Cognitive Dissidents

Baden Powell, the founder of the Boy Scout movement was involved in naturism and paganism.

In his formation of the Scout movement, Baden-Powell was heavily influenced by the unorthodox ideas of the "WanderVogel", an early 20th Century German youth group interested in “back to nature” ideas.

The Wandervogel placed an emphasis on collective nudity combined with physical activities such as swimming or hiking. At the same time Earnest Thomas Seton in the USA was exploring new ideas about woodcraft and the spiritual benefits of living in harmony with nature based on Red Indian life.

When Earnest Thomas Seton, the founder of the Woodcraft League of America, visited England in 1906 he gave Baden-Powell a copy of his book “The Birch Bark Roll”.

It was then that Baden-Powell found the inspiration to write “Scouting for Boys”, and by 1908 the Boy Scouts had been formed. Combining the new ideas from America, Germany and beyond, Baden-Powell had synthesized a radically new, and some would say militaristic, vision of how boys should be nurtured into adults.

A significant hint to his true motives appears in a recent biography of Baden-Powell where it was stated that he would often chat to naked scouts just after they had stripped off to swim when he was visiting their campsite in Epping forest, and which also goes on to suggest that his position of trust meant that watching would be the only action he could ever contemplate.

More strangely, the right-wing conspiracy theorists have frequently sought to blame Baden-Powell’s influence for the upsurge of paganism in the 20th Century. Heavily influenced by Seton and Baden-Powell’s ideas, John Hargrave dropped out of the Boy Scout movement and founded the “Kibbo Kift”, a movement based on camping, handicrafts and the world peace movement.

Hargrave, known as “White Fox” to his Kibbo Kift followers, published books which pre-empted much of the new-age philosophy with an emphasis on unity with nature and included chapters on “Yoga – the art of Meditation”.

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If any publisher is interested in a book called "101 Forbidden Facts: A Catalogue of Damned Information", then I have my original research and a proposal which can be forwarded to you. Please contact me.

Posted by Dr. K at 4:28 PM | Permalink

Edgar Hoover was a closet homosexual and transvestite

J. Edgar Hoover, scourge of communists and subversives during the "Cold War" was a closet homosexual and transvestite.

J. Edgar Hoover was the head of the FBI from 1924 until his death until 1972. He persecuted alleged communists such as John Lennon, and Robert J Oppenheimer , the "father of the atomic bomb".

However the life of J Edgar Hoover was far stranger than that of any of his cold war suspects.

Repeated rumours have surfaced that J. Edgar Hoover was in a homosexual relationship with his right hand man, Clyde Tolsen, for over 40 years. Certainly they holidayed together and remained life long bachelors, but they never set up home together.

Stranger still are the rumours of cross dressing that surfaced in “Official & Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover” by Anthony Summers, where it was claimed that organized crime had a picture of Hoover having sex with Tolsen, and that subsequent blackmail was the real reason that Hoover was “soft” on organized crime.

One witness says she was introduced to “Mary”, a man wearing a wig, black dress, lace stockings and high heels, but recognized the transvestite as Hoover. This tasteful ensemble was topped of course, by the obligatory suspender belt, which she alleged she winessed while Hoover was being pleasured by two young men.

On another occasion she alleged that Hoover was wearing a red dress and a feather boa, accompanied by the same young men she was startled to find Hoover listening to readings from the bible while being sexually pleasured.

J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolsen remained separate during their lifetimes; however, they are now united in death, as they are buried next to each other in the Congressional cemetery, in Washington, DC.

STOP PRESS: While researching the links for this I found that there are rumours that Hoover was of mixed race and that this was why he persecuted black civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King

If Hoover was mixed race and persecuted black civil rights leaders, and was also homosexual and pesecuted gays, then maybe his persecution of communists indicates that he was a "closet communist" or had left leanings in his youth.

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If any publisher is interested in a book called "101 Forbidden Facts: A Catalogue of Damned Information", then I have my original research and a proposal which can be forwarded to you. Please contact me.

Posted by Dr. K at 12:25 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

I was thinking while reading "Katrina may cost as much as four years of war", which claims that costs for Katrina may be as high as $200 BILLION, that any kind of covert weather manipulation would be the ideal force multiplier for a terrorist group.

But then it struck me that there is ONE COUNTRY in the world capable of carrying out "weather wars".

I quick search revealed that the conspiracy theorists were already onto this one, and linked it to Nikolai Tesla, odd uses of the HAARP project and Woodpecker.

I found all this very interesting, but no, this is not what I meant.

