I hereby give notice that I am formally and publicly disassociating myself from Anonymous Hackers.

 I do not believe in nor do I support the disruption of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of the press when the exercise of such freedoms does not interfere with the rights of others.  I do not believe in the interference of fundamental freedoms in the guise of protecting those freedoms whether that interference is made by a governmental or non-governmental individual or organization.

 I am not by this notice disassociating myself from, nor am I acknowledging any association with, the Cult of the Dead Cow, Umbra Data and the Dark Side Intelligence, LulzSec, Twitter Anonymous, the Sinister League of Evil Badguys, Hacktivismo, the Illuminati, or Terrorists for Truth.

 Nothing in this declaration shall be construed as indicating participation in any illegal activity, whether in the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, or any other country or portion of the world.

 I also hereby give notice that I do not intend to reveal the legal names, pseudonyms, locations, methods, or plans of any members of any of these groups, nor do I acknowledge having any such knowledge whatsoever.

Posted at 23:23 UTC on the 17th of April in the year 2012 CE/Discord 34, Year of Our Lady of Discord 3178

 ’Anonymous should take a leaf out of the IRA’s method of operation and use a cellular structure, with only 3 or 4 in each cell so if there is a snitch in the organization it has minimal damage.’

- Stephen, St. Ives, England, 07/3/2012 02:33

Quote from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2111020/Top-members-hacking-groups-Anonymous-LulzSec-arrested-leader-Sabu-turns-in.html

Image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Anonymous_at_Scientology_in_Los_Angeles.jpg

(Remember, this cellular structure is a fundamental part of the origin and success of Discordianism).

Posted by Reverend Loveshade at 11:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

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Some stories make us as ourselves, "What country are we living in?*"  This is one of them.

Some government agencies, employers, and colleges have demanded to know applicants' Facebook account passwords.  The ACLU stepped in and helped get that stopped. But now instead some are asking and even demanding to have access to the supposedly private friends' only posts. If they can do that with Facebook, your formerly private email could be next.

Even if you aren't required to reveal the information, if you're trying to get a job or get on a team, will you want to take the chance of refusing?

Currently, employers in most of the United States aren't supposed to discriminate on the basis of sex, race, age (with some major exceptions).  But apparently those rights don't apply to something as fundamental as private communication with your friends and family.

Learn more in The Redtape Chronicles article HERE. 

*Most, but not all, of us currently reside in the United States of America.

Posted by The Loveshade Family at 01:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

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They are at it once again. In the name of protecting corporate interests, a new bill is being considered in Congress. Among other things, if this bill passes "The government can order service providers to block websites for infringing links posted by any users." This could include blogs like this one, in addition to Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook. It could also mean blocking sites from other countries so Americans couldn't see them. This isn't what's happening in China, but it's a step in that direction.

Now we're all in favor of individual creators having the right to their own work and are against people stealing an individual's work in the name of "free speech." But as usually happens when the government goes after something big, this bill goes too far.  Let's stop censorship before it begins.

For more info including how to contact your representative, go to http://americancensorship.org/

To see the bill, go to http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/112%20HR%203261.pdf

Posted by The Loveshade Family at 02:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

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* The AMERICAN CONGRESS will work very hard to get very little done.

* Something long-lost by a MAJOR ARTIST will be revealed.

* A scandal will rock the BRITISH GOVERNMENT.  The color purple will be involved.

* The AMERICAN ECONOMY will show significant improvement; Democrats will claim it's because of their fine work, while Republicans will claim it's because of improvements made while George W. Bush was still president.

* BARACK OBAMA will once again be shown to qualify to be U. S. President.  Many people, especially those who watch Fox News, won't believe it.

* The BBC will have a major, career-destroying scandal.

* A male BRITISH ICON of purity and wholesomeness will be caught with his hand somewhere people don't think it belongs; i.e., in someone else's pocket.

* A female AMERICAN ICON of purity and wholesomeness will be caught exposing a portion of her anatomy that the prudish will not think should be exposed.

* Former American President BILL CLINTON will receive an award nobody in their right mind would have expected him to receive when e was president.

* The Law that DEATHS ALWAYS HAPPEN IN FIVES will once again be proven this year.  At least of those deaths will be unexpected, a famous singer, and a famous actor.

* A major figure in the MIDDLE EAST will be violently killed.

* A WORLD-KNOWN FIGURE will admit a Discordian connection.

* A long-awaited for DISCORDIAN TOME will finally be published.  There will be much rejoicing.

HAPPY NEW YEAR,

THE LOVESHADE FAMILY

Posted by Reverend Loveshade at 07:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

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It may seem difficult to believe, but until today, people who were HIV-positive could not come to the United States of America.

