Seattleite Goodspaceguy Nelson is a politician with a very forward-looking agenda: he wants humanity to colonize orbital space. Besides being his passion, orbital colonization was the major platform plank in his unsuccessful 2006 bid for US Senate.

Now that Goodspaceguy is running for King County Council, he has apparently had to put aside that big dream for the time being (there's only so much a Councilman can do in the arena of space colonization, after all,) and is instead focusing on removing restrictions on building height so the people of King County can live in "beautiful, high density communities filled with sky homes" -- slyly encouraging citizens to take baby steps into orbital space.

Intrigued by his bold vision of an orbital future, I wondered what he thought of that other ostensibly futuristic vision that has gripped the region since 1910: the monorail. While monorail fever has become somewhat dormant as of late, there's always the threat that it may flare up again (figuratively and literally) and as a Councilman he may have to address the monorail issue.

I emailed him and the other two contenders for the District No. 8 race to see what are their official positions on monorails. John Potter (R) and Dow Constantine (whom Nelson is running against in the Democratic primary) never bothered to respond, not even with a form letter.

However, Goodspaceguy not only responded, he responded with a fragment-of-fiction, titled "Life in the Colony: Space Sonja and Monorails". Set in the Boeing Blue District of the orbiting space colony at the dawn of orbital colonization, it comprises a Socratic dialog between himself, as a newly elected colony councilor, and Sonja, a "state approved, professional tease" who does performances imitating the spirit of Cher:

To prove that she had been reading, Sonja asked, "When our Boeing orbiting space colony becomes really, really large, do you think that our descendants ... of both we, the current space colonists, and of the new colonists still to be sent up by Boeing and Microsoft and the other space companies of King County ... I mean, do you think they will build space monorails or will they continue to float and glide themselves and their equipment through the zero gravity of space, as we do now?"

Goodspaceguy's position is that monorails are not cost-effective: "To be profitable, monorails require a huge number of people who use them regularly and around the clock ... The government transit systems turn out to be real money losers. The tax payers end up paying for the loss." Instead, as I mentioned above, he proposes high density communities and "24 hour, never-stop, go-go cities" that would get rid of rush hours. As to monorails in the orbital colonies (which I asked him about) he downplays them (and presumably other forms of transit) and suggests that colonists should get exercise by walking in "gravity corridors" to compensate for all their time floating weightlessly.

At the end he includes a poem which sums up his position on monorails nicely:

Monorails, Like Sonja, Can Be Fun!

by Goodspaceguy

Bodaciously beautiful call girls
Are expensively fun like monorails,
But Sonja finds that many would-be riders
Are without sufficient money pails!

The would-be-riders ask, "Oh, who will
Pay for our fun and frenzied riding times?"
Look to the sleeping tax payers. Their pockets
Are filled with dollars and dimes."

Some taxpayers shout, "Please, please stop.
Our dollars and dimes will not be enough!
Let us avoid frenzied transit monorails,
Paying for transit trips will be too tough."

Let us build more homes up in our sky,
And continue to walk under our Sun.
We want sky homes near our work, but we agree
That monorails, like Sonja, would be fun!

Bodaciously beautiful call girls
Are expensively fun like monorails,
But Sonja finds that many would-be riders
Are without sufficient money pails!

(While he may get flack from some for the subject matter, the correspondence of monorails to prostitutes is not undocumented.)

Given his sensible position on monorails (and the rude non-response of his opponents,) we here at ZPi are proud to endorse Goodspaceguy Nelson for King County Council to the people of District 8. I look forward to the day when the mile-high and monorail-free condos of Cascadia are serenaded from orbit with Cher's "Believe."

UPDATE (2006-08-26): Sad to report that Goodspaceguy Nelson lost the Democratic primary to water-taxi proponent Dow Constantine, 8.89% to 90.84%. Just more proof of the inordinate sway that the powerful Water Taxi Lobby holds over the primaries. Remember King Countyites, you can still write-in Goodspaceguy in the general election.

Our server suffered a disk failure, which knocked us offline since Wednesday. Some things may be missing or not working properly while I reupload the site from back-up and test everything.

UPDATE: I've finished uploading everything. If you see anything amiss, please email me.

