I’ve read a shocking article in The Daily Beast. A man who is a UFO popularizer is suing a streaming content company, and they are suing him back. Both are claiming the right to speak with authority about an alien race called the Blue Avians. It’s gotten pretty heated, with one side accusing the other of Satan worship.
The stakes are high, because, after all, the winner will speak for the blue space bird beings. Why won’t the bird aliens speak for themselves? I don’t know. Watch the news and the skies, and listen for the cosmic chirp.
I found myself paging through issues of Startling Stories magazine from the 1930s and 40s in the Internet Archive. I did that because the April image for our calendar is a cover from Startling Storiesand it got me wondering about Festus Pragnell and isotopes that are mentioned on the cover.
Here are some things I found while wandering through the magazine. In the story below, men of the 22nd century have neutralized the hormone that causes beard growth,so no one has to shave.That’s on the second page. I haven’t read enough yet to find out about the isotope men.
Festus, by the way, was really named Frank, but he took his father’s name from an early age. He was a writer and police constable in the UK, and lived from 1905 to 1977.
These magazines have excellent artwork like the image below. Avian and human trudge across an alien landscape where it seems to be raining bubbles. I really do like this picture – not being snarky.
Here’s an ad from the magazine. The National School of Meat Cutting was founded in Toledo, Ohio in 1923. It was the most famous such school in the country. Its motto was, “People must eat.” You can see the motto, and the place where the students lived in a postcard at this link.
One more ad, from the Gulf Hamstery in Mobile, Alabama. The Gulf Hamstery was founded in the late 1940s and became the premier hamster seller in the nation. It sold them to laboratories, breeders, and those wanting pets. The business failed in the 1950s when small hamsteries copied this one and began popping up everywhere.
Pharmaceutical company Gilead charges approximately $3,000 for a course of treatment of its COVID-19 medication, Remdesivir. They used $70 million in taxpayer money to develop it. Public Citizen says $1 per dose would cover production costs.
Prisons continue to be hotspots for infection. We were at 102,494 prison infections on August 18. Coronavirus-related prisoner deaths approach 900. Unintended death sentences for them.
I’ve read a couple articles lately that really lay bare the state this country has fallen to. One of those is “How America Became an Idiocracy” by Umair Haque. I recommend it. Here are some excerpts.
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You see, to the rest of the world — all of it, more or less — what America’s let itself become is mind-blowing, bizarre, bewildering: mass death, rampant disease, economic ruin, a grinning dictator atop it all — and this sense that Americans just don’t care.
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Why did they impeach Trump for bribes — but not torturing kids in cages? What the? Wasn’t it obvious then that he was a) a monster and b) that he’d do worse, this time to “real” Americans?
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2016: “Trump isn’t going to win, there’s absolutely no way. And even if he does, what’s the worst that could happen?” 2017: “Sure, he called people vermin and animals, but he didn’t mean it!” 2018: “Those aren’t concentration camps, for Pete’s sake! They’re just…just… ‘detainment facilities’!” 2019: “This isn’t fascism! It’s not authoritarianism! Don’t be ridiculous! It can’t happen here!” 2020, when 163,000 are dead, five million infected, and 30 plus million out of work: “Don’t worry — he can’t steal the election!!”
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America’s has about two months to wake itself up from its Rip Van Winkle slumber and fight like hell for its democracy, future, economy, health, and sanity. Feeling optimistic?
Here’s some very fine commentary on one of my favorite topics: conspiracy theories. Don’t try to squish your eye onto the screen to read it, just click on it, OK?
That’s what you will be – a healthy skeptic – after learning the basics of critical thinking in a mere three hours. South Seattle College. Register now.
In today’s media-rich world we are drowning in information. How do we know what’s reliable? How do we separate fact from fiction? Critical thinking can help rescue us. Using entertaining examples, we’ll cover the fundamentals of evaluating what we hear and see. We’ll consider ways to minimize self-deception and maximize clear thinking.
This is how an entire afternoon can disappear. Recently I was perusing a long list of rock music genres and sub-genres when I came across this one:
Italian Occult Psychedelia
How could I not look into it? Before long I was on Spotify listening to a band called Cannibal Movie. Imagine if you dumped a beat up old carnival organ into a swamp, and then the Creature from the Black Lagoon sat down and began to play. The sound burbling up from the water is their song, “Fame.”
Take a less distorted organ and add somber drumming and gothic chanting and you’ve got Capra Informis. Music to play at a goat sacrifice – “Tunnels of Cliphoth.” From here I moved on to …
Math Rock
I listened to music from several bands in this genre and really couldn’t detect a common denominator (ha ha) among them. One British group called Three Trapped Tigers had an album called “Numbers: 1-13” with songs labelled 1, 2, etc., as befitting math rock. I like a lot of this music. Another group, from Japan, called Ruins was utterly different and berserk. I recommend this inspired weirdness called “Skhanddraviza,” which must be a homage to Frank Zappa.
Folk Metal
I started with Finntroll. I don’t know why, but this combination of black metal and a type of Finnish polka music was hard to take seriously. It kept reminding me of the Stonehenge scene from Spinal Tap. Much of this genre is Scandinavian. However, the Orphaned Land is out of Israel, mixing metal with Middle Eastern folk music. Here they are live, doing a number without the deep growly voice technique they use on other songs. Finally, I’ll end with:
Dark Cabaret
Picture a group of young circus vampires trying to look menacing while playing squeezeboxes. Face makeup, accordions, and a theatrical style create the cabaret and lyrics about death and destruction make it dark. The Tiger Lillies recommend mindless insurrection in “Start a Fire.” I really like the stop motion style video for this Birdeatsbaby song called “The Trouble.”
You can have the same adventure I did by following the links to the music videos above. As an avant-guard metal band, Gorguts, says, “As spleen takes over me, resound, the echoes of my threnodies.” Live at the Brutal Assault festival.
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