I attended my last MBA residency for my first semester at the Presidio and on Saturday night I went to the Jewish Community Center in SF which hosted the capstone projects for the graduating class. By far the most impressive for me was a project called "Power Pipe" developed by Lucid Energy Technologies (http://www.lucidenergy.com/) that places generators inside the water pipes that pipe from reservoirs high in the mountains. This solution generates power from renewable sources currently untapped while simulataneously providing the water to communities.

It's a brilliant example of Design Thinking applied to solving unmet needs that help the planet. This kind of ingenious application of creativity and design thinking to sustainability is exactly why I chose the Presidio.

It's highly inspiring and I hope when it comes time for my capstone project I can deliver a positive solution that applies Design Thinking in service of sustainability. As I looked up to the Hebrew on the wall of the JCC and read the letters for "Tikkun Olam" I felt being at the Presidio I was in the right place with the right people at the right time.

I'm at my wit's end with sticking to a running routine and am thinking about doing the unthinkable: buying a running gadget. The kind that tells you how far you've gone, etc. Which gadget do you recommend or not recommend? Be specific (and think inexpensive)!


Edit: Just realized Todd has an iPod nano buried in a box somewhere. Assuming it still works, I'll probably get the Nike + iPod Sports Kit. I'm not into Nike, but this seems to be the cheapest option at about $30. Please advise.

For the past several years, instead of store-bought "stuff", I've given my family cookies and candies for Giftmas. Here's what's on the menu this year:

Mexican Hot Chocolate Snickerdoodles
Pistachio Cream Cheese Fingers (veganized, obviously)
Peanut Butter Cups
Chocolate Truffles

Other Possibilities:
Magic Cookie Bars
peppermint fudge
oatmeal/fruit bars

What are you bakin' this year?

This is a microcausm of what we have to look forward to as we move deeper into the 21st century: http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/30664

As the pressures of Gaia's feedback loops intensify their impact on human civilization, and as the emerging world jockeys for the remaining resources of the planet as they seek to build their own power...expect Great Conflict amongst the "Nations of Men." Welcome to Armageddon... The Wars of the "40 and 80's" Horus proclaims are just getting started.

Ex-Catholics into the occult love the ritual, religiousy elements of it around which one can build community.

Ex-Prostetants into the occult love the technologies and methods of it around which one can build the individual.

Of course there is cross-over.

But my general experience is that most of the religiousy occultists are ex-catholics, and most of those focused more on magick as a technology of indivdiaul self empowerment are ex-protestants.

"I love them which greatly scorn for they also greatly adore; they are arrows of longing for the farther shore."

(Nietzsche From Thus Sprach Zarathustra)

"People need a reference point."
Larry Vineyard


What is the highest good, the Sunom Bonum, the target, the "Star" you've hitched your life to? Where are you trying to go? How will you know if you've arrived? What will you give up freely for it? How do you know it's the highest and best thing your are capable of? What are your limits? What is the greatest destiny you could realize if you tried? What have you sacrificed for it's realization?

These aren't questions were encouraged to ask of ourselves, because if we did, and if we lived a life uncompromisingly committed to answering them, the entire world as we know it would cease to exist....for the very fibers of the world of the profane is based on a sublime and not so sublime lie...for it's very essence of being is based on compromise, on vague refusal to engage the radical core of TRUTH, an evasive distracting attempt to delude the honest hunger of a Child's Pure Heart when it asks? WHY AM I HERE? WHERE DID I COME FROM, WHERE AM I GOING?

The great Gnostic suspicion, that man in his "FALL/Descent" has forgotten...and thus the great act/effort/work of Self Recovery...ASCENSION/the Path of Return.

You can't navigate successfully across the fields of time and space unless the compass of your being is set to the marker of your SOUL aligned with the HOLY MOUNTAIN. And the SOUL is only revealed to ITSELF THROUGH FIRE.

