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Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Three Tips for Hacking Reality


"QUANTUM SHOT" #442
link



Reality Hacking - with geeky flair!

If reality is truly made up of highly compressed information and/or is holographic in nature then we should be able to hack our physical world just like a large computer system.

"The Reality Hacker" site is taking all the cool new theoretical spiritual/scientific blends out of the seemingly endless discussion stage and getting down to some serious quantum action. "We have already had some wild results and a few really weird accidents with the more complex things we are working with."


(image credit: Machina18, nsfw)

What do you get when you dive headlong into unbridled spiritual exploration guided only by computer hacking concepts, comic books, movies and theories from quantum physics? The answer: reality hacking.

Reality hacking is based on a popular theory that our physical world is actually made up of little more than highly compressed information. If this is true then our entire world is very similar to the computers we use every day. This means that reality itself can be "hacked" — broken into and manipulated — just like any other large computer system.

"It's an outlandish idea," says reality hacker Lisa Bruder. "And it gets even crazier when you begin to realize that you can pull material from literally any source and it can potentially work.

I actually got the idea for reality hacking from a comic book that pointed out that reality is just another operating system and that magic spells are a messy attempt at hacking it. I stopped dead in my tracks and wondered why something like that had not occurred to me before! Soon, I was figuring out ways to work the idea for real. Like information from any fictional (or non-fictional) source, it needed some serious tweaking, but dang it worked."


(art by: Przemek Kucinski, fragment - see more)


Here is how reality hacking works:

The idea is that there are small weaknesses in our reality—parts that are thinner and more pliable. (Interestingly enough, Lisa got the idea of "thinner reality" from the same comic book series) A few quick examples of these thin areas include sacred spaces, highly emotional group settings or virtual reality environments. Any place that alters consciousness and fools the brain into temporarily loosening its death grip on physical reality will probably work.

The thin areas are then exploited by applying an experimental hack – usually a combination of mixed spiritual practice, modified ideas from fictional sources rounded out with a good dose of hardwired technology. If the hacking combination is successful, something weird and unexplainable will happen that everyone can see and experience. If the results are good enough, another hack will be stacked on top of the first one to worm in even further. The process is repeated again and again, going deeper and deeper, getting more and more creative as each bizarre twist and turn is explored—uncovering larger and stranger effects.


(art by Andrew C. Stewart)

"The process for hacking reality is very similar to cracking a computer, but it requires a unique brand of instinct, on-the-fly creative thinking, spiritual training and some impressive mental adjustments," continues Bruder. "Learning to stop thinking in only three dimensions may be our biggest ongoing challenge.

We are teaching ourselves to wade into a rippling, liquid environment where linear formulas and rigid 'logical' thinking almost never apply."

It also doesn't hurt to be willing to look a bit foolish at times.

"I always look like a dork when I'm actually running a hack stack," laughs Bruder. "I'm either doing some very noisy breathing exercise, building or borrowing some strange structure, referring to a scene from a Star Wars movie like it's a serious scientific source, or wearing various layers of goggles, headphones and biofeedback sensors."


(art by Andrew C. Stewart)


If you decide that reality hacking is something you want to explore, here are three tips to help you get your toes wet:

1. Become a Mad, Wild, Crazy Spiritual Alchemist

Don't get stuck in rule-bound spiritual applications. Follow your instincts instead. Play with new combinations, share ideas, finger-paint with tradition and mix it up.

2. Don't Kill the Quantum

The fluid world is around us all the time. Sometimes we even manage to stumble into contact with it and have an extraordinary and unexplainable experience. Unfortunately, these rare and fantastic experiences are so alien to our established sense of reality that our first instinct is to clamp the experience off and pretend it didn’t happen. As soon as you can train yourself to not explain away random spiritual events you will be ready for the next reality hacking tip.

3. Follow Your "Hackcidents"

This tip is the simplest idea of the three and probably the most powerful. A "hackcident" is spiritual accident that can be reverse engineered into a stable reality hack.

Here's how you do it: Instead of shutting down an extraordinary event — follow it. Don’t run away from a reality-bending experience. Train yourself to run towards it. Shove your foot in the door and start scootching your way in. Ask questions. What is this? How is it happening? Why is it happening? Muster every bit of your curiosity, knowledge, personal training and sense of adventure and put it to work. See if you can find out more about what this thing is and how it might function. This is your White Rabbit. Learn to follow it all the way down the rabbit hole and you just might find Wonderland.


