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Yeah, really... If you're going to do a trilogy, make it a good one

That's a great trilogy, but great books do not generally translate to great movies, as there is simply too much that you have to lose in the translation.

The reason that Lord of the Rings works well as a movie is that it is not great literature to begin with. It's not bad, it's just minor literature in the same way that PG Wodehouse or Agatha Christie are, both of whom also translate well to the small or large screen.

Yeah, really... If you're going to do a trilogy, make it a good one

At 1st I misread the notnewsfornerd! as a fnord! http://www.rawilson.com/illumi... :/
come on, begin gay or lesbian is often a bit nerdy. Church-lady types approve of neither science nor sex, and certainly not non-standard-issue sexual attractions.

Even to suggesting a "basic income": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
http://www.rawilson.com/home.h...
http://www.rawilson.com/though...
http://deoxy.org/raw.htm

Thanks for the pointer. I'd be curious where specifically (which book or other writing) wherein he says that, if you know off-hand.

Even to suggesting a "basic income": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
http://www.rawilson.com/home.h...
http://www.rawilson.com/though...
http://deoxy.org/raw.htm

Thanks for the pointer. I'd be curious where specifically (which book or other writing) wherein he says that, if you know off-hand.

Do you have a link to this "normal" award terms?

Digging around a bit, all I could find what that the challenge was offered by a fellow named Robert Anton Wilson.

I couldn't find any info about the normal challenge on his website http://www.rawilson.com/

The challenge may be long gone. You could try the wayback machine, my eyes can't handle the blue text on a blue background any longer.

...thought of this before...

http://www.rawilson.com/tsog.shtml TS.O.G - Tsarist (Czarist) Occupied Government

RAW Bedside Update October 4, 2006 Donations have poured in since friends of Bob Wilson got the word out that he could use some help with steep healthcare costs (Donation link above). Thank you so much for your generosity! Bob requires 24 hour care and this kindly swarm of donations has enabled Bob to receive the care he (and everyone!) deserves. Bob is not one for the begging bowl. He would rather that fans wishing to help out simply buy his wares. But his friends, understanding the potential financial strain of Bob's needs, set up the Friends of Robert Anton Wilson relief fund, and your response has been astounding. Bob "is" presently cheerful, without pain and ceaselessly optimistic. Here's a quick history of Robert Anton Wilson's scenario. Bob has post-polio syndrome which has severely damaged his legs and weakened his body. He had a hard fall in June of this year which landed him in the hospital. He has since not been able to walk and is thus confined to his bed (overlooking beautiful Monterey Bay fnord), requiring 24 hour care. Due to Bob's acute weakness in June and July, many of his family and friends felt that Bob could go at any time. He has since rallied slowly with up's and down's, and like most things, his condition seems in the maybe state. Bob has no pain, has a hearty appetite, is in steady good, sharp humor, is surrounded by family and friends, and feels he shows signs of slow recovery. Praise Bob! All hail Eris!

If people aren't buying his books, it's probably for a good reason.

Plenty of people have bought his books over the years. Wilson is a well-known author and speaker:

Robert Anton Wilson is the coauthor, with Robert Shea, of the underground classic The Illuminatus! Trilogy , which won the 1986 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award. His other writings include Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy, called "the most scientific of all science fiction novels," by New Scientist, and several nonfiction works of Futurist psychology and guerilla ontology, such as Prometheus Rising and The New Inquisition. Wilson, who sees himself as a Futurist, author, and stand-up comic, regularly gives seminars at Eslan and other New Age centers. Wilson has made both a comedy record (Secrets of Power) and a punk rock record (The Chocolate Biscuit Conspiracy), and his play Wilhelm Reich in Hell was performed at the Edmund Burke Theatre in Dublin, Ireland. His novel Illuminatus! was adapted as a 10-hour science fiction rock epic and performed under the patronage of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Great Britain's National Theatre, where Wilson appeared briefly on stage in a special cameo role. Robert Anton Wilson is also a former editor at Playboy magazine.