"BURN BRIGHTLY THE FLAMES ENGULF THE DROSS AND PARE AWAY THE SHADOWS REVEALING A CRYSTAL LIGHT AT THE HEART OF THE SUN."

Looked at Thomas Carlson (Dragon Rouge Founder's) book on Qlippoth and Goetia at Fields Books today after my Krav Maga class. Book is basically about:

1.) Tree of Life/Sephiroth/Paths history and how "White Lodges" have used it in GD/OTO, ect...

2.) Tree of Death/Qlippoth/Tunnels of Set How "Spookier and Smarter" people like him and Kenneth Grant use it.

3.) How spooky people like himself and Grant have a better relationship with Goetia vis their deeper knowledge of "Dark Kabballah."

My Take: It's all a bunch of pompous self masturbatory (Qlippothic) exretria from a wannabe "Dark Prophet." Sorry, Mr. Therion lyricist...we've already got Marilyn Manson.


That aside, there's no doubt that an adept with "Head Above the Heavens, Feet Beneath the Hells" needs a deep inner knowing of both the personal and trans personal soul waste that is the Qlippoth.

But Karlson's approach to "Downward" initiation and the "Descent" on the inverse tree seems without any other purpose than out spooking the other "Dark Metal" Satanists of the Nordic Occult scene.

Like Dante, It's fine if you descend into Hell, but you better have your Beatrice (HGA) as a guide to show you how it all fits together vis the larger trajectory of your souls evolution.

Otherwise (no you wont be "Damned") you'll just waste an incredible amount of time, energy, and effort WANKING. Sure, you can have the thrill ride of "Darkness" for lifetimes...it just slows you down. You have to experience Light/Dark Integrate, and TRANSCEND THEM BOTH...ABRAXAS Anyone???

That's not the path Karlson is on. At the end of the day, his work is about providing a vehicle for the Ruach/Persona/Ego complex to WANK ad Naseum vis the Shells with no deeper existential or Ontological trajectory then to be "BADDER than Thou" in the European Occult party circuit. I guess he just landed in Seattle "For the First Time" and is trying to make inroads in the US. I'm sure alot of naive and lost young Goth Chicks will pony up to the table wearing their Dragon Rouge Lipstick. And if that's all he's out to do with his magick, attract Goth Chicks, then I'm sure this book will make him VERY POPULAR in the Goth Club Scene.

For those dumb enough to embrace his take on "Initiation" I can only say, you deserve the teacher and the teachings you get.

Richard P. Chaney

January 17, 1940 -- July 20, 1998



Richard Chaney, AB and PhD from Indiana University (1963, 1971), was a highly regarded member of the anthropology faculty since 1968 until his sudden death from heart failure in July 1998. He held the position of Associate Professor.

Richard Chaney was in many ways the quintessential professor: an avid reader and theoretician in cultural anthropology and comparative methods, an interpreter of exotic cultures and practices, and a successful teacher and an exceptional mentor. Richard was also active in service to the university and the larger community as well as a father greatly committed to his children and family.

Richard was a deep thinker and read widely not just in anthropology but also in psychology and philosophy of science, one of his prime areas of interest. He was developing several major writing projects that continued to expand along with his own intellectual growth: he had been working for some time on a book on a history of anthropology and had completed a major segment of a manuscript on the contexts of creativity. Chaney's writing showed evidence of interdisciplinary thinking, creativity, and fresh viewpoints. His interests in comparative hermeneutics formed the central theme of much of his writing and teaching; but as well he believed strongly in the fundamental importance of the comparative method and was especially well founded in the ethnology of Native North America.

Chaney was an expositor in his approach to teaching; his style was his own and one that inspired many students, these often followed him class after class. He attempted to lead students to make connections among the different disciplines and he was effective in both small seminars and large lecture classes; in either setting, he caused students to think, opened their minds, and helped them deal with abstract issues such as human intentionality, consciousness, and creativity. Chaney had served on more than 80 doctoral dissertation committees and was particularly involved in anthropology and education. He worked with many international students, especially in recent years with ones from Taiwan, where he was held in high regard by his co-researchers at the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, and National Taiwan University in the area of traditional medicine, folk healing and religion.

