The Purple Pinup Guru Platform

When purple things are pulsating on your mind, I'm the one whose clock you want to clean. Aiding is Sparky, the Astral Plane Zen Pup Dog from his mountain stronghold on the Northernmost Island of the Happy Ninja Island chain, this blog will also act as a journal to my wacky antics at an entertainment company and the progress of my self published comic book, The Deposit Man which only appears when I damn well feel like it. Real Soon Now.

Monday, December 26, 2005

Sparky: Speaking of Schwarzenegger — We'll borrow from the pages of the once wonderful paper the likes of Judith Miller tried to tarnish with as a White House Stooge:

Then examine the evil that is this White House Administration by looking at past deeds of scummy Nazi Pal Prescott Bush and the new Cabal.

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Hometown Snubs Schwarzenegger Over Death Penalty

The stadium in Graz, Austria, now has a generic name (top). Its old name was taken down as a protest over the California governor's decision to allow the execution of an inmate.

By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
BERLIN, Dec. 26 - For years the quaint Austrian town of Graz trumpeted its special relationship with its outsize native son, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Born in a village nearby and schooled in Graz, Mr. Schwarzenegger was an honorary citizen and holder of the town's Ring of Honor. Most conspicuously, the local sports stadium was named after him.

But early today, under cover of darkness, his name was removed from the arena in a sort of uncontested divorce between Mr. Schwarzenegger and the town council, which had been horrified that Governor Schwarzenegger ignored pleas to spare the life of Stanley Tookie Williams, former leader of the Crips gang, who was executed by the state of California two weeks ago for murdering four people.

The 15,000-seat stadium had been named after Mr. Schwarzenegger in 1997 as an act of both self-promotion and fealty toward the poor farmer's son and international celebrity who has always identified Graz as his native place.

But when Mr. Schwarzenegger declined to commute Mr. Williams's death penalty, the reaction was swift and angry in Graz, which, like most places in Europe, sees the death penalty as a medieval atrocity.

"I submitted a petition to the City Council to remove his name from the stadium, and to take away his status as an honorary citizen," Sigrid Binder, the leader of the Green Party, said in a recent interview. "The petition was accepted by a majority on the council."

Before a formal vote was taken on the petition, however, Mr. Schwarzenegger made a kind of pre-emptive strike, writing a letter to Siegfried Nagl, the town's conservative mayor, withdrawing Graz's right to use his name in association with the stadium. There will be other death penalty decisions ahead, Mr. Schwarzenegger wrote, and so he decided to spare the responsible politicians of Graz further concern.

"It was a clever step," Ms. Binder said. "He took the initiative," she continued, and then suggested a bit of the local politics that had entered into the matter. "It was possible for him to do so," she said, "because the mayor didn't have the courage to take a clear position on this point."

Needless to say, Mr. Nagl, a member of the conservative Peoples Party, who opposed the name-removal initiative, does not agree.

He is against the death penalty, he said in an interview, and on Dec. 1, he wrote a letter to Mr. Schwarzenegger pleading for clemency for Mr. Williams. But he blames the leftist majority on the City Council - consisting of Greens, Social Democrats and two Communists - for trying to score some local political points at Mr. Schwarzenegger's and, he believes, Graz's own expense.
"One stands by a friend and a great citizen of our city and does not drag his name through the mud even when there is a difference of opinion," Mr. Nagl said in a letter he wrote to Mr. Schwarzenegger. "I would like to ask you to keep the Ring of Honor of the City of Graz."

The heated nature of the debate revealed how much a relatively small place like Graz, certainly a place with no military might or diplomatic power to speak of, wants to play a role as a sort of moral beacon, waging the struggle for what it considers the collective good.

Graz, a place of old onion steeples, museums and Art Nouveau architecture, designated itself five years ago, with a unanimous vote of the City Council, to be Europe's first official "city of human rights." While the designation has no juridical meaning, it provides a sort of goal to live up to.

"We are against the death penalty not only in word, but really against the death penalty," said Wolfgang Benedek, a professor of international law at Graz University. He said the council's reaction reflected the special circumstances surrounding Mr. Williams: a man who had written a children's book aimed at steering young people away from violence, had already spent many years in jail, and seemed, to Europeans at least, to have reformed himself.

