each piece she's torn from the whole she gathers up to organize in a way that makes sense... A discussion point where ideas, articles, and stories that contain much of what you want and need to become aware of the existing corrupt reality we are experiencing and of ways to solve them...
Sunday, March 18, 2018
Something unusual is happening with our planet's magnetic field | CBC Radio
CBC RadioMarch 17
Listen7:19
The South Atlantic Anomaly
Something unusual is happening with our planet's magnetic field. For the past 160 years, it's been weakening at an alarming rate. Scientists are concerned that one day, our magnetic poles could flip like they did 780-thousand years ago. When that happens, we will lose a vital force field that keeps radiation from the sun and space at bay. It'll also scorch the technology our society depends on.
Now there's one spot in particular scientists are most worried about. It's known as the "South Atlantic Anomaly." It stretches from Chile to Zimbabwe where the field is at its weakest. Right now it's hazardous for any satellites travelling through the zone because they're exposed to high levels of radiation. The "South Atlantic Anomaly" is also thought to have destroyed Japan's powerful X-ray observing satellite. NASA has even reported that Space Shuttle laptops crashed when passing through the zone.
Scientists think the "South Atlantic Anomaly" could be ground zero for the flipping of the magnetic poles.
The cause of the magnetic field disturbance
Dr. John Tarduno, a geophysicist from the University of Rochester, wanted to put the present anomaly into a historic context. To do that, he got the help of some archaeologists and some funding from the National Science Foundation, to dig up some archeological data in southern Africa. "What we found working with archaeologists is kind of a unique record," says Dr. Tarduno. "The Bantu people who currently live there, they were the first people practicing agriculture. So at times of drought, you can imagine it was quite stressful on the population. And they practiced, according to the archeologists, a type of ritualistic burning. They would actually burn down their villages and then start anew."
What this means
"If we look at our best numerical simulations of a magnetic field reversal, this is the type of pattern we see right before a reversal," says Dr. Tarduno. "We don't know if the current [anomaly] will lead to a full reversal." If the anomaly continues to grow, the patch in the outer core under Africa could be the trigger to a full pole reversal.
Something unusual is happening with our planet's magnetic field. For the past 160 years, it's been weakening at an alarming rate. Scientists are concerned that one day, our magnetic poles could flip like they did 780-thousand years ago. When that happens, we will lose a vital force field that keeps radiation from the sun and space at bay. It'll also scorch the technology our society depends on.
Now there's one spot in particular scientists are most worried about. It's known as the "South Atlantic Anomaly." It stretches from Chile to Zimbabwe where the field is at its weakest. Right now it's hazardous for any satellites travelling through the zone because they're exposed to high levels of radiation. The "South Atlantic Anomaly" is also thought to have destroyed Japan's powerful X-ray observing satellite. NASA has even reported that Space Shuttle laptops crashed when passing through the zone.
Scientists think the "South Atlantic Anomaly" could be ground zero for the flipping of the magnetic poles.
The cause of the magnetic field disturbance
Dr. John Tarduno, a geophysicist from the University of Rochester, wanted to put the present anomaly into a historic context. To do that, he got the help of some archaeologists and some funding from the National Science Foundation, to dig up some archeological data in southern Africa. "What we found working with archaeologists is kind of a unique record," says Dr. Tarduno. "The Bantu people who currently live there, they were the first people practicing agriculture. So at times of drought, you can imagine it was quite stressful on the population. And they practiced, according to the archeologists, a type of ritualistic burning. They would actually burn down their villages and then start anew."
