I recently came across the blog of a long time muse of mine, Labi Siffre. I was once in a second-hand shop in Manchester and the cover of his 1972 album, “Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying” called out to me to buy it…

I had never heard of him, and the record was a little scratched, but I took it home and haven’t stopped listening to it since. I even hooked up the record player to the computer so I could make mp3s. Some time later, I saw him perform a sublime set of music and poetry - on race, religion, politics and people.

When I came across his blog, Into The Light, I saw a stream of poetry… This one really caught my attention:

as 123 as ABC

“life has no meaning without God” say many
but life has no meaning
full stop. period.

life is the muse, the inspiration
equalled only by existence
and these wonders inspire us
FIRE us to meaning

to not realize that is
profoundly
odd

and the customary way
to flee
responsibility

It seems more relevant today than ever.

(on YouTube)

The European Union is seeking again to ban the swastika symbol. There has been a flurry of debate about the vastly different meanings the symbol has to different cultures.

This has centred on the feelings of the German nation, European Jews and Hindus.

From YNet News (via Anarchaia):

Germany plans to use its presidency of the EU to launch an initiative which could lead to common laws across the bloc making it a crime to deny genocide and display Nazi symbols.

“The swastika has been around for 5,000 years as a symbol of peace. This is exactly the opposite of how it was used by Hitler,” said Ramesh Kallidai of the Hindu Forum of Britain.

“It is almost like saying that the Klu Klux Klan used burning crosses to terrorize black men, so therefore let us ban the cross. How does that sound to you?”

Links

• BBC article
• Reclaim the Swastika reader comments
• Rainmountain posts to Flickr
• Positive Swastikas Flickr Group

At the recent SLDevU conference in London, I understood the vision behind the online virtual world, Second Life, to a much deeper level: a platform for the 3D Internet - a richer, more compelling and more collaborative space for information and communication than our current, flat-screen Web.

Created by visionary programmers and inhabited by curious explorers, soul seekers, revellers, entrepreneurs and a frenzy of big-bucks brands, I wonder if we could turn this new Frontierland into something greater than our First Life?…

Second Life is often cited as being just another Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplay Game. But its founders have no such idea in mind. No, not a game, but a virtual universe in which all the lands, buildings, clothes and all manner of wild and wonderful objects are sculpted and scripted by the residents. People conduct business and engage in the marketplace for very real money. They congregate and communicate in ways never previously possible…

Information from our more familiar, 2D websites streams in and out of the Second Life world, interacting with its residents. Now you can watch a YouTube video together with people in different countries. You could be in the crowd at a concert of your favourite band, without ever travelling. You can work with colleagues and hold business meetings in your new virtual office.

What possibilities of open-mindedness and self-exploration could this unique experience offer? If travel expands the mind, Second Life is like moving to Mars! Certainly, the space is permeated by all the familiar messages from dollar-hungry ‘lifestyle’ brands and the heady hedonism of clubs and consumerism. We know these too well, but is there something else in there, something to touch the core of one’s being: meaningful communication, heartfelt connection, depth and learning or spiritual discovery?

We see a rare opportunity, where the citizens of this New World can be instrumental in creating the society of their dreams - and in the relative safety of a virtual space. Can we rise to the challenge and even create a catalyst for transforming the very Real World all around us?…

Links:

• Virtual Reality in Second Life & Beyond
• Second Life Resource for Educators
• Making a Living in Second Life
• Guide to Jobs in Second Life

A time for goodwill, for giving, for sharing… Or a time for consuming, for devouring, for spending…

As Christmas hype reaches its zenith, millions of last-minute shoppers stock-up on their obligatory must-gives. I wonder how much money is spent each year on unwanted gifts. Still, you’ve got to give something and it is good for the economy…

An Idea for Next Christmas
There’s no need to buy new, expensive gifts when the world is already full of perfectly good but unwanted possessions. And because so many of us have things that we no longer need, why not organise a local community bring-and-share for Christmas presents?…

People would bring good quality items to give away, and they’d take home gifts from others. Perhaps there’d be a small fee for each present, which gets donated to charity.

Would you want to take part?

Prout (PROgressive Utilisation Theory) is a visionary socio-economic system to encourage a cooperative society. A new short story competition has been announced for writers to open a window on a future, Proutistic society. From the press release:

IMAGINE A SOCIETY IN WHICH…
…food, clothing, housing, education and medical care are guaranteed to everyone.

…most farms, banks, industries and services are run as cooperatives owned by the workers.

…there are no multinational corporations.

…different voices, languages and cultures are respected.

…there is self-sufficiency in food, medicines, clothing, housing, and local transport.

…the environment is protected and restored, all agriculture is organic, waste is recycled and renewable energy is used.

…universal spirituality is valued, not religious dogmas or conflicts.

…leaders are selfless servants of the people.

STRUGGLE AND CONFLICT…
Naturally, such a society could never come about without great struggle. The richest one percent who control our world today would do anything to prevent it.

They direct the multinational corporations and manipulate the US Empire, going to any length to neutralise such a progressive society. When it does come about, there will always be selfish people who would try to destroy it for their own personal benefit.

CAN YOU DESCRIBE IN A COMPELLING WAY…
…the people, the struggles, the sacrifices, the tragedies and the triumphs that would be needed to achieve such a society?

…in which part of the world such a society would first take root and what threats, opposition, and deceit that would be employed to undermine it?

…how living in such a society would affect people?

SHORT STORY COMPETITION DESCRIBING A FUTURE SOCIETY BASED ON PROUT!
Prout stands for the Progressive Utilization Theory, an alternative socio-economic model. In the words of Noam Chomsky,
"Prout’s cooperative model, sharing the resources of the planet for the welfare of everyone, deserves our serious consideration."