I was thinking of a country that consumes almost 25% of the world's oil enjoys some of the lowest gasoline prices in the world when prices are adjusted for GDP per capita, and which refuses to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on reducing Greenhouse Gases thought to cause Global Warming which might have been a contributing factor in hurricane Katrina.

No wonder I am not a conspiracy theorist, I only have to look at the human capacity for greed and foolishness to explain the world I find myself in.

Posted by Dr. K at 10:02 AM | Permalink

From The Guardian today:

MI5 head warns of liberties trade-off to fight terror

I wonder whether the continued erosion of civil liberties in the name of the "fight against terror" is worth it.

Surely if we change our way of life and destroy everything that makes western liberal democracy the 8th wonder of world then the terrorists are winning??

The pupose of terrorism, it must be said, is to cause TERROR and to use that terror as a force multiplier for organisations that have no conventional armies.

They, whoever they really are, have succeeded in their aim and the net effect is to change the way we live forever. Recent history suggests that such legislation does not disapper when the threat recedes. The Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act was introduced in 1974.

Although being re-written several times the act shows no sign of going away, indeed with each assualt on civil liberties the act becomes more entrenched in law.

I fear the recent attacks will do nothing to stop this trend.

Posted by Dr. K at 10:59 AM | Permalink

From the "The Guardian" today, a piece entitled "Secrets Laid Bare" inspired by the recent DEMOS report "Wide Open"

I'm not sure I agree with the statement that "in a strict sense nothing except computer code can ever be open source".

Other electronic media, such a music and eBooks can also be distributed as "Open Source".

But then I realised that some of the largest "Open Source" projects have been running ever since human kind first began to speak.

I am referring to the huge body of oral myths and folktales that have been handed down from generation to generation.

These stories have been heard, embellished and retold, then re-embellished, for hundreds, or in some cases thousands, of years.

Stories were are all very familiar with from childhood, such as Cinderella and Snow White were the product of centuries of oral traidtion and story telling long before the Brothers Grimm collected them and wrote them down for the first time in 1810.

So if the large body of myth, folklore and legend passed down orally by the common folk is "open source", what else?

Folk music is another good example. Once again this kind of "open source" happens when ordinary people get together and make and play music together for entertainment. To celebrate the ordinary mundane things of life: birth, marriage, birthdays, death.

If you listen to all the diferent types of folk music from áround the world you hear will a rich and distinct tradition that is unique to the region that the music originates from.

Before the invention of the modern well tempered scale music wasn't even written down by folk musicians.

They played by ear and learned by rote, sharing techniques and tunes as they collectivly evolved their music into their distinct musical styles. Then those sytles evolved and merged to create new styles as musicians from all over the world collided in the "New World" .. setting off a new explosion of music that lead to categories such as "Jazz", "Blues", "Cajun", "Bluegrass" and "Country & Western", and so many other that I could go on forever.

Sounds pretty "open source" to me ..

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I think there will be "More On This Later" .. now I've started the analogy it looks like most of the development of civilisation relied on the open source model and the free interchange of ideas, music, literature & technology.

I can think of some notable exceptions .. and I will explore them "Real Soon Now" .. right now i want to read the DEMOS "Wide Open" report in full .. 77 pages ...

Posted by Dr. K at 8:52 AM | Permalink

Timothy Leary, LSD guru, was a FBI & CIA Informant

Recent evidence suggests that Timothy Leary, guru of LSD, was an FBI and CIA informer in the later years of his life.

Born in 1920 and called the “most dangerous man in America” by Richard M Nixon, Leary became a professor of psychology at Harvard before taking his first dose of LSD in 1962. Over his life time Leary was reported to have taken 5000 doses of LSD as well as smoking “one marihuana joint a day” whenever he could.

After announcing that his first trip was the “most shattering experience” of his life, Leary became the guru of choice for the acid generation, advocating LSD use with the phrase that was to become like a mantra: “Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out”.

After being caught with a tiny amount of marijuana and sentenced to 30 years in jail Timothy Leary escaped and went on the run before finally being recaptured in Switzerland and extradited to the United States.

It was at this time that Leary allegedly cooperated with the FBI and CIA in identifying members of the Weather Underground who had assisted his escape. In his statement Leary talked about his motives; “I would like to work constructively and collaboratively with the intelligence and law enforcement people who are ready to forget the past” and stated that he “wanted to get out of jail as soon as possible”.

Leary, whose subsequent career included advocacy for cyberspace and lecture tours with G.Gordon Liddy, the notorious Watergate burglar, died of prostrate cancer at the age of 76.

His ashes, along with those of Gene Rodenberry, the creator of Star Trek, and others were launched into space, their last resting place.