Archaeologist Tom Huffman of the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa helps John Tarduno (taking the photo) and his students orient and collect samples at a field site in southern Africa. (University of Rochester / John Tarduno)
When the Bantu people burned down their villages, many of the structures are made of clay. And when that burns and then cools, the magnetic minerals in the clay locks in the magnetic field properties at that time. These burned down structures end up being like time capsule compass needles. Using this to look back into Earth's magnetic past, Dr. Tarduno says, "We think we see several episodes that are similar to what is happening today - that is the magnetic field is operating abnormally as viewed out of Africa.""We think we see several episodes that are similar to what is happening today - that is the magnetic field is operating abnormally as viewed out of Africa."- Dr. John Tarduno , University of RochesterDr. Tarduno thinks this recurrent phenomena is caused by a disturbance in the Earth's outer core layer where the magnetic field is generated.
What this means
"If we look at our best numerical simulations of a magnetic field reversal, this is the type of pattern we see right before a reversal," says Dr. Tarduno. "We don't know if the current [anomaly] will lead to a full reversal." If the anomaly continues to grow, the patch in the outer core under Africa could be the trigger to a full pole reversal.
If we look at our best numerical simulations of a magnetic field reversal, this is the type of pattern we see right before a reversal.- Dr. John Tarduno, University of RochesterEven if it doesn't result in a full pole reversal, if the Earth's magnetic field continues to weaken, it could still have negative effects on society. Our modern technology will be less protected from incoming space radiation and solar storms. And we'd be less protected from the harmful UV radiation coming from the sun.
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Landmark Report Concludes Abortion In U.S. Is Safe
3:47
A report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine says that abortion is safe but that "abortion specific regulations in many states create barriers to safe and effective care." Bryce Duffy/Getty Images hide caption
toggle caption The report, called "The Safety and Quality of Abortion Care in the United States," examined the four major methods used for abortions — medication, aspiration, dilation and evacuation, and induction — and examined women's care from before they had the procedure through their follow-up care.
"I would say the main takeaway is that abortions that are provided in the United States are safe and effective," says Ned Calonge, the co-chair of the committee that wrote the study. He is an associate professor of family medicine and epidemiology at the University of Colorado and CEO of The Colorado Trust.
Calonge says the researchers found that about 90 percent of all abortions happen in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. And complications for all abortions are "rare," the report says.
But the report did find that state laws and regulations can interfere with safe abortions.
"Abortion-specific regulations in many states create barriers to safe and effective care," the report says.
Calonge says those rules often have no basis in medical research.
Median Distance To The Nearest Abortion-Providing Facility By County
Analysis is limited to facilities that had caseloads of 400 abortions or more per year and those affiliated with Planned Parenthood that performed at least one abortion in the period of analysis. Credit: National Academies of Sciences; Source: Bearak et al., 2017 hide caption
toggle caption There is no evidence that breast cancer follows abortion, for example, but five states require doctors to tell women there is a link, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that focuses on reproductive and sexual health.
"There are policies that mandate clinically unnecessary services like pre-abortion ultrasounds, separate inpatient counseling. There are required waiting periods," Calonge says.
According to Guttmacher, 27 states make women wait at least 24 hours for an abortion and 11 states require women to have an ultrasound before they can terminate their pregnancy.
And there are state laws that dictate who can perform abortions and where they can do them. Some require all abortions to happen in the equivalent of a hospital or surgery center. Others require a doctor to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital.
The National Academies report says waiting periods and requirements for unnecessary tests can result in long delays because women may have to travel to get care and have trouble getting appointments.
"Delays put the patient at greater risk of an adverse event," the report says.
Hal Lawrence, the CEO of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, says the report settles the debate over abortion-restricting laws and regulations.
"Those sorts of laws have been totally debunked," he says.
He says the study shows most of those laws do nothing to improve women's health.
"Abortion is safer when it's performed earlier in gestation," Lawrence says. "And so delaying and making people wait and go through hoops of unnecessary, extra procedures does not improve the safety. And actually by having them delay can actually worsen the safety."
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 voided some state abortion laws when it ruled that Texas' strict rules around abortion facilities impose an undue burden on women. But other laws remain in place even without any backing in medical research.
Still, Donna Harrison says there are good reasons for the requirements.