The blocking law was passed in 1987, back when ignorant Americans (and apparently their elected officials) thought HIV/AIDS could be passed by handshakes and hugs.  It became the late 20th century equivalent of an earlier America's "C-word" (cancer), or America's equivalent of the biblical leprosy.

But Americans, unlike the enlightened bibical writers of a few thousand years ago, were ignorant of current medical knowledge.  Even in the late 1980s, the evidence was that HIV/AIDS could not be spread by casual contact.

And even if it was justified in the panicked 1980s, how could it have taken 22 years for HIV to be moved out of the category of highly contagious diseases spread by casual contact?  The United States was one of only about 12 countries to have such a ban.  Others include Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Libya.

It's another example of how American politics are often rooted in superstition, and how many years it can take to correct a misguided law that those in the know, in this case the medical community, had long said was not helpful and was, in fact, harmful.

Finally, after 22 years, familes who have been separated have a chance to come together again.  Assuming members have not died from legally-sanctioned second-hand smoke.

http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2009/dec/01/travel/chi-hiv-travel-ban-01-dec01

Posted by The Loveshade Family at 05:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)

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I know you've all been waiting for this all year, so here it is.

Here are my predictions for 2010 (actually, other members of The Loveshade Family contributed to this; they just don't want to admit it):

* The HEALTH CARE REFORM so praised by Americans (that is, those who don't have health care), will pass, but will not work as planned.  Detractors will say it's a huge waste of money, and will put America in the toilet.  However, supporters will say it's at least better than it was, and it will continue to get better.  Rush Limbaugh will say at least I'm still alive.

* ELVIS PRESLEY will be spotted in a shopping mall in New Jersey.

* The AMERICAN ECONOMY will show significant improvement; Democrats will claim it's because of their fine work, while Republicans will claim it's because of improvements made while George W. Bush was still president.

* An American group will work very hard to prove that BARACK OBAMA DOESN'T QUALIFY AS PRESIDENT.  The group will be suspected of having ties to a dissident group overseas.

* The supposedly dim-witted PARIS HILTON will still maintain the facade of being dim-witted, but will none-the-less cleverly manage to get herself in the news for yet another scandal.

* A male AMERICAN ICON of purity and wholesomeness will be caught with his hand somewhere people don't think it belongs; i.e., in someone else's pocket.

* A female BRITISH ICON of purity and wholesomeness will be caught exposing a portion of her anatomy that the prudish will not think should be exposed.

* The Law that DEATHS ALWAYS HAPPEN IN FIVES will once again be proven this year.  At least of those deaths will be unexpected, a famous singer, and a famous actor.

* QUEEN ELIZABETH I will not die, but will have a significant medical problem.  (Sorry, your Majesty).

* A major figure in the MIDDLE EAST will be violently killed.

* In the United Kingdom, there will be renewed interest in an ANCIENT ACTIVITY.  It will be something that's been popular in North America for years.

* HIP HOP will still be popular with many, and still hated by many others.

* I will perform a legally-recognized DISCORDIAN WEDDING, and there will be much rejoicing.

HAPPY NEW YEAR,

THE LOVESHADE FAMILY

Posted by Reverend Loveshade at 09:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)

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Parents, moralists and media are curently attacking Sexting, or sending nude, semi-nude or sexually-explicit images and videos of yourself over phone and the Internet.  They're even going after cybersex, or sexually-explicit conversations in chat rooms.  Naturally, the biggest concern is when it's done by "young people."

After all, didn't some 13-year-old girl commit suicide over it?

No.  She wasn't a victim of sending nude photos of herself, she was a victim of vicious cyberbullying.  People who could be helped with counseling for self-esteem issues brought on by hormonal changes and, often, non-supportive parents, need help.  But they can get an easy release by harassing people online.  After all, it takes no courage attacking someone who can't really attack you back (plant your attacks, then log off).

The old "sticks and stones may break my bones, but your dirty words can't hurt me" is a great philosophy to live by, but it doesn't reflect the reality that human beings are a social species.

But can't you get arrested?  Yes.  As we've reported here before, young people have been arrested and charged with promoting child pornography for sending pictures of themselves.  The criminal and the victim become the same person.

Continue reading "Sexting--Fun or Dangerous?" »

Posted by Reverend Loveshade at 03:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)

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It pains us to write this, but GeoCities, one of the Internet's early and most popular places for posting a personal website, ends today.

It's one of the cruelties of the modern era that history may not be preserved.  Even in the U. S. government, critical issues discussed via email and text messaging can vanish at the touch of a few buttons.

