We were brainstorming ideas for this title, but I decided that instead of making something catchy up, I should just f***ing swear. After all, what separates Brainsturbator from all those other weird science sites is 1) my cheerful willingness to be offensive and immature, 2) my total contempt for copyright laws and common sense, and 3) my voracious consumption of psychedelic drugs.  There’s no sense in pretending we’re some sort of respectable operation when I give out awards.  Hell, odds are a few of these sites would rather not be associated with me.

This is a collection of what I consider to be some of the best websites on the internets.  I spend a truly unhealthy amount of time on the internets, so I appreciate finding someone who’s put in work and built a quality resource.  This is in no particular order and not all of it will be interesting to you: I tend to have a much wider Curiosity Zone than most people I talk to.  A number of these websites are truly amazing and completely obscure, because the people who run them don’t want to deal with Search Engine Optimization, Web 2.0, keywords, or any of the other obligatory bullshit of “blog” culture.  And that’s a beautiful thing. Here’s a toast to Fucking Art—let’s begin:

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The Codex Serpahinianus has a reputation as a mysterious, impenetrable book.  Having gotten ahold of an excellent scanned copy, I have to say that reputation was unfounded.  The Codex is an early study of the fractal dimensions of apparently “flat” surfaces, such as paper, and the shapes generated by ink along that landscape.  As you will see in the first two scans, all of the intricate species, landscape and cultures within the pages of the Codex are the result of iterative changes in a chaotic environment—just like you and me.

The extraordinary “Codex Seraphinianus” is a book of 400 pages in the form of an encyclopedia—graphical letters, signs, animals and plants, anatomy and chemistry, creating a book to view and to admire. Its writing, completely invented, could never be deciphered even with the most technologically advanced machine, but it can be intuited, loaded with emotional meaning that washes over the eyes.

I give away the scan without malice—I don’t think I’m exactly hurting the market for existing copies of this book.  The Codex is ultimately an artifact, not a message—it’s a reminder that flesh-surface of actual paper has a power that electrons on a screen do not.  Everything in the Codex was written and drawn by hand—evoking illuminated manuscripts and Da Vinci’s legacy of dope notebooks.  Some of the best tea I ever had in my life was picked by monkeys in the Fujian province of China.  It’s called Monkey-Picked Tea, and it’s $37 for 3 ounces.

At least the Codex is free.  Much love to Luigi Serafini, the primate who hand-crafted this:

Sorry, due to traffic this file has been removed for a bit, digg + 150meg pdf is crippling my server.


CODEX SERAPHINIANVS (150 MB SCAN)

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After over a decade of being immersed in the conspiracy theory culture—and I’m still there wether I like it or not—my core beef remains the same.  It’s not something unique to conspiracy research.  It’s a universal problem with all true believers: exaggeration for dramatic effect.  Subtlety is interesting.  Details are brainfood.  Overstatements are good for getting people alarmed and worked up, but what happens when people start realizing they were decieved?

Is Facebook a CIA front, devoted to identifying, tracking and crushing dissent in the college generation?  Actually, no.  Facebook is a website, devoted to “social networking.” However, there’s also a lot more going on behind the curtain.  As always, it’s the grey areas that interest me the most.  So with this article, I want to ask refined and specific questions to get accurate and detailed answers.  Because it’s not an exaggeration to say that there are very real ties between Facebook and CIA—and there’s a whole covert landscape of semi-legal databases, companies selling private information, and the new horizon of computer-driven “Data Mining”. 

In short, this is a great angle to sneak a peek one of the most hidden, and profitable, sectors of the US economy.  What we’ll see is a lot less simple than a good conspiracy theory, but I also think it’s a hell of a lot more interesting than the “Facebook = CIA” mantra that passes for “investigation” on the internets.

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In the past year, I’ve been becoming a much more optimistic human being.  This is due to two things: first, seeing several of my lunatic projects take on a life of their own (and even make me money), and second, meeting up with a small network of truly amazing people.  GOMAR2 is one of them—I find this fellah to be an inspiration.  I figured it’s only right to introduce him to the Brainsturbator audience, since this is a perfect example of the “win/win/win situation” structure that’s been fascinating me for the past 12 months.

I win, because I get to present you the reader with dope content.  GOMAR2 wins, because he gets his message and his art out through a new outlet.  And you win, because this is a great interview.  An incredible interview.  See, I only wrote the questions, so I’m allowed to say that. In related news, I’ve been snoozing on the depth and extent of my international network of power weirdos, change agents, and grey magicians.  There will be quite a number of interviews in the coming months, so I’d appreciate feedback or criticism if you have any. 

With that said, let’s commence the conversatin’...

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Every one in a while, it’s important to remind ourselves that we live in a Universe we don’t know shit about.  Sure, we’ve figured out a vanishingly small percentage of what’s going on, and we’ve got all kinds of cultural systems to keep ourselves from thinking too much about How Much We Don’t Know—but if you really sit down outside and think about it, you have no idea what’s going on around you at any given second.  Odds are, this will not change within your lifetime.