"The tendency to look at abortion as though it were not a serious medical procedure is irresponsible. I mean, we all know that the fetus is killed during an abortion but women can be harmed by irresponsible medical care," says Harrison, the executive director of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
She says data on complications from abortion is incomplete because doctors and patients don't always report it accurately, or at all.
"There is no good data collection — and when you have garbage in, and you have garbage out," she says.
And she says waiting periods are important so that women can give fully informed consent before they undergo what she says is a sometimes dangerous, surgical procedure.
The new report — which runs more than 200 pages — addresses most aspects of abortion care, including the use of the abortion pill mifepristone.
For example, it concludes that the strict requirements on how doctors can administer mifepristone may need review. The researchers say the rules may be erecting unnecessary barriers.
The report also says nurse practitioners and physician assistants can perform abortions just as safely as physicians.
Also, abortions have no long-term consequences on women's physical and mental health, the report says.
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Reuters just got $10 billion to build a sustainable news business. How should it spend it?
Reuters News just won the lottery. What will it do with all that money?
By Mar 16, 2018, 9:00am EDT
Blackstone chairman and CEO Stephen Schwarzman
Rabbani and Solimene Photography/Getty Images for FIT 
Welcome to Reuters, the news agency which faces, today, the most epochal decision in its history. If it doesn't scale back, radically and quickly, its core financial-news offering, then in 30 years' time it will be on life support. If it does make the change, however, then it can not only save itself; it might even be able to help transform billions of people's access to trusted news.
Opportunities like this don't come along very often — indeed, to a first approximation, they never come along. But now, thanks to a $17 billion M&A deal in which private equity giant Blackstone is taking over the Thomson Reuters financial-terminal business, Reuters News (which is not part of the deal) has found itself in possession of an astonishing $10 billion lottery ticket. The catch: This lottery ticket is timed to self-destruct.
Reuters, from itsvery beginning in 1851, made its name by delivering fast and accurate information to both newspapers and the financial markets. Over the years, the financial data part of the business grew to dwarf the news business, and the billions of dollars in revenue thrown off by financial terminals have helped to pay for a global news operation that now employs more than 3,000 journalists in some 200 locations around the world.
But once the terminal business becomes controlled by Blackstone, led by Stephen Schwarzman rather than by Thomson Reuters, that business has much less incentive to pay Reuters hundreds of millions of dollars a year for its news. After all, Thomson Reuters had significant control over what Reuters covered. By contrast, Reuters will and must have complete editorial independence from Blackstone.
The result is that if Schwarzman wants to rely on a news operation, he's either going to build one of his own, like his fellow billionaire Mike Bloomberg did, or else he's going to contract with a news provider who will let him specify exactly what he wants to pay for. The days when Reuters could rely on financial data terminals to pay for its global newsgathering are now numbered.
That would be bad news indeed for Reuters, were it not for one thing: As part of the deal, Blackstone has agreed to pay Reuters at least $325 million a year for its news. Better yet, that payment is guaranteed for at least 30 years. That's a minimum of $9.75 billion in total — the kind of money most news organizations can only dream of. (To put that number in context, the Washington Post was bought by Jeff Bezos for $0.25 billion.)
It's going to be very, very tempting for Reuters to treat this as a no-big-deal change. It received about $325 million from the terminal business in 2017; it will do so again in 2018, and the year after that, and the year after that. Nothing's broken, so why bother fixing anything? A ship the size of Reuters has a very strong tendency to just keep on steaming ahead in the same way it's always done, and that has to be the expectation inside and outside the newsroom today.
But that would be a fatal mistake. Thomson Reuters won't share with me the contractual details of the agreement it made with Blackstone, nor will they tell me what if anything Reuters News is obliged to provide in return for the $9.75 billion. But it's entirely possible that those obligations are entirely nominal. Blackstone would agree to pay $325 million a year for Reuters News even if it valued that news at zero.
