New music: FUCK BUTTONS "Surf Solar" (edit)
Stream: [audio:http://www.arthurmag.com/magpie/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/FuckButtons-SurfSolar.mp3%5D
Download: “Surf Solar” (edit) – Fuck Buttons (mp3)
This is an excerpt from “Surf Solar,” the final song on the Buttons’ newie…
…produced by Andrew Weatherall, who old beardheads will remember as the newvisionary who made Primal Scream sound like future/now geniuses during their Screamadelica period. Dudes are touring with Growing dudes across North America in a minute. Doobie duo dudes unite! ¡Muy bueno!
Fuck Buttons website: http://www.fuckbuttons.co.uk
Subscribe to Arthur’s iTunes Podcast and receive music automatically: click here
Starting Monday, Oct. 26: Arthur serializes ZAZEN, a new novel by Vanessa Veselka

'How To Draw' by Aiyana Udesen
Aiyana Udesen is an artist from San Francisco who lives with artist boyfriend Matt Furie, and two pet rats. Aiyana spends her time figuring out how to draw things and shares her process in her how-to-draw zines. She’s also in an art gang called Future Colors of America with Furie, and Albert Reyes. You can buy one of her latest books by visiting www.aiyanaville.com and dropping her an email.
Thru Oct. 25, Basel: WITCHES' CRADLES by the Center for Tactical Magic
From The Center for Tactical Magic:
The CTM presents a new interrogation of power dynamics. Existing at a technological crossroads where torture, recreation, magic, and self-liberation merge together, Witches’ Cradles (2009) are an interactive public installation based on a contemporary re-envisioning of a medieval torture device.
“During the witchcraft persecutions in Europe, Inquisitors are said to have sometimes put an accused witch in a bag, which was strung up over the limb of a tree and set swinging. When witches’ learnt about this punishment they experimented with it themselves and found that the sensory deprivation or confusion of senses induced hallucinatory experiences. A similar swinging motion has long been used by shamans and dervishes and is sometimes known as ‘dervish-dangling’.”
– Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology
Devised initially for interrogation and torture, the witches’ cradle was eventually reclaimed by its potential victims for flights of fancy and inward journeys to altered states of consciousness. Since then, the past 100 years alone have shown us an array of antecedents that cast both shadows and light on the witches’ cradle, ranging from backyard tire swings to mob lynchings; from New Age sensory deprivation tanks to the haunting images from Guantanamo Bay. Even Houdini’s famed illusion, Metamorphosis (in which he freed himself from a locked and tied canvas sack), promised “self-liberation” and “change in 3 seconds.”
The Center for Tactical Magic’s re-envisioning of the witches’ cradle plays on these historical notes while suggesting a present-day desire to conjure positive transformation. Each cradle consists of a large 5-pointed star designed to simultaneously evoke its magical origins, imperial state power, and a cosmic source of light amidst darkness. After sitting in the center pentagon, the points of the star close overhead as the cradle is hoisted off the ground, allowing the participant to swing gently in the darkened center of the collapsed star. Like a black hole, a holding cell, or a metaphysical amusement ride, the Witches’ Cradles distort time and space. It is at this event horizon that the Witches’ Cradles create a place where one can begin to realize an altered state and contemplate the next course of action.
The Witches’ Cradles can be experienced at the Shift Festival of electronic arts and new media in Basel, Switzerland running from Oct 22 – 25, along with our collection of contemporary Wands. This year’s theme for Shift? “Magic. Tech-Evocations and Assumptions of Paranormal Realities”… Enough said.
For more info:
http://www.shiftfestival.ch/en/shift-2009/home-news/
Friday, Oct 23 8pm, L.A., FREE: Dr. Stephan Hoeller on Jung's "Red Book" at the Gnostic Society in Atwater Village



From the Gnostic Society website:
October 23, 8pm: Special Lecture on Jung’s Red Book
Reflecting upon the first glimpses into the freshly published Jung’s Red Book, Dr. Stephan Hoeller (pictured above) will preview the forthcoming series in November on this subject entitled “The Holy Grail of the Sacred Psyche”.Lectures are free and open to the public (free-will donations are appreciated). Refreshments are offered following the lecture. Further information is available by calling 323-467-2685.