Apple has just introduced their next iteration of the iMac line featuring a styling change sure to grab the attention of paranoids: the body and keyboard are encased in aluminum -- an iMac with it's own AFDB!

This isn't some trivial design quirk; they go out of their way to emphasize the new aluminum case in their PR campaign, and even include an Al13 Periodic Table square on their design page. (Of course they don't mention the psychotronic properties of aluminum -- no mainstream business would. They merely claim that it makes the iMac "friendlier to the environment" since aluminum is a recycled material.)

So, should aspiring paranoids rush out and get this new iMac? In a word: No.

While having an aluminum computer to match one's aluminum beanie might seem tastefully fashionable to the sort of people who want their computer case to match the UI of their music downloading program, there are, from an anti-psychotronic engineering perspective, serious flaws (or rather devious features) with this design that any true paranoid would notice.

If one were to run active anti-psychotronic software (AAPS) -- for instance, my own MindGuard -- on this Aluminum Enclosed iMac (AEiM), the software would be rendered functionless. Because there's a shielding layer of psychotronic-energy-deflecting aluminum isolating the circuitry running AAPS from the outside world, the software won't be able to detect/analyze mind-control signals or emit jamming/scrambling counter-signals.

Worse still, a poorly programmed AAPS may experience a feedback loop while detecting and responding to its own emitted counter-signals deflected back at itself, which can cause a build-up of psychotronic harmonic resonance in the circuitry leading to a violent discharge. Just try explaining to an AppleCare representative how your new iMac exploded while you were trying to evade the Forces of Mind Control -- you'll end up abducted, brain-formatted, and reprogrammed as an "Apple Genius" drone at one of their indoctrination cubes.

(This isn't the first aluminum-encased computer that Apple has offered. However, unlike the new iMac's continuous-surface aluminum, earlier aluminum-encased tower models were perforated with holes permeable to psychotronic signals -- most likely done for the benefit of Apple's own mind-control programs. I feel that it is no coincidence that just recently I received word that MindGuard was successfully compiled and run on a Mac. Clearly, Apple is locking down their systems to keep out unauthorized AAPS usage.)

Users unaware that their AAPS is being blocked might forego their beanies, not only leaving them open to general mind-control danger, but also to a new, unique danger. Which brings us to the shocking TRUTH about the new iMacs: They are in fact psychotronic deflection mirrors designed to aim signals from mind-control satellites directly at the heads of Mac users!

An Apple authorized mind-control satellite (A) targets its psychotron at the glare reflected off of the glass superstrate of the new iMac (i), allowing it to bounce its signals off of the aluminum substrate right into the frontal lobes (L) of a Mac user. Meanwhile, competing mind-control agents (B) have their signals deflected away (?), thus keeping the Mac user within the singular control of Cupertino.

Although I'm sure these revelations are disillusioning to orthonoid Mac users, it really is standard MO for Apple, and in particular Steve Jobs, the man who invented the Reality Distortion Field (a psychotron platform favored by deranged artists, megalomaniacal hipsters, and the smuggest, most turtle-necked members of the New World Order), experimented with trance-inducing psyoptic cases like the "flower power" iMac, and is occasionally controlling the mind of US President Bush (and many others) through the iPod.

Elisa Correr is a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) -- or rather, she's a propagandistic cartoon version of what the European Union would like people to think MEPs are like.

Correr's adventures are detailed in a comic titled Operation Red Dragon, published online by the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE). The comic is just one part of a £3.8 billion brainwashing campaign by the EU to inculcate themselves into the hearts and minds of Europeans.

By using her diplomatic street-smarts, barely robed sexuality, and knowledge of parliamentary procedures, the globe-trotting Rapporteur for the Parliamentary Committee on International Trade navigates the murky channels of international intrigue to uncover the schemes of Shao, the corrupt Governer General of the autonomous province of Sin Kiang in the People's Republic of Dong Fang (which is not China, wink wink), and deliver her findings to Parliament in the form of the Correr Report, much to the chagrin of the shadowy forces aligned against her.

While on a diplomatic mission to Dong Fang, Correr discovers
Tony Liang hiding in her hotel closet. The plot thickens!