(art by: Przemek Kucinski, fragment - see more)


"The fun part is that you don't have to be a professional scientist or a highly developed monk or yogi in order to understand reality hacking concepts or use them effectively," says Bruder. " You just have to be ready to break every rule of reality, work in some wild, warped gray areas and generally operate so far outside the box that you can mix hard science and ancient spirituality with comic books and video games to make something happen."

It is definitely fun, often messy and even scary at moments!

To find out more about reality hacking sign up at www.TheRealityHacker.com for a free e-course, videos and reality hacking news.


(art by: Przemek Kucinski, fragment - see more)

Also read How to Become a (Real) Cyborg"

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COMMENTS:

37 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Heh. Warren Ellis' "Planetary" series strikes again.

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Blogger Ken said...

What a bunch of BS.

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Blogger Emily Veinglory said...

what a crock

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Anonymous Anonymous said...

>> "Learning to stop thinking in
>> only three dimensions may be our
>> biggest ongoing challenge"

Not for me; I've always thought in 4 dimensions. If I left out Time, I'd be a statue.

___  
Anonymous Marc said...

'Tarded.

___  
Anonymous big al said...

This is Hinduism and Wicca glossed over with Matrix-esque techno-blather. This is bogus at best and evil at worst.

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Anonymous jenjen said...

whether or not the hackuracy of the post is all it's hacked up to be, the art is gorgeous.

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Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's probably easier to just do drugs.

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Anonymous peter said...

This thing was started here for me ->

hacker manifesto

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Anonymous Anonymous said...

Rational arguments for irrationality are always more compelling than irrational arguments for irrationality. This article is among the latter. Read some psychology, and you'll get a better picture what's being expressed here.

Our natural feelings/reactions to situations do provide beneficial outcomes. Its a shorcut way of our brains dealing with situations we dont have time to think about. Its not spiritual at all.

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Anonymous David Byrden said...

Reality is made of compressed information, therefore (they say) it's like a computer and it can be hacked?

That does not follow. You might as well conclude that a cow is full of milk, therefore a cow is like a coffee machine and it can produce espresso.

I'm also leery of their description of "the brain's death grip on physical reality". Most of the people I know have only a loose grip on reality. Some of them are away with the fairies, and if you hacked reality they'd hardly notice.

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Anonymous Anonymous said...

This was beyond geeky :s

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Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is a first for Dark Roasted Blend - a bad post. Not much more than new age spiritual mumbo jumbo combined with science-y sounding buzzwords. I surely hope this was a joke! How much ya wanna bet that behind that very skinny Reality Hacker website frontend is a pitch for sending them money, probably for 'secret methods' and such.

It was all worth reading though just for David Byrden's Cow/Coffee Machine analogy. That was just awesome!

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Anonymous Anonymous said...

Here's a link to the hidden site for Reality Hacker. It's pretty sad.

For a good laugh, take a look at the HTML source for that page. It's got hundreds of unnecessary nested font tags. Must have been from a hyper-dimensional vibration in the quantum matrix causing a glitch in the reality hackstack.

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Blogger Avi Abrams said...

Don't take it too seriously, folks. These are just means to shake things up a little :)

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Blogger Emily Veinglory said...

I have a PhD in psychology and this *is* a crock. If a spotty undergraduate came up with it I'd giove it a C at best.

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Blogger Stealthy Dachshund said...

"you can mix hard science and ancient spirituality with comic books and video games to make something happen."

Yup, I call it 'my life'. Science, religion, comic books, video games... Wheeee!

I think this post needs a follow-up post dedicated to Happy Mutants, the culture hackers. (And as culture is made up of information, it is 'hackable', either for information or for malice.)

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Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'd have to agree that this was the worst post that I have ever seen on Dark Roasted Blend... But I won't fault you... Hitting home runs 99.99999% of the time is perfectly OK by me :D

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Anonymous Anonymous said...

The fact that a psych PhD felt this was worth a "C" exposes more about psychology than the article...

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Blogger David said...