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Authors note: if this seems tame it's because the publisher rejectecd the original piece which investigated the rumours flying around that Leary's drunken wife-beating and general mis-behaviour contributed to his wife Marianne's suicide.

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If any publisher is interested in a book called "101 Forbidden Facts: A Catalogue of Damned Information", then I have my original research and a proposal which can be forwarded to you. Please contact me.

Posted by Dr. K at 4:06 PM | Permalink

About this time last year I was working with a publisher in the UK who wanted to do a book along the same lines as the excellent "50 Things You're Not Supposed to Know" by Russ Kick.

We never really agreed on the book. I imagined something a bit Fortean and full of odd, suppressed, ignored and unknown facts. I wanted to call it "Forbidden Facts: A Catalogue of Damned Information" or maybe just "101 Forbidden Facts", but the publisher wanted the book to be more "celebrity" orientated, more scandalous, more gossipy. I never did like the title they eventually chose.

I did the work that was offered and wrote 10 sample entries which were duly mocked up into dummy pages to show what the book would look like.

All was going well until the last minute when they gave the book to another author. Ah well, such is life ...

Anyway the 10 sample entries are in my copyright still, so I guess I can post them here. Starting today I'll post one a week.

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If any publisher is interested in a book called "101 Forbidden Facts: A Catalogue of Damned Information", then I have my original research and a proposal which can be forwarded to you. Please contact me.

Posted by Dr. K at 3:39 PM | Permalink

While setting up the scanner I found this scrap on the scan bed. That's a good enough reason to post it.

Why "Telstar" of all things?

I have always thought that "Telstar" is a seminal piece of "Retro Electronica".

It's not the tune itself, as much as the production and recording techniques, the vibe, the sheer craziness of it all.

Joe Meek managed to capture almost everything in "Telstar" that would make electronic music so popular in the 21st C.

Listen to the intro? What *has* that got to do with what follows? But it kind of fits, and as the beat and the main riff rises up, and up, we are led into this mad-professor "Stylophone" type riff which dominates the rest of the tune.

Except for the guitar break, which sounds like it was drenched in the sixties, and wouldn't remember it had been there. Then that outro, it wouldn't be out of place on any self-respecting "Industrial Ambient" compilation.

So Sixties, so different from the time, yet so much a precursor for what was to follow.

Why?

The standard answers are as follows:

(i) The production techniques used by Joe Meek were way ahead of the time: close miking to instruments and amps, advanced use of compressors and other studio effects being the main elements of his style.

(ii) Joe Meek used backward running tapes (now called "back masking"), tape loops (now called "looping") and "found sounds" (now called "sampling") to create his masterpieces.

(iii) The compressors used by Joe Meek had a legendary "Dark Mode", a feature that can still be found in compressors built by the company that bears his name today.

I don't think that the success of "Telstar" was so much to do with all of those things.

I think the success of "Telstar" was due to that fact that, like so many "pop tunes", "Telstar" was in the right place at the right time, ending up as "Number 1" in both the UK & US.

Technological Optimism, Harold Wilson's "White Heat of Technology", the Space Race, Carnaby St, the "Swinging Sixties" ... I could go on listing the standard cliches forever.

Joe Meek, Gone but not forgotten.

The Joe Meek Appreciation Society remembers "the man, the mystery, the music", while the London West-End theatre production, Telstar closes on the 10th of September 2005. There are also books about Joe Meek's bold studio techniques, and about his life.

You could argue that Joe Meek is probably more famous now than he ever was in the Sixties. But isn't that yet another cliche?

But then I wonder, thinking about Joe Meek and his magical "dark mode" compressor, his bag of studio tricks and cutting edge techniques.

Would "The Beach Boys" have made the legendary "Pet Sounds" in 1964 - without the pioneering work of Joe Meek?

Would "The Beatles" have made "Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band" in 1967 - without "Pet Sounds"

Would "Pink Floyd" have made "Dark Side of the Moon" in 1973 -without "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"

Who knows? But I think the history of pop, rock and electronic music have all benefited from the pioneering work of Joe Meek.

Posted by Dr. K at 1:17 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

This from the BBC website:

According to latest reports file sharers 'breached copyright'.

Shock! Horror!

Sorry to tell you this BigMedia, but beating up the p2p guys *isn't going to help*.

Beating up the p2p *users* isn't going to help either.

I've been to 3rd world beaches where you can pay a few dollars, euros, pounds, or rupees (or whatever) and you can fill up your MP3 player, or get CD's burned. The year before last I had a choice of over 100,000 albums, all at low cost, for my MP3/CD player or laptop.

If I was unscrupulous I could have bought loads of music for next to nothing, but I restrained myself. CD's are cheap enough in India without purchasing pirated MP3's.