"Stalwart liberal" Correr is aided in her investigation by Tony Liang, journalist and amateur voyeur, who has taken photos -- that will soon land him in one of Shao's secret prisons -- of Shao's men receiving crates marked with the logo of the powerful and generically named European Arms Consortium, who have been peddling influence in Parliament to secure a WTO agreement to lift the arms embargo against Dong Fang (whose government is making token concessions to Western counterfeiting and piracy concerns,) thereby allowing the Consortium and Shao free rein to engage in illicit arms dealing.

Elisa Correr's faith in EU embargoing power is tested.

After undergoing the indignities of an illegal police search and a media smear campaign, receiving thinly veiled death threats, and barely surviving a knife-attack on a train and strangulation by a disguised ninja, Correr finally convinces the Parliament of her report's veracity. Still nursing her knife wound, she gives an impassioned speech advocating Truth, Justice, and the European Union way during a plenary session of Parliament. Pointedly ignoring an MEP likening her story to a "plot of a trashy novel" (this is known as "credulity inoculation" in memetic engineering circles), she finally unleashes, to the applause of the assembled MEPs, a deft parliamentary procedure:

I request that the vote be deferred and that my report be sent to the Parliamentary Committee until further details of the Council's proposal are known.

What follows is a Montage of Wrongs Righted: the head of the Consortium is arrested, Shao's forces are rounded up, and Liang is freed. Having thus saved the day, Elisa Correr is posed the question: Does she have great courage to hold Dong Fang and 27 member states in check? No, not courage; just a few principles -- the principles of the EU which are defended by those selfless Liberal Democratic heroes of the European Parliament!

But are these EU principles what they seem? As every informed paranoid knows, the European Union -- which claims to be headquartered in Brussels -- is actually an elaborate ruse by the Belgian Conspiracy to get Europeans -- and, as Dong Fang learned, eventually everyone else -- to cede their independence to Belgian dominion. The adventures of Elisa Correr certainly aid this pro-Belgian agenda by making the life of an MEP seem as exciting and glamorous as a Hercule Poirot mystery and Tin Tin story combined. The name of the comic is even designed to evoke Belgian superiority; "Operation Red Dragon" was the code-name of a supposed daring rescue by a Belgian parachute battalion of hostages being held by Congolese secessionists in 1964, obviously making an analogy between those secessionists and anyone who would secede from the EU.

This, of course, isn't the first propaganda mascot that the EU wing of the Conspiracy has tried to foist on Europeans; in 2004 I reported on Captain Euro, head of the Twelve Stars Euro Team that, from their secret base under the Atomium in Brussels, works to squash the plans of various goateed villains advocating independence and decentralization.

(Via Bulldada Newsblog.)

It has been brought to my attention that the "Brussels Beast" -- the supercomputer network through which the Belgian Citizen Pods are linked, providing "Belgians" the shared cybernetic illusion of "Belgium" -- has started censoring my page exposing the TRUTH about Belgium (that it doesn't exist).

An operative working deep undercover in the bowels of Euro-Disneyland has sent me the following screenshot showing what some "Belgians" are seeing when they follow links to my page from fellow "Belgians":

Non-"Belgians" should not be affected, as long as they avoid being kidnapped and hooked up to a Citizen Pod. However, if you or someone you know is stuck behind the Brussels Beast firewall inside the Belgian Simulation and are unable to access my page, be patient. I am working with hackers from the European Grendel community on subversive technical means to circumvent this censorship, allowing all victims of the Conspiracy to read my page unrestricted.

More proof that BELGIUM DOESN'T EXIST:

Yves Leterme sings (click for video.)

Top politician forgets Belgian national anthem

Belgium was reeling Monday after the country's likely new prime minister was asked on Belgium's National Day to sing the national anthem and inadvertently launched into the French anthem instead.

Asked Saturday by a reporter from a state television channel, RTBF, to sing the Belgian national anthem, "La Brabançonne," on the day commemorating the accession of King Leopold I of Belgium to the throne in 1831, Yves Leterme, a Flemish politician who is struggling to form a coalition government, smiled at the camera and blurted out, "Allons enfants de la patrie" - the first words of "La Marseillaise."