I hack reality all the time, it's called Psychedelic drugs: LSD, Psylocibin, DMT

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Blogger Commander Clumsy said...

"Avi Abrams said...

Don't take it too seriously, folks. These are just means to shake things up a little :)"

Avi, why do you feel the need to defend your entries/articles? It's your blog, isn't it?

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Blogger Avi Abrams said...

All in good fun, Commander. Comments were getting nasty toward the hacker girl.

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Anonymous Anonymous said...

my english is'nt so good:

But i did understand.
You never be able to Hack reality but Your Brain... All senses ar illusions of your brain and iff you think you feel somthing it is an imagination.

So iff you hack your brain, you can manipulate the illusion of senses.
"Your" reality is changing but only yours. and sometimes you get lost.

This act can be assisted of druguse.
Or insanity...

Good luck in hacking.

Reg. Pillum

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Anonymous Anonymous said...

actually, its abra kadabra

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abra_Kadabra_(comics)

that melded science and magic.

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Anonymous Anonymous said...

As an epileptic, I can assure you all that reality has some thin spots.
The natural reaction to these events is to run the other way, or to hang on for dear life in hope of maintaining things long enough to get to a safe place.
The brain is very soft.

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Anonymous Anonymous said...

You guy have obviously never done any serious meditation or read very much into some deep hardcore buddhism ancient hinduism, physics philosophy, any other medium that questions our rather strong grip on reality. That and and you seem to be missing the point about using ideas from every medium to explore our own reality, or lack there of.

Buddha would have been considered insane by a lot of people in his time if it weren't for his incredible common sense intelligence. He believed in life on other planets before people believed there were other planets. He believed that everything was made up of sub-atomic particles that continually recreate themselves as science has only proven recently. He like Einstein believed that time is not linear. He believed that you shouldn't believe what anyone says and find things out for yourselves.

I think that we can all agree that sci-fi and comics tend to bend ideas about reality further then almost any other medium and time and again their ideas are used with success within our reality framework. There are so many undiscovered secrets in our universe that have yet to be found yet you simply write off someones ideas as idiotic and move on just like others did to DiVince, Einstein, Jesus, Buddha anyone who didn't believe in the Catholic version of Christianity, countless tinkerers and experimenters throughout time. And no I'm not putting this chick on the same level and some of the great minds of our time only pointing out that she is trying to understand things in her own way and shouldn't be persecuted for it by some nerds spinning their psychology beanies calling her a wackjob while studying great people that were once called wackjobs themselves. Try reading some Jung, talk about some messed up stuff that works. I'm simply saying that lack of an open mind and thinking you know all the answers using only modern science and ideas only serves to leave you fighting for scraps of knowledge once the dust all settles.

In short, get over yourselves. She may be barking up the wrong tree at times but I'm sure that if she's looking with honesty she'll see with honesty.

One final note. You will never get there with drugs. They give you hints and point you in the right direction at times, but that direction will always be way more blurry then if you get there without.

Namaste motherf$#@ers ;)

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Anonymous Jeremy said...

Oh, where to start in all this crazy?

Let's concede that this is slightly plausible; Loop quantum gravity posits something like a Penrose spin network at Plank scale, which is potentially hackable. This puts the "information density" of the universe at about 10^600 bits per square centimeter. The human brain seems capable of processing around 10^14 bits at any one time. If we ignore the huge 10^44 difference between human processing times and Plank time, then the amount of space a human brain could 'hack' is still vastly less than the size of a single proton, assuming the holographic principle.

Hippies love quantum mechanics, until it shows precisely how wrong they are, at which point it's dismissed as an artifact of useless human logic.

The universe has already come up with a perfectly amazing way of allowing you to move things around with your mind. It's called your "body".

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Anonymous Anonymous said...

These "reality hackers" are putting themselves in great danger because they are opening themselves up to control by demons.

Tikhon.

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Blogger Ilyas to i-EL said...

Anonymous is very correct in his/her response. Bravo! In short though. The mind is just a lens of sorts. The world around you is filled with infinite possibilities. How ever small/opaque you allow your lens to be is your choice. But the visionary is the one that steps beyond the "hard sciences" and such to see into the beyond. The beyond being where previous people's lenses have yet to see. And for those hanging onto the logic of various sciences. Science just reflects the knowledge of the time in question. It evolves. So what seems true today may not be tomorrow with further discoveries. So it isn't wise to make the foundation of your argument in something that is in constant flux. Capiche?