I felt sorry when I heard that the Robot Animal Within is nearing terminal status, both physically and financially. I have read many of his books and have always considered him to be of great merit in the libertarian free thinker category. I met him once and found that he had a deep, spiritual quietude.

I would donate if I thought that the money could actually help the author instead of his creditors.

http://www.rawilson.com/ - same PayPal address, the author's own site.

Robert Anton Wilsons autobiography is titled Cosmic Trigger. There were several updates/sequals including Cosmic Trigger III: My Life After Death

What the subtitle refers to is the false stories that he was found dead in his home on February 22, 1994 that propagated on the internet and the insights he had from watching the situation unfold.

I really hope that again the current story is also unfounded. But I am afraid its not, so I will be sending a check.

For all those 'the hippy should gedda job' folks, they might be interested to know that RAW was a (little l) libertarian before it was cool. It fact he was probably one of the seed crystals that fostered the 'coolness' on the internet back in the day.

It's not an awesome idea because as much as it has it's good use there is also the darker side with pedophile, snuff and other crap that should not be tolerated.

Snuff films are not real. And the problem with pedophilia isn't the transmission of images of the sexual abuse of children, it's when actual sexual abuse of children goes on.

Freedom has risks. If you have free elections, the "wrong" guys might win. If you have secure communications, "terrorists" might use them to make plans. If you have the right to keep and bear arms, "bad guys" may have guns.

But if you believe in freedom, you're very very wary of the state getting to define who the "wrong" guys, the "terrorists", the "bad guys", are. Consider that Martin Luther King Jr. was a target of COINTELPRO; consider Nixon's "enemies list"; consider the Fugitive Slave Act, the Dredd Scott decision, the Alien and Sedition acts, the Red Scares, the concentration camps for Japanese Americans...

you cant have a place where you can bend the rules forever, that's anarchy!

And? "Anarchy" means no ruling hierarchy. Some people think that's a good idea, especially when it comes to communication. As Robert Anton Wilson put it, "A monopoly on the means of communication may define a ruling elite more precisely than the celebrated Marxian formula of `monopoly in the means of production.' Since man extends his nervous system though channels of communication like the written word, the telephone, radio, etc., he who controls these media controls part of the nervous system of every member of society. The contents of these media become part of the contents of every individual's brain."

Hmm, the All-seeing eye logo, and the invocation IAO, all wrapped up in one juicy package.

I'll say this much for our rulers at the Information Awareness Office, they do have a sense of humor.

Either that, or Robert Anton Wilson really is running the show, and we're all just characters in one of his novels.

Fnord.

I spend most of my day reading NON-FICTION (Read:The only thing to truly increase your mind).

Nonsense. Fiction is a legitimate way to present and explore ideas; reading, say, The Illuminatus! Trilogy will do quite a bit to "increase your mind".

exhibit a

Of course, the Catholic Hierarchy had been inteligent (and by their own lights, right) all along: Repression is never a static process, but must always be dynamic, either moving forward toward total control or retreating backward as the floodgates open to that force which French intellectuals quite correctly capitalize: Desire. Shakespeare asked how Beauty could survive, being no stronger than a flower, and Tennessee Williams answered (in Camino Real) that the flowers in the mountains always break through the rocks. The cry of "Flower Power" in the 1960's might as well have been Nipple Power. Once those gentle buds had crashed through the rocks of repression, Desire was free and the walls of the cities began to shake. Real language began to be heard on the screens of movie houses; other parts of the body, one by one, crept out of the darkness of shame and concealment; topless clubs appeared with bottomless clubs soon after; Blacks rebelled against poverty, students against monotony, even straight citizens raised their voices against a war that made no sense (but when had straight citizens ever objected to a war on those grounds before?); the Indians emerged from the depression that had crushed them since their last defeat at Wounded Knee and began to agitate again; eventually there were mutinies in prisons, in armies, on ships, even among Air Force officers. In Frederick Perl's terminology, people had stopped harboring their resentments and began to make demands -- and a large number of them were proclaiming, in loud voices, that they would use any means necessary to get what they wanted. By the end of the decade, the Jesus Freaks, the women's liberationists and the silent majority were all in a panic, trying desperately to rebuild at least some of the walls of repression which traditionally have kept civilized humanity from attempting to immanentize the eschaton. This phrase is from conservative historian Kurt Vogelin and refers, in technical theological language, to the heresy of the Gnostics, who wished to produce heaven on this earth instead of postponing it until after death. Vogelin says this heresy underlies all forms of radicalism and rebellion, and he is probably right. Modern history is a war between Authority and Desire, and if Authority must demand submission, Desire will settle for nothing less than the attainment of its gratification.

