Regular readers will be familiar with Canadian futurist and ethicist George Dvorsky, whose excellent site Sentient Developments explores topics related to science, technology, human performance and the moral imperative to expand rights of personhood to certain non-human animals. We’ve linked to SD dozens of times over the years, and George was even good enough to let us do some guest blogging back before we got too busy to populate our own damn site.

George is also the Chairman of the Board at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies as well as the program director for the Rights of Non-Human Persons Program.

We’re happy to count George among our personal friends, which makes it that much more fun to tell you about his podcast, which we listened to all the time back in the day. Besides the cool discussions, we were always really impressed with George’s choices in music for the program. (Dude’s got some big ears!) Now the podcast is back in full force, and we encourage you to check it out. The official feed is here; you can get it through iTunes right here.

Another pal, Michael Nordstrom (aka Nerdstrom, aka Mondhexe, aka fifty other things), has taken his obsession with über-legendary kaiju character Garamon to an absurd and fairly fucking awesome new level. Already the proprietor of fan site Garamania, Nerdstrom is now attempting to become Garamon.

We’re not kidding.

Check out the Kickstarter page for The Becoming of Garamike project, through which Nerdstrom is attempting to raise a mere $2,200 to get a couple of pro sculptors and makeup artists to help him, erm, make the transition. Here’s the official description:

Yes, at last… no longer content to merely document and celebrate the world’s favorite clunky, crusty, fish-lipped, oil-belching, high-rise-wrecking meteorite monster… I, Michael Nordstrom (Nerdstrom), Proprietor of Garamania, being of warped mind and highly costume-tolerant body… have decided to becomeGaramon (actually, Garamike).  Working with ultra-talented professional sculptors/make-up artists Michael Ridge and Michael Turner and a whole lot of alginate, foam and silicone, I will be alchemically transformed into a being as outwardly Garamonic as I could ever hope to be. Our design honors the original suit while adding some cutting-edge components (including the face, which will be a form-fitting silicone masterwork of Gara-expressiveness).  Our goal is to complete work on at least the initial phase (head, hands, feet and tail) by the opening night of GARAMANIACAL, the all-Garamon, all-Pygmon art show I am curating for FOE Gallery in Northampton, Massachusetts (the current image for this project is a section of an incredible painting by Jason Edmiston, which will be on display at the show).  On opening weekend, my hope is to be a Gara-transformed barker and ballyhoo-er, stomping the snowy streets of Northampton to connect the public at large to the show, turning them on to works of Garamonstrous art that they didn’t even realize they needed in their lives (but they do… they definitely do).  The funds you contribute will help us meet this goal, as well as further us on the road to completing a full suit in the foreseeable future.

Backers should know that this will not be a short-term transformation.  Once granted the powers of Gara-becoming by Ridge and Turner, I will be able to become my Gara-self at any time, night or day… I plan to fully inhabit this suit, mustering all of my performance experience to truly bring it to life as a Gara-character unto itself.  Just as Jandek was Ready For The House, I am Ready For The Suit. I have a slew of mindbenderly projects in mind for my Gara-persona… YOU, the audience, will:

THRILL! at the sight of Garamike hosting a delightfully art-damaged musical variety show, to be produced for local cable access (also to be broadcast online);

GASP! while watching Garamike deliver gripping, novel musical performance art happenings to delight and inspire legions of like-monstrous folk (again, to be captured on video for cable and online broadcast);

GUFFAW! at frequent photoplay amusements featuring Garamike, to be posted to Garamania… and much, much more!

This may sound strange, but is it really any weirder than, say, Dolly Parton’s face in that thar new singin’ contest movie?

Best to both of our buds in their quest for excellence!

Welcome to the first post of my new series! In Dispatches From the Mat, we will examine the lifestyle and philosophy of yoga, and what makes up a fully developed yoga practice (hint: it isn’t being able to stand on your head). I hope you will be part of the discussion and join me in the search for union, for the true Self and the true nature of reality.