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Anonymous Anonymous said...

Right on!
I'm a skeptical scientist and an Asperger who tends to fall outside of time, there have been great mornings when I've experienced 6 impossible things before breakfast.

Conventional reality is a flimsy kludge. This woman is pointing intelligently at the gaps between our flashing neon signs. Her hints are right on.

Many of you are right to run away.
Self meta-programming is risky stuff, and you don't ever really recover.

I'm glad I didn't... recover.

Dogstoyevski

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Anonymous Anonymous said...

the reality hacker site was the biggest bunch of bs ever. and it looked like the website had been put together in 10 minutes. the videos were pointless too.

watch video 5. the onee where the origami is supposedly hovering in mid air: if you look closely, especially at the end when she takes her hand away, you can see its balancing on a tiny post, kinda like a tooth pick.

also, the source code for the site, despite being the most basic site on the web is filled with completely unnecessary code, perhaps to make people think more effort was put into it than really was.

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Blogger Sen_Yamamoto said...

about the 'floating oragami'. That video was not showing floating oragami. She was showing how the energy exuded from her palms could make the object spin, not hover. You need more background before you can point out more than a false flaw.

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Anonymous Drew Terry said...

This is the biggest peice of.....
I've ever seen.

honestly though, I do beleive it is possible to get your own mind to beleive you're "Hacking reality."

But this lady is trying to make you beleive you actually can change reality, which is crap.

By the way, if you'd be so kind,
Take a look at my fractal and surreal art AVI, if you think it's good enough you might perhapse post it here on DRB (heh heh :)

ok maybe not post it, but please take a look http://www.flickr.com/photos/professor_enigmas_incredible_fractal_gallery

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Anonymous Ángel said...

The beauty about this things is that no one can say for sure if its true or not. The curious thing about them is that everybody thinks that he or she has the truth. Human being, being of contradictions.

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Blogger modabid al-Adel Hassan said...

Lisa Bruder is actually onto something. The problem is that she's too busy trying to make money to realize what she has in her hand.

But like in the Matrix, "Nobody makes the first jump." Lisa Bruder needs to take a second leap and look again. Perhaps she will learn something. Anyone claiming a hold on reality manipulation who needs to sell to make money, is missing the boat.

Neo learned he did not need to dodge bullets. He simply altered their existence and gave them a new behavior.

Lisa Bruder doesn't know it yet, but that what reality hacking is really all about: Consciously and deliberately giving Reality a new behavior.

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Blogger Avi Abrams said...

Some fresh view on all of this - thank you, Modabid

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Anonymous Anonymous said...

quote-jenjen:
whether or not the hackuracy of the post is all it's hacked up to be, the art is gorgeous.

---------------------------------
I agree with you completely.

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    I work in an area of medicine closely related to this, and I can tell you that the existence of MPI is not a given. If it does exist, it is a lot rarer than you make out.

    Like a lot of psychiatric 'diagnoses', it is not reliable, and depends heavily on the subject bias and preconceived views of the diagnostician.
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  • I'm very sorry if this comes out as a double post, but after waiting for a while and not seeing it published I re-posted this kind-of-a-sort-of-a-rant.

