Christmas in Mu

The idea of Mu first appeared in the works of the antiquarian Augustus Le Plongeon (1825–1908), a 19th century traveler and writer who conducted his own investigations of the Maya ruins in Yucatán. He announced that he had translated the ancient Mayan writings, which supposedly showed that the Maya of Yucatán were older than the later civilizations of Atlantis and Egypt, and additionally told the story of an even older continent of Mu, which had foundered in a similar fashion to Atlantis, with the survivors founding the Maya civilization.

Le Plongeon actually got the name "Mu" from a mistranslation of what was then called the Troano Codex in 1864, using the de Landa alphabet. Mu was taken to mean Atlantis, which is what Le Plongeon thought; he also thought that Queen Moo was in Central America 30,000 years ago and founded civilizations in Atlantis and Egypt.



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Christmas Eve Afternoon Sky...

Taken with my LGVX8600 phone.
From RMStringer

Merry Christmas

 

 

RMStringer

********************

"To open the eternal worlds, to

open the immortal eyes Of man

Inwards, into the worlds of thought, into Eternity". ITN

 

 

 

We want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. 

J

The RMStringers

 

 

The "longer" you look at this picture, the "more" you see.

Look at the lines the artist used to draw this picture of Christ. There are scenes from Christ's life. Have you ever seen anything like this?

Share this with a friend or two. In the Circle of God's love, God's waiting to use your full potential.

May God Always Bless You.

Some Moon Night Shots...

I took these tonight. It is very windy and partly cloudy. The moon is full. I hope that you like them.










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[Slashdot] Stories for 2007-12-23

======================================================================
For those of you that do not read SLASHDOT, here are the stories that
They are reporting. They are a very good source of "Techie" information.
======================================================================

Slashdot Daily Newsletter

In this issue:
* Retail Store Scalping Wii Consoles on eBay
* Norway Mandates Government Use of ODF and PDF
* Could An ExtraTerrestrial Find Earth with a Telescope?
* Specs For the New KITT
* NASA's Invention of the Year Award Goes to Synthetic Muscles
* Many Analog TV Watchers Aren't Aware of Upcoming Switchover
* Notebook Makers Moving to 4 GB Memory As Standard
* New Jersey Judge Shields Anonymous Blogger
* IRS Data Security Still a Concern
* Mystery Company Recruiting Talent With a Puzzle
* FBI Prepares Vast Database of Biometrics
* U.Maine Law Clinic Is First To Fight RIAA
* Analog Cellular Shutdown To Hit Built-In Devices
* GNU Octave 3.0 Released After 11 Years

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Retail Store Scalping Wii Consoles on eBay |
| from the with-a-name-like-slackers-... dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Friday December 21, @20:55 (Wii (Games)) |
|

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/22/0159248

|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

C0rinthian writes "ArsTechnica reports that the games retailer Slackers
has been keeping their stock of the Nintendo Wii off their store shelves,
and is instead [0]selling the system on eBay for $400-500. (A $150-$250
markup)" This follows their look at the other side of the coin: [1]why
some retailers insist on Wii Bundles.

Discuss this story at:

http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/12/22/0159248

Links:
0.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071220-exclusive-retail-chain-scalpin
g-wii-allotment-on-ebay.html
1.
http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2007/12/19/forced-wii-bundles-an-
independent-game-stores-perspective

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Norway Mandates Government Use of ODF and PDF |
| from the playing-nice-with-everyone dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Friday December 21, @22:30 (Government) |
|

http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/22/026216

|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

siDDis writes "Earlier this year Slashdot mentioned that Norway was
[0]moving towards mandatory use of ODF and PDF. Now it's official: the
Norwegian government has [1]mandated the use of open document formats
from January 1st, 2009. There are three formats that have been mandated
for all documentation between authorities, users and partners. HTML for
all public information on the Web, PDF for all documents where layout
needs to be preserved and ODF for all documents that the recipient is
supposed to be able to edit. Documents may also be published in other
formats, but they must always be available in either ODF or PDF."

Discuss this story at:

http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/12/22/026216

Links:
0. http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/14/1616248&tid=185

1.
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/12/20/norway-mandates-gover
nment-odf

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Could An ExtraTerrestrial Find Earth with a Telescope? |
| from the helloooo-up-there dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Saturday December 22, @00:38 (Space) |
|

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/22/0454227

|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

[0]Active Seti writes "If aliens were hunting life outside their own
planet, could they peer through the vastness of space and lock onto
[1]Earth as a likely home for life? Researchers say with a roughly
Hubble-sized array observers could measure Earth's 24-hour rotation
period, possibly leading to observations of oceans and the chance of
life. 'They would only be able to see Earth as a single pixel, rather
than resolving it to take a picture,' said Astronomer Eric Ford. 'But
that could be enough for them to identify our planet as one that likely
contains clouds and oceans of liquid water.' The research will be useful
to astronomers designing the next generation of space telescopes on our
planet, because it provides an outline of the capabilities required for
studying the surfaces of Earth-like worlds."