There is a passage in the Katha Upanishad with which I deeply identify. Yama, lord of death, has granted young Nachiketa three boons, in reparation for the three days the boy waited at Death’s palace while Yama was away. Nachiketa’s first two requests were fairly practical: a return of the love of his father and instructions on how to properly practice a ritual which leads to spiritual development. For his third blessing, however, Nachiketa asks for the secret of death. Yama answers by saying, “That’s over your head, boy, ask for something else,” but Nachiketa sticks to his guns. Yama tries to tempt him with wonderous offerings:

Ask for sons and grandsons who will live a hundred years. Ask for herds of cattle,

elephants and horses, gold and vast lands, and ask to live as long as you desire.

Or, if you can think of anything more desirable, ask for that,

with wealth and long life as well. Nachiketa, be the ruler of a great kingdom,

and I will give you the utmost capacity to enjoy the pleasures of life.

Ask for beautiful women with loveliness rarely seen on earth, riding in chariots,

skilled in music, to attend on you. But Nachiketa,

don’t ask me about the secret of death.

To which Nachiketa answers:

These pleasures last but until tomorrow, and they wear out the vital powers of life.

How fleeting is all life on earth! Therefore keep your horses and chariots,

dancing and music, for yourself. Never can mortals be made happy by wealth.

It is an unfortunate truth of our world that most people seek comfort and luxury, as well as all sorts of pleasures, as opposed to seeking wisdom or lasting joy. Those things that we are taught to want, that our senses most desire, are very difficult to turn our backs on. I am as guilty as the next person — and was even more so when I was younger — of falling for the “sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll” ploy. Putting myself in Nachiketa’s shoes, I doubt I would have held fast as he did. The offer of beautiful women is tempting, but the offer of beautiful women skilled in music? That would likely have broken me. Especially as I may have been a little nervous to begin with, what with the whole speaking-to-the-Lord-of-the-Dead thing.

But Nachiketa has the right idea. he knows that all these pleasures are empty. He knows that they drain the natural energy (prana) that fuels us. Bodily pleasures are hard to turn down, but they lead to the desire for more bodily pleasures, whereas wisdom leads to the search for more wisdom. When we learn to turn ourselves away from the constant need for pleasure and luxury, we will find that we are more aware of what it is that we actually want, and that those wants come from a place far deeper than the wants of the body and senses.

This is key to a true yoga practice. In understanding what it is we really want, and in recognizing the wants that come from the Self as opposed to the self, we are tapping into our absolute nature, that exists beyond our bodies. It is this nature that was not born, that will not die. The goal of yoga is not to be strong or flexible or sexy. It is to gain knowledge of reality. All lower goals, all sensual desires, are merely illusion (maya). Yoga literally translates as “yoke,” meaning the joining of our minds and bodies in their true nature. When we begin to move beyond the illusion of our lives, we see reality, and it is a beautiful thing.

And by demons, I mean demons.

According to the Asheville Citizen-Times, Patel murdered her two daughters — four-year-old Piya and seven-year-old Jiya — with a hatchet. When her husband returned from work, he found his daughters hacked to death and his wife severely injured; she attempted to take her own life by repeatedly hitting herself in the head with the murder weapon. According to Patel, a “ghost” was responsible for the slayings.

Clearly, Mrs. Patel suffered from problems far more serious than a murderous spirit, if ever such a thing existed. Her situation doesn’t necessarily say much about the paranormal craze of recent years, but it might tell us something about the pharmaceutical treatment of mental illness. In Patel’s case, such treatment is likely justified. But what about those who aren’t as disturbed?

Let me state that I do not know Mrs. Patel, nor am I familiar with her condition prior to this grisly incident. However, I’m not just a paranormal nerd, I’m also a high school teacher, a job that gives me a certain insight into how medication affects people — I’ve seen the before and I’ve seen the during and I’ve seen the after. Often, one is no more or less scary than the other.

I’ve seen bright and intelligent students with some fairly obvious personality quirks walk into my classroom one day tense and easily agitated, then dull and near-unresponsive zombie within 24 hours. I’ve seen highly violent students quick to do harm to themselves and others be transformed into apathetic beings with emotionless eyes. I’ve see kids who dart around the classroom with the energy of a chihuahua but the grace of a dancer become immobile and stationary, a shadow of their former selves.