    My area of expertise and academic backround is in culture history and there's nothing new to me about this. We all live in a a very fragile state of, let's call it, existential fear. Fear for our body, our inner thoughts, our surroundigs, the dark spirits of our soul (if you choose to believe in one). We very well know on some level or another that the world around is (or seems to be) more than is told or taught to us or simply something we can concieve.
    Before you say it, of course it's not that simple. Most of us go thru this life happy in knowledge that everything is quite like it's supposed to be: everyday life, love, reassurance that everything is the way it's supposed to be. So why do we get hysterics? Why do we cry even when nothing is supposed to be wrong?
    Maybe, and this is just a maybe, there are so many feelings and questions anaswered in our lives that when something catches us anawares it resonates thru crowd. Hidden fears or need to get release thru laughter just catches fire.
    How about mass hysteria masquarading as national pride that results in death of millions? It exists.
    There's always an untapped hidden potential in us for everything: mass suicide to catch a ride on a UFO, to kill your neighbour with a suitable posse of friends and likeminded, to laugh at the same joke all across the globe.
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    Let's cut down to the chase: conformity keeps us sane and it's a good thing, otherwise we would propably not even exist (even after the nutrional value of eating our neighbour).
    Then again this world and along it our shared psyche as a human race has had to forget so many things that could harm us (our fears, absurdity of existance, the inherent sense of dark humour that permeats our lives, fear of our selves, our bodies (just ask David Cronenberg or Freud), or a fervent fear for napkins.
    We more or les live in mass hysteria at all times whether it involves consumer goods we buy, TV-shows we watch or a lifestyle we all subscribe to. However, aforementioned is what we call normal everyday life.
    I hate to say it: Monty Python got it right; to make jokes of our most insane existential fears is going to stick around a whole lot longer than the last lightbulb-joke.
    Oooops... some post I've just made.
    Well. I'm waiting for a crunchy frag (Okay, that was cheap).
    As far as we go as humanity, something tells me we won't stop laughing or fearing or hating in hordes for the unforeseable future.
    Let's just agree to laugh, hmmmm.
    We culture historians at least won't mind.
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  • Anonymous Said: "it's more common than you think."

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  • >Wow...sounds like the "Global Warming/Environment Change" phenomena.

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    I s*** thee not.
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  • Also include one thats killed many poeple, war on terror, iraqi freedom and osama bin laden.
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  • I had this happen to me, in a summer camp 10+ years ago. A guy ran into the room laughing, and it took over. I ran out into the hall, near crying and my gut wrenched in pain from the laughter. It was one of the scariest uncontrollable things thats ever happened to me tbh. Everyone didnt get it, about 3 or 4 people out of 15-20 in the room.
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  • "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds"

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    (meta-referential...)
    Read more

  • I got caught up with a 'spiritual teacher' in the 1980's. He could make people see incredible things - like turning into Buddhist and Hindu Dieties, levitating, disappearing, with no lighting special effects. In his presence people had amazing spiritual experiences. He gave lectures to thousands of people who shared these experiences. Later on it turned out that he was a lying phony who manipulated people into giving him large amounts of cash. I myself witnessed him telling lies on national TV. However, the *experiences* he gave me (and thousands of others) really was something that is hard to explain outside of some type of mass 'hallucination'.
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  • What is real anyway? Reality, according to some, is just what you believe it to be.
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  • FYI:

    In the case of The Mad Gasser, there was evidence recovered from at least one fo the scenes. A woman's footprint and a rag with an unidentified chemical on it. (The chemical evaporated before any tests could be carried out to determine what it was.)

    Also, there was a suspect. A man who had the reputation of carrying out weird chemistry experiments. Some believe that when he became the suspect his sister began doing copy-cat crimes in order to take the heat of her brother, which explains why many of the witnesses claim they saw a female figure flee the scene of the crimes.

    There was also a rash of similar incidents in a small town 10 years earlier and it's likely that residents hadn't heard of these cases.

    So the key to so-called 'Mass Hysteria', is that it may or may not exist and that it might be based on real or imagined threats.

    What we do know is that 'Mass Hysteria' is of itself never an explanation for anything.
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  • The image of the girl in this post from http://community.livejournal.com/vintagephoto/
    where abouts on this site is the photo from? Do you know the date it was posted, who posted it, who took the photograph, or who the girl is? I really would like to find the original source.
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  • We'd like to know this too, this is a great image.
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  • The girl in the first image is Andrée Rolane. She appeared in several films in the the 1920s including L'Occident (1927) (aka 'The West'), Les Misérables (1925) and La Fanciulla di Pompei (1925). I am still unsure where this photograph is from, but it is also shown at http://killerbeesting.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html
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  • I have to say... watching Mystery Science Theater 2000 doesn't help.
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  • The mad gasser's name way Farley Llewellyn.