And it’s not like I’m trying to make you specifically feel like a moron—it’s just because you’re a human being.  We’re all morons, trapped inside mental cages we can’t even see, most days.  So rather than focus on the hilariously grim nightmare apocalypse meltdown that’s going on all over the Earth right now, I’d like to take this Thursday to give you a booster shot of awe, wonder, and optimism.  It’s been a stressful few weeks for the American people—a number of celebrities have been going to rehab and prison, and there might be some other stuff going on, too. So let’s take a collective breather and look closely at some truly amazing stories that have passed under the radar and over our heads.

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I’d like to start by thanking Jeff Wells of Rigorous Intuition for first letting me know about this movie.  I downloaded it at least a few months ago and it sat on my desktop unwatched until last night, when I was clearing space and deleting old files.  I figured I should at least watch it before I removed it, and boy howdy am I ever glad I did.  This humble little educational film peeled my eyelids back in a big way.  Today it would be considered subversive entertainment, and yet it was being shown in classrooms around the country back in 1946.  It is a truly remarkable little movie, clocking in at just under 10 minutes and packing as much whallop as any of the “radical” documentaries making the rounds online these days.

It is an artifact from an America long since gone, a nation of informed democracy, economic security, educated voters—and most of all, a nation of meaningful patriotism.  By that I mean the polar opposite of what we hear today—“my country, right or wrong”—this was 1946, where people were proud to be Americans and loved their country because it was right. 

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Today I’m going to type out one of the most illuminating passages from one of Jacques Vallee’s best books, Revelations.  It comes at the conclusion of his case study on UMMO, a UFO cult the existed in Europe and Latin America.  (If you’re not familiar with UMMO, start here and I’ll get you up to speed.) It is the story of how one man, by the name of Kirk Allen, fabricated an entire cosmology in fantastic detail of an alien world.  His inventions had such intricate detail and internal consistency that he nearly drove his therapist insane. 

I will be referring back to this repeatedly over the next month, because it’s an important point in this information age: you need to be more cynical. I don’t mean bitter and constipated, I mean too informed to fall for bullshit.  I mean able to instinctively recognize when someone is lying to you.  The Overload Maneuver is a classic cult technique.  Who are you to judge the Urantia Book until you’ve read all 2097 small-type pages?  It could be the answer to everything and you won’t know until you’ve read it, right?

There are many similar cases, of course.  Consider the Codex Serpahinianus, an entire illustrated encyclopedia about another world, written in a completely unique and still undeciphered language.  Consider the work of J.R.R. Tolkien, who created Middle Earth in such detail that today many people suggest he was actually describing the secret history of the planet Earth, based on some occult sources he uncovered at Oxford.  And consider the case of Kirk Allen—I’ll turn the microphone over to Jacques Vallee for the rest of this article:

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This will be an unconventional We Salute You.  If you’re new to Brainsturbator, we do an irregular series of profiles on folks I consider to be Important Humans.  In the past, that’s included such admirable primates as Aubrey DeGray, Jacques Vallee, Yoshiro Nakamatsu, even UFC fighter Jeff Monson.  These are all people who are, in their own way, making a positive contribution to the human species.

G. Clotaire Rapaille is not.  At all. Rapaille is a marketing consultant, one of the highest-paid, highest-profile experts on the hidden psychological forces that drive consumers.  He is a very wealthy and successful man, and he has no qualms about the serious social damage that his work has done.  So why write about him—why “salute” him, especially?

I am writing this because Rapaille is a con man.  Rapaille is, near as I can tell, one of the most accomplished, audacious and ambitious con men alive today.  He has woven a tapestry of pre-existing ideas into something he claims is radically new—and he’s convinced the many of the most powerful people in the world that he’s right.  Considering consensus reality is against me here, you might be thinking I’ve set the bar too high—if the Fortune 500 says Rapaille is right, who am I to say he’s wrong? Just a hick with a sharp eye, folks.  I’m not asking you to agree with me, but I do think you’ll enjoy chewing this over.  Let’s take a closer look behind this curtain.

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This is probably long overdue.  Although Brainsturbator has attracted a lot of flattering attention from the publishing industry (as well as Scientologists) for flagrant violation of copyright law, I’m still a big fan of real damn books, the kind you can carry around with you and read in the backyard.  PDF files are great, but my laptop would give me testicular cancer if I tried using it like a book. 

The classic excuse for pirating mp3s is really true, at least in my case: when I download a book I really like, I will go out and buy it.  This was true for Kevin Kelly‘s masterpiece Out of Control, and just this past week, that was true for Ben Mack‘s outstanding marketing book, Think Two Products Ahead.  If the book is important enough to be re-read and referred back to regularly—and damn few of them are—then it’s worth investing money into getting a hard copy.

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