The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage

Author's webpage











Find this at your local independent bookstore, or Waterstone's or Amazon, etc.

Viewing the Solstice in a city

If you are stuck in a city, and want to watch either the sunrise or sunset related to The Solstice, this website may help - by finding you streets in your city in alignment..

On Solstices and City Planning

When does the Solstice occur this year?

The December solstice (at Stonehenge in Wiltshire) occurs on Tuesday December 22nd at 08:04 GMT.

Aaron Swartz kickstarter

From DeadDrop to SecureDrop


Lisa Rein is the the founder of Aaron Swartz Day, Co-Founder, Creative Commons, Digital Librarian-Timothy Leary Futique Trust, SFSU BECA Lecturer, Journalist, and a Musician/Songwriter.



With the Spirit + Genius of R. Buckminster Fuller, Nikola Tesla, and Jack Parsons; my impression of Aaron Swartz is that he truly "Stomped The Terra."

See the very moving documentary: "The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz" (2014).

Let's honour his memory and legacy by helping fund this film!

Current Events

AGNOSIS! EP. 25 "Current Events"

Amor et Hilaritas!

Excellent news, as the RAW Trust starts getting under way.

Here you can read the first newsletter       and        here you will find the main site

A major project of the trust, Hilaritas Press, will eventually appear here, too.

'Pataphysical projects

The 'Pataphysical Slot Machine

If you're in the Bay Area, come see it! 

Learn more at http://pataphysics.us/

Meet the Bamboodus from Inspiration Island. These mythical creatures are featured in an art wonderbox for the 'Pataphysical Slot Machine, our poetic oracle. These two indigenous characters are from a mythical tribe called the Bamboodus. These clay sculptures were created by Stephanie Levene, and inspired by picture books of native tribes. The jungle background was designed by our friend Ray Moss, who lives in Costa Rica. The glowing fire was created by Freddy Hahne, using flashing LEDs. He also mixed the soundtrack, which combines a song by Fabrice Florin with a composition by Tom Disher, originally created for a 2002 Burning Man exhibit called Inspiration Island.

 The Slot Machine will be on display throughout October 2015 at the Mill Valley Mill Valley Public Library.

'Pataphysical Studios on Facebook     On Twitter

Black and White

AGNOSIS! EP. 24 “Black and White”

Hagbard Celine

The Illuminatus! Trilogy Annotated & Explained

Happy Birthday, Bucky!

From The Huffington Post

Why I/We Celebrate Buckminster Fuller's Birthday (July 12, 1895) Every Year  
by L. Steven Sieden

"So I vowed to keep myself alive, but only if I would never use me again for just me. I vowed to do my own thinking, instead of trying to accommodate everyone else's opinion, credos and theories. I vowed to apply my own inventory of experiences to the solving of problems that affect everyone aboard planet Earth."

In contemplating this commitment, I have found it extremely similar to the Buddhist Bodhisattva Vow, and many people contend that Bucky was in fact a living Bodhisattva wearing a three-piece suit in order to not stand out from his contemporaries. Regardless of his appearance, his mission became clearer and clearer until he honed it down to the following simple yet powerful sentence:

"To make the world work for 100 percent of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological damage or disadvantage to anyone."

Click pic for article in Art Tatler

How R. Buckminster Fuller Committed “Egocide”  by Agathe Molvic in The Utopian

The Great Escapism

AGNOSIS! EP. 23 "The Great Escapism"

 12 all new pages!

Harmon’s Head: Community & The 8 Circuit Model of Consciousness

This is a model of the Dan Harmon created sitcom Community based on The Eight-Circuit Model of Consciousness, a metaphysiological construct developed by Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson.

It is most certainly an imperfect mapping of the show, based on an imperfect psychological model, which cherry picks certain characteristics, and ignores others, but I found that it ends up fitting far better than I expected it to, and since the show is known for its impeccable story structure, it’s interesting to find something resembling character structure as well. For the sake of simplicity this is based on the original “Greendale Seven Study Group” incarnation of the cast.