Pressed by the reporter as to whether he really thought those were the words, Leterme, the head of the Flemish Christian Democrat party, replied: "Oh, I don't know." Shortly afterward, he was filmed making a telephone call on his cellphone during a religious service, and, in a final gaffe, he proclaimed in an interview at the independence festivities that his countrymen were, in fact, celebrating "the proclamation of the Constitution."

Apparently the Belgification process done on Leterme's brain (shortly after he was kidnapped from an IHOP in his home state of Michigan and whisked away to a Citizen Pod under Euro-Disneyland -- this is what happens when you order the waffles) was botched, leading to this unexpected exposure of the lack of coherence to the Belgium ruse during a live propaganda broadcast. The Belgian Conspiracy quickly tried to cover up this flub by hiding the TRUTH inside the lie (bold mine):

Some Belgian commentators said Leterme's ignorance was a healthy sign of a nation free of nationalism. "I can understand why some people think it is ridiculous," said Bernard Bulcke, the European correspondent for De Standaard, the leading Flemish newspaper. "But one must remember that Belgium was an artificial construction, we have been invaded throughout our history by other powers and created by them. Maybe it is positive that nationalism doesn't exist in Belgium. So we can't sing the national anthem. Who cares?"

Leterme was unavailable for comment.

Unavailable because They have him back in the psychotron chamber for reformatting.

(Via those woo-woos at Fark.)

"They'll see and they'll say, 'Why, the robotic fly wouldn't even hurt a human...'"

Much like with last year's "Bionic Hornets", Harvard University's newly revealed robotic fly is not the true state-of-the-art in the world of tiny artificial entities, but it will help the gradual conditioning of the public to the eventually swarms of microscopic black helicopters, now lying in wait for the dawning Nano­bio­techno­logical Regime.

Naturally, the robotic fly is being funded by DARPA (who, you may recall, was behind the anti-AFDB propaganda study, as well as a mind-reading device and the iPod). DARPA claims robofly technology will be used for stealth surveillance in the battlefield and "urban environments" (whose urban environments? yours, perhaps?), but paranoids know it's ultimately just a soothing memetic ruse; by the time the population notices the horrific TRUTH of black helicopter dominion, they will have already been inculcated with an orthonoiac sense of acceptance and subordination.

As the robotic fly's developer, Robert Wood, notes threateningly: "You probably wouldn't notice a fly in the room, but you certainly would notice a hawk." He is, of course, referring to that future midnight dreary, when the ominous shadows of raven-sized juvenile black helicopters, rotor-blades folded back like wings, will perch in the open above the doorways of all our homes, not only to watch but to be seen. By the time the population notices, it'll already be too late.

UPDATE 2007-10-10: Macroscopic Black Helicopters are being used to watch -- and be seen by -- protesters.

Besides their "Family Jewels", the CIA also recently released lots of other interesting documents, which can be searched through at their FOIA Electronic Reading Room. While some are questioning their heavy use of redaction, if you read the context of the redacted text carefully many secrets can be gleaned.

For instance, consider the document titled "Agency Hosts Movie Premiere and Sneak Preview". It recounts a screening at CIA Headquarters in Langley, VA of the made-for-cable movie "In the Company of Spies", which was filmed on location there. Although they obviously want to keep it on the hush-hush, the keen-eyed will notice that the document redactedly intimates at a highly classified CIA gift shop:

Redactions also hint at a secret CIA house band, whose name is only known to the upper echelon of the Intelligence community:

Given the fevered redacting at the end suggested by the crescendo of multiple, overlapping white boxes, one can only assume that George Tenet's drum solo must have really kicked [EXPLETIVE DELETED].

(Note that the line right before that contains a redaction joke by Tim Matheson. Perhaps the Publications Review Board redactor has a sense of humor.)

Yucca Mountain Johnny is a blue-collar worker at the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository project in Nevada. At his "Yucca Mountain Youth Zone", Johnny just wants to teach the youths about nuclear physics, hydrology, and engineering, while dispelling myths about the repository (such as the nuclear waste could explode or that the facility is really a military base for the NWO's fungoid allies).