Discuss this story at:

http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/12/22/0454227

Links:
0. http://activeseti.com/

1. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-12/uof-tca122107.php

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Specs For the New KITT |
| from the a-shadowy-flight-into-the-dangerous-world dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Saturday December 22, @02:22 (Television) |
|

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/22/0647213

|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

An anonymous reader writes "The upcoming made-for-TV Knight Rider movie
features an [0]all-new version of the Knight Industries Two Thousand
(KITT). Popular Mechanics has the 'specs' for the original
Hasslehoff-mobile, as well as for the digital-effects enhanced version in
[1]the 2008 production. 'Designer Harald Belker, who has created the
Batmobile for Batman and Robin and a next-gen space shuttle for
Armageddon, came onboard to give the new KITT. a unique look. "The goal
was to make it look more aggressive without being hokey or garish,"
Belker says.'"

Discuss this story at:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/12/22/0647213

Links:
0. http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/new_cars/4237588.html

1. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/29/0621228&tid=129

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NASA's Invention of the Year Award Goes to Synthetic Muscles |
| from the we're-so-close-to-cyborgs dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Saturday December 22, @04:28 (NASA) |
|

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/22/0655243

|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

[0]coondoggie writes "It sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie:
technology that can [1]act like muscle and nerves to expand and contract.
The invention has been named the NASA Government Invention of the Year
for 2007. 'The Macro-Fiber Composite, or MFC, is made up of ceramic
fibers and can be attached to a structure to bend it, reduce vibrations
and monitor force. By applying voltage to the MFC, the ceramic fibers
change shape to expand or contract and turn the resulting force into a
bending or twisting action on the material. MFC technology could also
find its way into inflatable space structures can be used for antennas,
communication satellites, space station trusses, and solar sail support
structures, NASA said.'"

Discuss this story at:

http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/12/22/0655243

Links:
0. http://networkworld/

1. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/23284

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Many Analog TV Watchers Aren't Aware of Upcoming Switchover |
| from the it's-coming dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Saturday December 22, @06:19 (Television) |
|

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/22/0657258

|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

A recent poll of TV watchers shows that many Americans aren't aware
[0]the end times are coming for analog broadcast signals. "The survey
found that the group most affected by the analog cutoff -- those with no
cable or satellite service -- are most in the dark about what will happen
to their sets: Only one-third of them had heard that their TVs are set to
stop receiving programs. Of course, there are solutions. Congress is
subsidizing the purchase of digital television receivers. And the cable
TV industry is hoping that this will spur the last holdouts to buy pay
TV."

Discuss this story at:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/12/22/0657258

Links:
0.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/20/rabbit-ear-users-dont-know-the-end-
of-analog-tv-is-near/index.html?ex=1356066000&en=95ec892a3d55c747&ei=5088&pa
rtner=rssnyt&emc=rss

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Notebook Makers Moving to 4 GB Memory As Standard |
| from the living-in-the-wacky-future dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Saturday December 22, @08:24 (Portables) |
|

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/22/076211

|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

akintayo writes "Digitimes reports that first-tier notebook manufacturers
are [0]increasing the standard installed memory from the current 1 GB to
4GB. They claim the move is an attempt to shore up the costs of DRAM
chips, which are currently depressed because of a glut in market. The
glut is supposedly due to [1]increased manufacturing capacity and the
slow adoption of Microsoft's Vista operating system. The proposed move is
especially interesting, given that [2]32-bit Vista and XP cannot access 4
GB of memory. They have a practical 3.1 b

Myspace.com Blogs - “Everybody lie down on the floor and keep calm” - DJ Food MySpace Blog

There was a BIG NOISE about this site when it came out by the KLF community!   What a great spoof int he likes of BILL and Jimmy. Very KLFish!  Thanks to DjFood for this...