1. Shirley Bennett - The Oral Biosurvival Circuit

This circuit is concerned with nourishment, physical safety, comfort and survival. This circuit is imprinted early in infancy. The imprint will normally last for life, unless it is re-imprinted by a powerful experience.

Shirley is a nurturing, morally simplistic, mother figure. She is concerned with what is “nice.” This circuit is considered the equivalent of Freud’s oral stage of development, and Shirley can be seen adhering to this role when she finds herself compulsively baking treats for the group to snack on. Her primary motivations are her three kids and her sandwich shop, both of which represent the obligations of the Oral Biosurvival role.

2. Troy Barnes - The Emotional–Territorial Circuit

The emotional-territorial circuit is imprinted in the toddler stage. It is concerned with domination and submission, territoriality etc.

Troy is a childlike, emotional, ex high school prom king, whose character arc travels a trajectory from social domination to losing himself in deference to his relationship with Abed. He also frequently has territorial struggles with Jeff, the de facto leader of the group. This circuit is considered the equivalent of Freud’s anal stage of development, and Troy does indeed proclaim a fondness for “butt stuff.”

3. Annie Edison - The Symbolic or Neurosemantic–Dexterity Circuit

This circuit is imprinted by human symbol systems. It is concerned with language, handling the environment, invention, calculation, prediction, building a mental "map" of the universe, physical dexterity, etc.

Annie is an exceptionally organized, intelligent, and responsible overachiever, who emerges as the most efficacious member of the group. This circuit is activated by stimulant drugs, such as caffeine and amphetamines, and so Little Annie Adderall’s pill addiction makes perfect sense in this context. Her efforts in the debate team, Model UN, the Save Greendale Committee, and her aspirations to become an FBI agent all speak to her desire to achieve agency via language and dexterity.

4. Jeff Winger - The Domestic or Socio-Sexual Circuit

This fourth circuit is imprinted by the first orgasm-mating experiences and tribal "morals". It is concerned with sexual pleasure (instead of sexual reproduction), local definitions of "moral" and "immoral", reproduction, rearing of the young, etc. The fourth circuit concerns itself with cultural values and operating within social networks.

Jeff is a morally relative father figure to the group, which he formed accidentally after a failed subterfuge to try to get into Britta’s pants. Jeff is both a source of inspiration and mitigation for the group, which in either case is an exorcising of social control. He shows them the “right truth.”  Jeff is an expert at manipulating cultural relativism in order to create his preferred socio-political environment. Jeff enjoys the power of paternity without committing to the responsibility of actual fatherhood.

5. Britta Perry - The Neurosomatic Circuit

This circuit is concerned with neurological-somatic feedbacks, feeling high and blissful, somatic reprogramming, etc. It may be called the rapture circuit. When this circuit is activated, a non-conceptual feeling of well-being arises. Perceptions are judged not so much for their meaning and utility, but for their aesthetic qualities. Experience of this circuit often accompanies an hedonistic turn-on, a rapturous amusement, a detachment from the previously compulsive mechanism of the first four circuits.

Britta is a socially conscious bliss ninny. She is well versed in the aesthetics of rebellion, but her understanding of the actual issues tends to be superficial, and consequentially her ideas usually annoy more than they illuminate. Britta is no stranger to altered states of consciousness, she has been shown to be a frequent pot smoker and occasional psychedelic drug user, she has seen the world from outside the first 4 conventional or “terrestrial” circuits, but hasn’t fully integrated this perspective.  This situation makes her something of an outcast, and she is consequentially considered “the worst” by the rest of the group.

6. Abed Nadir - The Metaprogramming Circuit

This circuit is concerned with re-imprinting and re-programming all earlier circuits and the relativity of “realities” perceived. This circuit consists of the nervous system becoming aware of itself.

Abed is a painfully self aware savant of media with extreme meta sensibilities. He has “medium awareness” and sees his world through the incidentally true filter of it being a TV show, and often becomes concerned with the multiversality of alternative timelines/realities.  He often uses this transcendent perspective to program the behavior of the group. Abed may be the best example of the “metaprogrammer” archetype in all of pop culture. He can be seen experimenting with altering the social dynamics of the group via simulations in his dreamatorium, or by dosing the female members of the group w/ chocolate during their periods, or by trying to directly alter the group’s reality by way of interfacing with the show’s storytelling conventions.