But now the mean, ol' Congress wants to silence Yucca Mountain Johnny:

A measure by Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., to cut off funding for the Energy Department's Yucca Mountain Youth Zone Web site that's home to the smiling, hard-hatted cartoon character was approved by lawmakers by a voice vote and without debate.

...

"Regardless of how you feel about Yucca Mountain, we should all agree that the Department of Energy's use of a Joe Camel look-alike to influence children is an inappropriate use of taxpayer money," [Berkley] wrote [in a letter to colleagues].

Could this move portend trouble for the hundreds of other Propaganda Mascots serving the US Government? Thanks to a 1997 mandate by President Clinton, nearly every US government agency's website has a kids' section, many with "Joe Camel look-alikes" influencing children in various ways. Are they all in jeopardy of becoming pawns in political fights?

Will Congress investigate the Crypto Kids for their role in domestic spying? Will hip-hopping health-advocate Power Panther be forced to resign when it's revealed he took part in illegal covert counterintelligence programs aimed at black nationalists during the '70s? Will secretive monkey energy scientist Dr. E be subpoenaed before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and forced to explain exactly what he is doing with taxpayer money on his mysterious island? And just how will parents explain to their little children why Pat, their passport pal, can no longer be their pal since he's serving thirty months in a federal prison for leaking state secrets? Is this the beginning of the end of innocence for government propaganda aimed at children?

There's still hope for Yucca Mountain Johnny. Berkley's amendment has to make it past the Senate and President Bush, who, as a big Bob the Builder fan, is expected to veto. But if the veto is overridden and Yucca Mountain Johnny looses his cushy government job, he -- and other future ousted GPMs -- will be forced to find propaganda work in the private sector. Perhaps there's a car loan company in the market for a construction worker mascot who knows a lot about long-term thermal-hydrological-mechanical transport of radionuclides in fractured volcanic tuffs with varying degrees of welding.

(Via Bulldada Newsblog.)

UPDATE 2015-01-03: Cracked recently linked here from a listicle about disturbing mascots. Since I originally posted this, Yucca Mountain Johnny's enemies were successful and his Youth Zone -- along with the entire Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management subsection on the DOE.gov site -- was taken down. I've replaced the link to the Zone above with a mirror on archive.com. Also, the Bulldada Newsblog is now bulldada-free and all about cast iron cooking.

For those disturbed by the mercurial nature of the Internet, rest assured that ZPi will never change. It will always be the late '90s here. Trust no one and keep mmmbopping.

While (unsuccessfully) looking for an original, full source for Lord Kelvin's dire predictions of an end to breathable air, I found an interesting article from 1901-10-09 in New Castle News, quoted at length from a "London letter". It paints a disturbing picture of the vapory, frog-ruled world that mankind must survive in after peak oxygen is reached:

DESTROYING OXYGEN.

Will the human race and all animal life soon be left without air for breathing? will the world come to an end in the general asphyxiation of every living thing?

Lord Kelvin, the greatest authority today in mathematical physics, asserts that the oxygen supply of the world will be exhausted within the next five centuries.

Oxygen is the real force of the atmosphere so far as man and nearly all air-breathing animals are concerned.

Lord Kelvin has sounded an alarm which has created more discussion in scientific circles than any other pronouncement since Darwin put forth his 'Origin of Species.' No satisfactory reply has so far been offered. It is admitted that, theoretically, the oxygen in the atmosphere is diminishing. Every bucketful of coal in a furnace and every stick of wood in a cook stove burns up a portion of the world's supply of breathing air. How long will the oxygen hold out?

Is there any way in which the extravagant waste of the world's atmosphere can be checked?

Lord Kelvin's conclusions were stated in a lecture recently delivered before the British association for the promotion of science. He has made a study of the subject for many years. He is now past middle age, and ranks as the foremost living physicist.

The following is a summary of the important points of Kelvin's theory:

'The extravagant waste of oxygen by modern manufacturing processes may leave the inhabitants of the earth without air for breathing, and that within a short and calculable time. At the present rate of progress five centuries will exhaust the full supply of the world. This means the exhaustion of oxygen.