 

Myspace.com Blogs - "Everybody lie down on the floor and keep calm" - DJ Food MySpace Blog

5:05 AM - "Everybody lie down on the floor and keep calm" www.thesoundof.mu by Strictly Kev and Mr Trick About three years ago a website appeared at the address www.thesoundof.mu with images of various famous sites - Stonehenge, Easter Island, the Pyramids - featuring the KLF's famous 'T speaker' from their 'White Room' era. Embedded in the sparse and cryptic pages was the 'soundtrack' to a supposedly forthcoming DVD documentary called 'The Sound of Mu(sic)'. The site disappeared at some point in 2007 and hasn't been seen or heard of since - until now. I have to hold my hands up, along with my good friend Mr Trick and say, "It's a fair cop Guv, it was us what dunnit". Sorry to disappoint the few who actually thought it was the KLF (and there were some - and also a couple who were disappointed when they found out it wasn't them) although any hardcore KLF fan knows that they would never do a thing like this. Or would they... That's an endless debate for another day, the reason I'm revealing this little scam (sorry Bill and Jimmy) is that it was cut off in its prime and now is the time to finish it. But going back to the beginning: when it first appeared KLF fans took a little while to find it, but eventually it climbed up the Google pages. Keen-eyed page refreshers found that the intro image contained random messages that changed each time you clicked on the site. Announcements ranged from "Warning! This is still not the White Room" to "Lord, Now is the Time". The most cryptic was "KLF info sheet 5 is not thought to exist - JAMS CD8". This was a reference to the info and press releases that the KLF issued in their lifespan, No.5 mysteriously never made it and the last CD they released was JAMS CD7 whilst ours was CD8. I was really getting into the minutae of the band's history here, picking over the smallest crumb to act as a signpost for true fans to make a connection whilst introducing subtle wordplay and imagery that could well have been part of the JAMMs/KLF mythos. .. When you entered the site proper you were redirected to a separate window with the legend "The hills are alive..." and an image of the T speaker sharing the hillside at Easter Island. If you laid the cursor over the three dots after 'alive' you got a link to another page: this time, jet fighters flying over a giant 'Justified' pyramid and "...with the sound...". Further dot-browsing turned up another link to a final page - the T speaker amid the kind of hilly meadow Julie Andrews would have frolicked in and the line, "...of Mu(sic)" along with a tracklist. This was embedded with all sorts of teasers that would tickle any red-blooded KLF fancier; references to 'Mu Mu County' and 'The Black Room' - unfinished but existent KLF material - as well as 'K Cera Cera', their anti-war anthem. Punning abounded as well with 'What Time Is Lord?' (geddit?) and '3am, Echo Beach' - Jimmy had recently remixed the Martha & The Muffins classic. Below all this was the line, "Scenes from the forthcoming documentary 'The Sound of Mu(sic)'". In the middle of the lower speaker was a pulsing red woofer cone which, when clicked, took the user to a 30-minute mp3 download of the 'soundtrack', an ambient collage similar to KLF classics like 'Chill Out' and 'Waiting (for) The Rites of Mu'. Among fans all over the world, this provided much forum debate, everywhere from mash up message boards to dedicated KLF sites, even one from Israel. Some swore it was by a group of German fans, others claimed it was just 'Chill Out' remixed with a few new bits. Some tried to trace the source of the site and deduced that it was from the States (it wasn't) and one got excited when he found it was registered under the name 'Penkiln Burn' (Bill Drummond's publishing company). Comments ranged from "Whoever is responsible... it sounds like they got hold of the KLF's source material...", "I hope this gets released!", to "It really could mean that they are back?", "Even titles of the pages on the site put together state: available soon, jams CD8". The Hedphonesex blog said, "... even if this is the doing of some fakers / fans it's a worthwhile piece of work." Mark Emsley from ireallylovemusic wrote, "someone doing a great rip off or there are stirrings in the KLF/JAMMS world". DJ Hickory Dickory Doc (before I even knew him, it's such a small world - we truely are musical soul brothers) said, "Whoever made this mix did it in a good marketing way so that it looked like something the KLF would have released but did not". He also spotted Mr Trick's Beach Boys inclusion as not being from any original KLF material too. This 'original' composition by Trick had kicked off the whole idea in the first place. He had made an ambient version of the Beach Boys' 'Wouldn't It Be Nice' in the style of the 'Chill Out' album. This was complete with sheep effects and all manner of other found sounds and he mailed it over to me for use in a mix I was doing in a similar manner (originally for Solid Steel). We slipped this 'unreleased' gem into the rest of the KLF material and only a few picked up on it as not being part of their musical output in the past. Also I couldn't resist using 'The Sound of Music's' famous 'the hills are alive, with the sound of mu...', cutting it off before it finished and alluding to the JAMMs' publishing credit on early records. This just fitted with the Easter Island imagery, like a jigsaw puzzle and we had more and more fun piecing the 'story' together. One enterprising / cheeky fucker even downloaded it all and sold