Fiction book has come out that didn’t devolve into glorified fan fiction. Fingers crossed…

  2. Atlantos
    From the summary it looks like an incredible corn-ball turkey of a novel, aimed at Atlantean and Lemurian prehistoric civilization pseudoscience believers. Beautiful mushroom shaman, Cleatah? Please.

    “12,000 years in the past…

    On primeval Erthe and Mars two magnificent civilizations hurtle toward their cataclysmic destinies. The rival brothers who govern them possess advanced technos and all-too-human passions.

    Are they gods or are they men?

    Level-headed Terresian explorer and scientist Poseidon Ra commands an expedition to Erthe where a routine genetic protocol on the aboriginal population has unexpectedly triggered a staggering leap in human evolution. He quickly realizes that he’s traveled 940 million miles across the solar system only to fall in love with a planet…and its exceptionally advanced native daughter and mushroom shaman, Cleatah. ……..”

    1. corn-ball turkey
      Of course it is, but that what’s makes it a fun story. You don’t eat potato chips because they are healthy. Kids who read Twilight *shutters* didn’t read it because they thought that a vampire would fall in love with them (well…the sane ones. as I said “glorified fanfiction”). I don’t expect this book to be Dune or even Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, but damn I’m going to give it a chance. I’ve read Star Wars novels, it can’t be any worse than some of them.

      And to clarify: Many gods of ancient times, especially Greeks, were shown to have human vices and emotions. This is the very thing that the literary world defines as making you human. Also when you call Atlantis and all that applies “pseudoscience” you are depicting it in your mind the same way the fantasy has made it. If we think of Atlantis in a way that we have seen happen in the real world to other places, then it looses that fantasy. Can an island sink because of a tsunami or other natural disaster? Yes. Islands are sinking every day due to climate change and from storms, etc. The island I live adjacent to lost almost a mile of its end tip after Superstorm Sandy. Gone forever into the waves. Now yes this book plays more on the fantasy side of things, but that’s what it’s trying to do. It’s science fiction! Its not trying to be fact. If it was trying to be fact I could see your anger. Plus, it’s not trying to base itself off of theory like Dan Brown tried to do with Da Vinci Code (and by “base” I mean stole. And I don’t care what you think. God rest your soul Michael Baigent).

      So in conclusion. I. Don’t. Care. I have never gone into reading a book without taking a big grain of salt with me. But most importantly all I care about is if it’s a good story. If it’s a good story, I will enjoy it. I don’t have to be cynical about a fictional story. Yes I believe an island that we now call Atlantis could have existed, but only basing it in science, nothing mystical or super-powered or faerie crystals…blah, blah, blah. Nothing has been disproven or proven. The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

      I think Cyril Scott’s “Initiate” stories were great. Do I believe it all really happened? I don’t care because it was a good story. Potato chips…that’s what I call these kind of books. Fun junk food for your brain. Now get off the cross we need the wood. Sheesh!

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