7. Pierce Hawthorne - The Morphogenetic Circuit

This circuit is the connection of the individual's mind to the whole sweep of evolution and life as a whole. It is the part of consciousness that echoes the experiences of the previous generations that have brought the individual's brain-mind to its present level.

Pierce’s old age makes him both a source of wisdom and antiquated prejudice. This circuit is often described as the storehouse of collective memory, and Pierce does often act as an almost supernatural repository of information about the group. Pierce knows everyone’s secrets, and while he sometimes succumbs to villainy, he invariably uses this knowledge to induct the group into further maturation. The ideology of this circuit tends to be incorporated into a lot of new age bs, which Pierce would be perfectly comfortable with in his capacity as a Level Five Laser Lotus in his Reformed Neo Buddhist community.

8. Dan Harmon - The Quantum Non-Local Circuit (Overmind)

The eighth circuit is concerned with quantum consciousness, non-local awareness (information from beyond ordinary space-time awareness which is limited by the speed of light), illumination.

Dan Harmon is widely considered synonymous with the show he created. So much so that the defining characteristic of the show in season 4, the one season where he wasn’t involved in its production, is his obvious absence. Although there is of course a small army of actors, writers, directors, designers, dungeon masters, and production crew members that help bring Community to life, it is the general consensus that the reality of the show is the imagination of Dan Harmon.  And if you follow along with his podcast and documentary "Harmontown", it’s easy to imagine all these characters and ideas churning around in Harmon’s genius and self aware deprecation. Harmon is the part of Community that emerges out of meta-fictionality and is part of a transcendent reality, our reality, the real world of everyday experience. In the most recent season, and perhaps series, finale, Harmon effortlessly opens the fourth wall, and the show becomes a sincere expression about his real life, and his real life becomes a natural extension of the show. The sitcom as triumphant mythology. Cool. Cool, cool, cool.

Psycholitic doses

Even the father of LSD, Albert Hofmann seems to have been a fan. In his book, Fadiman notes that Hofmann microdosed himself well into old age and quoted him as saying LSD “would have gone on to be used as Ritalin if it hadn’t been so harshly scheduled.”

from Microdosing — a new, low-key way to use psychedelics

PHILLIP SMITH, ALTERNET

“Micro-dosing turns out to be a totally different world,” he explained. “As someone said, the rocks don’t glow, even a little bit. But what many people are reporting is, at the end of the day, they say, ‘That was a really good day.’ You know, that kind of day when things kind of work. You’re doing a task you normally couldn’t stand for two hours, but you do it for three or four. You eat properly. Maybe you do one more set of reps. Just a good day. That seems to be what we’re discovering.”

James Fadiman

Photo courtesy of Scott Kline

Note: Albert Hofmann lived an active life to the age of 102, and his wife lived to be 94.

James Joyce - Modern Psychonaut

“I am convinced personally that Mr. Joyce is a genius all the world will have to recognize.”

– Aleister Crowley, The Genius of Mr. James Joyce

“Joyce’s prose prepared me to enter psychedelic space.”

– Timothy Leary, FLASHBACKS

“(Finnegans Wake is) about as close to LSD on the page as you can get…”

– Terence McKenna, Surfing on Finnegans Wake

“If you’ve never had a psychedelic, reading Joyce is the next best equivalent.”

– Robert Anton Wilson, RAW Explains Everything

“I have read Finnegans Wake aloud at a time when takers of LSD said, ‘that is JUST LIKE LSD.’ So I have begun to feel that LSD may just be the lazy man’s form of Finnegans Wake.” 

– Marshall McLuhan, Q & A

“Someday I’m going to get my article published; I’m going to prove that Finnegans Wake is an information pool based on computer memory systems that didn’t exist until centuries after James Joyce’s era; that Joyce was plugged into a cosmic consciousness from which he derived the inspiration for his entire corpus of work. I’ll be famous forever.”