I’ve seen kids with intensified, but typical teenage problems become twisted entities of their former selves, and seen those same kids, when taken off the pills, self-medicate through drugs, self-induced violence, or worse.

I’ve also seen students personifying heartache — kids who can take these feelings and turn them into beautiful expressions — become cheerful and engaging people at some sacrifice to their creativity.

I don’t know what “normal” is. I don’t know how to feel it and I don’t know what it feels like. It does seem to me that our society has chosen to excise portions of personalities deemed irregular by capturing them in pill bottles with the hope that it produces this elusive state of being.

And like I said, I don’t know Mrs. Patel, or her situation. She is confused to a degree well beyond anything I can imagine. She may indeed require pharmacological intervention to deal with her inner demons. In the days of yore she would be considered possessed and put to the stake, today she remains medicated.  I simply have to wonder if this is the case for all of the kids I’ve encountered whose energies may not be so sinister, simply misdirected.

It has been noted that this is no ordinary economic downturn. One of the reasons it seems unlikely that the American economy will emerge from current conditions anytime soon is that there are no sure bets for growth. Some would suggest that we can magically repair the damage by reducing the deficit; not a bad idea, but this will have a negligible impact on, say, jobs — especially in the short-to-medium term. How did we get here? An almost religious conviction in systems that should have been recognized as unsustainable.

This has happened before, albeit on a smaller scale. The bad news is, when a collapse of this size occurs, recovery doesn’t happen overnight. Just ask the music industry, which has been trying to go back to its heyday of control and collusion for more than a decade. The problem is, the more they cling to their old systems, the worse it is for the actual creators. Just like the more policymakers attempt to peg progress to Wall Street’s whims, the more American workers are imperiled.

Had anyone made the connection, the music industry’s response to its paradigm shift could have told us a lot about how to deal with the financial meltdown. The root causes are more similar than not: a misguided belief in the ability to engineer permanent growth. In fact, Peak Music was a part of the very same Wall Street philosophy that pushed us to the brink of disaster.

The record industry in the 1990s was rapidly consolidating, with large multinational corporations getting into music as a portfolio-enhancing diversification. From there, executives sought new ways to produce shareholder growth. The music business became like the movie business, but instead of s’plodey movies with big opening weekends, you had spendy boy bands with huge debut Tuesdays. Manufacturing consumer consent was fairly easy, especially with distribution locked down and broadcast media owned by just a handful of companies. You could practically plot a year’s returns with just a handful of guys in a room.

With radio a hyper-concentrated market dominated by payola and retail under the thumb of the major labels, the consumer became trained to accept what was spoon fed to them. $18.98 a CD with a single good song on it? No problem!

Then the unexpected happened. The Internet came along.

The recorded music industry, like Wall Street following the banking crisis, had no clue how to respond. Most kids, when they find out that there is no Santa Claus, go through a period of grief and disaffection, but then they get over it. The music industry has been trying to find a new Saint Nick for more than a decade. I worry that our policymakers will do the same with the American economy.

The old ideas won’t work. That’s the nature of paradigm shift. You can’t build anything lasting according to the previous blueprint. No matter how hard you try, no matter how much money you throw at the problem (or at policymakers), any edifice constructed using the old engineering will not stand. Sure, you can prop it up for a little while, or set to rebuilding over and over and over, but the exercise is ultimately fruitless. Eventually, the way forward will reveal itself, but the will be little continuity between the old and the new, other than the fact that the replacement construct will eventually fail, too.

Repeat after me: you cannot engineer away failure.

But you can prolong the mighty crash by accepting the natural rhythms of growth and contraction. Had the Wizards of Wall Street not entered the dangerous game of financial derivatives, we surely would have experienced recession-like events, but there’s would have been far less danger of a total systems collapse. Had the music industry focused on offering the best product in a reasonably open marketplace, they may have been able to retain some consumer loyalty when the internet came along (their response to the technology itself is its own separate topic).

At the end of the day, the true tragedy is who bears the brunt of these traumas. In the music business, it’s largely the creators (though I do know for a fact that a lot of good people in the industry lost out, too). With the overall American economy, it’s the majority of the public.

None of this was an inevitability. Something for the next generation of wizards to consider.