To know more about Prout’s socio-economic model and its policies, see www.prout.org and www.proutworld.org.

The Prout Research Institute of Venezuela is hosting a short story competition about a future Prout society and the struggles needed to bring it about. Stories may not exceed 5,000 words and must be previously unpublished. Entrants may be located anywhere on the planet, but each person may submit only one story written in English, Spanish or Portuguese. The stories will be judged on whether the future society portrayed correctly represents Prout, as well as on good writing and originality.

JUDGES
A committee of four panelists, led by the published writer Devashish Acosta (author of "When the Time Comes" and "The Ashram"), will judge the contest. To ensure impartiality, all stories will be numbered and the authors’ names will be removed until the final decisions are made.

A Proutist who wishes to remain anonymous has generously donated funds so that we can offer the following cash prizes:

• First prize: US$500
• Second prize: US$300
• Third prize: US$200
• Five fourth prizes: US$100 each
• (Winners in economically developed countries will receive a check or bank transfer. Winners in economically undeveloped countries will be sent an international postal money order.)

The winning stories will posted on the Prout Institute of Venezuela website. In addition, the Prout Research Institute of Venezuela reserves the right to publish the stories in an anthology and in a Prout magazine.

DEADLINE
Midnight March 31, 2007 Venezuelan time (GMT minus 4 hours)
Winners will be announced May 15, 2007

All stories must be sent by email to shortstory[at]prout.org. There is no entrance fee. Stories that exceed 5,000 words, that arrive late or that do not describe the struggles to achieve or maintain a Prout society will be disqualified from the cash prizes. After June 15, 2007, all authors are free to submit their stories to other competitions or venues for publication.

Source: PRI Venezuela, via After Capitalism

‘Lotus Date’ by Anadi.

‘Breathe’ Movie

There are plenty of wrongs to right in the world. We can but deal with one at a time…

I don’t know about you, but email spam really annoys me. There’s something repulsive about deceitfully and repeatedly forcing useless products onto millions of people who really couldn’t care less about viagra logo enhancements or anything else on offer. So…

Take Action
If you’ve ever made your email address public on a website, the chances are that it’s been detected by a spam robot and added to its database.

For the benefit of such bots, I’ve written a little script to churn out scores of random addresses, with a link to a page that has more of the same. The result is the SpamPit. May they never come out again…

To Add a SpamPit to your Website…
Either download the code (simply unzip it and upload the three files into the main directory of your site) or go through each part of the code below. You are welcome to modify it and redistribute.

This PHP function will return random addresses within <a> tags:

<?php
function getEmails(){
  // Settings
  $num_letters = 10;
  $num_emails = 70;
  $tld = array('com', 'org', 'net');

  // Generate addresses
  $emails = '';
  for($i=0; $i<=$num_emails; $i++)
    {
      $email = '@';
      for($j=0; $j<=$num_letters; $j++)
        {
          $email = chr(rand(ord('a'), ord('z'))) . $email;
          $email .= chr(rand(ord('a'), ord('z')));
        }
      $email .= '.' . $tld[rand(0, count($tld)-1)];
      $emails.= "<a href='mailto:$email'>$email, ";
    }
  return substr($emails, 0, -2);
}
?>

Simply call the function within the body of your page:

<?php echo getEmails(); ?>

If you want to have an infinite number of urls that call the same page, as in my version, you’ll need to do the following (assuming your site is hosted on an Apache server):

• Save your page as spampit.php
• Create a .htaccess file in your main directory, if you don’t have one already.
• Add this to turn on the rewriting of urls:

  Options +FollowSymLinks
  RewriteEngine On

• Add this rule to capture requests to any url that starts /spampit/:

  RewriteRule ^spampit(/?.*?(\d*)/)?$ /spampit.php?depth=$2 [L]

• Add this PHP function to spampit.php, which returns the url of the next page:

  function getNextUrl(){
    if (!isset($_GET['depth']))
      { $depth = 1; }
    elseif ($_GET['depth'] != '')
      { $depth = intval($_GET['depth']) +1; }
    else
      { $depth = 1; }
  
    $pattern = '/\/spampit\/?.*?\d*\/?$/';
    $replace = "/spampit/$depth/";
    $str = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
    return preg_replace($pattern, $replace, $str, 1);
  }

• You can now add an HTML link within the page to link it to the next page. You can get the href of the link by calling the function you just added:

  <?php echo getNextUrl(); ?>

  For example:

  <a href="<?php echo getNextUrl(); ?>">More addresses</a>

• Finally, you may want to create a robots.txt file so that genuine search engine bots don’t choke on your infinite address book… Add these lines to the file:

  User-agent: *
  Disallow: /spampit/
  Allow: /spampit/$
  Disallow: /spampit/*/

  The first line addresses all (well-behaved) robots.

  The second line is a standard robots.txt rule that to prevent bots indexing any part of the /spampit/ directory.

  The third and fourth lines are extensions to the robots.txt format, followed by some robots, which will enable them to crawl only the first spampit page.

  We are assuming here that a spambot will not care about a site’s robots.txt file and will just go ahead and crawl through everything… Well, let them!

Do you like Dharmasphere? Do you listen to music? Sure you do!

Roll up and join the Dharmasphere group on Last FM. We’ll get group radio once we have a few more members…

Last FM is a website that learns your musical tastes and plays you a radio stream of similar music - from highly commercial to highly independent artists. It has introduced me to some fantastic new bands.

If you’re interested to listen to my music, one of my albums is in there:
Ishta - Live in Manchester