– Philip K. Dick, The Divine Invasion

“Joyce’s book is called Finnegans Wake. The missing apostrophe creates another pun,
which Joyce explained to friends as a warning to the ruling classes:
 the oppressed rise, eventually, in every historical cycle.”

– Robert Anton Wilson, Coincidance

“Phall if you but will, rise you must: and none so soon either
shall the pharce for the nunce come to a setdown secular phoenish.”

– James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

I thought it would be fun on the occasion of Bloomsday 2015 to offer up a smattering of James Joyce’s hierarchitectitiptitoploftical influence on the psychonaut counter culture, and hopefully provide a novel context for his great works, which might help them extend beyond the trappings of highfalutin literary scholarship.

Please feel free to explore for yourself:
The collected works of James Joyce

Finnegans Wake, again

Hear James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Read Aloud 

Set to Music 

31 Hours of Free Unabridged Audio

Here, at Open Culture, you can find the project Waywords and Meansigns

Our own, our very own, Steve Fly took on Chapter 14.   FW III.2

Steve Fly at *Traces du Sacré* exhibition in Paris 2008

Track 14: William Sutton reads pp. 429-42 469-73; Steven 'Fly' Pratt reads pp. 443-68. 

Drums, turntables, guitar, arrangement, production, recording in Amsterdam by Steve Fly. 

Mastered by Tim Egmond at Ei-Complex Studios, Amsterdam

PS: as it happens, Finnegans Wake (at least the first third) became a freak hit book in China a couple of years ago.

Note:    *Traces du Sacré* at the Centre Pompidou still online

Steve Fly

The Library of Babel

Erik Demazieres - Library of Babel

Jorge Luis Borges wrote a wonderful story about the infinite library, a short story you can find here.

Thanks to the wonders of computing, something resembling that fantastic library now exists!

Read about it in The Guardian                                                                     Read about it at Open Culture

Some samples:

Finnegans Wake

RAW

http://www.zonedobsolescenceconcertee.org/

Only Maybe

Cosmic Triggering

Cosmic Trigger Theatrical Promo from C S on Vimeo.

Campaign Update

And you can buy one (or more) of the beautiful fund-raising T-shirts right where you are sitting now.

Lifted directly from Cosmic communications related to the Cosmic Trigger Play. If you missed it the first time round (Liverpool and London) try to catch it in its next incarnation.

An Update for The Cosmically Enthused

All Hail Discordians, Let's take a moment to hail Cosmic Dom - who built the website, budgeted the show, ordered many of the crowdfund perks, oversaw their postage, erected the *#@!* projection scaffold, had his shoulder wept upon, and indulged in many an all-nighter with a spreadsheet. All for the love of Bob and an occasional sandwich. Now he's been at it again - and updated the website to include a gorgeous gallery of pics by Jonathan Greet, a fantastic collaborators page (phew-eee, what a fine bunch) and many other tweaks and twiddles. Please take a look! Are you there grinning ear to ear, off your Discordian chops on Pure Bob?                 Finally, a plea - did you write a review/ post/ testimonal about your Cosmic Trigger experience? If so, would you be so kind as to send a link for inclusion on the website? Reviews Or has your trigger been pulled, resulting in an extraordinary stream of synchronicity and creativity that you are currently chasing? Better let us know about that too. We'll report in to Cosmic Coincidence Control Centre and link to it on our Cosmic Tentacles web-tab. Here's one: Kate Genevieve has created an illustrated record of the dreams folk had in Liverpool the night after the show... The Oneiric Archives Toodle pip til next time. PS. If you await news on T-Shirts, it's a-comin' xx xxx Daisy

On the Road to Somewhere

LIBER JUNGLE - EP. 02 “On the Road to Somewhere” 

Continued from: LIBER JUNGLE - EP. 01 "Arachnophobia"

ROCKET MEN

As reported by Tom Jackson on RAWillumination.net:

A dynamic duo tackle Pynchon

“Michael Johnson and Peter Quadrino have jointly released two blog posts that focus on Thomas Pynchon's epic novel Gravity's Rainbow.”

“Both discuss Timothy Leary's fascination with the novel; Michael focuses more on Leary, while PQ offers more of an overview. Do read both pieces.”