Geocities technically began in 1994, when most people not only hadn't used the Internet, but didn't even know what it was.  But it didn't really get going until 1995.  The site was divided into loosely themed "neighborhoods," like Area51 and Hollywood.  A person's personal url originally would be an address like http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dimension/8484/.  As the Internet advanced, these could be shortened to the domain name plus user name, like http://www.geocities.com/bloodstar84.

Many people's first websites were there.  Our friend BloodStar built his in the 1990s, and it was the first place anyone could find Reverend Loveshade's work online, including the now well-known "Five Blind Men and an Elephant" (the second place was http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Zone/7971).  It held one of the early online references to Apocrypha Discordia, which back then wasn't a real book.

Alden built his first website there in 1997, and still considers it his second favorite self-built sites (the first is this site, of course).  Friendships and even marriages happened through that site, which was the third most visited in its heyday.  Some people grew up there, posting as young teenagers and continuing into their college years.

And now, with one swipe of Yahoo's axe, it will be gone.  For a while now, it hasn't been possible to start a new site or even to edit one that's already there.  But as Yahoo! now offers everyone free email with unlimiitd storage, keeping the sites up would likely take very little.  Back in the day, you got what was a whooping big 15 megabytes of space for your website.  And most sites weren't nearly that big, meaning you could easily save 100,000 of them on a $200 flash drive.  But Yahoo! won't do it.

Thanks goodness http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/28/geocities_preservation/ has been working to save what they can.  This is real history, the personal, amateur groundwork on which the personal and corporate blog were built.  Decades from now, when people are downloading a history book of the Internet into their brain, GeoCities will be an important part of the book.

Goodbye, old friend.

Posted by The Loveshade Family at 03:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)

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Continue reading "Privacy--An Endangered Species" »

Posted by Alden Loveshade at 01:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (16)

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The most effective censorship is the censorship you don't know about. If what you can learn is controlled by a government, corporation, religion, you won't know what you're missing. You will likely believe what you're told.

The Internet has been censored by various groups and nations for years.  At first, the censorship was quite obvious.  Now, it's getting more subtle.  You may head for a website that's not blocked, but just takes a really long time to load.  Too long, so you head somewhere else.  But is the delay due to poor website design, heavy bandwidth usage, or subtle censorship?

Want to know if your internet provider that claims to only be blocking hate speech and child pornography is also blocking politics they disagree with and the competition?  Check out Herdict.  It's run by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.  You can go there to learn of blocked websites, and also report your own suspicions.  You can also sign up for alerts, and download a browser add-on you can use when you can't access a site.  It's at  www.herdict.org

Posted by The Loveshade Family at 01:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)

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America is a nation with access to some of the best medical professionals, equipment and treatment in the world.  It's also a nation where an increasing number of people are refusing to be treated because they can't afford it.

Increasing unemployment and health care cutbacks during the current recession mean more people are without medical insurance.  As doctors and hospitals demand payment or proof of insurance, more people are going to emergency rooms for care.  (An ER can't turn down a patient because of inability to pay).

How will this help the economy if more people aren't getting the medical care they need?  More may be unable to work, support themselves and their families, and disease may become more rampant.  And more workers may die.

See an article about the problem at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30628634

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To see more entries related to health care, click http://loveshade.org/blog-mt/mt-search.fcgi?IncludeBlogs=1&search=health+care

Posted by The Loveshade Family at 05:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)

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Marijuana use has long been associated with problems in short term recall.  Hey, did I say bud affects short term recall?

Ironically enough, weed may help prevent--and even reverse--the most notorious memory disease of all, Alzheimer's Disease.

The journal Neurobiology of Aging reported that a compound that works like marijuana's THC reduces brain inflammation and improves memory in senior citizen rats.

As always, more research will have to be done.  But the effects of chemicals on rats are amazingly similar to the effects on humans.

Could this be another nail in the coffin of out-dated anti-marijuana laws?  Hey, Grandpa, don't forget to smoke some grass!

See http://health.msn.com/health-topics/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100230518&gt1=31036

Posted by Reverend Loveshade at 04:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)

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"This morning, PETA dispatched a letter to Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, cofounders of ice cream icon Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc., urging them to replace the cow's milk in their products with human breast milk."

That's from the official website of PETA, or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.  It's apparently in the wake of news reports that a restaurant owner in Switzerland plans to buy breast milk to use in soups, stews and sauces.

Their site claims it's cruel to keep cattle locked up, forcibly impregnating cows every nine months just to keep up milk production.

Would their solution mean milk-supplying women would have to be impregnated every nine months?