Fnord.

ehowa==funny

ehowa!=fnord

But now I have to kill you :)

I've read some from the "Book of the Damned". Fun stuff. You should check out the non-fictional works of Robert Anton Wilson. I particularly recommend The New Inquisition. He discusses Fortean pheonomena, but includes some references. Apparently there are some credible sources that report rains of fish and frogs. I've never believed in the "segregating whirlwind" explanation. I recall discussing this crazy stuff with some friends a few years ago. They didn't believe in amphibianic precipitation ;) and laughed at me ... all in fun, of course. Then a few weeks later, one of them phoned me and said "I just saw a news report. A rain of fish in Kentucky." I laughed right back!

Wilson is simply amazing, IMNSHO. Of course his fiction is fnord great too.

Yeah, Robert A. Wilson: yeah.
Never found the third book in the Historical trilogy; once I'm through with Gene Wolf, I may have to go back to that.

In a weird way, this reminds me of the Jumping Jesus Phenomenon

Go here for more info.

Wow, a decade after picking up his books, I finally grok that line from R.A.W.

Here we have dozens of people aguing about the isness and isn'tness of some Damned Thing, all the while blind to the axiom that
"All propositions are true in some sense, false in some sense, and meaningless in some sense".

The photo(s) were true, in that they depicted accurately what was going on.
False, in that the exact arrangement of light and shadow didn't happen.
Meaningless in that it was a falsification presented as fact (the virtue of fact is that it is true, if you have a false fact, it is no longer what it is).
Doubly meaningless by virtue of having passed through the intestinal tract of a modern media during wartime.

The varying interpretations here demonstrate that the manipulation wasn't done for political reasons, (or at least it didn't succeed in emphasizing the effect one way or the other).

IMO, I agree that his actions were totally wrong, unethical, dismissable, although not in this case deceptive.

It's the waiting for the next case that means we must stamp on this one.

DOGSI YNNUBSGUB DNA'TORRAC AEKIL DEPAHS ISDLROW EHTON
FNORD
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Fnord.

Home of the fnords

And I'm the first to mention this here so far? You should all be modded down -1 for naiveté.

Hm. And yet the WayBack Machine has the Project Censored page here, and even the AlterNet story linked therein. Ah, but yes, it must be a conspiracy by the Big Eye In The Pyramid -- someone call Hagbard Celine. Fnord.

-1, Delusional.

It can teach you insights into:

• What 'scientific proof' really means (it's not a good idea to say something is something with 100% certainty) and how hard it is to dislocate it from human psychology.
• How dangerous it can be to blindly believe so-called 'experts' (what about that guy at Bell Labs who falsified his work, they had to pull 6 patents!)
• How to describe things without defining their 'reality' for clearer thinking.

Remember: Belief gets in the way of learning. The philosophy of science is something I believe that everyone should learn about, and scientists unwilling to study it should not call themselves scientists.

See Robert Anton Wilson's "Cosmic Trigger" series (esp. Cosmic Trigger III) for a really interesting read about this. (He's one of the guys who wrote Illuminatus, so you can trust him! Fnord!)