The Allure of Gravity's Rainbow and Its Mysterious Author
by Peter Quadrino

Fugitive Thoughts: Timothy Leary's Reading of Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow
by Michael Johnson

(I really enjoyed this titanic team-up and thought it wd be fun to sneak into the mix!)

bc
@RGC777
weirdoverse.com

Cosmic Trigger - reload

Spring Equinox, and we sense stirrings in the Cosmic Trigger camp - get the T-Shirt and help fund another glorious adventure.

 For several of the Maybe Logic crew witnessing (or performing in) the heroic performance in Liverpool and London formed a highlight of last year.

Triumphant performance in Liverpool, 2014

A Joycean Jinx!

“Being humus the same roturns”

JJ, FW Pg. 18

The sensationalistic tabloid story of Robert Durst has once again surfaced on print and digital front pages the world round. This time thanks to an HBO documentary called “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.” (Bear with me on this!)

If you’re unfamiliar with the story, in short, what happened was an extremely rich man’s wife disappeared under mysterious circumstances in the 1980’s, then a close friend of his (Susan Berman) was murdered 2 decades later when she was about to be questioned about the wife’s disappearance, and then he admittedly killed and dismembered a neighbor, but successfully claimed self defense. He was generally regarded as having gotten away with at least 3 murders.

He then agrees to participate in a documentary about himself, proclaiming his innocence and bad luck coincidence throughout, which aired recently to great interest, and concluded by bringing about new evidence, resulting in his current arrest.

What was the new evidence? A misspelled word.

After Susan Berman was killed an anonymous letter was sent to the police informing them of the body’s location.

In the anonymous letter, presumably sent by the killer, Beverly Hills is misspelled as "Beverley Hills."

The documentary crew then discovers a letter that Durst sent to Berman with the exact same misspelling and indistinguishable handwriting.

The documentary crew confronts Durst about this, and he appears to have strange involuntary reactions, all while still maintaining his innocence and bad luck coincidence. And then in a truth is stranger than fiction moment, Durst excuses himself to the bathroom, and forgetting that he is still wearing a microphone, engages in what sounds like a pathological rambling confession.

But it’s really the misspelled word that’s the more concrete evidence, and doesn’t this scenario sound familiar to ye Joyceans?

The Phoenix Park murders of 1882, which features prominently in the dreamscape of Finnegans Wake, along with the attempt of Richard Piggott to frame Charles Stewart Parnell as being involved in and/or supportive of the murders via a series of forged letters.

Parnell was cleared of the charges because Piggott’s misspelling of the word hesitancy as “hesitency” identified him as the author of the letters.

“Hesitency was clearly to be evitated”

JJ, FW Pg. 35

Joyce makes much of this incident and the theme recurs throughout the book, playing into the ambiguity of HCE’s guilt/innocence of the indistinct crime he is accused of.

Curious that in both cases it was an extra letter “e” that did the trick.

So it goes, around and around and around again.

bc

@RGC777

weirdoverse.com

Additionally! My comic "REJECTED" came out on Comixology today.

And also maybe check out: Why “REJECTED” is a bad comic that I hope nobody reads, but I love it anyways!

Eris' New Dress

A wonderfully Discordian media virus recently ran its course through the simultaneous resonance of our social networks, a meme so efficient and contentious that it became ubiquitous almost immediately, and can be invoked simply by saying “The Dress.” Like the mythic Apple of Discord, thrown by Eris’ to instigate a fight amongst the gods, the ambiguously hued picture sparked immediate conflict amongst its viewers, who vigorously argued about its contents. A media virus, as defined by Douglas Rushkoff, consists of a protective & sticky outer shell, and a hidden payload of memetic code. (A Trogan Horse for ideas.) The outer shell is the surface issue/face value of a meme, in this case, the question: “What color is this dress?” The adhesive shell becomes attached to a host medium and thence its memetic programming gets injected therein. This meme was particularly sticky because people could not understand how anyone could possibly disagree with, what was presumed to be, their objective observation. The memetic programming contained within the argument of “Black & Blue vs. White & Gold,” amongst all the science of perception, seems to be something akin to the zen koan: “Who is the great magician that makes the grass green?” I think Robert Anton Wilson would have absolutely loved “The Dress,” and all the discussion about subjectivity and uncertainty that it created. Without really realizing it, the internet just got a crash course in Maybe Logic.