"Many people around the world pleaded with Mr. Schwarzenegger to show mercy in this case, and when he didn't, the city had somehow to react," Mr. Benedek said.

Mr. Benedek allows that there is an element of elite versus popular opinion on this matter. A poll by the local newspaper found that over 70 percent of the public opposed removing Mr. Schwarzenegger's name from the stadium. This adds to a practical consideration very much on Mr. Nagl's mind: that Graz will no longer be able to count on using its special relationship with the governor to promote its image.

"We had the great classical culture on the one side," the mayor's spokesman, Thomas Rajakovics, said, referring to other important figures who are associated with Graz, - like the astronomer Johannes Kepler, the Novel Prize-winning physicist Erwin Schrödinger, and the conductor Karl Böhm. "And on the other, we had Arnold Schwarzenegger and the popular culture. These were the two poles for us, but we're not allowed to use his name any more."
The Schwarzenegger name has, as it were, been erased. The new name is now simply Stadion Graz-Liebenau (a district of Graz), though there were other proposals. One was to name the stadium after the Crips, the gang that Mr. Williams founded, but that idea did not get widespread support. Another was to name it Hakoah, after a Jewish sports club that was banned after Hitler annexed Austria in 1938.

But the first "city of human rights" did not seem quite ready for that either. It is not that there was vocal opposition but, as Ms. Binder put it, Austrians do not generally want a daily reminder of the terrible wartime past.

Meanwhile, city officials are holding on to Mr. Schwarzenegger's honorary citizenship ring, which arrived from Mr. Schwarzenegger during the holidays. Mr. Rajakovics said they will keep it for him in the hope that one day he will take it back.

Apaches accuse Prescott Bush of robbing Geronimo's grave

December 25, 2005

Native americans are petitioning Congress to investigate the elite Skull and Bones group and return what they believe are the remains of Apache warrior Geronimo for reburial.

The petition alledges that Geronimo's grave was robbed in 1918 by members of the society, including Prescott Bush, President George W. Bush's grandfather. The alledged graverobbers stole Geronimo's head and his prized silver bridle, which had been buried with him. These allegations are also within a book by Yale graduate, Alexandra Robbins, titled; "Secrets of the Tomb". Robbins suggests that the reason these men robbedgraves is; "Bones as a society is preoccupied with death; skulls, skeletons, and artwork depicting death are prevalent in the tomb. When Bonesmen steal things they use the euphemism that they are taking 'gifts to the goddess' whom they honor within the tomb."

Robbins also said; "I think it's ridiculous that Bonesmen's sense of entitlement is broad enough to include items that allegedly don't belong to them. The items they supposedly steal as a prank or competition may be valuable and meaningful to the actual owners. It's appalling that proper authorities have not forced their way into the tomb to retrieve the items that don't belong in there."

An economics professor at Clark College,James Craven, suggests that; "In the near future, there will finally be large groups of Natives showing up in front of 'the tomb' to protest this ugly racism and grave robbing by the Bones, and they will not be leaving until that skull and any other Native artifacts have been returned...[The theft] is a metaphor for something much bigger and even uglier. It is the ugly racism and hubris of the in-bred power elites who seek to infiltrate positions of power."

In her book, Robbins also reports that Apaches met with Skull and Bones representatives following their admission by letter that they did in fact have a skull they called "Geronimo". The Apaches were offered some bones, but refused to accept them at that time because, according to the petition; "It was obviously not the skull seen in the smuggled photograph."

Endicott Davison, an attorney for Skull and Bones, denied that Geronimo's skull is in the possession of the group.

Online Petition Sources

Cheney-Rumsfeld "Cabal" alleged in the USA

December 25, 2005

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who was Colin Powell's chief-of-staff, is attracting news headlines around the globe [1] by publicly accusing members of the Bush administration. He said in a speech at the New America Foundation: "What I saw was a cabal between the Vice President of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made."