Utopia: /you-TOE-pee-ah/ n. A description of a society where everyone else likes the same things you do. First used by Sir Thomas More in the novel of the same name. From the Greek 'eu topos' (lit. 'no place')

Has anybody noted that there are shitloads of Robert Wilsons who specialize in Sci-Fi/Paranoia/Conspiracy -subjects?

Robert Anton Wilson being a prime example.

Check it out in Amazon sometime, when you're really bored...

Never read anything by this Robert CHARLES Wilson guy, but Robert ANTON Wilson wrote some pretty cool, messed up books. Try the Illuminati trilogy....

Actually, that's only true from one set of perspectives. Think of it this way: Your title to the house is merely a piece of paper that says that the house is yours. All it means is that you can get men in blue uniforms with guns to show up and kick other people out of the house if you want, assuming the political climate stays roughly equivalent to what it is.

This does not mean you "own" the house, any more than having control of the police force and the ability to break into people's houses, kill them, and take their property means you "own" the house (but then, when has that ever stopped anyone?)

I wouldn't be celebrating. Capitalism may be working, but book fans are getting ripped off.

This is my experience: I have been adding to my Robert Anton Wilson collection lately. In case you aren't familiar with him, he has written a large number of important and controversial books [fiction,non-fiction,fantasy]. He was also the senior editor at Playboy during the late 70's. Most of his books have been through multiple printings by various publishers. Two or three years ago I could have purchased any of his books in paperback for under $10. Now price-gouging season has begun. Some of my recent quotes: $25, $60, etc... These are prices for used paperbacks less than twenty years old. I lent and lost a copy of The Earth Will Shake a few years ago, but now I can buy a used copy for $65--I spent $10 for a new copy about five years ago.

I lamented this just the other day while in the local bookstore. Then the owner gave me some inside information: the book seller has been hoarding Robert Anton Wilson books with the help of the web. He has nearly monopolized this particular market; now he sells a small number each week for his cash flow.

That's my beef with capitalism. The "market" (really: anticipation of future sales) has caused a product to become scarce. Hence the outrageous prices. In the meantime it is impossible--without enough disposable income--to find most books written by this contemporary author. I don't doubt that the internet has opened up a lot of readers to a lot of authors, but the speculators are creating a scenario not unlike the end result of censorship.

So yes, it does piss off the book publishers. It also pisses off people who would like to buy books for a fair price to read them [newsflash: original purpose of books is for reading!].

Hmm, This sounds like what wilson & shea where on about in the illuminatus trilogy. How did they put it? Something like 'a man with a gun in his hand is told only that which will prevent him from pulling the trigger'. They formulated it a (bit) more lucidly in their 'law of fives' which limits the number of subserviants an individual can effectively manage to five, before the explosive growth in possible alliances becomes to great to comprehend and an information breakdown occurs. Oooh err! Some empirical evidence for some weird & whacked out sci-fi madness!! Ps - Don't flame, you should only take this as seriously as you take yourself. Check the book out here

Illuminist: "And those Discordian bastards stole the statues we were planning to sell them!"

Discordian: "Hot shit! 8 months after a splinter group of the Leauge of Assassins goes apeshit, 6 months after we barely catch the germ warfare leaks in time, and only a week after we buy the luxury submarine we read about on Slashdot, and we've got the gold Atlantean statues! Finally, we can buy the Mob back from the Illuminati and stop the power grab in the States. (Dorn, that's your job!) The rest of us will haul ass through the secret tunnel to Lake Totenkopf! Let's move it, we've only got three weeks to go before they immanentize the Eschaton!"

(I gave up on reality when I realized the The Illuminatus! Trilogy, (1975), was a better guide to world events fnord than CNN. Robert Anton Wilson was right -- science fiction fnord authors aren't writing fiction, they're just people who happen to be travelling backwards in time fnord and they're writing their memoirs...)

How could anyone forget the man who taught us about the fnords?

