John.c.clarke

Travel around a mountain. Source

How much water and air we have. Fascinating.

The Sun on Sunday, which is of course the News of the World with a different hat on, lied about me last week.

In the general scheme of things, the crumbling economy, the savaged environment, the treacherous, inept, deceitful politicians that govern us, the corrupt corporations that exploit us, it might not seem like a big deal. That's because it isn't to anyone, except me or my girlfriend. The pain, disruption and distress, that the Sun inflicted by falsely claiming that I cheated on my girlfriend, in the context of such awesome corruption, is a pale liver-spot on the back of Murdoch's glabrous claw. Still though, it's a tiny part of the demon's dermatology and as such, connected to all the other pestilence. Here's how.

The post Lee Camp: This Wooden Table Will Change The Way You View The World appeared first on disinformation.

Bigfoot, stabilized.

“The people have spoken, but it will take a while to determine exactly what they said”

- Bill Clinton

Comedian Russell Brand has initiated a debate in the UK about whether it’s worth voting. A significant stir was made on Her Majesty’s BBC when he called for a revolution and told the interviewer it’s not worth voting: “Why pretend? Why be complicit in this ridiculous illusion?”.

The Guardian newspaper carries an opinion piece from him, which Disinfonaughts might like to make an evaluation of: RUSSELL BRAND WE DESERVE MORE FROM OUR DEMOCRATIC SYSTEM.

From my point of view he seems sincere. Perhaps I’m sympathetic because he appears so well versed in the subcultures which Disinfo has faithfully served since the days of Netscape (ask your Grandad). Or maybe it’s that he’s talking in a manner which suggests he’s been paying close attention to his influences, the most prominent of which is a personal favorite of mine, reptilian conspiracy theory espousing ex-TV presenter David Icke.

However, so off message have Brand’s outbursts become that even members of the UK’s comedy establishment are taking issue with him. Revolution “ends in death camps, gulags, repression and murder” fumes Oxbridge graduate and BBC star, Robert Webb, in a critique posted as an open letter to, The New Statesman, a “left leaning” political magazine Brand guest edited the previous week.

In fact Webb claims he was so horrified by Brand’s irresponsible message to ‘the kids’ that he’s joined the UK’s Labour party. Webb’s concerns, that to deny yourself the vote is to deny yourself a voice, are in my opinion alike to his decision to join the establishment and their political “left wing” The Labour Party: misplaced and out of date. The idea Brand is about to lead a violent revolution in Britain is more than a little absurd, proof that taking a comedian too seriously rarely pays off. However, even if he did, the nightmare scenario Webb describes is informed by the conditions of the past and ignores the new realities of our present and possible future.

Previously revolutions have been co-opted by the following mechanism:

someone with enough thugs on their side and a knack for mass communication steps up onto a soapbox and tells the people what the people want.

Thanks to the internet, this may no longer be possible because “the people” have a voice and need no one to speak for them. The technology I’m using is the closest we’ve ever had to a collective voice. The beauty of it is that unlike any previous manifestation in history you can use it to tell me, from your perspective, whether I’m wrong, or right, or almost there. As long as internet articles without comments sections look incomplete and search engines continue to provide a thousand different possible answers to a single question we’re on reasonably safe ground. The push for free expression online continues and if we all keep our nerve in the face of the authorities and their desperate attempts to silence us a new form of democratic engagement starts to look almost inevitable. Brand appears to acknowledge this in his Guardian piece, “I don’t need to come with ideas, we can all participate. I’m happy to be a part of the conversation”. Perhaps what’s starting to look inevitable in our future is what I’d term, for want of a better phrase, a “wiki-revolution”.

The fact of the matter is this, had the internet existed during the French Revolution the likes of Robespierre would never have prospered. Powerful counter narratives to his speeches would’ve appeared the moment his thoughts were impressed upon the world wide web. This is true of all the revolutions that have been betrayed by articulate demagogues and charlatans over the last few hundred years. If you claim your authority as a “voice of the people” you will require a standard of proof not previously available and in the long run I suspect that few will have the audacity to adopt such a pose. Those following developments in Egypt and the so-called Arab Spring are likely to have interesting perspectives on this.