The show was called “Small Town Gothic,” and it paid tribute to the back story of hauntings — those peculiar and offbeat little tales that give towns their character — rather than the paranormal investigation itself. Within each story, one investigator would play the “believer” while another would act as a skeptical historian. The two would dig deep into community lore, gathering tales of ghosts, monsters and general weirdness that accumulate through a town’s unique history. Using local archives, the tall tales would be separated from facts via historical record and personal remembrances.

We pimped this thing like a ho at 2AM. We made phone calls, got some feedback, had a lot of doors slammed in our faces and received several “thanks-but-no-thanks.” The commercial television market is a tough nut to crack, much more so than the music world (where I lived for many years). Whereas record labels seem interested in hearing what bubbles up from actual scenes (at least superficially), TV is much more self-involved and nepotistic. Production companies would rather rely on insider consultants than consider outside ideas, regardless of how interesting — or marketable — those ideas might be.

While pitching the show to production companies, I was shocked at a clause they all required us to sign which basically stated that they could legally produce the exact show we were pitching because they had the same idea before they met us. Meaning, each time we pitched a show, they could say, “Yeah, we already thought of that. Thanks. Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out.” And then put it into production.

The best feedback we received was “you’ve got something here, but I don’t think that it’s fully developed. Come back to us when you have a polished concept and we can talk.” I took this to mean, “I conceive better television shows on the toilet.”

So we gave up. Why bother? A colossal effort with little to no reward. Yet despite all this, I’ve spent the last year mulling the show over in my head, removing certain parts and altering others. I’ve spent countless hours in the shower (where amazing songs, lyrics and television shows are formulated and ultimately dried off with your towel) re-conceptualizing the show, and I came to a simple conclusion regarding pitching paranormal TV programs:

Fuck it. Fuck it all to Hell.

So anyway, here I am. With a television show I’m all set to pitch, but with no inclination to run around town, call around the country, sign ridiculous documents and all the other crap. Instead, I’m pitching it here, and tagging production companies. This is my show. Starring me and my friends. Production companies: you want it? Email me. You don’t? Go make a show about auctioning storage spaces — there’s four of those on right now, and surely the world needs another.

My show is called “Ghost Skeptic,” and it stars a dashingly handsome, likable and cocky teacher by day who spends his nights investigating supposed haunted locations around the country (world?). It begins with the following monologue:

My name is Chris Parizo. I spent my life studying the tales of ghosts, specters, and haunts. For years, I investigated the paranormal, searching for the unknown and unexplained. I spent hours with the latest equipment in hundreds of haunted locations and have come to one conclusion: ghosts don’t exist. But I want to believe! That’s why I’m offering this challenge. Send me to the most terrifying locations in the world, places where people dare not tread, and let me enter alone. Armed with a “panic button” as my only protection, and with my associate Darrell Hazelrig guarding the perimeter, I will venture into the world’s most dangerous and frightening haunted locales. And I will do it alone. This is “Ghost Skeptic.”

The gist of it should be clear from the opening. Basically, it’s “Small Town Gothic,” but we’ve succumbed to the paranormal investigation stuff. Act I will establish the location’s backstory: its history and the people who nurture the legend. Act II will focus on the archives and records, separating fact from folktale. Act III will be me scared shitless in the dark, doing my best not to press the panic button and alerting Darrell to switch on emergency lights, thereby ending the investigation. All of this will conclude with a wrap-up where I channel my inner Anthony Bourdain with my self-reflective and self-righteous philosophies of the paranormal. There’s another element that I will answer for anyone interested, but right now I’m too busy making fart noises with my mouth to get into it.

You’re frothing already, aren’t you!?!? This is just the greatest television pitch in history, right!?!?! You’ve got a great big boner and it has “Ghost Skeptic” written all over it, don’t you!?!?!?

Meh.

So that’s about it. I think it’s a good idea and it’s definitely something that I would watch. Hell, I’d even buy a t-shirt. Consider this an open call to all production companies: I’m tired of calling and emailing you; now it’s your turn.

And if you’ve already come up with this idea, kiss my ass. Give me executive producer credit and $20,000 so Darrell can get some new editing equipment and we’ll call it even.