If you haven't read his work yet, you don't know what you're missing. Try here for some book excerpts. It's probably best to start with the fiction, like The Illuminatus! Trilogy and The Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy.

How could anyone forget the man who taught us about the fnords?

If you haven't read his work yet, you don't know what you're missing. Try here for some book excerpts. It's probably best to start with the fiction, like The Illuminatus! Trilogy and The Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy.

How could anyone forget the man who taught us about the fnords?

If you haven't read his work yet, you don't know what you're missing. Try here for some book excerpts. It's probably best to start with the fiction, like The Illuminatus! Trilogy and The Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy.

How could anyone forget the man who taught us about the fnords?

If you haven't read his work yet, you don't know what you're missing. Try here for some book excerpts. It's probably best to start with the fiction, like The Illuminatus! Trilogy and The Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy.

Naivety always makes me smile. Is "The Future" some event which has passed, has its outcome been thoroughly documented?

Only last weekend I slept under a geodesic dome in the woods of coastal Georgia (U.S., not EurAsia). I briefly contemplated Fuller and his myriad ideas while falling asleep. We don't have the Dymaxion car, the instant houses, the one-cup-of-water showers, let alone his economic visions. How come? Some of his ideas may be actually impossible to bring to fruition, but that is not reason enough. The answer is that society is not ready--not ready to let go of the notion of scarcity of wealth. Fuller's ideas, whether socio-political or mechanical in nature, transcend economics. In his mind, all people are equally valuable and all rightful heirs of the earth and of humanity. Any object he designed shared the same properties: cheap, useful, sustainable, and democratic. These are all anathema to our greed-oriented society, which is tripping over itself in its attempts to consolidate all wealth and power in the hands of a few wealth addicts.

This is from one of my favorite Robert Anton Wilson articles, "Ten Good Reasons to Get out of Bed in the Morning", published in Oui back in 1977 and reprinted in Illuminati Papers:

Stalin's paranoia was a self-fulfilling prophecy; so was Bucky Fuller's optimism.

Nazis have. If you ask them, they would reply that they believe that their system of morality is entirely valid and acceptable. No society believes that it is evil. What you should have said is "don't people have the same morals as me?". It's the same kind of transformation as R.A.Wilson's "War on Some Drugs".

Nazis have. If you ask them, they would reply that they believe that their system of morality is entirely valid and acceptable. No society believes that it is evil. What you should have said is "don't people have the same morals as me?". It's the same kind of transformation as R.A.Wilson's "War on Some Drugs".

You're right
it SHOULD work both ways.

the big problem there is that the the government already blew that out the window by allowing CORPORATIONS to exist at all!

that french term, coined by Joseph Smith, means LEAVE ALONE.

as you say, the government leaves business alone, and that *should* work.

but by allowing HUGE MONSTROSITIES to behave as INDIVIDUALS, we've created a NIGHTMARE!

"capitalism" isn't the problem, as capitalism DOES NOT EQUAL "corporatism."

what i'm trying to say is that corporations are unnaturally created and fostered by "business law" and that corporatism FLIES IN THE FACE of the laisez faire concept.

check out what robert anton wilson has to say about that.

Your point is good and you deserve your positive moderation, but...

failures and cranks: phrenology, mediums as masters of the fourth dimension, any number of numerological schemes, orgone energy

Ouch. Orgone energy does not, IMHO, deserve to be put in that lineup. Especially here on /. Now, I'm not an expert on the subject but I do know that the others are either outright scams or were heard out. Wilhelm Reich never really had his day. In fact, the U.S. Government seized his books and papers and burned them back in 1957. Clearly a First Amendment issue, which is a favorite topic around here.

Granted, this is a poor argument for orgone energy, but it is my understanding that very few have recreated Reich's experiments before declaring him a crank or a failure. Peer review wasn't possible because nobody would take the time to hear him out. The same thing has happened in gravity research in the past (the exact reference eludes me) and we have adequate reason be concerned that the scientific community may be too ready to cry 'crank'.