    http://forteantimes.com/features/articles/83/in_search_of_the_mad_gasser.html
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  • Watching Mystery Science Theater "2000" definitely wouldn't help. 'Cuz if that's what you're doing, then it's already too late for you. You're mind is gone.
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  • "Don't forget Y2K" comments really honk me off, almost as much as the Global Warming deniers. Y2K was a no-show because millions of hours of labor went into staving off impending disaster. Word got about about how serious the problem was, and people FIXED it. It wasn't mass hysteria or some false mental phenomena. Neither is global warming.
    I've lived in Minnesota since 1993. When I moved here, winter snow piled up four feet high along the roads, higher at intersections. To deny something serious is happening is simply to buy into what Exxon Mobil spent $80,000,000 to make you believe. Follow the money. Those who have the most to lose are driven by their own psychotic personalities to do anything they can to stay in power, and since climate change is such a world-changing event, they HAVE to deny its existence, even though it could eventually kill them. Human society has evolved this personality type over millenia. So they can't help what they are and they'll continue to tell lies and pay others to do so.
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  • hmm, lets not forget the biggest example... Religion. :0
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  • Global warming isn't mass hysteria; it's just not as visible in the States as it is in Canada. The further north one goes, the more noticable it becomes.

    Here in the Interior of BC, an estimated 80% of our pines (last I heard) have died. For literally hectares, there's great swathes of red, standing dead pines. The cause? The Mountain Pine Beetle, which our trees have no propection against.

    Traditionally, they haven't needed it, because it's been too cold for them up here. But it hasn't gotten cold enough to kill them since the winter of 03/04. That year, weather here dipped down into its usual -40/-50c range, but the next year it only got down to -30c. And that was the last year we saw -30 for more than a day or two.

    Last year it barely broke -25, and rarely got below -20c (-30f). Now, this might sound exceedingly cold to you, and yes, it is cold, but it's unusually warm for up here. And it isn't just scientists saying, "Oh noes! It's warmed up by three degrees!!" It's a phenomenon that everyone here can actually see, because it's been an increase of 30 degrees in only the last five years.

    Don't try to tell Canadians that global warming/climate change is mass hysteria. It's already hitting us hard.

    You can see pictures here, if you're interested. Scroll past the images of the bloody little buggers themselves, and you'll see what I mean about "swathes".

    And this is directly of the BC's Ministry of Forests' web page.

    http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfp/mountain_pine_beetle/bbphotos.htm
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  • Ah, but climate study was started during a cold period in time, what was known as the 'little ice age'. It occurred shortly after the medieval warm period, where the temperature globally, was much higher than it is now. The Earth runs in cycles, there's no way it can be consistent.
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  • So how do we protect ourselves from mass hysteria?

    the moral of the story: DON'T FALL INTO THE HYPE

    PRACTICE LOGIC AND REASONING

    THINK FOR YOURSELVES!!!!!

    ~AskewedOptimism
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  • Hah. HahhahahAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
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  • HAHAHAHAHAhahaha..ha..ha.... ha?
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  • Regarding your last picture in this post (the one with the guy wrestling the giant sea-scorpion): see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3247691.stm - it's a recreation of a euryperid for a BBC TV show.

    The real beasties are long extinct.
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  • The really weird statue of a mother and children are from the Vigelandspark in Oslo, Norway. This isn't even the weirdest one!! Google it and see... i am sure there are many more pictures to be found
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  • Re: Reuse... recycle... (more info)

    -> more info here
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  • The real beasties are long extinct.

    Thank God!
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  • The picture is of Jez Gibson-Harris holding a robotic eurypterid (a 'sea scorpion' from the Ordovician period) built by Crawley Creatures for the BBC program "Sea Monsters", aired in 2003. The picture above, as well as another of the prop, and other props from the program, can be found at http://www.crawley-creatures.com/gallery/seamonsters.htm
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  • I don't think that people should be rewarded for putting lives at risk.

    But if you watch the "car vs train" incident, the offender seems to get advertising fees. I'm sure the train driver doesn't benefit.
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  • Of course in the 10 more bridges post they have a photo of the Cheasapeake Bay Bridge (U.S. 50 in MD) instead of the Cheasapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel (U.S. 13 in VA)
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  • The Billboard isn't a photoshop, it was a publicity stunt for the film.
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  • Reality check: If the north pole should melt, how much would the water level rise? Hint
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  • Of course steam locomotives handled high water better than modern Diesel electric ones do. geira, actually the melting of the ice cap at the NORTH pole wouldn't raise sea level at all. Floating ice melting doesn't affect water level. It's the melting of the ice at the SOUTH pole and Greenland that would raise sea levels.
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  • the lady soup picture is a shoop.
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  • The guy on the public phone is in malaysia. Although, I wonder if the phone actually even works when it's not flooded since maintenance are so bad, most of it are not in working order.