Apparently not.  It appears that woman will continue producing breast milk as long as they're nursing, as the Veronika Robinson case points out (she breastfed her daughters until they voluntarily stopped breast feeding at age 7, one of them almost 8 years old who asked for it again on her 9th birthday.)  PETA claims breast milk is not only better for the animals, but for people.

If this becomes a trend, it leaves us with a very large question: what about yogurt, or milk itself?  A cow can produce many times the milk that a human woman can.  Where would all that milk come from?

Read the PETA letter and comments at http://www.peta.org/mc/NewsItem.asp?id=11993

See a short video about Veronika Robinson at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHRyRCHuQ7g and Robinson's corrections to some of the video at http://www.themothermagazine.co.uk/extraordinarybreastfeeding.html (thanks to Einley for pointing these out at http://www.mothering.com/discussions/showthread.php?t=844263 )

Posted by The Loveshade Family at 04:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (16)

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Hey, everyone,

As an artist myself, I fully understand the need to protect copyrights. They're really the only way that a small free-lancer like myself could survive.

But the Viacom suit against Google/YouTube sounds pretty scary. I'm not sure Viacom really has the privacy of users in mind considering that a while back a bunch of Napster users got slapped with hefty bills or face lawsuits.

And we've already seen that privacy in this country for the past seven years has been badly eroded in favor of the bottom line.

And that privacy has been getting stripped away for much longer than that.

As for copyrights, Viacom, owner of MTV and VH1, has even gone so far as to grab the rights to videos that were made years and even decades before MTV was even a germ of an idea.

So be careful if you go to YouTube, okay?

Unless you're one of those folks who knows how to remain anonymous on the Web (which I'm not.)

See more at http://news.yahoo.com/s/cnet/20080703/tc_cnet/830110784399835117 and http://www.reuters.com/article/technology-media-telco-SP/idUSWEN535120070313

Posted by Danacasso at 07:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (30)

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Posted by Reverend Loveshade at 06:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

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Arthur C. Clarke, the 90-year-old icon of science and science fiction who passed away on March 19, 2008, has been cleared of having sex with boys.

Clarke served as host and commentator of the television program Mysterious World, and was the creator with Stanley Kubrick of the immortal 2001: A Space Odyssey.  The movie (it was also a book) was honored at the 2001 Academy Awards.  He came up with the idea of the communications satellite, and was a close friend of fellow science and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, who in turn was known by our own Alden Loveshade.

But even Clarke could not escape the rampant international pedophile hunt that's ravaging the modern world. The Sunday Mirror had published its story of the allegations 10 years ago when Clarke was 80, ironically (or purposely) a few days before he was to be knighted by the Prince of Wales on a visit to Sri Lanka.  The British-born author had made his home there for many years (he was knighted in 1998).

While no evidence came forth, the allegations haunted Clarke, and resurfaced after his death.  But authorities in Sri Lanka announced Sunday, 2008 March 23, that the investigation had been dropped, and that Clarke had been cleared before his death.

See http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/1998/08/13/fhead.htm and look for the most current article at http://www.citizen.co.za/ (sorry, we don't have the exact URL)

Posted by The Loveshade Family at 08:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

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Well, well, well. Happy 60th, Roswell, New Mexico. For true believers, yours was the definitive UFO incident.

Yet, if it weren't for another state you might not have made into the national lexicon in the first place.

The state to which I refer is the Evergreen State; Washington. You see, Roswell's "incident" was July 8, 1947. But in Washington on the previous June 24, a lone pilot was flying east over the Cascade mountains in his small plane. Suddenly, Kenneth Arnold looked out to the north and saw nine silver objects flying at what he estimated to be around 1200 mph. At that time, the fastest jets did about 660 mph.

Continue reading "Happy 60th Roswell--but Arnold was first" »

Posted by Danacasso at 03:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

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This is a message sent to us by Danacasso 

Well, I'm sure that you must know that today is the 30th anniversary of the release of Star Wars, now called Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. It didn't have that longer title until after 1980, but then you knew that.

On May 25, 1977, I was twelve years old and living in King Salmon, Alaska and although the local Air Force station did have a theater, I never saw Star Wars there. Instead, I saw The Great Waldo Pepper and Airport 77, both aviation movies.

However, I did know about Star Wars after a fashion as one of my dad's magazines had an ad for the famous poster by the brothers Hildebrandt; I just didn't know it was for a movie.

Then, in August of 1977, my brother and I travelled back to our home state of Oregon to live with our mom. Right after we got there, the big news was not a movie but the death of Elvis. Then, one day in a store, we saw a magazine about the movie, and it was then that I realized what it was. Then my cousin mentioned it and how good it was.