a mocked-up copy on eBay for £40, claiming he'd got it at a record fair! Unfortunately he emblazoned KOPYRIGHT LIBERATION FRONT across the top of the cover in the wrong typeface, ruining all my hard work and making it look just like a bootleg. All the images I'd compiled for the site had been intended to look as though they could have been real, either in a KLF project past or in some fanboy fantasy of the future. We made the site as fans of what had been and what could have been, because the KLF had something so good going and they cut it off at its peak. It was exactly the right time for them to have done so because they ensured there would never have been any chance for them to go downhill, get stale or disappear into irrelevance. They were there and then they were gone - if only more groups had their courage... The downside of this however is that many fans didn't have any, for want of a better word, 'closure' on the band, leaving so many questions, "what ifs?" and unfinished projects behind to be pored over, unravelled and expanded upon. It was these fragments that we used as material to both authenticate and entice people in to the site. The mix contained a section of the unfinished 'Black Room' album, numerous sounds buried deep within lesser-known remixes and even a cameo from the late John Peel exclaiming "Is it the KLF or isn't it?". I had, in fact, made up proper CD artwork whilst making the website images which was later visible on the second 'burning' stage of the project. A few months later new images replaced the old, this time with the theme of burning prevalent as with the K Foundation's million pound arson stunt. Images of burning 'Sound of Mu(sic)' CDs and LPs, echoing the back cover of 'Who Killed The JAMMs?' featured with the lines "Burnt Offerings..." and "1 Million Pounds Can't Be Wrong" (an Elvis reference). The main site images were replaced with two Stonehenge images and a final burning T speaker completing the phrase "Lost in Mu(sic)", "Caught in a trap...", "...no turning back". The strapline again declared 'Scenes from the forthcoming documentary...' with 'Soundtrack available now at www.thesoundof.mu'. Oh the anticipation!. I once arrived at the Ninja Tune office to find an employee with the Stonehenge image I'd created as the desktop image on his Mac and had to keep a straight face when I asked about it and he replied that he was looking forward to the documentary. Sadly that never came to pass, the reasons being twofold: the site was registered in Mauritius so that we could get the '.mu' ending to the URL and the country had recently changed the way it handled its domain name. This meant that everything with a .mu domain went offline and the process of getting it back online was tenuous at best and initial enquiries were met with silence. Finally an email promised a return to normal service at some point but that was vague and time was running out. The second reason was that there was to be a third and final part to the 'project': firstly there would be a new change of images at the site, a solitary opening page with the line '2007 - What the Fuck Is Going On?'. Now, any KLF/JAMMs fan will see the significance of this as it's 20 years since this immortal phrase was first issued - obviously as '1987 - What the...' - and the site going down only added to the situation as those paying attention would have been thinking of this fact. Lastly, we were going to print up large flyposters of fake release ads for the "documentary", have a friend post them up around certain media hotspots in the capital and photograph them for the site. The thinking behind this was that if people saw images of actual posters they would start to believe that there really was a film coming out. Then maybe the media would jump on it and we'd have a good laugh as they chased a non-existent film. I made around 20 variations on different designs for potential posters, which are being shown here for the first time. These had mildly provocative straplines like, 'Burn The Beat' and 'Burn The Bastards' (after their old single), plus 'Adding Fuel To The Fire' and 'No Turning Back...'. They were all meant to look like scenes from a film, snapshots for promo purposes or frames from a trailer. These are the ones I was most happy with and three were earmarked to be printed up for the final phase. Then life got in the way, both our partners gave us children and the poster thing was put on the back burner. Then the site disappeared. It's a shame it didn't all happen as we'd hoped but we hadn't actually worked out what we were going to do for the encore, after the poster images had gone up and (hopefully) the web was buzzing about this impending film. I guess we would probably have made it up as we went along, much the same as Bill and Jimmy did, but it was fun to play at being the KLF for a while. Postscript: Whilst creating all these images I made many others which weren't as successful and didn't make the grade of authenticity I was looking for. Again, these have never been seen until now... Post Postscript: I initially made the mix for the radio with several spoken word sections from interviews with Bill Drummond talking about his past with the KLF. I took these out when we decided to do the site as they would give the game away too easily as the KLF would never have done such a thing. Here is a link to an mp3 of the ' vocal version' of the mix, unheard until now. Also here is a downloadable pdf mini book of all this material and more with the full story - best viewed in full screen mode in Acrobat Happy Xmas :) Strictly Kev and Mr Trick