In a rambling, hastily arranged press conference Monday, embattled American Apparel CEO Dov Charney addressed multiple charges of sexual harassment from his female employees by claiming his behavior was actually a misunderstood ironic commentary on ’70s and ’80s styles.

“But you know, clearly no one ‘got it’,” Charney said in a mocking tone, making air quotes with his fingers. “So y’know…” he chuckled, burying his hands in his pockets, his voice trailing off as he looked into the distance. “I guess, whatever.”

Waving away questions with a supercilious scowl as if he smelled something unpleasant in the room, Charney continued emphatically. “People don’t get it, see? When I’m, like, calling my female employees ‘sluts’ or ‘cunts’ or, like…  locking one of the girls in my apartment and forcing her to have sex with me, I don’t, actually like… mean it, really. It’s more like ‘unhh, look at me, I’m some creep from a ’70s porno’” he said, adopting a low, growly voice. “‘Ohh, look at my porno mustache, check out these weird ’80s glasses… they’re so cool, right?’ You know, like vintage old-school sex-predator shit.” He sneered, chuckling to himself, “It’s not like I’m actually forcing a girl to suck my dick, right? I’m like, ‘forcing‘ a girl to ‘suck my dick‘ or whatever. See?”

“It’s an artistic comment, man. That’s my thing, you know? Real in-your-face stuff that freaks out the latter-day Puritans in this country. Like, um… Artaud, hel-lo? Heard of him?” Charney let out an exaggerated sigh, shaking his head. “Y’know, it’s like no one has read any books or seen any movies or anything. Lars Von Trier does, like, edgy sexual stuff all the time and you don’t see girls getting on his case. It’s like… just fucking read some Foucault, man. Read some Derrida.”

With the risk to America’s working class due to union busting, it’s easy to overlook economic exploitation abroad. Exhibit A: the sacking of Bangladeshi (and Nobel Peace Prize winner) Muhammad Yunus from Grameen Bank, a pioneering institution which he founded, and which has provided millions of dollars in aid to the poor. Yunus was fired last week on the grounds that he was past retirement age, and had been wrongly appointed in 2000.

There are those who say Yunus’ firing was politically motivated: not only has he spoken out against the Bangladeshi government, Yunus tried to form his own political party in 2007. However, the Prime Minister has accused Grameen of charging high rates of interest and exploiting the poor.

In a telling interview for Deutsche Welle, Badruddin Umar, a Dhaka-based activist and author of “The Poverty Trade of Dr Yunus,” states that the higher ups at Grameen Bank were afraid of the praise and admiration Yunus received, and of the people who viewed him as a “demigod.” Yet the poor are unafraid to critique him. As Umar puts it, “The common man does not think that criticizing Yunus will bring international shame. When you go to the countryside, most people will say that he is sucking people’s blood… now more news reports are emerging that people have had to sell their land, utensils and domestic animals to repay the loans, and being unable to repay the loans people have committed suicide.”

Although Yunus himself has questioned why people who are badly affected by loans borrow money from Grameen, Umar states that microcredit finance agencies fill the “credit gap” that banks cannot. “Lending to the poor is nothing new,” Umar says. “It is similar to old times when the same social relations and circumstances forced people to go to the old feudal moneylenders.”

Unfortunately, other microcredit agencies are no better than Grameen Bank. Women are hit especially hard by loans, as they are the principal borrowers. James Melik tells the story of Joba Rani, a formerly self-sufficient farmer left unable to repay her loans after floods in her village of Jamlabaj. Badruddin Umar is not the first critic of microfinance: Dr. Qazi Kholiluzzaman Ahmad of PSKF, which monitors microfinance, describes microfinance in such damning terms as a “death trap” for the poor, who frequently borrow without thinking of the consequences; furthermore, 60 percent of people borrow from multiple sources. According to Dr. Ahmad, “There is no understanding that it might take 10 or 20 years to repay their loan.”

As for Joba Rani, she was forced to sell three of her six cows at half market price in order to repay her loan in what Ahmad and Badruddin might describe as an all too familiar story.