The Gnostic Society, 3363 Glendale Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90039
Solid Sept. 16, 2009 New York Times Sunday Magazine feature on Jung’s Red Book: click here
Sun Oct 25, Chicago: SEEDY SUNDAY with Nance Klehm, others
This just in from Nance:
seedy sunday is THIS SUNDAY!
it’s autumn and seedy business is all around us!
you’ve been growing and now it’s time to swap seeds!
sooooo…
__________________________________
sunday OCT 25th, 3-8pm
SEED ‘SWAP N STORE’ potluck!
—————————————-
please bring your home grown, viable seeds that you have gathered, stories about growing, and
a beverage or dish to share!
THE SEED ARCHIVE
2446 south sawyer avenue
chicago 773.762.0277
***for more info about seed saving***
http://www.salvationjane.net/seedarchive.php
Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint – LOUIS RIEL

OCTOBER 23 — LOUIS RIEL
Manitoban leader of the Mètis Rebellion.
OCTOBER 23, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
San Juan Capistrano: SWALLOWS DEPART. NATIONAL MOLE DAY.
CANNING DAY. FESTIVAL OF FORGOTTEN GODS. FEAST OF GOOD AND PLENTY.
ALSO ON OCTOBER 23 IN HISTORY…
1734 — French writer, early communist theorist Restif de la Bretonne born.
1844 — Mètis Rebellion leader Louis Riel born, Manitoba, Canada.
1850 — First national Women’s Rights convention, Worcester, Massachusetts.
1926 — Leon Trotsky expelled from Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
1927 — Surrealist Beat poet Philip Lamantia born, San Francisco, California.
1956 — Revolution erupts in Hungary, Russian tanks called in.
1958 — Russian Boris Pasternak wins Nobel Lit Prize for Doctor Zhivago.
Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective
B2B
from : http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/b2b/

Brain-To-Brain Technologies
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091006102637.htm
BCI Allows Person-to-Person Communication Through Power Of Thought
“New research from the University of Southampton has demonstrated that it is possible for communication from person to person through the power of thought — with the help of electrodes, a computer and Internet connection. While attached to an EEG amplifier, the first person would generate and transmit a series of binary digits, imagining moving their left arm for zero and their right arm for one. The second person was also attached to an EEG amplifier and their PC would pick up the stream of binary digits and flash an LED lamp at two different frequencies, one for zero and the other one for one. The pattern of the flashing LEDs is too subtle to be picked by the second person, but it is picked up by electrodes measuring the visual cortex of the recipient. The encoded information is then extracted from the brain activity of the second user and the PC can decipher whether a zero or a one was transmitted. This shows true brain-to-brain activity.”
Techlepathy
http://yuri.typepad.com/yuri_blog/2008/02/lift-conference.html
http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Kevin:Warwick.html
“Probably the most famous piece of research undertaken by Professor Warwick is the set of experiments known as Project Cyborg, in which he had a chip implanted into his arm. The first stage of this research, which began on August 24, 1998, involved a simple transmitter being implanted beneath Professor Warwick’s skin, and used to control doors, lights, heaters, and other computer-controlled devices based on his proximity. The main purpose of this experiment was to test the limits of what the body would accept, and how easy it would be to receive a meaningful signal from the chip.
The second stage involved a far more complex chip which was implanted on March 14, 2002, and which interfaced directly into Professor Warwick’s nervous system. The electrode array inserted contained around 100 electrodes, of which 25 could be accessed at any one time, whereas the median nerve which it monitored carries many times that number of signals. A highly publicised extension to the experiment, in which a simpler array was implanted into Professor Warwick’s wife – with the aim of creating some form of telepathy or empathy. Empathy is awareness of the thoughts, feelings, or states of mind of others. When we see another human or animal experiencing something positive or negative, we instinctively identify with the other. One must be careful not to confuse empathy with sympath – was also moderately successful, although the implant seems to have been less successful at stimulating signals than at measuring them.”