After all, if Blackstone didn't agree to the payment, there's no way the Thomson Reuters board of directors would ever have agreed to give up control of the terminal business. The board is already deeply split, with the board chairman, David Thomson, opposed to the deal. If the very existence of Reuters News was put into jeopardy by the sale, the deal could simply never be done. Instead, Thomson Reuters's board has managed to grant Reuters News a true runway to long-term sustainability.
Reuters, newly armed with its amazing guaranteed income stream, must embark on a reinvention which will allow it to maintain its size and scope when the money runs out in 2048. With the news agency and other media products only producing revenues of around $300 million, the hundreds of millions of dollars coming in from the terminal have always been crucial — and up until now, the terminal business has always, in one way or another, paid that shortfall. Going forward, it won't.
There's only one option, then, for the Reuters leadership: To declare that "no effort shall be spared to expand, develop and adapt the news and other services and products of Thomson Reuters so as to maintain its leading position in the international news and information business." That shouldn't be too hard, since it's right there in the organization's foundational Trust Principles.
What would such an expansion, development and adaptation look like? A lot of people will have ideas on that front, but one long-term trend is undeniable: The world's middle-class news consumers are no longer going to be based mainly in Europe and North America.
Blackstone's billions should be able to give Reuters the ability to reach billions of emerging news consumers directly, and to be able to compete with broadcasters (CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, Star) that are hobbled by astronomical per-story costs. Spend some of that $325 million each year on tactical acquisitions and a bunch more on aggressive international expansion; pretty soon Reuters can become the first best source of news for a planet that is just now emerging into broad literacy.
At the same time, move out of all those expensive offices in global financial centers around the world, wired to provide up-to-the-second information on market prices, and stop hiring journalists based on their ability to understand yield curves and central bankers. Instead, tell the stories that domestic news consumers demand, delivered directly to their phones in a manner they can come to rely upon.
That's a significant change in skillset, which will probably require Reuters buying digital-native news organizations in most of the countries it's operating in. Wonderfully, it now has the wherewithal to do so. And it's much better to spend that money on preparing for the future than it is to squander it providing financial news for the benefit of an ungrateful Stephen Schwarzman.
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Saturday, March 17, 2018
Satisfy The Self
We exist to satisfy the needs of others to see like them,
submission to the will of civilization,
not the freedom of independence.
Just Read FBI Deputy Director McCabe's Statement Regarding His Firing By Trump... Just Read It.
Andrew McCabe, Deputy Director of the FBI.
I have been an FBI Special Agent for over 21 years. I spent half of that time investigating Russian Organized Crime as a street agent and Supervisor in New York City. I have spent the second half of my career focusing on national security issues and protecting this country from terrorism. I served in some of the most challenging, demanding investigative and leadership roles in the FBI. And I was privileged to serve as Deputy Director during a particularly tough time.Posted without further comment.
For the last year and a half, my family and I have been the targets of an unrelenting assault on our reputation and my service to this country. Articles too numerous to count have leveled every sort of false, defamatory and degrading allegation against us. The president's tweets have amplified and exacerbated it all. He called for my firing. He called for me to be stripped of my pension after more than 20 years of service. And all along we have said nothing, never wanting to distract from the mission of the FBI by addressing the lies told and repeated about it.
No more.
The investigation by the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has to be understood in the context of the attacks on my credibility. The investigation flows from my attempt to explain the FBI's involvement and my supervision of investigations involving Hillary Clinton. I was being portrayed in the media over and over as a political partisan, accused of closing down investigations under political pressure. The FBI was portrayed as caving under that pressure, and making decisions for political rather than law enforcement purposes. Nothing was further from the truth. In fact, this entire investigation stems from my efforts, fully authorized under FBI rules, to set the record straight on behalf of the Bureau and to make it clear that we were continuing an investigation that people in DOJ opposed.