The Deutsche Welle interview casts a damning light on a man named one of Bust magazine’s A Few Good Men in 2010, who then said of his project, “We had male opposition, and it was translated into religious opposition. People said we were destroying their culture; that women needed to be kept at home because they weren’t supposed to have or handle money. I said, ‘You keep your culture; I am creating a counterculture.”

Sadly, he has not.

Now to be a real Debbie Downer! Here are some stats on the Gaza blockade, which has been in effect for the past three years. Perhaps most relevant are the food shortages: not only are 61 percent of Gazans “foods insecure,” but 80 percent of homes are dependent on food aid. Moreover, one third of children under five and women of childbearing age suffer from anemia, according to the World Health Organization. Although Abergil may be unaware of this fact, electronic items, including computers, are generally denied entry into Gaza.

Hey, at least the men with whom she posed will be spared the further humiliation of an virtual reunion with their captor. And you thought it sucked getting Facebook requests from those horrible people you went to high school with…

Where would an Israeli soldier get the idea that this was kosher? That it’s perfectly okay preen and pose with prisoners for your own amusement? Well, here in the U.S., college age kids are known to invade Mexican border towns over spring break, where they take pictures of themselves mock-raping inflatable burros, downing shots and snapping pics of insecure girls flashing their breasts. Pathetic, sure, but less legally damning.

Then there was Abu Ghraib, back in 2004. Remember those Iraqi prisoner abuse pics, memorably featuring a then-twenty-one-year-old Lynndie England? To her credit, Eden Abergil didn’t post any shots of her holding a leash attached to a naked, crawling man. She does not make the thumbs up sign behind human pyramids. There are no snaphots of her leering at men being forced to masturbate.

Moreover, there’s no evidence that Abergil did it to please a man, unlike England, who happily posed for the enjoyment of her now ex-boyfriend, Charles Graner In a half-assed defense of her reprehensible behavior, England remarked to an interviewer, “I didn’t want them. But he was so persistent. Go on! Just for me! If you loved me, you’d do it. I’m like, gee, OK just take the damned picture.”

I suppose it’s somewhat comforting to know that Abergil probably didn’t take her pictures for some fella’s titillation. Perhaps there’s more gender equality in a country with universal conscription. Sisters are doin’ it for themselves!

When Abergil was asked about the harm Israel’s international reputation could face as a result of her actions, she protested, “We will always be attacked. Whatever we do, we will always be attacked.”  For Abergil, the Geneva Conventions (to which Israel is a signatory) are major a killjoy when she’s having “the best time of my life” (as her IDF Facebook album is labeled).

There’s nothing wrong with violating international human rights standards of the people you’re occupying. It’s just good, healthy fun when you’re young.

“Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”
–The United States Code of Military Justice

Let’s do a little thought exercise, shall we?

You’re the president of the United States of America, which, in addition to your other executive powers and responsibilities, means that you are the civilian leader of the US military. As Commander in Chief, you have a higher ranking than any member of the armed forces. According to the military’s staunchly-observed hierarchy (by which the entire apparatus functions), enlisted personnel may not, under any circumstances, insult, demean or ridicule a commanding officer. Nor are subordinates allowed to reject or thwart orders issued by a superior. To do so would be a gross dereliction of duty, rendering the perpetrator unfit to serve.

Still with me? Good.

You also happened to have taken the Oath of Office under particularly trying circumstances. Your predecessor managed to embroil the country in two protracted wars, at least one of which was entirely elective. This is in addition to a badly-damaged national economy, a ballooning deficit (3 trillion of which can be attributed to just one of the aforementioned conflicts), and an obstructionist minority party. Oh, and there’s also a huge-ass oil leak in the Gulf that refuses to be plugged.

The last thing you need is the general in charge of the most strategically significant of the two wars undermining your military policy. Especially when the shit-talker is the living embodiment of that policy, having repeatedly evangelized his counterinsurgency plan until you finally chose to implement it. Even with this particular conflict entering it’s most violent phase in nearly a decade, you remain committed to your general’s strategy. So much so that you’re willing to deal with ongoing squabbles between the more skeptical members of your administration and Pentagon brass.

Sounds kinda sucky, huh?

Well, that’s the exact situation President Obama finds himself in due to a story in Rolling Stone that shows a clearly disrespectful, if not insubordinate, General Stanley McChrystal. More telling are the remarks from the general’s staff, who cross enough lines to make an Army draftsman’s head spin.