Telepathy Chips
http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/ai/brain-computer-interfacing-prosthetic-limbs-telepathy-chips
“Consider the “telepathy chip” — a neural implant that allows the wearer to project their thoughts or feelings to others, and receive thoughts or feelings from others. There seems no in-principle reason why this can’t be done, but it raises a huge number of questions philosophically, technically, psychologically and socially. It’s not clear what percentage of a person’s thoughts and feelings would actually be comprehensible to another person — in many cases, you might send your thoughts to someone else only to find them interpreted as 90% gobbledygook mixed up with concepts and images that are recognizable to the receiver. It’s also not too hard to envision some of the social and economic pressures that might arise surrounding telepathy chips. Would you become suspicious if your husband or wife didn’t want to do a telepathy-chip mind-meld after coming home late Friday night? Teams of individuals linked via telepathy chips might achieve far greater efficiency at some sorts of work than any group of detached individuals with similar skill could. Computer programming comes to mind, where the hardest part of the job is often understanding what other people were thinking when they wrote the code that you have to deal with. Social subgroups rejecting telepathy chips could become isolated, backwards communities similar to the Amish today (who, it must be noted, don’t mind their backwardness and isolation at all). Ultimately, telepathy chips and related BCI devices could lead to the emergence of new forms of intelligence, “mindplexes” composed of independent human minds, yet also possessing a coherent self and consciousness at the higher level of the telepathically-interlinked human group. Humans who reject telepathic interplay with AIs could be at a significant disadvantage both socially and economically. Nearly any job requiring insight and creativity would benefit from a stream of “push technology” input from a savvy AI. Potentially all this could lead to the emergence of a global brain spanning human and artificial intelligence.”
Previously On Spectre – Telekinesis Comes To Market
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/telekinesis-comes-to-market/
How corporations and the internet are killing living culture—first it was music, then it was the press, now it's books
From the Oct. 17 NYTimes:
October 17, 2009
Price War Over Books Worries Industry
By MOTOKO RICH
A tit-for-tat price war between Wal-Mart and Amazon accelerated late on Friday afternoon when Wal-Mart shaved another cent off its already rock-bottom prices for hardcover editions of some of the coming holiday season’s biggest potential best sellers, offering them online for $8.99 apiece.
The price cutting began on Thursday when Wal-Mart announced that it would take pre-orders for 10 yet-to-be-published hardcovers for $10 apiece on its Web site, Walmart.com. Later that day Amazon quietly began cutting the prices of those same titles to the very same $10, prompting Wal-Mart to lower its price to $9, a markdown of 59 to 74 percent off the list price of the books. Amazon had matched the $9 price by Friday morning, and Wal-Mart had lowered its price again, to $8.99, by late afternoon.
…
Independent booksellers have long struggled to compete with discounts offered by Barnes & Noble, Amazon and Wal-Mart. William Petrocelli, an owner of Book Passage, an independent company that has stores in San Francisco and suburban Corte Madera, Calif., said that for now he was relying on the loyalty of customers who valued staff recommendations and author events as much as prices. But, he said, if the low prices siphoned off too many customers and put independent stores out of business, it would ultimately affect what would get published.
“What this does is accentuate the trend towards best sellers dominating the market,” Mr. Petrocelli said. Without independents, decisions about what books to put on store shelves would reside in the hands of a few corporate executives rather than hundreds of idiosyncratic booksellers, he said.
“You have a choke point where millions of writers are trying to reach millions of readers,” Mr. Petrocelli said, “but if it all has to go through a narrow funnel where there are only four or five buyers deciding what’s going to get published, the business is in trouble.”
…
Indeed, [author James] Patterson, who said that while he was glad to be included in the top 10 most popular preordered books at Walmart.com, he could not think of any other industry accepting such dramatic discounts.
“Imagine if somebody was selling DVDs of this week’s new movies for $5,” Mr. Patterson said. “You wouldn’t be able to make movies.” He added, “I can guarantee you that the movie studios would not take this kind of thing sitting down.”