Ironically this democratising force behind the communications era is one of the problems driving the zeitgeist Brand is a symptom of. The UK’s political establishment has, over the last fifty years or so, been able to pass a number of laws, in accordance with a wider agenda, without any apparent popular democratic support. For example, the European Union, which Britain is now part of, was never voted for by the general public, the most they signed up for was a trading agreement. The abolition of the death penalty was not supported by a majority of the British public, nor do a majority of Brits believe in man made global warming or have ever articulated support for anti-smoking laws. We were never asked about bank bail outs, the war in Iraq had over a million people on the streets marching against it. The list goes on and on. “The business of Government” in the UK ignores the will of the people as a matter of routine and few believe otherwise.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with the agenda they’ve been following, or like the changes to your life that have been handed down by our political masters, one thing it’s hard to pretend is that the will of the people is reflected by these so-called leaders of men. This is because the political elites still live in a world where they think they can stand on a soapbox and tell ‘the people’ what ‘the people’ want. That world has vanished now and as a mode of control the technique is as absurd as me telling a grown adult to behave themselves or Santa won’t give them any Xmas presents.

If we all collude and collaborate together we can design a new system that makes the current one obsolete. The reality is there are alternatives. That is the terrifying truth that the media, government and big business work so hard to conceal. Even the outlet that printed this will tomorrow print a couple of columns saying what a naïve wanker I am, or try to find ways that I’ve fucked up. Well I am naïve and I have fucked up but I tell you something else. I believe in change. I don’t mind getting my hands dirty because my hands are dirty already. I don’t mind giving my life to this because I’m only alive because of the compassion and love of others. Men and women strong enough to defy this system and live according to higher laws. This is a journey we can all go on together, all of us. We can include everyone and fear no one. A system that serves the planet and the people. I’d vote for that.

LINK TO BRAND’S GUARDIAN ARTICLE HERE

In short it doesn’t matter if you agree with Brand’s statist orthodox-left tendencies, the sentiment driving him forward is coming from our subculture and as a result it’s one I believe the establishment will not be able to control.

Nick Margerrison.

The post The People Would Be Just As Noisy… appeared first on disinformation.

Wondering about the mechanical intricacies of how televisions function? It likely will never be better explained than in this mysterious clip that looks to have been filmed circa-1990, in which everyone’s favorite Icelander deconstructs a TV set to reveal what is really occurring inside:

The post Bjork Explains Television appeared first on disinformation.

I’m pretty sure I remember looking at the lock and seeing myself turn the key. Or was that yesterday?

Despite modernisation, the owners have retained the toilet’s original listening booth - an unusual feature seldom seen nowadays.

Submitted by jlolliday, for which thanks.

Last week I attended a conference in London called 'Energy Live.'
I was there as a guest speaker and felt out of depth the moment I entered the venue.
This was a gathering of leaders in the field of energy supply and distribution, massive gas and oil corporations, industrial scale solar and wind companies, the national grid, renewable investment funds, you name it, the big guns were there.
It was a day of seminars and panel discussions ranging across all manner of topics related to the future of energy, where it might come from and how we distribute and use it.
Just before I was due to appear a rather scowling but hugely enigmatic and entertaining man called Chris Faulkner took to the stage.
Mr Faulkner is the Founder and CEO of the Dallas-based Breitling Energy Company. They frack. They frack like hell, if there's one thing Mr Faulkner loves, it's fracking.
He was forceful, funny, dogmatic, dismissive and enormously entertaining.
His obvious dislike of environmental activists was exposed with charm and wit, this guy was a brilliant speaker, a fantastic figurehead for an industry with a fairly severe PR problem in the UK.
He argued the case for fracking as well as anyone possibly could, the enormous economic benefit the American economy has experienced since fracking was introduced on a truly massive scale.
The decrease in coal burning at power stations, the increase in manufacturing and jobs in all sectors. The vast amounts of tax the fracking companies have paid to the government both at a state and federal level.
Due to the success of the process the cost of gas has fallen through the floor, so much so that's it's currently not worth a company like Mr Faulkner's investing in new drilling sites in the USA.
So guess what folks, they want to do it here.
I was surrounded by a lot of people who work in the fossil fuel industry in one way or another, you would think he was preaching to the converted and although he got laughs, won rounds of applause it didn't seem like he'd fully convinced people.
He left the stage to tumultuous applause and he deserved it, he was a Texan showman bedecked in Cuban heeled boots and rhinestone cufflinks.