Regarding Karen Hughes's attempts to improve the country's image abroad? "It's hard to sell [manure]," Wilkerson said. "If you're unilaterally declaring Kyoto dead, if you're declaring the Geneva Conventions not operative, if you're doing a host of things that the world doesn't agree with you on and you're doing it blatantly and in their face, without grace, then you've got to pay the consequences" said the man who was chief of staff at the State Department until early 2005.

Wilkerson also described President Bush's behavior as "cowboyism" and Condoleezza Rice as "extremely weak."

The colonel described Colin Powell as "the world's most loyal soldier," but said he felt his loyalty belongs not to the administration, but to the country.

An email allegedly from Powell told Wilkerson: "Don't characterize my loyalty."

Related document:

Sources

More later - Sparks

posted by Coat @ 5:45 PM   0 Comments

GO-GO GURU: A 16 TON ANGEL FALLS ON TOP OF ALBUQUERQUE!!

The PP Guru is out on tour again. That's right folks - everyone's favorite INTERNATIONAL BLOG POP STAR is making the rounds all over the state of New Mexico. The PP Guru embarked on this ambitious Amtrak trek leaving at approximately 7 PM last Wednesday evening on the Southwest Chief leaving from LA Union Station (which incidentally has the best damn bagel shop in all of LA), and during the 16 and a half hour trek (and boy did the PP Guru need a bath upon arrival at his final destination), the PP Guru made limited stops at: Fullerton, San Bernardino, Barstow, Ca, Flagstaff, Ar, Gallup, New Mexico (home of the fallen down drunken Indian), and until finally, Albuquerque.

The PP Guru's aunt of whom he hasn't seen in seventeen years picked him up from the Santa Fe Depot in downtown Albuquerque. We went on a little mini-tour (mini being the operative word) of the city- checked out the college area- visited a few of the PP Guru's aunt's friends, and waited around until she got a pedicure. The PP Guru found himself a nice music store to hang out in called Grandma's Music and sound and got to test drive a new Korg Trition Workstation. Afterwards, the PP Guru took a another two hour jaunt to where he would set up his temporary guest house HQ in the sleepy desolute town of....Grants, New Mexico.

The PP Guru's aunt has working for the past two months as a Associate District Attorney for the township of Chibola, New Mexico. The PP Guru's aunt main function on the job is to look up the law to see if those who are being prosecuted by the law on whether or not it's being done right. She also argues in courts during arraignments of whether the bail amounts set are just or unfair. The PP Guru took a tour of the courtroom and was mystified to discover that the judge has all this crazy computer equipment sitting on her desk. So what does the judge do, sentence you to twenty years of logging on to AOL?

It seems that everyone in this town knows everyone. On the first night of the PP Guru's arrival - the PP Guru went to a local supermarket and already he had been introduced to a couple of local town judges and sheriffs that the PP Guru's aunt knows from work.

Coming to the full realization that the PP Guru was not in for a action packed weekend- (no Craiglist's Erotic services or Cityvibe out in these wood- although he did spot a Spearmint Rhino in Albuquerque. Wait a minute, what woods?) he kept himself busy with his portable DVD player, a few Vertigo comics - (catching up on Joshua Dyshart's work on Swamp Thing - which is much suited to him as another kid who was raised in the Bayou - who else is more qualified to be in Alan Moore's footsteps), a couple of CDs and of course, his brand new appendage, the Alesis QS6.2 keyboard is out here as well. The PP Guru misses his *ahem* film star neighbor very much. She was the one who was more than happy to drop the PP Guru off at the train station and then sped off before he could wave goodbye to her blazing trail of car exhaust. The PP Guru has been wondering or not if she liked the Christmas present he left with her (black pearl diamond earrings - her birthstone) that he got from Zales Jewelers. He supposes he'll find out when he gets back. Also, the PP Guru has been getting more mail from his Russian gal pal, Irina.




Doesn't she have the most loveliest set of Russian teacakes that you ever seen?