The OIG investigation has focused on information I chose to share with a reporter through my public affairs officer and a legal counselor. As Deputy Director, I was one of only a few people who had the authority to do that. It was not a secret, it took place over several days, and others, including the Director, were aware of the interaction with the reporter. It was the same type of exchange with the media that the Deputy Director oversees several times per week. In fact it was the same type of work that I continued to do under Director Wray, at his request. The investigation subsequently focused on who I talked to, when I talked to them, and so forth. During these inquiries, I answered questions truthfully and as accurately as I could amidst the chaos that surrounded me. And when I thought my answers were misunderstood, I contacted investigators to correct them.
But looking at that in isolation completely misses the big picture. The big picture is a tale of what can happen when law enforcement is politicized, public servants are attacked, and people who are supposed to cherish and protect our institutions become instruments for damaging those institutions and people.
Here is the reality: I am being singled out and treated this way because of the role I played, the actions I took, and the events I witnessed in the aftermath of the firing of James Comey. The release of this report was accelerated only after my testimony to the House Intelligence Committee revealed that I would corroborate former Director Comey's accounts of his discussions with the President. The OIG's focus on me and this report became a part of an unprecedented effort by the Administration, driven by the President himself, to remove me from my position, destroy my reputation, and possibly strip me of a pension that I worked 21 years to earn. The accelerated release of the report, and the punitive actions taken in response, make sense only when viewed through this lens. Thursday's comments from the White House are just the latest example of this.
This attack on my credibility is one part of a larger effort not just to slander me personally, but to taint the FBI, law enforcement, and intelligence professionals more generally. It is part of this Administration's ongoing war on the FBI and the efforts of the Special Counsel investigation, which continue to this day. Their persistence in this campaign only highlights the importance of the Special Counsel's work.
I have always prided myself on serving my country with distinction and integrity, and I have always encouraged those around me to do the same. Just ask them. To have my career end in this way, and to be accused of lacking candor when at worst I was distracted in the midst of chaotic events, is incredibly disappointing and unfair. But it will not erase the important work I was prevailed to be a part of, the results of which will in the end be revealed for the country to see.
I have unfailing faith in the men and women of the FBI and I am confident that their efforts to seek justice will not be deterred.
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The Pentagon Wants You to Go Shopping While the Experts Go to War
Americans are in the dark about the near-global warfare being waged in their name.
By William J. Astore
March 15, 2018
Now, ask yourself a simple question: What sort of war requires no sacrifice? What sort of war requires that almost no one in the country waging it takes the slightest notice of it?
America's conflicts in distant lands rumble on, even as individual attacks flash like lightning in our news feeds. "Shock and awe" campaigns in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, initially celebrated as decisive and game changing, ultimately led nowhere. Various "surges" produced much sound and fury, but missions were left decidedly unaccomplished. More recent strikes by the Trump administration against a Syrian air base or the first use of the most powerful non-nuclear weapon in the US arsenal, the MOAB super-bomb, in Afghanistan flared brightly, only to fizzle even more quickly. These versions of the German blitzkrieg-style attacks of World War II have been lightning assaults that promised much but in the end delivered little. As these flashes of violence send America's enemies of the moment (and nearby civilians) to early graves, the homeland (that's us) slumbers. Sounds of war, if heard at all, come from TV or video screens or Hollywood films in local multiplexes.
We have, in short, been sidelined in what, to draw on the lexicon of World War II, might be thought of as a sitzkrieg, the German term for phony war.
A bizarre version of blitzkrieg overseas and an even stranger version of sitzkrieg at home could be said to define this peculiar American moment. These two versions exist in a curiously yin-yang relationship to each other. For how can a nation's military be engaged in warfare at a near-global level—blitzing people across vast swaths of the globe—when its citizens are sitting on their collective duffs, demobilized and mentally disarmed? Such a schizoid state of mind can exist only when it's in the interest of those in power. Appeals to "patriotism" (especially to revering "our" troops) and an overwhelming atmosphere of secrecy to preserve American "safety" and "security" have been remarkably effective in controlling and stifling interest in the country's wars and their costs, long before such an interest might morph into dissent or opposition. If you want an image of just how effective this has been, recall the moment in July 2016 when small numbers of earnest war protesters quite literally had the lights turned off on them at the Democratic National Convention.