There is no denying it, Mr Faulkner is exactly what a Brit audience wants from an American oil man. No punches pulled, shoot from the hip, speak your mind, fracking is the future people, get used to it.
Then I was introduced, a bumbling wet liberal electric car driving, solar panel owning middle class English pillock.
As I said to the audience when I took the stage, 'back in '87 I had to follow Robbie Coltrane at a big benefit concert in Edinburgh where the audience was 99% Scottish, I thought that was a tough gig!'
Believe me, that was nothing compared to following Mr Fracker.
I did my best, he'd set the tone, he'd raised the bar.
It was all or nothing, instead of bumbling and being apologetic went in six shooters blazing.
I suggested that while the immediate economic benefits of drilling and burning were undeniable, we might be at a pivotal point in the great human story where we needed to stop burning stuff.
While it might be possible to safely drill through the water table and pump highly toxic fluids deep underground to desperately try and extract the last vestiges of hydrocarbons from the planet, there just might be a longer term downside.
While it is foolish not to consider all the options available to us after the chronic failures of all governments over the last 25-30 years to prepare for the energy gap we are now facing, maybe fracking should be put on the back burner for now.
Now I'm not going to pretend I can remember everything I said, I know at one point I talked about drilling in my garden and fracking the hell out of my home and shitting all over my grandchildren's lives, I now recall that moment with some shame.
Yes, it got a laugh but that kind of cheap reaction to the massive and powerful industry that Mr Faulkner represents is not constructive.
Thankfully I also suggested we concentrate instead on developing massively distributed, local, individual and community owned power generating networks, grid level storage and and a non drill and burn attitude to sustainable energy production.
I may have mentioned that 97% of new power generation capacity in Germany is not owned by  mainstream utilities, meaning quite simply that it's owned by the people who use the power.
A distributed system like this is more reliable, more robust, less vulnerable to attack or mass blackouts, more able to adapt to new technologies, the list goes on and on.
What was truly encouraging was the response my rather unfocused and over emotional tirade got from this very professional and well informed group.
It felt very positive.
Maybe they were just being polite to an old bloke but I think there is something bigger going on.
People in the industry and particularly engineers understand that we need to start doing something radically different to the old model.
I can only hope that they succeed.
But seriously, respect to Mr Faulkner, the simplicity of the model is undeniable.
Frack, extract gas, sell it cheap, make a shit ton of cash, screw Mr Putin, screw the Saudi's and experience an economic boom.
Hell, you only live once.
Drill and burn baby. Drill and burn.

tunder (1982)

Cast: Esteban Arias

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Ah, the parties we used to have. Do you remember the one when we murdered everybody?

Slope Point is the southernmost point of South Island, New Zealand. Lying just east of the Waikawa and Haldane settlements, the land is primarily used for sheep farming. With no roads nearby, the area is only accessible by a 20-minute hike.

According to an article on Kuriositas, “airstreams loop the vast circumpolar Southern Ocean unobstructed for 2000 miles and then they smash into land here. They are so persistent and so violent that the trees are perpetually warped and twisted into these crooked, windswept shapes.”

The branches of these windswept trees point northerly in order to offer the least resistance to the relentless winds.

A larger, zoom-able version can be found at http://thedoghousediaries.com/large/5414.png.

EDIT2:  Some Wikipedia articles from which we pulled much of our data have suddenly been updated.  Coincidence?  Anyway, we’ve made further updates to the map.

EDIT:  Made multiple corrections to outdated data and wrong country borders.

Fun Fact.  If you flipped Mount Everest over and placed it on top of the Mariana Trench, it’s peak would fall 7,000 feet short of the bottom. It would also be the single largest waste of human effort in history.