AstralVoyage.com
Travel is a difficult business. To go anywhere useful you have to have tickets, passports, credit cards, vaccinations against exotic diseases and time off from work. There are security problems at airports, airport parking is too expensive (if you can find it), there are never enough taxis when you get to your destination, room service brings daiquiris when you want margaritas, and so it goes. Even travelling on business is a pain, although someone else is paying for it all. Luckily, the answer has been found. This site gives much information about astral travelling, where you don't actually travel personally but send some kind of spirit version of yourself instead. I am going to take lessons because it will be really handy at work. If the boss complains that it looks like I am asleep I will be able to say that I was just out astrally visiting the branch offices and some interstate clients.

Onelight.com & The Hollow Earth
Have you ever thought about the real reason that underground nuclear testing was discontinued? It was obviously wrong and dangerous to test in the atmosphere, but who cared if some rock got melted a couple of kilometres under the Nevada desert or under some Pacific atoll? Well, the governments cared, and it was because they knew something that we didn't. They knew about the people inside, and they knew that if we kept on letting off bombs down there, the insiders would revolt and then we would all know that the governments knew about the insiders. To protect this conspiracy, testing had to stop. On another matter, I really want one of those Vril Generator machines. The Vgra isn't working as well as it used to and I could use some generated vrility.

Instrumental Transcommunication
Well, it's all settled now. There can be no doubt that, with the proper training and equipment, people can talk to dead people. Actually, when I come to think of it, people have always been able to talk to dead people. What I really meant to say is that dead people can talk back. If you look at the picture at the right using a magnifying glass, you will see incontrovertible proof of someone talking from beyond the grave. In case you can't find your magnifying glass, or one of the kids is using it to burn ants, or it's one of those tacky plastic things you get in boxes of breakfast food, I will quote some of the message for you. Who could argue with this evidence?

The Wiccan & Faerie Grimoire of Francesca De Grandis
Can you imagine what life would be like if there were no faeries? Nothing would get done around my place if there weren't these little sprites running all over my desk and flittering from bush to bush in the back yard. Who would clean the gutters, change the tap washers and put new batteries in my Palm Pilot, for starters? One of the reasons that I adopted Wicca as my chosen form of spititualistic superstition was that it has relevance to today's problems. Rather than give us rules about what to eat if you have to wander in a desert for forty years, we get useful stuff. As an example, just take the advice from Native American Ian Lurking Bear who gives us a "spell to free oneself from excessive computer enchantment". The only problem I had with it was that I needed to have two white sage smudges and three calming baths after I had gone through the registration process for Windows XP.

Marilyn Monrobot
You didn't know you needed one of these, did you?

Crystallized In Tranquility
You know those books you see with the stickers that say "This book will change your life"? Well, this web site needs one of those stickers. As Shari says on one of her archive pages "These Are Deep Philosophical Truths. Many People In Ordinary Reality Cannot Understand These Truths Yet. Remember That You Are Reading Words From A Chemist/Physicist/Philosopher/Futurist/Programmer To Whom The Cosmic Computer Is Child's Play". I'm lucky because the research I do to collect the stuff for my site means that I spend a lot of time outside ordinary reality, but the rest of you will just have to catch up. Take two of Shari's essays and call me in the morning.

Secrecy in Public Relations – oxymoronic or just moronic? (8/3/2003)
Corporations have names, and there is a large industry devoted to telling people about those names. The advertising budgets of places like Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Toyota and McDonalds could be used to run small countries, and I would imagine that almost everyone reading this would recognise those names and would know what these companies sell without me having to say any more. Company names are valuable properties and nobody appreciates their brand being devalued or used illegally, but I am not in any fear that any of the companies mentioned above would take offence at what I have said about them here.

Imagine my surprise, then, to find out about a company that doesn't want people to even mention its name. I commented on this back in January when I was first contacted by a lawyer about the matter, but I didn't do anything about it then because, frankly, it just looked too silly. I have now received another letter which mentions a huge amount of money gouged out of someone else who offended by saying the words that cannot be said, so I will have to respond. You can read the lawyer's letters here. The content of my email to him appears below.

When I received your first letter I was puzzled, as the only mention of Nutrition For Life on my site was the name of the company, used as a link to its web site, and this could hardly be seen as misrepresentation or passing off. As companies spend large amounts of money to get their names widely recognised, it struck me as strange that anyone could interpret trademark law to suggest that a company's name was so sacred that it could not be said or written. Equally confusing was the implication that just saying a company's name, especially one as inoffensive as "Nutrition For Life", could cause damage to the company's reputation or business.

I can only assume that the resort to a claim of intellectual property infringement is a ploy to bypass the laws protecting freedom of speech and is used by Nutrition For Life to suppress any criticism, real or implied, of their multi-level marketing activities. As requested, however, I have removed the company's name from the link, and it now says "Some MLM company that threatens to sue anyone who mentions its name".

I noticed in your first letter that you claimed that NFLI was the owner of the trademark "Nutrition For Life" in Australia. A check with the relevant authorities showed that, in fact, that mark has a pending registration to Merck & Co. I have passed on the details of your claim to the intellectual property lawyers who act for Merck in this part of the world.

As is my usual practice, your letter has been scanned and its contents and this reply have been loaded up to my web site.

Nutrition for Life went broke in July, 2003. I laughed. Heartily

See everything that appeared in 2003 here..

That child abuse thing (11/2/2012)
Back in January I mentioned a case of child abuse, where a naturopath boasted about exposing her child to chicken pox. Here is how the story was reported in the local paper, the Cambridge Post.

This did not please the anti-vaccinators, and here is what Meryl Dorey erstwhile (and perhaps still current) president of the Australian Vaccination Network had to say in a letter to the paper.

I love the headline: "Anti-vaxers reply on chickenpox". At least the paper is under no illusion about Ms Dorey's position.

Let's just give that letter the yellow marker treatment, shall we:

See everything that appeared in 2012 here.