To use an expression I heard more than a few times in my years in the military, when it comes to its wars, the government treats the people like mushrooms, keeping them in the dark and feeding them bullshit.
Prussian war theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously spoke of the "fog of war," the confusion created by and inherent uncertainty built into that complex human endeavor. As thick as that fog often is, in these years the fog of phony war has proven even thicker and more disorienting.
By its very nature, a real war of necessity, of survival, like the Civil War or World War II brings with it clarity of purpose and a demand for results. Poorly performing leaders are relieved of command when not killed outright in combat. Consider the number of mediocre Union generals Abraham Lincoln cycled through before he found Ulysses S. Grant. Consider the number of senior officers relieved during World War II by Gen. George C. Marshall, who knew that, in a global struggle against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, subpar performances couldn't be tolerated. In wars of necessity or survival, moreover, the people are invariably involved. In part, they may have little choice, but they also know (or at least believe they know) "why we fight"—and generally approve of it.
Admittedly, even in wars of necessity there are always those who will find ways to duck service. In the Civil War, for example, the rich could pay others to fight in their place. But typically in such wars, everyone serves in some capacity. Necessity demands it.
The definition of 21st-century phony war, on the other hand, is its lack of clarity, its lack of purpose, its lack of any true imperative for national survival (despite a never-ending hysteria over the "terrorist threat"). The fog it produces is especially disorienting. Americans today have little idea "why we fight" other than a vague sense of fighting them over there (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Niger, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, etc.) so they won't kill us here, to cite George W. Bush's rationale for launching the war on terror. Meanwhile, with such a lack of national involvement and accountability, there's no pressure for the Pentagon or the rest of the national security state to up its game; there's no one even to point out that wherever the US military has gone into battle in these years, yet more terror groups have subsequently sprouted like so many malignant weeds. Bureaucracy and mediocrity go unchallenged; massive boosts in military spending reward incompetency and the creation of a series of quagmire-like "generational" wars.
Even phony wars need enemies. In fact, they may need them more (and more of them) than real wars do. No surprise then that the Trump administration's recently announced National Defense Strategy (NDS) offers a laundry list of such enemies. China and Russia top it as "revisionist powers" looking to reverse America's putative victory over Communism in the Cold War. "Rogue" powers like North Korea and Iran are singled out as especially dangerous because of their nuclear ambitions. (The United States, of course, doesn't have a "rogue" bone in its body, even if it is now devoting at least $1.2 trillion to building a new generation of more usable nuclear weapons.) Nor does the NDS neglect Washington's need to hammer away at global terrorists until the end of time or to extend "full-spectrum dominance" not just to the traditional realms of combat (land, sea, and air) but also to space and cyberspace.
Amid such a plethora of enemies, only one thing is missing in America's new defense strategy, the very thing that's been missing all these years, that makes 21st-century American war so phony: any sense of national mobilization and shared sacrifice (or its opposite, anti-war resistance). If the United States truly faces all these existential threats to our democracy and our way of life, what are we doing frittering away more than $45 billion annually in a quagmire war in Afghanistan? What are we doing spending staggering sums on exotic weaponry like the F-35 jet fighter (total projected program cost: $1.45 trillion) when we have far more pressing national needs to deal with?
Like so much else in Washington in these years, the NDS doesn't represent a strategy for real war, only a call for more of the same raised to a higher power. That mainly means more money for the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, and related "defense" agencies, facilitating more blitz attacks on various enemies overseas. The formula—serial blitzkrieg abroad, serial sitzkrieg in the homeland—adds up to victory, but only for the military-industrial complex.