    Amost everybody uses mobile phone these days.
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  • I don't see Sean Penn anywhere in those pictures in the mid-west. Very odd. Do you think that Bush bombed the levees in those towns? I think this should be looked into immediately.
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  • One of those "China floods" pictures is not from China. The man trying to make a phone call from the blue phone booth flooded up to his chest is from Malaysia.

    http://lh5.ggpht.com/abramsv/SGRuZFSsHTI/AAAAAAAAUmk/ee_fP4UeJrY/s640/2070170031_f4f8ae1196_o.jpg

    The logo on the front of the phone booth tells me it's from 2005 or before, because in 2005 Telekom Malaysia changed it's name and logo to this http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/countries/my/126744.html
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  • Some photos, which were obviously Photoshop edits were tasteless considering the calamity and nature, no pun intended, of the picture. Boooooooo!
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  • Living in the American midwest, smack in the middle of the area hardest hit during the Great Flood of '93, I'm amazed by the tenacity of century-old farmsteads that survived the floodwaters. Granted, many are no longer inhabited, but still they stand as mute testament to their builders' craftsmanship. High water marks are visible after fifteen years at second-story rooftop level!

    Interestingly, lesser 'modern' structures were instant flotsam, such as those shown in many of your photos.
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  • Re: Light Signature

    http://www.recreation.hu/peter/images/ligth.jpg
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  • The truck without another front wheel is an old Tatra. It has independent suspension (very rare in a truck), you don't need any load to drive it like that. Actually the owners manual suggests doing this in case of a flat tyre if you don't have a spare.
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  • The last one is from House of Gord.
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  • In the most popular sense of the word--that is, referring to the familiar psychedelic images widely available on posters, greeting cards and giftwrap in the mid-'90s--the chest of drawers may not be immediately recognizable as a "fractal."

    Those beautiful and intriguing pictures are based on iterations of complex forms such as the Mandelbrot set. However, fractals can be based on iterations of any form, including a simple cube, such as this chest.

    I think it's a fractal in the truest sense--or at least as close an approximation as a piece of furniture is likely to get.

    In fact, it looks like a variation of the Menger sponge:

    http://mathworld.wolfram.com/MengerSponge.html
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  • Thank you RangerGordon... loved that Menger Sponge piece.
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  • You can't steer the truck without front wheels.
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  • To me the "Fractal Drawer" seems more like it's based on the Fibonacci numbers:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_number (see the "tiling" image on the right)
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  • You must admit, that is some pretty cool stuff.

    JT
    http://www.Ultimate-Anonymity.com
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  • definitely
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  • "My art is made totally freehand"? indeed!
    then wtf is the suv with the armature and all that business?
    He walked 100 miles then drove, SLOWLY 100 miles. I think the impact on the environment is a little more visible from outer space now.
    Why not make a better point and etch an image in antartcica with the same equipment
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  • @ Anonymous (ofcourse...)

    I think it's a crane to lift the artist much higher to take pictures of his artwork.

    btw: if he did actually drive the 100 miles driving... yes that is indeed a MASSIVE load on the CO2 contribution... because OMG 100 miles is disastrous. thats like a 2hr drive!! What a monster.
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  • @Anonymous

    Yes, bringing sand painting equipment to etch ice in Antarctica would be quite a challenge!

    Like eating soup with a fork.
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  • Here is an other example of massive art figures created between 200 BC and 600 AD : the Nazca Lines

    http://www.crystalinks.com/nasca.html
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  • woowww, impresionante

    saludos desde españa
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  • Just pure Awesomeness!
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  • I say commission this artist to make a 21st-century analog of the Nazca artwork for the people of the future to puzzle over. Why not? The Incas did it. Why shouldn't we?
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  • This is SO BEAUTIFUL but my heart can't help but question. Why? Aesthetic showmanship? Could the resources have been put to better use? This question does not imply an answer. I just struggle between beauty and function and I see millions of souls just struggling to survive while others have the resources to do something like this, as incredible as it is.

