By Theory
Transformus is the fruition of the ideas of many people, and continues to evolve each year as more become involved... and it will continue to evolve well past that, we hope. Transformus is defined by what the community makes it. That said, it did come from somewhere. Here's that story, in brief. In the fall of 2003 a few good souls started meeting and planning a festival based on ideas brought home from an arts festival they went to in the desert, the music festival scene, and the progressive conference/workshop circuit. In the spring of 2004, an open call was put out on some email lists, and a diverse group of talent converged on the Deerfields land to walk, talk, and dream about what a place called Mysteria could be. From that meeting, seven people stepped up to the plate and committed to making this thing happen, putting up their personal time, energy, and money to the concept. Those 7 were: Wordplay, ChwDog, Debra, Rhythm, Uncle Jonah, Vic Diesel, & Theory. Since then numerous people have given time, sweat & tears to make Transformus happen.

A fun southeastern Burn.

Transformus: The Southeast Regional Burn

http://www.myconfinedspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/computer-terminal.jpg

Computer Terminal : My[confined]Space

Whatever the case, it was only days into the exposition before Alpha — maddened with sexual desire — broke out of the Palace of Science in search of the Nudist Queen. He found her in Balboa Park. There, he spent the day pleasing her and her constabulary of bronzed, buxom subjects. The photograph above was taken at the end of that day, and even though Alpha’s creator had never programmed him to feel joy, you can clearly see the curl of a smile somehow suffuse the sparkle-spitting slit of his oblong mechanical mouth. Alpha is the luckiest robot who ever lived.

There's some boobs here, but it ain't porn. Amazing explanation of the robot/neked pic from the 30s.

ECTOPLASMOSIS! » Alpha the Robot Meets Zorine, Queen of the Nudists

Very funny bear attack/salmon commercial.

YouTube - Bear Attack Commercial

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In the skin, explained lead researcher Tamás Bíró of the University of Debrecen, Hungary, these compounds help the sebaceous glands protect us from harsh outer elements, such as the drying effects of wind and sun. Cannabinoids are thought to have a similar role in the leaves of the marijuana plant.

Among its protective functions, "endo-pot" stimulates oil production and tells hair follicles to stop producing hair. Whether this explains the plethora of pimples and receding hairlines at Grateful Dead concerts (or those of former band members) has not yet been determined.

The research, funded mostly by the Hungarian and German governments, will be detailed in the October 2008 issue of The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Journal.

Why is a psycho-stimulant working outside the brain?

Dermatologists have long suggested that mental states affect the skin, having observed flare-ups of acne, psoriasis, hair loss and other conditions that coincide with stress. Now, they are finding that the skin responds to, and produces, compounds called neuropeptides previously thought to exist exclusively in the brain. This is said to prove the brain-skin connection by nailing down the mechanism.

"It is working in both directions," said Andrzej Slominski, a researcher at the University of Tennessee who was not involved with the endocannabinoids study but does research on the skin's neuroendocrine system.

Your Skin Produces Marijuana-Like Substance | LiveScience

Ver' Fun' Kids in the Hall skit.

YouTube - Man of Destiny

This is great.

YouTube - JEDI GYM

The accusers point to the link between the volume of transactions on the futures markets and the price of oil. Since 2004 the near tripling of trading in oil on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), the world’s biggest market for the stuff, has neatly coincided with a tripling in the price.

What is more, investing in oil has become something of a fad. Commodities traders and hedge funds with long experience have been joined by less expert sorts, including pension funds and individuals. All this, the theory runs, is contributing to a bubble in commodities. The rush of punters betting on higher prices is begetting a self-fulfilling prophecy: it is the tide of new investment, rather than inadequate supply or irrepressible demand, that is pushing the price of oil ever higher.
Follow the oil, not the futures

This reasoning holds obvious appeal for those looking for a scapegoat. But there is little evidence to support it. For one thing, the surge in investment in oil futures is not that large relative to the global trade in oil. Barclays Capital, an investment bank, calculates that “index funds”, which have especially exercised the politicians because they always bet on rising prices, account for only 12% of the outstanding contracts on NYMEX and have a value equivalent to just 2% of the world’s yearly oil consumption.