Of course, one solution to phony war would be to engage in real war, but for that the famed American way of life would actually have to be endangered. (By Afghans? Syrians? Iraqis? Yemenis? Really?) Congress would then have to declare war; the public would have to be mobilized, a draft undoubtedly reinstated, and taxes raised. And those would be just for starters. A clear strategy would have to be defined and losing generals demoted or dismissed.
Who could imagine such an approach when it comes to America's forever wars? Another solution to phony war would be for the American people to actually start paying attention. The Pentagon would then have to be starved of funds. (With less money, admirals and generals might actually have to think.) All those attacks overseas that blitzed innocents and spread chaos would have to end. Here at home, the cheerleaders would have to put down the pom-poms, stop mindlessly praising the troops for their service, and pick up a few protest signs.
In point of fact, America's all-too-real wars overseas aren't likely to end until the phony war here at home is dispatched to oblivion.
A final thought: Americans tell pollsters that, after all these years of failed wars abroad, they continue to trust the military more than any other societal institution. Consistent with phony war, however, much of that trust is based on ignorance, on not really knowing what that military is doing overseas. So, is there a chance that, one of these days, Americans might actually begin to pay some attention to "their" wars? And if so, would those polls begin to change and how might that military, which has experienced its share of blood, sweat, and tears, respond to such a loss of societal prestige? Beware the anger of the legions.
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Fotamecus: The Chaos Magick Film You May Never Get to See
The film's title, Fotamecus, comes from the name of a servitor created in 1996 by a magician calling himself Fenwick Rysen. In chaos magic, a servitor is an artificially created being with limited autonomy that executes a pre-programmed task. In the case of Fotamecus, the the task was to literally condense or expand time, dependent on the needs of the operator. Say, for instance, I was running late to an appointment. In theory, I could call upon the entity to contract the amount of time it would take to get there, and the trip would shorten. The problem, according to Fenwick, is that to contract time in one place meant that time had to be expanded in another. To this end, the servitor was then programmed to self-replicate clones of itself as needed, creating a matrix of servitor nodes. That way, if I needed to make my trip shorter, then a node would be created which another person could access if they wished to make another time period last longer (insert minute man joke here). This would keep me from having to "pay" for my time. With me so far?
Jump ahead five years to Matt Lee and friends, plotting out a film that would manifest the entity onto a projector screen, reaching a larger audience and teaching them how to contact it, effectively taking control of their own perception of time. Matt began soliciting crowd-sourced funding in return for what he called The God Maker Program, a CD/DVD/VHS package including background information on the film, images, audio files, and writings pertaining to DIY servitor creation.
Interest surged. Julian Vayne mentioned the film in his book, Now That's What I Call Chaos Magick. Discussions and comments popped up all over the internet expressing excitement for the project. Filming began. A release date was projected for 2003, but was pushed back later to 2006. Then, to the frowns of the internet occult community, it was canceled altogether.
Due to the economic downturn, the film's production company, Indifference Productions, had closed its doors, leaving Matt with hours of 16 mm film that would never be seen. The only publicly available footage resulting from from the work would be a trailer and a forty-one minute documentary entitled Chronomancy.
The first portion of Chronomancy features the magicians making a batch of cookies with the Fotamecus sigil imprinted on them while discussing their own experiences with the servitor as well as some explanations of the sigilization process. The second portion documents a ritual in the woods being performed to invoke Fotamecus into the film while a narrator explains what is happening. Throughout the footage, we hear the entity's name being repeated as a mantra. As we watch, we are forced into the role of participant, with the mantra being burned into our memory on a level matched only by "Call Me Maybe." By witnessing the ritual, we are perhaps invoking Fotamecus ourselves.
Although Matt Lee and numerous internet commentators seem a bit disappointed with the outcome of the Fotamecus Film Majik Project, I have to say that the original intent may have found fruition even without an actual release. This writer, at least, has now been exposed to the entity, and plans on future experimentation with his own subjective perception of time.
*sniff* Dammit. I think I left my sigilized cookies in the oven too long.
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