    What is the price and reward of art.
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  • reminds me of andy goldsworthy stuff. my favorite form of art... fleeting, temporary, made of natural materials. just like us humans.

    i find it ironic... this is the same location as burningman. and i'm happy he didn't do it during BM, because this kicks ass over anything ever created there.
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  • ps @ anonymous:

    why? there doesn't need to be a why, does there? if everything was done based on a why, i think beauty and magic would disappear from our lives. well, at least when it comes to art.

    *just because* is enough for me in this case.
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  • "btw: if he did actually drive the 100 miles driving... yes that is indeed a MASSIVE load on the CO2 contribution... because OMG 100 miles is disastrous. thats like a 2hr drive!! What a monster"

    I just cant believe it. That someone would drive a hundred miles, its just too hard to believe! Hes destroying the planet!
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  • "I think it's a crane to lift the artist much higher to take pictures of his artwork."

    He used a cherry picker and a plane to get the shots.
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  • Hey, if you guys are interested in jims art check out this video i made on youtube, more videos will be coming. The video has more shots from the desert. I made the music on garageband.

    Worlds Largest Human Made Drawing+ other art by jim denevan

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6tWXU1dA7s
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  • Nice video... thank you
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  • Definetly better than sticking those umbrellas up and down interstate 5 in California about 10 years or so ago very nice indeed carbon foot print or not.
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  • I just put out a new version of the youtube video that is much improved with new shots. check it out and feel free to leave feedback, it is much appreciated!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdD3jmyPbGo
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  • Very Impressive, but not the largest, I would argue. Have you had a look at the Nazca Plains near Peru recently?
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  • Nazca lines are smaller, look it up.
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  • Seems everyone is comparing these sand figures with those on Nazca desert. They remind much more to me the (ex-)'misterious' crop circles in UK and other places...
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  • Check out my newest video that has interesting footage from jim denevan's trip to Greenland.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eVgFXaB6-E
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  • That's the same office freak out you linked to before, from a different angle. makes me wonder if it is staged.
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  • Booooo! That's an old joke but apparently you didn't know that or cared. ;)
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  • If I am missing some context someone could drop a link. The internet is a big place and some of us hail from distant corners of it.
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  • The bar is named "Eternity".
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  • BTW-MIne was in reference to the "ignorance/apathy" joke at the end there. ;>)
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  • Andyman - my ignorance AND apathy knows no bounds
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  • Very nice post, never heard of exploding lakes before. The image with the pump in the center of the lake is not visible...
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  • The last picture could be from Philippe Ramette, a french photographer. He doesn't use Photoshop, but strange machines to create weird pictures of himself.

    You can see some of them here (fr) :

    http://laboiteaimages.hautetfort.com/archive/2007/02/11/index.html
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  • My link's been broken, sorry, try that short one, please (it's really cool) :

    http://tiny.cc/GBi06
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  • Just to clarify, while CO2 is toxic in sufficient concentration, the deaths at Lake Nyos were due more to it simply displacing all the oxygen and causing immediate asphyxiation, than to any toxic effect.
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  • fascinating article.

    off-topic, but a confirmation, that last pic is indeed Philippe Ramette, entitled:

    Rational exploration of the undersea : irrational walk 2006

    (xippas.com/en/artist/philippe_ramette)
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  • Sigivald, you are absolutely right. Moreover, the main toxic gas expelled by a volcanic lake - or a smoking crater or crevice - is the poisonous SO2, or Sulphur Dioxide.

    Many of the people who died in lake Nyos were deprived of oxigen and poisoned by SO2.

    I think that this trend of blaming CO2 for everything that happens is becoming rather fishy...

    Congratulations
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  • Thank you for the image info - credit added.
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  • i heard about the lakes, it was in one of arthur clarkes' books. can't remember which one, though.
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  • Wow!
    I posted too the Mario Sánchez gallery o.o

    here:
    http://hardergeneration.hu/2008/06/11/aegis-strifes-digital-hell/

    i really love this works :)
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  • The fountain in the middle of lake Nyos only used a pump to get it started. Now it is a self-sustaining fountain of fizzy-water, shooting 100 feet into the air.
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