So where the PP Guru is now is in the towns of Farmington and Aztec - spending the Christmas holiday with his cousin who is twelve years his junior. Now believe it or not, when the PP Guru was first trying to make his fluttering eye 80's looking boy toy journey to Los Angeles in this vain attempt to becoming a international blog pop star- the PP Guru had once spent a good amount of time during mid 1986 trying to adjust to barren wasteland life in the town of Aztec, New Mexico. He lived for a brief time in a trailer with his cousin and his aunt on some ancient indian burial ground which was probably cursed by some superstitious Ananzi tribe - and from there he began eloping into his Carlos Castenada phase. Strange things began to happen in the PP Guru's life which involved of all things - death and reincarnation. But the PP Guru isn't going to go all metaphysical medieval on you — just yet. We'll save that for some other time.

On the trip up to Farmington, which included a excruicating amount of the PP Guru's aunt's cats in the backseat constantly meowing for probably of all things, some bladder relief- because it was nearly a three hour drive from Grants (which is nothing to the average New Mexico motorist) and there was nothing through most of the way but barren deserts, mountain buttes (one as the PP Guru's aunt described as the one looking like a sleeping UTE warrior) , red sunsets, and everything devoid of life everywhere.

Once, we arrived at the PP Guru's cousin house, he was quickly welcomed a respite of normal civilization when he showered the PP Guru with shots of Captain Morgan, Tequila Rose, and some Jagermeilter while headbanging to Machine Head. So that was fun. But it wasn't prog.

In Part Two of The PP Guru's impulsive road trip journal: The PP Guru turns his cousin on to Porcupine Tree. The deadly secret of Mount Taylor - the tallest mountain in the state of New Mexico. The PP Guru is part Russian? Like his true pen pal love, Irina? Details to follow. And all the PP Guru got for Christmas was a Port Wine cheeseball from Hickory Farms. Also, the PP Guru is in financial turmoil right now. He has maxed a total of four credit cards since his self imposed exile from the entertainment biz. Living with you is hell according to the Go-Go Guru ~ Coat
Cynical Sparky adds Marriage-minded Montana Martin mentions:

“... I would just like to add I have been contacted by aprox. 8-10 ladies from Russia in the past 2 years I live in Montana and at one time a lady had contacted me and also a friend of mine in the same town so we compared e-mails and the only thing that was changed was our names.

... She wrote to me on Date.com. She wanted to come and visit me but needed money for airfare. After transferring the money for the tickets, she said her ticket was robbed from her and I never heard from her again, and the profiles on the date.com website vanished.

I just wish a certain knuckleheaded chum would listen to his friends - Sparky

posted by Coat @ 8:04 AM   6 Comments

Sunday, December 25, 2005

Sparky: An Ode To Science

Evolution evidence rated as top ‘breakthrough’
Science selects ‘hot topic’ to lead its annual list of research highlights

Photoillustration by Chris Bickel and Kelly Buckheit / Science
Science's cover image symbolizes the host of genetic studies and field observations that have shed light on the mechanisms that drive Darwinian evolution. A model DNA molecule is emblazoned with species representing key advances of 2005, including a stickleback fish; the influenza virus; a European blackcap; a chimpanzee; a fruit fly; and three members of Homo sapiens, including Charles Darwin.

MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 7:48 p.m. ET Dec. 22, 2005

WASHINGTON - Two days after a federal judge delivered a heavy blow to the intelligent-design movement, the journal Science Thursday proclaimed that fresh evidence of evolution in action was the top scientific breakthrough of 2005.

In the annual roundup, the journal's editors pointed to wide-ranging research built on the foundations of Charles Darwin’s landmark 1859 work ”The Origin of Species” and the idea of natural selection. Among the highlights: a study that showed a mere 4 percent difference between human and chimpanzee DNA, and studies documenting the splits in species of birds, fish and caterpillars.

“Amid this outpouring of results, 2005 stands out as a banner year for uncovering the intricacies of how evolution actually proceeds,” the editors wrote. “Ironically, also this year, some segments of American society fought to dilute the teaching of even the basic facts of evolution.”

The journal’s editor in chief, Don Kennedy, acknowledged that this was a reference to the spread of intelligent-design claims, which contend some aspects of nature are so complex that they are best explained as the work of an unnamed creator rather than the result of random natural selection, as Darwin argued.

Opponents, including many scientists, argue that intelligent design is a thinly disguised version of creationism — a belief that the world was created by God as described in the Book of Genesis. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that creationism may not be taught in public-school science classes.