Finally, my dad came down to visit us and he took my brother and me to see Star Wars. This was at one of the last old single-screen theaters in town.

It's been a long road, and a difficult one, since then, but I still haven't forgotten that August evening in 1977 when I got my twelve-year old mind blown away. Thanks, George, you changed my world.

Danacasso

Posted by Danacasso at 11:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

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According to the mother of the 10-year-old girl Riley, she has a birth defect--a penis.  The preteen transgender girl, who is biologically a boy, finds self-identity as the opposite sex.  Even as a toddler, Riley wanted "girl" toys and clothes.

On the flip side, 14-year-old girl Rebecca wrote Mom a letter saying "she" wanted to be a "he."  Rebecca, now known as Jeremy, was "a boy in a girl's body."

Most modern societies, and many historical ones, force people to be identified as either "male" or "female."  This dictates what clothes, activities, professions and people they can marry.  But this division into two boxes reflects neither psychological nor biological reality.  People range from a wide spectrum of "feminine" to "masculine" thoughts, feelings and behaviors that doesn't always fit biological gender.  And genetics don't produce only the "female" XX and the male "XY," but also XXY, XXX, X, XXXY, XYY and other combinations.

Read about Riley at http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=3072518&page=1

And learn about Jeremy at http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=3077906&page=1

Posted by Alden Loveshade at 04:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

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Do search engines such as Google violate copyright laws?  Is the display of a low-pixel image in a search engine illegal?  The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco just said no.

It's fascinating how technology changes law and our very concepts of our world.  Before printing became commonplace, and even for quite a while after, there was no such thing as "copyright," nor even a clear concept of how a piece of work could belong to its creator.

Now we're questioning whether a computer-interpreted phone line or satellite link that displays a lower pixel version of an electronic image that's computer code interpreted by a personal computer and electronically put together on a visual monitor is a copyright offense.  Weird.

 Read about the decision at http://blogs.abcnews.com/scienceandsociety/2007/05/sex_and_google.html#comment-69784414

Posted by Alden Loveshade at 04:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

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"First Cloned Cat has Kittens."  And before that, two later-cloned wild cats had kittens. Real-life biology has once again passed science fiction.  Some of you trekkers/trekkies might remember that in the original Star Trek's vision of two or three centuries from now, cloning was wraught with problems, often including infertility. Well, the future ain't what it used to be.

Now, in the early 21st century, cloning can not only be used to produce pets, which can bear normal offspring, it's been approved by the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for cloning cattle.  Not long from now, you might be feeding cat food made from cloned beef to your cloned cat, while you enjoy a cloned T-bone steak with your second spouse, cloned from your late first, who is bottle-feeding your cloned baby with cloned milk.

(Remember that a clone is like an identical twin, it is NOT the same person or animal.  That would require brain-taping and copying, which we don't have--yet.)

Read more about the cloned cat at http://apnews.myway.com/article/20061215/D8M126280.html and about the FDA's view on cloned beef at http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/12/28/cloned.food.ap/index.html.

Posted by Alden Loveshade at 04:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

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America spends a much higher percentage of it's money on health care than any other industrialized nation.  And yet it has the worst life expectency and highest infant mortality rate, according to a study by the non-profit and non-partisan Commonwealth Fund.

This study is something to chew on for those who are opposed to a system of national health care, where every citizen is provided with medical insurance.  The opposition claims such a system would mean worse and more expensive health care.  But the experience of other nations says otherwise.

You can read the details in "U.S. Health-Care System Gets a "D." by Catherine Arnst.

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To see more entries related to health care, click http://loveshade.org/blog-mt/mt-search.fcgi?IncludeBlogs=1&search=health+care

Posted by Alden Loveshade at 12:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

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Is Pluto a planet or not?  Many astronomers are up in arms over the declaration of the International Astronomical Union that Pluto, along with a couple other heavenly bodies, are not planets.  Pluto has been considered the ninth planet since its discovery in 1930, so why the change?  Is it because scientists discovered that Pluto didn't fit the established definition of a planet?

No.  There never has been an established definition of a planet, until now.  And a number of scientists don't like it.  Is this a matter of scientific debate on the validity of observational and experimental evidence, or is this pure politics?

Continue reading "The Politics of Pluto" »

Posted by Alden Loveshade at 04:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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Have you ever sold a cell phone?  Have you ever given one to a family member, or thrown one away in the trash?  You may have given away your financial records, your passwords, even the secret of the affair you're having on your spouse.  This could be true even if you were careful enough to delete all your cell phone's records first.

Don't believe it?  Read the article "Betrayed by a cell phone" at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/betrayed_by_a_cell_phone

Posted by Alden Loveshade at 05:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

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