“When “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” hits the big screen on July 11, it won’t just be comic book aficionados salivating over the lush, fantasy-world storyline. Fans of Celtic mythology, too, will recognize the name of the film’s principle villain, Prince Nuada, a character loosely modeled after an important figure in the ancient folklore of Ireland. [...]‘’

“Researchers say they’ve taken a significant stride forward in understanding how relaxation techniques such as meditation, prayer and yoga improve health: by changing patterns of gene activity that affect how the body responds to stress. The changes were seen both in long-term practitioners and in newer recruits, the scientists said. “It’s not all in your head,” [...]

I’ve received a few interesting emails to pass along, first this photo to the right of the fireworks over NYC sent in by Alterati’s NYC correspondent Lefty (& btw, watch for a column from Lefty within the next day.) Secondly, this email from long-time Alterati reader Chris Joseph, the blogger behind squarewaves.net:Share This

(Written with Steve Lambert.)

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Reality Sandwich has just created its first batch of web banners that you can post across the internet. Below you'll find two codes for banners to post in MySpace, websites, blogs, and more. If you're a Facebook aficionado, we attached an RS Facebook button if you'd like to dress up your profile there.

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A member of the Tamil Siddha sect of southern India, Siva Baba, offers intensives and introductions to Grace Light in the U.S. Grace Light is an immediate experience of the omnipotence of the universal God. As Siva Baba explains, this light is of the one true God of all, not a sectarian god. If given the Grace Light one individual can pass the light to another increasing bliss and spreading this intention throughout humanity.

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The Copenhagen Consensus Center was founded in late 2002 by Bjorn Lomborg, the former director of the Danish Evironmental Assessment Institute. In 2003 the idea for the Copenhagen Consensus Conference was developed, and in 2004 the conference took place in Denmark with eight of the planet's foremost economists, four nobel laureates included, and thirty specialists from ten different "problem areas."

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It’s no secret that Big Pharma has been providing doctors with special perks in return for prescribing their products. This has been going on for ages. But to get a better grip on why the costs of healthcare have been increasing dramatically we need to understand about the massive networks that Big Pharma is involved [...]

While the LifeTrac project may free rural communities from dependence on specific, for-profit tractor manufacturers, it will not free them from dependency (and the associated side effects) on distant manufactures of engines, smelters of metals, or producers of tires. While this may be an improvement, it’s a Pyrrhic victory at best, as it will only [...]

Reality Sandwich and Apocryphon Productions present...

"Come Together," a pan-cultural worldbeat mashup every wednesday at Mehanata Bulgarian Bar.

This Week, July 2nd
Live Performances by

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A letter from one of our readers:

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In February 2008, the HOV Group opened Zen Burger, an “environmentally friendly” fast food restaurant, to challenge the perspective of unhealthy fast food. According to studies, meat-processing and animal agriculture generates more greenhouse gases than the world’s transportation vehicles combined. Zen Burger's "ZenMeats" provide the look and taste of familiar products, processed wholly from unaltered vegetables, grains, and soy.

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More here (via Dedroidify)

he year is 1908, and it’s just after seven in the morning. A man is sitting on the front porch of a trading post at Vanavara in Siberia. Little does he know, in a few moments, he will be hurled from his chair and the heat will be so intense he will feel as though [...]–

Valleywag writes: Violet Blue, a popular local blogger, columnist, sex educator and contributor to Gawker Media’s smutty sister Fleshbot, seems to have rubbed someone at Boing Boing the wrong way. She discovered that nearly all the posts on the site that mentioned her or her work had disappeared — save for one, a post from last [...]’

The odd behavior of a molecule in an experimental silicon computer chip has led to a discovery that opens the door to quantum computing in semiconductors. In a Nature Physics journal paper currently online, the researchers describe how they have created a new, hybrid molecule in which its quantum state can be intentionally manipulated - [...]

[The Electric Jesus] • I've been turning my Electric Jesus workshop into a book, and here's the first attempt at the second chapter . You can check out the first chapter here. Portions of this chapter appeared in a previous podcast.

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A recent Dutch Newspaper, De Volkskrant, released an article saying that thousands of Dutch citizens are preparing for the end of the world in 2012. Although the numbers are greater in the United States, the particular buzz of this article is fascinating.

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Today on RIPPLE: Ray and the Rev continue their interview with filmmaker Kevin Booth of Sacred Cow Productions about his documentary American Drug War: The Last White Hope.  Share This

“In a fascinating review of the cognitive neuroscience of attention, authors Raz and Buhle note that most research on attention focuses on defining situations in which it is no longer required to perform a task - in other words, the automatization of thought and behavior. Yet relatively few studies focus on whether thought and behavior [...]“”

“The Texas Supreme Court on Friday threw out a jury award over injuries a 17-year-old girl suffered in an exorcism conducted by members of her old church, ruling that the case unconstitutionally entangled the court in religious matters. In a 6-3 decision, the justices found that a lower court erred when it said the Pleasant [...]

“It is a remarkably hairy close-up. But this tiny microchip attached to a bee’s back will hopefully explain why so many honeybees are dying from disease. Professor Juergen Tautz and his team at the University of Wurzburg in Germany are studying the health of more than 150,000 bees, in the hope of halting the apparently [...]

This weekend, his organization, The Methuselah Foundation, is sponsoring its first U.S. conference on the emerging interdisciplinary field that de Grey has helped kick start. (Its first day, Friday, will be free and open to the public.) The conference, Aging: The Disease - The Cure - The Implications, held at UCLA, is an indication of [...]

“Spaced Out: Radical Environments of the Psychedelic Sixties” explores the crash pads, hippie communes, infinity machines and other far-out dwellings of the time period. Author Alastair Gordon, whose other works have dealt primarily with the clean modernism of airports and mid-century Hamptons homes, turned his attention to the design, architecture and visual culture of LSD-inspired [...]