“I think what arouses the ire of scientists [about intelligent design] is ... the notion that it belongs in the same universe as scientific analysis,” Kennedy told Reuters in a telephone interview.

“It’s a hypothesis that’s not testable, and one of the important recognition factors for science and scientific ideas is the notion of testability, that you can go out and do an experiment and learn from it and change your idea,” said Kennedy. “That’s just not possible with a notion that’s as much a belief in spirituality as intelligent design is.”


Yerkes National Primate Research Center
Science's editors said September's publication of the chimpanzee genome — and its comparison with the human genome — ranked as "one of the most dramatic results" in the effort to reveal the laws of evolution in action. The genetic sample was taken from a chimpanzee named Clint, shown here.

Intelligent design came under review in two states this year: On Tuesday, a federal judge in Pennsylvania banned the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in the Dover Area School District. Last month, in Kansas, the state Board of Education approved public school standards that cast doubt on evolutionary theory.

Kennedy said Science picked evolution as the year’s biggest breakthrough in part because it was a “hot topic,” but stressed that there was a wealth of research that justified the choice, ranging from field studies to molecular-scale genetic analysis.

Nine other topics were listed as runners-up in the annual "Breakthrough" roundup:

  • Planetary safaris: With spacecraft at or on the way to the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, a comet, an asteroid, Saturn, and the very edge of the solar system, planetary discovery soared in 2005. The high point may have been the landing of Europe's Huygens probe on Titan, Saturn's largest moon.
  • A rich year for plants: Several key molecular cues behind flowering and other plant mysteries and surprises came to light in 2005. For example, plant molecular biologists pinned down the identity of a signal that initiates the seasonal development of flowers.
  • The nature of neutron stars: In 2005, new instruments yielded vivid insights into the most violent behaviors of neutron stars. An intense pulse of radiation from near the center of the Milky Way may have been the result of a short gamma-ray burst — a rapid merger of two neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole.
  • Brain wiring and disease: Several studies in 2005 suggest that diseases such schizophrenia, Tourette syndrome, and dyslexia are rooted in "faulty wiring" of the brain's neural circuitry during development in the womb.
  • Where did Earth come from? Researchers looked at earthly rocks and meteorites that resemble the starting material of the solar system — and found that their atoms were significantly different. Some scientists say early Earth materials came from a different part of the solar system, while others say parts of early Earth are hidden deep within the planet.
  • Key protein's close-up: The most detailed molecular portrait to date of a voltage-gated potassium channel was unveiled in 2005. These channels, gatekeeper proteins that usher potassium ions in and out of cells, are as key to nerve and muscle functioning as transistors are to computers.
  • Changing climate of climate change? In 2005, evidence linking humans to global warming continued to accumulate, and U.S. politicians began to take notice.
  • Cell signaling steps up: Dynamic views of how cells respond to the chemical and environmental signals all around them took hold in 2005, thanks to efforts to track multiple inputs and outputs of cell signaling networks simultaneously.
  • Fusion research in France: The struggle over the location of the world's first fusion reactor has ended — the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor will be built at Cadarache in southern France and not in Japan.

The editors took note of scientific lessons learned from natural disasters such as the Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and the Pakistan earthquake — and drew attention to progress toward better risk analysis, early warning systems and disaster-resistant engineering.

Click for related stories
They also said the state of U.S. particle physics ranked as the "breakdown of the year," due in part to the federal government's cancellation of two multimillion-dollar experiments (BTeV and RSVP). The journal's roundup didn't mention the late-breaking controversy over South Korean stem cell research — a breakdown that involved research published by Science earlier in the year.

Eight fields of research were identified as "areas to watch in 2006": the avian flu, gravity-wave detection, RNAi-based treatments, ultra-high-energy cosmic rays, microbial evolution, the "superflow" of solidified helium, high-temperature superconductivity — and the potential for continued sightings of the ivory-billed woodpecker, long presumed extinct but recently rediscovered.

© 2005 MSNBC Interactive. This report includes information from Reuters and MSNBC.com.

posted by Coat @ 10:00 AM   1 Comments