'The sum total of oxygen at our disposal is 1,020 millions of tons. Every ton of fuel used three tons of oxygen in combustion. Consequently the burning of 340,000,000 of tons of combustibles will destroy the world's air for breathing. The population of the earth is 1,500,000,000 persons. Each has to his credit 200,000 tons of combustibles. Burn this and we die, not from lack of fuel for keeping warm, but from lack of oxygen for breath. Considering the rate at which manufacturing and commerce are depleting the coal supply, less than 500 years may see the end of the human race.'

Science has rarely offered so strange and so terrible a picture of the end of the world as Lord Kelvin's theory suggests. From various scientific authorities in New York (Hallock, Woodward, Hovey, Van Ingen, Burgess and others) interesting speculation as to the gradual approach of the final catastrophe has been gathered.

With the decrease of oxygen in the air the heat of summer would become intense. This would not be the pitiless, parching heat of the desert. Moisture would hang heavy in the air. Steam would rise from the ground and the sun would be veiled in clouds of vapor.

Plants would spring up and flower in a day and trees grow almost in a night. With time for adjustment, the very luxuriance of vegetation would clear the air again and furnish breath to famished life.

But with the swift rush of Kelvin's calculations the mischief will have been accomplished in three centuries. Alarm will spread too late. As oxygen becomes precious the entire human race will strive madly for some means of increasing it. Every man will conserve his strength, because muscular effort requires the expenditures of much oxygen. Factories will not smoke any longer.

Huge electric plants will distill the seas into air. The banks of the ocean will be crowded with the humanity that comes to it to turn it by alchemy from water to breath. Every year the waters will recede under the drain of electrolyting process.

Man will become more puny with each generation. Death will confront the race and pride of power and trade and achievements in art and learning will give way to a desperate struggle for life.

Certain animals, on the other hand, will thrive apace. Huge and brilliant fishes will swim the sluggish streams. Serpents will grow to monstrous sizes and great frogs will croak in the swamps. All the lower nature may reach its flower again before the death of man, as it did before his birth.

The sturdiest of the human species will survive longest. Scarcely on the last day will the last men be able to distinguish the faces of each other in the thick vapor. They will move about in the dense atmosphere with slower and slower steps. A torpor will creep over them and they will die.

Professor William Hallock, department of physics and secretary of the faculty, Columbia university, asked about Lord Kelvin's theory, said:

'Lord Kelvin's contention rests upon a sound basis. It is true that modern manufactories are consuming fuel in larger amounts than the processes of nature now produce it.

'This combustion locks up practically that portion of the world's oxygen which was freed originally in the slow formation of this fuel through unknown ages.

'If we continue to use up our known supply of oxygen at the present rate, without in some way getting the stock reinforced, then our descendants must die of asphyxiation. But nature may in some hidden way discover a means of increasing the supply of oxygen. There may be sources of supply yet unknown to us. Man may invent an artificial process of freeing oxygen from its combinations. Or, lastly, man may become a cold-blooded animal and capable of existing upon an infinitesimal supply of oxygen.

'Vegetation upon the earth would probably have to be swept away before our supply of breathing air gives out. In that case it is a problem whether man would not starve to death before asphyxiation came upon him. Personally I do not anticipate any such catastrophe. It is one of those things interesting to speculate upon, because it is remote enough not to alarm us a great deal.

'One can always hope that something will happen before worst comes to worst.

'As animal life is now constituted it cannot live without oxygen. Vegetation, on the other hand, lives upon carbonic acid gas, which is useless to animals. This forms the main distinction between animal and vegetable life. Each supports a laboratory which works for the subsistence of the other.

'Fish and other cold-blooded animals live on an infinitesimal amount of oxygen. They use it only in muscular effort. Their body heat is the same as that of the element in which they live. Man, on the other hand, is not content with enough oxygen for this. He lives in a mean animal temperature of 98 degrees. he uses up a wasteful amount of oxygen in keeping his body temperature at 98 degrees. It is quite within the range of possibility that evolution may change this.'

UPDATE 2007-06-22: I have found a reference to Kelvin's original paper ("on the Fuel and Air Supply of the Earth", read at a meeting in 1897) that started all this, but it apparently was never published in full. For more details, read the "On the End of Free Oxygen" page.