The Null Device
2002/7/30
A lot of people have linked to this recently (GJW/Jimbob and Jorn are two), but it's somewhat frightening how much of this Onion article from January 2001 has come true.
The scary similarities between Bush's America and Orwell's 1984. From the state of permanent war to the Ministry of Truth Office of Strategic Influence, and more. Perhaps soon they'll introduce a daily Three Minute Hate, with summary dismissal or detention for non-participation?
(via FmH)
Aircraft manufacturer Boeing are working on anti-gravity propulsion technology; they are attempting to solicit the aid of a Russian scientist, Dr. Evgeny Podkletnov, who claims to have developed a device called an "impulse gravity generator". (It is not known whether Podkletnov was involved in the development of Russia's "jumbo cosmosphere" programme.)
But it is also apparent that Podkletnovs work could be engineered into a radical new weapon. The GRASP paper focuses on Podkletnovs claims that his high-power experiments, using a device called an impulse gravity generator, are capable of producing a beam of gravity-like energy that can exert an instantaneous force of 1,000g on any object enough, in principle, to vaporise it, especially if the object is moving at high speed.
The fact that "free energy" is mentioned in the story, however, seems a bit dubious. Though, if this succeeds, it may finally put the USAF on a par with the Nazi flying saucers based inside the hollow earth fnord. (via bOING bOING)
Tonight at the Film Festival, I saw a documentary titled Love and Anarchy: The Wild Wild World of Jamie Leonarder. The subject of the documentary is a rather unusual person, who has lived the life of the outsider in every way. He worked in psychiatric hospitals, started a noise-rock band named The Mu-Mesons, most of whose members suffer from schizophrenia, associated with outsider artists, and more recently, ran a retro/lounge/exotica night named Sounds of Seduction in Sydney, and became a renowned collector and exhibitor of "psychotronic" cinema (i.e., all the indescribably weird stuff from prior decades, from low-budget monster movies to films from Christian groups on the evils of teenage dating to vintage sex-education films). Anyway, the documentary had some interesting thoughts on outsider art, including the assertion that outsider art is more original than art by trained or mentally normal artists (which makes sense).