According to the article:

McChrystal’s aid calls National Security Advisor James Jones a “clown.”

Another aide says of envoy Richard Holbrooke, “The Boss [McChrystal] says he’s like a wounded animal. Holbrooke keeps hearing rumors that he’s going to get fired, so that makes him dangerous.”

Bolstering that, McChrystal himself, receiving an email from Holbrooke says, “Oh, not another e-mail from Holbrooke. I don’t even want to read it.”

On Vice President Biden, who disagreed with the General’s strategy in Afghanistan, McChrystal says while laughing, “Are you asking me about Vice President Biden? Who’s that?” An aide, mirroring his boss, adds, “Biden? Did you say Bite me?”

Clearly, McChrystal’s team would not be as free with their color commentary if they thought the boss felt differently. It’s no exaggeration to call this an Epic Discipline FAIL.

And it can’t be good for the mission. In the RS piece, McChrystal registers frustration with an Afghanistan strategy that he not only architected, but aggressively pushed for. Apparently, it’s all Obama’s fault. So much for that famous military ethos of personal responsibility.

The article was hardly an exercise in “gotcha journalism.” according to RS editor Eric Bates, “They knew when we were on the record. They said a lot of stuff to us off the record that’s not in the story. We respected those boundaries. This was all when they knew they were on.”

Furthermore, McChrystal made no attempt to deny the veracity of any of the story’s quotes.

Bates has also said that the general has known about the article’s contents for the past two weeks, as he had been contacted during the magazine’s routine fact-checking.

Lots of folks are think that Obama should dismiss McChrystal, and not just liberals. Notorious hawk Henry Kissinger said earlier today that the president “should probably fire” the general. Its not like McChrystal is some populist superhero like General McCarthur, who was famously axed by President Truman. The war in Afghanistan does not enjoy broad public support, and even Republican congressional leaders recognize the futility of retaining an insubordinate general in the midst of major conflict.

The fact that McChrystal has apparently already offered to resign doesn’t make things any easier for Obama, who has pinned his entire Afghanistan strategy on the general’s lapel. Wild card or no, McChrystal is one of the few American officials who can seemingly communicate with Afghan president Hamid Karzai — an impossibly flaky leader who nonetheless is the sole political bulwark against Taliban intransigence.

We should know very soon whether or not McChrystal keeps his post. Until then, I might as well ask: what do you think Obama should do?

My journey has been one of photoshopped photographs, “ghost sounds” that were really pebbles thrown by other investigators and magicians’ assistants who tweaked EMF and K-II meters to light up like the Fourth of July. I have seen this behavior displayed by both weekend warriors and paranormal rock stars, each creating his or her own brand of falsification and misdirection.

A few noble personalities — such as John Zaffis, Kristyn Gartland, and Loyd Aurebach — stand out as honest folks, willing to share with me their truths (and myths). A candid conversation that I had with Dave Tango gave me some hope in a dying field. I assume these folks offered their views because they recognized a shared passion for the paranormal. They occupy a rare place in the industry as the few truthsayers in a field of hyperbole-prone, self-indulgent liars.

Then there are those tarnished and lost souls who pilfer and rape the paranormal, squeezing out every drop of it in pursuit of personal glory and sensationalism. They’re like the so-called “spirit photographers” and “mediums” of 19th century Spiritualism — taking money from Civil War widows armed with cheese cloth and papier mache masks. They are the people who stymie any validation that the field may garner from outsiders. They are fuel for skeptics and haters, and at this point, I can’t say I blame anyone for harboring negative views about the paranormal field.

It’s like meeting Babe Ruth, and he punches you in the face, sleeps with your mom, and eats all your candy.  And then you find out his bat is corked.

So, where do I go from here? Do I retire my fascinations and try to maintain what level of respect I have left for the field? Do I walk away from it, and just go back to the books that I’ve cherished since childhood? Or do I go all Fugazi on this bitch and DIY a new group that’s more iconoclastic in approach and definition? Do I even have the energy to even attempt that?

I’m not sure if I am willing to sacrifice a childhood love anymore than I already have.