In these brief notes we cannot hope to sum up or do justice to what Richard brought to the university; however, he was one of our most student-centered professors with strong connections to many diverse sections of the campus from philosophy to education to physics and one who enjoyed working with students as well as debating the role of hermeneutics in science. He will be missed.



William S. Ayres

Professor and Head, Anthropology

Since my mystical experience following my taking the "Red Pill" in 1989 I've found most "Religion" to be problematic. Because of this, one of my focuses in Anthropology was the Anthropology of Religion. I wanted to understand what this massive viral infection called "Religion" is that plagues the minds of humanity on so many, many fronts.

But ye doth protest too much...think of the great art and great cathedrals inspired by ennobled minds....think of the lofty values and ideals, hopes dreams and aspirations....

I didn't say everything is dumb, just that it's mostly dumb.

On the other hand, think of the waste of lives, talent, energy, intelligence, and creativity, siphoned off by the vampiric Language Virus that is mainstream religiosity as embodied by the parasites called religious institutions and religious functionaries that feed on mankind in a never ending cycle of need, greed, and bleed.

The basis of my critique is Gnostic. And yes, we already know the interface between "Esoteric and Exoteric" within a given long gradient of religious tradition...That they interface and inform one another, blah blah...

That said, most religion is based on a superficial relationship between the mind/ego/persona/ and various emotionally charged and communally anchored symbol sets and ritualistic practices. Humans are infected by these symbol sets from birth and it takes a great degree of deconstruction in the form of massive ordeals to ever go underneath the floorboards. Yes, and this is intimately bound up with culture...

Most religions and religious commitments are some how tied to ego driven identity politics wherein the mind/ego aggregate is habitually anchored relative to a referent (I'm a Pagan, I'm a Buddhist, I'm a Christian, I'm a Muslim), blah, blah...

At a deeper level of Gnostic realization, all of this is so much more ephemeral memetic slight of hand.

In stead of wasting our breath on this kind of stuff, we should be pushing for Revelatory Technologies (Yoga, Psychedelics, Meditation) that pierce the veil of the ego/symbol/identity construct and open the door to revelatory Gnosis based on individual understanding shorn of the need for religious officials, institutions, and paradigms. It' time we all woke up, and shucked the training wheels of the soul that is religiousity.

But people need ritual, they need religious community...Do they? I buy the community part, but need it be "religious community." The Ksatriya warrior caste critiqued the Brahmanical Castes over 2000 years ago when they went into the forest (as a community) to practice yoga. They wrote the Upanishads, which to this day trumps most writings on spirituality. Their point was that religion and religious functionaries were basically parasites that made their living defining themselves by symbolic capital and feeding off of their communities to assert their own positions vis a social hierarchy. If you had inner awakening as a yogi or taker of Soma (Red Pill) you saw the smoke and mirrors of this entire side show and the fact that you don't need people like this to guide and direct your life anymore.

Like the Ksatriyas and Forest Yogis who wrote the Upanishads, The sooner we shuck the idea that other people, institutions or paradigms have a better take on God and the Truth then the process of own inner awakening, the sooner we will come to casting off this giant parasite on the evolution of human consciousness called religion.


Of course, this perspective is highly threatening to religions, religiosity, religious functionaries, Brahmans, Priests, Pundits, Pagan Wannabe Cult Leaders, Witch Queens, Buddhist Lama Masters"... Particularly those who make their way in society via the profession of religion. One of the great ideas we get from Shamanism is that their were no full time shamans. Every Shaman subsequently had to hunt, fish, or garden. That is, they had a "Day Job" that made them self reliant and self sufficient, and all of their Shamanic Techniques were and adjunct to that. I think this is a great model and would wipe out a big part of the problem I'm talking about above.


So what kind of a world would it be like without Religion (Not spirituality or Gnosis Mind you)...Imagine.