Teeming Links – July 12, 2013

Image courtesy of Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

This week, a change in format: The Teeming Brain’s long-running “Recommended Reading” series will henceforth be titled “Teeming Links.” It will also shift to a streamlined format that does away with the former practice of including extensive excerpts and publication information from the linked items. I want to curate and share lots of fascinating, valuable, troubling, and sometimes necessary news, essays, videos, podcasts, and other things with you, and with multiple competing responsibilities and commitments continuing to mount in my life, this is one way to further facilitate that.

So, without further ado, here’s today’s entry:

NSA PRISM: George Orwell’s ‘1984’ is flying off the shelves (UPI)
“1984” book sales skyrocket following NSA surveillance scandal — sales rise 7000 percent.

Bilderberg Group? No conspiracy, just the most influential group in the world (The Telegraph)
Conspiracy theorists claim it is a shadow world government. Former leading members tell the Telegraph it was the most useful meeting they ever went to and it was crucial in forming the European Union. Today (June 6, 2013), the Bilderberg Group meets in Britain.

Tired of helping the CIA? Quit Facebook, Venezuela minister urges (Reuters)

‘Quit Google, Facebook’ suggests tech expert as surveillance scandal deepens (Wired)

Uri Geller psychic spy? The spoon-bender’s secret life as a Mossad and the CIA agent revealed (Independent.ie)

The Masters of Deception (Paul Levy for Reality Sandwich)
If we don’t understand that our current world crisis has its roots within and is an expression of the human psyche, and instead become entranced into believing that the many problems we face as a species have a concrete, objective and extra-psychic origin, we are doomed to unconsciously repeat and continually re-create endless suffering and destruction in more and more amplified form, as if we are having a recurring nightmare.

The Greatest Epidemic Sickness Known to Humanity (Paul Levy for Reality Sandwich)
Wetiko/malignant egophrenia is a disease of civilization, or lack thereof. The wetiko virus is the root cause of the inhumanity in human nature, or shall we say, our seemingly inhuman nature. This “psychic virus,” a “bug” in “the system,” in-forms and animates the madness of so-called civilization, which, in a self-perpetuating feedback loop feeds the madness within ourselves.

An intriguing consciousness theory, but skeptics want evidence (NBC News)
The idea that consciousness arises from quantum mechanical phenomena in the brain is intriguing, yet lacks evidence, scientists say.

Our Undue Focus on Long Life (The Atlantic)
Americans are living longer but not necessarily better.

“Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”: The new warrior cop is out of control (Salon)
SWAT teams raiding poker games and trying to stop underage drinking? Overwhelming paramilitary force is on the rise.

Strange Sightings in New Milford: Extraterrestrial or Not? (Litchfield County Times, Connecticut)
“Eight eye witnesses saw a caravan of unidentifiable flying vehicles in the Northville corridor of Litchfield County over Route 202,” they wrote in an e-mail to The Litchfield County Times.

Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities’ Riches (The New York Times)
The next big idea in language, history and the arts? Data.