More importantly, neither index funds nor other speculators ever buy any physical oil. Instead, they buy futures and options which they settle with a cash payment when they fall due. In essence, these are bets on which way the oil price will move. Since the real currency of such contracts is cash, rather than barrels of crude, there is no limit to the number of bets that can be made. And since no oil is ever held back from the market, these bets do not affect the price of oil any more than bets on a football match affect the result.

The market for nickel provides a good illustration of this. Speculative investment in the metal has been growing steadily over the past year, yet its price has fallen by half. By the same token, the prices of several commodities that are not traded on any exchanges, such as iron ore and rice, have been rising almost as fast as that of oil.

Speculators do play an important role in setting the price of oil and other raw materials. But they do so based on their expectations of future trends in supply and demand, not on whims. If they had somehow managed to push prices to unjustified heights, then demand would contract, leaving unsold pools of oil.

The futures market does sometimes signal that prices are likely to rise, which might prompt speculators to hoard oil in anticipation. But it is not signalling that at the moment, and there is no sign of hoarding. In the absence of rising stocks, it is hard to argue that the oil markets have lost their grip on reality.

Some claim that oil producers are in effect hoarding oil below the ground. But there is also little sign of that, either among companies or countries: all big exporters bar Saudi Arabia are pumping as fast as they can.
It takes two to contango

Despite their dismal reputation, the oil speculators provide a vital service. They help airlines and other big oil consumers to hedge against rising prices, and so to reduce risk—a massive boon amid the economic turmoil. By the same token, they provide oil producers with more predictable future revenues, and so allow them to expand more confidently and borrow more cheaply. That, in turn, should help to lower the price of oil in the long run. Any attempt to curtail speculation, by contrast, is likely to make life harder for firms and oil more expensive.

The oil price | Don’t blame the speculators | Economist.com

Given this history, and the fact that recent years have seen a huge flood of speculative money entering the commodity markets—assets in commodity indexes, by some calculations, increased twentyfold between 2003 and the spring of this year—it’s not unreasonable to wonder if there might be something nefarious behind the sharp run-up in oil prices. But there’s little convincing evidence that the oil market is being significantly manipulated. Whatever chicanery is occurring—and we can assume there is some—has only a marginal effect on prices at the pump.

Congress is not, though, just attacking illegal market manipulation; it’s also taking aim at perfectly legal speculation, namely the buying and selling of futures contracts, which are effectively bets that oil prices will go up (or down). Futures contracts can be used by oil sellers (like OPEC ) or oil buyers (like the airlines) to hedge their risks by agreeing to sell or buy oil in the future at a set price. Speculators, by contrast, mostly use futures contracts to gamble on oil prices, and have no interest in buying or selling real barrels of oil. These gambles can be tremendously lucrative, but they don’t directly determine the real (or “spot”) price of oil. That’s set by the people who are buying and selling actual barrels of petroleum. Although speculators could directly distort oil prices by turning their futures contracts into oil and then taking it off the market to drive up prices, a look at oil inventories shows no sign that this is happening.

If speculators aren’t at fault, why have oil prices spiked so high? Fundamental reasons aren’t hard to find. Between 2000 and 2007, world demand for petroleum rose by nearly nine million barrels a day, but OPEC has been consistently unable, or unwilling, to significantly increase supply, and production by non-OPEC members has risen by just four million barrels a day. The prospect of military action against Iran, which would disrupt global supply, seems greater than it did a few years ago. And the plunging value of the dollar has meant that the cost of oil has jumped more in the U.S. in the past year than it has in countries with healthier currencies.

But there’s also something else at work, which the oil guru Daniel Yergin calls a “shortage psychology.” The price of oil—more than that of many other commodities—isn’t based solely on current supply and demand. It’s also based on people’s expectations about future supply and demand, because those expectations determine whether it makes sense for oil producers to sell their oil now or leave it in the ground and sell it later. Currently, the market is assuming that oil will become scarcer, and that global demand will keep rising, especially in rapidly developing countries like China and India. As a result, producers are asking very high prices to pump their oil.

Oily Speculations: Financial Page: The New Yorker: Its Not the Speculators