The Big Lab Experiment...

This was emailed to me several years ago. IT is very interesting... It also makes you THINK...

 

Was our universe created by design?
By Jim Holt

Was our universe created? That is, was it brought into being by an entity with a mind? This is a question I began pondering after my recent inquiry into the end of the universe. (For some reason, cosmic mysteries are best contemplated in pairs.) It is the fundamental issue that separates religious believers, ranging from Deists to Gnostics to Southern Baptists, from nonbelievers. To many atheists, the very idea that our world could have been created by a conscious being seems downright nutty. How could anyone, even a god, "make" a universe?

To get a better understanding of this matter, I thought it might be wise to consult the man who has done more than anyone else to explain how our universe got going. His name is Andrei Linde, and he is a physicist at Stanford University. (He's also an artist and an acrobat, but never mind.) In the early 1980s, the then-thirtysomething Linde came up with a novel theory of the Big Bang that answered three vexing
questions: What banged? Why did it bang? And what was going on before it banged? Linde's theory, called "chaotic inflation," explained the shape of space and how galaxies were formed. It also predicted the exact pattern of background radiation from the Big Bang that was observed by the COBE satellite in the 1990s. Linde has been amply honored for his achievement, most recently by being awarded the 2004 Cosmology Prize of the Peter Gruber Foundation (along with Alan Guth, another pioneer of the theory of cosmic inflation).

Among the many curious implications of Linde's theory, one stands out for our present purposes: It doesn't take all that much to create a universe. Resources on a cosmic scale are not required. It might even be possible for someone in a not terribly advanced civilization to cook up a new universe in a laboratory. Which leads to an arresting thought: Could that be how our universe came into being?

"When I invented chaotic inflation theory, I found that the only thing you needed to get a universe like ours started is a hundred-thousandth of a gram of matter," Linde told me in his Russian-accented English when I reached him by phone at Stanford. "That's enough to create a small chunk of vacuum that blows up into the billions and billions of galaxies we see around us. It looks like cheating, but that's how the inflation theory worksall the matter in the universe gets created from the negative energy of the gravitational field. So, what's to stop us from creating a universe in a lab? We would be like gods!"

Linde, it should be said, is famous for his mock-gloomy manner, and these words were laced with irony. But he insisted that this genesis-in-a-lab scenario was feasible, at least in principle. "What my theoretical argument showsand Alan Guth and others who have looked at this matter have come to the same conclusionis that we can't rule out the possibility that our own universe was created in a lab by someone in another universe who just felt like doing it."

It struck me that there was a hitch in this scheme. If you started off a Big Bang in a lab, wouldn't the baby universe you created expand into your own universe, killing people and crushing buildings and so forth?
Linde assured me that there was no such danger. "The new universe would expand into itself," he said. "Its space would be so curved that it would look as tiny as an elementary particle. In fact, it might end up disappearing altogether from the world of its creator."

But why bother making a universe if it's going to run away from you? Wouldn't you want to have some power over how your creation unfolded, some way of making sure the beings that evolved in it turned out well?
Linde's picture was as unsatisfying as Voltaire's idea of a creator who established our universe but then took no further interest in it or its creatures.

"You've got a point," Linde said. "At first I imagined that the creator might be able to send information into the new universeto teach its creatures how to behave, to help them discover what the laws of nature are, and so forth. Then I started thinking. The inflation theory says that a baby universe blows up very quickly, like a balloon, in the tiniest fraction of a second. Suppose the creator tried to write something on it surface, like 'Please remember I created you.' The inflationary expansion would make this message exponentially huge. The creatures in the new universe, living in a little corner of one letter, would never be able to read the whole thing."

But then Linde thought of another channel of communication between creator and creationthe only one possible, as far as he could tell. The creator, by manipulating the cosmic seed in the right way, has the power to ordain certain physical parameters of the universe he ushers into being. So says the theory. He can determine, for example, what the numerical ratio of the electron's mass to the proton's will be. Such ratios, called constants of nature, look like arbitrary numbers to us: There is no obvious reason they should take one value rather than another. (Why, for instance, is the strength of gravity in our universe determined by a number with the digits 6673?) But the creator, by fixing certain values for these dozens of constants, could write a subtle message into the very structure of the universe. And, as Linde hastened to point out, such a message would be legible only to physicists.

"You might take this all as a joke," he said, "but perhaps it is not entirely absurd. It may be the explanation for why the world we live in is so weird.
On the evidence, our universe was created not by a divine being, but by a physicist hacker."

Linde's theory gives scientific muscle to the notion of a universe created by an intelligent being. It might be congenial to Gnostics, who believe that the material world was fashioned not by a benevolent supreme being but by an evil demiurge. More orthodox believers, on the other hand, will seek refuge in the question, "But who created the physicist hacker?"
Let's hope it's not hackers all the way up.

 

Jim Holt writes the "Egghead" column for Slate. He also writes for The New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine.

--
RMSTringer
+++++++++++++++