For more information (including an interesting discussion about arguments), read this excerpt from Wilhelm Reich in Hell by Robert Anton Wilson

Your point is good and you deserve your positive moderation, but...

failures and cranks: phrenology, mediums as masters of the fourth dimension, any number of numerological schemes, orgone energy

Ouch. Orgone energy does not, IMHO, deserve to be put in that lineup. Especially here on /. Now, I'm not an expert on the subject but I do know that the others are either outright scams or were heard out. Wilhelm Reich never really had his day. In fact, the U.S. Government seized his books and papers and burned them back in 1957. Clearly a First Amendment issue, which is a favorite topic around here.

Granted, this is a poor argument for orgone energy, but it is my understanding that very few have recreated Reich's experiments before declaring him a crank or a failure. Peer review wasn't possible because nobody would take the time to hear him out. The same thing has happened in gravity research in the past (the exact reference eludes me) and we have adequate reason be concerned that the scientific community may be too ready to cry 'crank'.

For more information (including an interesting discussion about arguments), read this excerpt from Wilhelm Reich in Hell by Robert Anton Wilson

And if that doesn't work, someone will probably use it to find a date. "According to our cameras, the new intern is very likely to be a slut, Mr. President."

Ken Boucher

Through what mass-media coverage of the protests I managed to catch, I couldn't help but be reminded of the rioting at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, one of those things that has always made me wish I'd been born one generation earlier :) In particular, I heard that there were scores of people at the protest chanting "The Whole World Is Watching" while the police moved in with tear gas and clubs.

The '68 DNC was significant not only because of the rioting, and the Chicago 7 (or 8, depending on who you ask) trial, but because it was the first time that mass media (television in particular) had allowed images like that from our own soil to be broadcast right into the living rooms of everyday american homes.

The yippies to some extent (certainly more than the policemen beating unarmed protesters on camera) realized the opportunities afforded by this new kind of media coverage, and may have sought in some ways to provoke the police into more vicious attacks (the weathermen, for example, would chant "pigs eat shit. pigs eat shit. pigs eat shit." at approaching police lines), because they knew it was all being broadcast on the NBC Nightly News. "The Whole World Is Watching" takes on new significance in this light.

While I don't think the WTO protests are anywhere near the calibre of the '68 DNC, the situation is similar in some ways, as Katz pointed out. The event seems to have centered around a new type of media, a whole new way of communicating drastically altering the way we organize ourselves . Net coverage of the event has been particularly extensive (what are we doing right here?).

To quote Robert Anton Wilson (roughly) "Marx was wrong. Society is not determined by its means of production, it's defined by its means of communication."

Anthony

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Now, considering that the telecom industry has been in bed with the NSA since the days of morse code, it goes without saying that there exists a worldwide monitoring network the likes of which will make grown men cry.

However, it may also be useful to note that if the NSA is anywhere near as powerful as we have been led (or have led ourselves) to believe, we probably wouldn't know about it. Organizations (like the NSA) that operate on the perception of power have it in their best interest to spread disinformation about themselves, especially if they wish to remain obscure and secret.

This concept is explored at great length in Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus trilogy.

The essence of the idea is this: people tend to dismiss the rantings of crackpots and paranoid conspiracy theorists.

So, let's say (just for example of course) you have a worldwide listening network, and you want to keep it low key. You're pretty smart, so you know you can't keep something that big a secret forever. What do you do?

You go out and spread rumors about it being all-powerful, and that it can monitor everything. If you're good, you even plant a story or two in some underground zines about how it's running stolen technology from the planet Vulcan, and was really created by occultists (or Masons) who traveled through time from the 13th century.

The rumor takes on a life of its own. You only have to plant the seeds, and the imaginations of the sheep^H^H^H^H^Hpeople will do the rest for you. In no time at all, anyone who believes it is obviously some kind of lunatic, and your mission is accomplished.

Just something to consider.

Anthony


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