But in India I can buy MP3-CD's anyhow, for about 55-80 rupees I can buy legal MP3 compilations of all sorts of Indian stuff, and I buy these whenever I see something interesting.

Yeah sure there's "pirated" information out there on p2p.

BUT .. just because people use p2p to swap material that's pirated doesn't mean p2p is to blame.

Think of it like this: One popular slogan of the U.S. gun lobby is:

"Guns don't kill people. People kill people"

Well, I have to say:

"P2P doesn't cause piracy. People cause piracy"

I will have a *lot* more to say on this subject in the coming months, because I do *have* a vested interest.

I make my *own* music .. and sometimes I want to give it away free.

But it's really hard to find web hosting for anything with an .mp3 extension (or .ogg, or whatever) because:

(i) ISP's and open hosts aren't willing to give up server space to a possibly copyright infringing MP3. You can't blame them, they could get stung for $$$$$s for hosting something they didn't know was there. Who has the time to check every MP3 uploaded?

(ii) MP3 sucks bandwidth. I don't post MP3 on this blog because my BM asked me not to. "Not enough bandwidth" he said. Imagine I uploaded an MP3 to my site when my BM was away, busy, on holiday, or just sleeeping. If it was current, by the time he woke up a 100,000 people could have uploaded that "popular tune" - at 5-7Mb a pop - not nice.

Meanwhile all this wrangling makes it harder for anyone *making* their own music to distribute it.

I wish BigMedia could get it sorted out.

But BigMedia are large corporations "responsible to their shareholders" (i.e. interested in money and nothing but money).

I think the only winners are going to be the lawyers who are going to be kept in work for years to come.

Posted by Dr. K at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I wrote this for some other website who's name I can't quite remember ... they didn't use it though.

Posted by Dr. K at 5:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

After further thought I realised I should buy a 2x2 USB MIDI interface.

That would be good because the Opcode drivers have a nasty habit of hanging applications when driven with too much midi data.

When you kill the app and reset the machine the drivers are gone and have to be reinstalled.

This is especially annoying when playing with the high-density midi streams that an arpeggiator can generate. I might end up having to re-install the drivers several times in one session.

Worse yet, I don't think a driver update is coming "real soon now" because Gibson, the famous guitar maker, bought Opcode, the famous midi specialist, in 1998.

Problems with finance led to Gibson virtually shutting down Opcode, laying people off and ending the development of Opcode's product line.

This was bad for Opcode users, who no longer got driver updates, and especially bad for MAC users, because Opcode also produced OMS, the Open Music System used by many MAC audio programs. Once development stopped OMS was permanantly frozen at version 2.3.8, with no chance of updates to support future operating systems.

During a campaign to save OMS, and make it "open source", various letters and Internet petitions were sent to Gibson, but to no avail. To this day OMS remains frozen.

These days the Gibson website has nothing to say about Opcode, and the Opcode website only has an Apache welcome file.

The only winner was Apple Computers, who hired Doug Wyatt, the programmer from Opcode who'd thought up and written OMS in the first place.

His blog can be found at Doug's musings , and there is also an interesting interview at the O'Reilly website.

Posted by Dr. K at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I wanted to set up a scanner so I could scan images for this blog.

After hunting through the (unpacked) boxes I found my old Canon-320P scanner.

The problem with this scanner is that (a) it is a ancient parallel scanner, and (b) my parallel port is taken up with an antique "OpCode Translator PC" MIDI interface.

I plugged the scanner into the "through port" of the OpCode and got .. nada, zip, nil.

After hunting through the (unpacked) boxes I found the documentation for the OpCode interface.

It stated that you need to power up the interface to use the parallel through port.

After hunting throught the (unpacked) boxes, I finally found the power supply and plugged it in.

The scanner was still not recognised.

After hunting through the (unpacked) box marked "memory" I recalled that it was always like this, and that I used to run the scanner from another PC.

*doh*

In the end I had to choose between MIDI out and a scanner the old fashioned way, by changing the cable at the back.

This is, as they say, is "no choice at all". So now I am looking at USB scanners, or maybe a USB MIDI port.

While I was setting the scanner up, I realised that there was a scrap inside, so I scanned it.

It might even be in the next blog entry if I don't get sidetracked .. by unpacking all my boxes and sorting them out.

Posted by Dr. K at 12:43 PM | Permalink

COMMENT ON EXTREME TALES WEBLOG HERE

Just like News Machine - I've made this comments page buried deep below the bottom of my weblog to allow people to comment on the static Extreme Tales Weblog.

Posted by Dr. K at 8:33 PM | Permalink