Strange Animals in the House of Knowledge: On Forteans & Paranoia

"What may look to outsiders like a conspiracy of lies and secrets is often just an effect of the inertia of systems to change, the result of countless different interacting factors that are, each individually, perfectly innocent. Those systems are always being renegotiated and modified to make them work better, but change is always sluggish from the viewpoint of outsiders, such as the far-seeing paranoids and Forteans on the margins."

Satanic statue unveiled in Detroit

"The bronze Baphomet statue, featuring a human body, goat’s head and wings, was unveiled just before midnight to cheers of 'Hail Satan'. Statues of a boy and a girl in poses of adoration stand on either side."  

"Fitzgerald warned residents to be cautious. 'Use your sixth sense,' he said."

Entertainment Industry Says ‘No More’ to Social Justice Warriors

"Perhaps the most accurate distinction is libertarian versus authoritarian: those who want to control culture versus those who want to liberate it. The entertainment police versus the entertainment rebels. The rebels are producers and consumers. The police are a narrow band of loud but isolated media blowhards."

New definition of extremist: ‘Anybody who challenges the established order’

"Anybody who has any kind of dissenting views that wants to change our economic and political system will be equated with and put together with the most appalling terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda. This is all deliberate, it is all what it’s meant to do is meant to frighten people into conforming. And who wants to be equated with Al-Qaeda, let’s face it?"

Self-proclaimed experts more vulnerable to the illusion of knowledge

"The research team warns that a tendency to overclaim, especially in self-perceived experts, may actually discourage individuals from educating themselves in precisely those areas in which they consider themselves knowledgeable--leading to potentially disastrous outcomes."

Fmr. NATO Commander Wesley Clark calls for internment camps 'to deal with radicals' in the US and Europe

"Clark's being 'in the know' right after 9/11 about long-term US foreign policy projects indicates, at the very least, that Clark is privy to certain information coming from the highest authorities."

Israeli spy admits: we encouraged anti-Semitic conspiracy theories

"In other words, Israeli spies and diplomats (despite propaganda claims to be the protectors of the Jews of the world) actively encouraged the dissemination of a notorious anti-Semitic forgery for their own cynical power-political reasons."

The Mainstream Media is Junk Food For Your Brain

"It’s a lot like when you know you should eat a salad instead of that enticing doughnut, but you choose the doughnut instead because it’s oh-so-good in the moment. When the less intelligent segments of society are presented with the real facts or even just told to investigate an issue on their own (the salad), they often react with confusion or fury, choosing instead to accept whatever the mainstream media is telling them to say or think (the doughnut)."

The psyop to neuter The Rebel

"In the psyop to demean, distort, and squash the rebel, there is a single obvious common denominator: the establishment media are doing the defining; they are the ones who are setting the parameters and making the descriptions; they are the ones who build the cartoons; looking down their noses, pretending to a degree of sympathy, they paint one unflattering picture after another of what the rebel is and does and says; they have co-opted the whole game."

Iron Man and Transformers Were Censored by US Military

"The US military has also shown interest in the Transformers series, as well as shows ­including American Idol, Hawaii Five-0 and even Cupcake Wars."

Robots pass 'wise-men puzzle' to show a degree of self-awareness

"The research team, represented by Selmer Bringsjord told those in attendance that incrementally adding abilities such as the team demonstrated will over time lead to robots with more useful attributes. He and his team, he notes, are not concerned about questions of consciousness, but instead want to build robots that are capable of doing things that might be considered examples of conscience behavior."

Poverty's most insidious damage is to a child's brain

"'In developmental science and medicine, it is not often that the cause and solution of a public health problem become so clearly elucidated,' Luby wrote in the editorial. 'It is even less common that feasible and cost-effective solutions to such problems are discovered and within reach.'"

Was Charles Fort a Fortean?

"Today, we are fed the false choice of the extraterrestrial (meaning the extrasolar) hypothesis, but the length, depth and intimacy of this phenomenon suggest- to anyone willing to consider the implications of the evidence- that this phenomenon is a permanent condition of the planet and of our species. Fort wrote of this a century ago but no one seems to be able to face up to this yet. Certainly not most of the most visible Forteans."

From Christian faith to nihilistic void

"Commentators have mentioned the excessive submission ('love your enemy', 'turn the other cheek') and the guilt ('original sin'). However, despite all their imperfections and the corruption they've been subjected to, traditional religions still convey some important values: solidarity, charity, community, love. In this sense the materialistic, individualistic values that have been hammered into our minds are far worse than the religious ones that preceded them."

The Lonely American

"The isolated public in a totalitarian society is unable to connect its personal experience of despair, anxiety, fear, frustration and economic insecurity to the structures that create these conditions. The isolated citizen is left feeling that his or her personal misfortune is an exception. The portrayal of society by systems of state propaganda—content, respectful of authority, just, economically secure and free—is mistaken for reality."

Digital amnesia: Mobile phones deprive users of memory skills

"49 percent of UK respondents do not remember their parents’ telephone numbers, 57 percent haven’t memorized the number for their place of work, 71 percent of parents can’t dial their children off the top of their head, and 87 percent don’t know the number of their children’s schools by heart. On the other hand, 47 percent can recite the phone numbers they had when they were between age 10 and 15, likely before devices had such large memories."

Depression damages parts of the brain, research concludes

"'Your whole sense of self depends on continuously understanding who you are in the world – your state of memory is not about just knowing how to do Sudoku or remembering your password – it’s the whole concept we hold of ourselves,' he said."

Stanford researchers find mental health prescription: Nature

"'These findings are important because they are consistent with, but do not yet prove, a causal link between increasing urbanization and increased rates of mental illness,' said co-author James Gross, a professor of psychology at Stanford."

The Pain of Modern Life: Loneliness and Isolation

"As Mohandas Gandhi famously said: 'All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family.' This is not a sycophantic religious concept, but the fact of our inherent nature; a nature that the current World socio-economic order systematically works against, forcing us to live in unnatural, unhealthy, un-fulfilling, and unjust ways."

The Only Way Forward In 2015

"Peace and harmony is the ideal. Friendship, understanding, and compassion between races is also a noble goal. But, in the absence of the ideal, we must be willing to accept a mutual understanding that our own self-interest is inextricably linked. No one is demanding that you like one another. But we must begin to recognize common interests, setting aside differences at least temporarily, before we lose everything."