Originally posted on disinfo.com

bc
@RGC777
weirdoverse.com

enlightening images

LIGHT PHOTOGRAPHED AS A WAVE AND A PARTICLE FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER

Waywords and Meansigns: recreating finnegans wake (in its whole wholume)

A spanking new project to record and interpret Finnegans Wake called 'waywords and meansigns' has been launched, and this drummer is very happy to be a contributor (to the second edition) scheduled for release later this summer. This first edition will be in orbit some time in the coming months, and features a diverse international mix of musicians and artists from across a spectrum of the arts.  

"Waywords and Meansigns is an upcoming audio version of James Joyce's famous text, Finnegans Wake, to be read in its entirety. The book will be divided into 17 sections, and there will be a different music/reader/performance group assigned to each section. Featuring established as well as up-and-coming artists, Waywords and Meansigns will offer a version of Joyce's work that is stimulating, accessible, and enjoyable to even the most casual of readers and listeners."

http://www.waywordsandmeansigns.com/about.html

https://www.facebook.com/waywordsandmeansigns


Finnegans Wake by James Joyce had been a fav/ book of Bobs, that he considered the greatest novel of all time. Listen to Dr Wilson cruise through some of the 'Shem The Penman' episode here, deploying his Brooklyn Irish brogue.

Robert Anton Wilson reads Finnegans Wake: Shem the Penman



There are plans for a second and a third edition of the project, so anybody reading this who would like to join this new adventure, please contact: waywordsandmeansigns @ gmail. com

"FW is what I call “The Good Book”, and I’m only half joking.  To me it’s not only the greatest novel ever written, it’s the greatest poem ever written, the greatest detective story ever written, and the most entertaining work in all literature, and as William York Tindall of Columbia says, it’s the funniest and dirtiest book in the world.   People are intimidated by it.  If the publishers just had the sense to put on the cover, “the funniest and dirtiest book in the world - Tindall, Columbia”, it would sell a lot better, and people would make the effort to decipher it.--Robert Anton Wilson.

THE "MIND" INDESTRUCTIBLE

bc comic made for Robert Anton Wilson's Tale of the Tribe MLA course (2005)

The funny chap w/ the wicked stash strut is supposed to be Ezra Pound, who wrote:

"4 times was the city rebuilded, Hooo Fasa

            Gassir, Hooo Fasa   dell' Italia tradita

now in the mind indestructible, Gassir, Hooo Fasa

with four giants at the four corners

and four gates mid wall Hooo Fasa

and a terrace the colour of stars"

-Canto 74 

RAW explains:

"Hooo mean somthing like hooray or hallelujah

Fasa = the tribe or the king

From an African "tale of the tribe"

collected by Frobenius

Wagadu = a divine, or magick, city

which existed four times 

and each time got lost again

first thru vanity

second thru lying

third thru greed

fourth thru feuding

Wagadu still exists in some sense

"in the mind indestructible"

and will appear again

when all people transcend

vanity, lies, greed and vendettta

Hooo Fasa

Hooo Fasa

gets repeated 10 times at the end of the song

Hooo Fasa "

and a George Kearns quote by way of Eric Wagner:

"...the unnamed African seekers of a city of the mind, Wagadu (both divinity and city), whom we come to recognize by their cry, "Hooo Fasa." They can metamorphose into each other, as they do in Frazer, to become Isis-Kuanon, Isis-Luna, Circe-Titania, or Adonis-Tamuz."

I take the "mind" Indestructible as the non-local class of all minds, which after all is No Mind!

RAW comments:

"You captured the essence of Pound's use of the Sudanese legend -- 

even though rain and industrial waste are hardly equal conditions 

in the death camp where a rapist and murderer was hanged every day.

Hooo Fasa"

Fair Enough!

See also: Agnosis! Ep. 12 "A Sun Play of the Ages"

bc

@RGC777

weirdoverse.com