I know you’ve been asking yourself “What would a teaspoonful of neutron star do to you?” The answer: bad things.

Or you may be asking “Where has Psyche gone?” The answer is: nowhere really. I’ve just been busy. (Sorry.)

As it happens I’m still around, often on Twitter and Facebook, and I recently joined Google+ – which is pretty nifty. I blogged my initial thoughts about G+ over here. (BTW: if you’re intrigued and want an invite let me know and I will hook you up.)

I’ve also been posting reviews on Spiral Nature (see below for the full list of new stuff), and I have a few pieces forthcoming in various occult journals – further details upon publication.

Neat stuff keeps happening, and I want to share it. I don’t know where the time goes.

Here are a few things I’ve found:

• John Coulthart shares HP Loevcraft’s favourite artists over on Tor.com. Among them are Henry Fuseli, Francisco Goya and Sidney Sime. Also included? Lovecraft’s first sketch of Cthulhu. Nifty.
• Kalagni has great advice for sex with angels over on Blue Flame Magick. All the stuff you wanted to know, but were afraid to ask. Pro-tip: plan for bukakke.
• On Enfolding.org, Amy Hale discusses Pagan “Elders”, and challenges the term, even as it’s usage is growing. I’m not a big fan of the term myself, especially when most Pagan “Elders” are self-proclaimed.
• In other news, NewScientist shares a field guide to bullshit in an interview with Stephen Law, regarding his new book, Believing Bullshit. Could be useful. *cough*
• In Austria a Pastafarian has wont he right to wear a pasta strainer in his driver’s license photo. It’s religious headgear, you see.

As mentioned above, since our last Saturday Signal, our sister site has posted a number of new reviews which may be of interest:

• Divine Duality, reviewed by Ryan Valentine
• Defense Against the Dark, reviewed by Gesigewigu’s
• Man-Made Monsters, reviewed by me
• Teachings of the Santeria Gods, reviewed by Lilith Saintcrow
• Gift of the Dreamtime, reviewed by L. D. Taylor
• Witch Hunts, reviewed by Mike Gleason
• Loneliness and Revelation, reviewed by me
• Swami Panchadasi’s Clairvoyance & Occult Powers, reviewed by Gesigewigu’s
• The Weiser Field Guide to the Paranormal, reviewed by Lilith Saintcrow

And that’s the signal for this week.

I’ve missed you guys. What’s new with you?

Saturday Signal: sifting the signal from the noise of the Internet’s occultural cacophony.

With all the news I post about space, how ’bout our home planet?  No, not Pluto this time: Earth. Apparently it’s missing two billion years. Kind of. Well, we are anyway, in that we have no idea what happened for that span of time. Theories abound.

Also, the solar system is about two million years older than we thought.

Science is cool.

• In her blog Know Thyself, T. Thorn Coyle reminds us that commitment and consistency are important in any practice, whether mundane or spiritual, in “Let’s Get Engaged“. You really do earn points just for showing up.

• Charlie Jane Anders asks, “Could self-aware cities be the first forms of artificial intelligence?” on io9. To which we respond, “the first” might be a stretch (servitors, anyone? or egregores, gods, etc?), but that cities can and do become sentient certainly seems reasonable. Let’s just keep an eye out for Skynet, ok?

• US Games, purveyors of the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot Deck (amongst others), now blogs! Fool Stop Tarot Blog is run by Janet, their social media person, who also maintains their Twitter account and Facebook page. Everyone’s so Web 2.0.

• Sannion (H. Jeremiah Lewis) writes in The House of Vines, “Speaking about the unspeakable“, that the old mysteries are dead, and that’s ok. We can’t reconstruct the past as it was, and that’s fine. Learning what was is great, but it’s not where we are now. Live life. Great stuff.

I had tons more links to share, but time intervened, so next week’s Signal will likely be double-sized. You’re welcome.

As always, if you come across anything nifty, please share it in the comments, or if you use delicious tag it “ahrfoundation” and we’ll take a look. Thanks!

I’ve been making gradual updates to blog functionality and thought I ought to let you know what changes have been implemented, and ask your thoughts on whether this improves things, or if you have other suggestions.

WordPress Upgrade

ahrfoundation.org runs on WordPress, and on June 17th we upgraded to WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious” along with a significant portion of the blogging world.

Only a few of you may notice any differences, those who log in to comment (which is not a requirement for this site), and those who log in for guest posts. On the front end everything looks pretty much the same, and behind the scenes the changes are minimal, though there are over 1200 bug fixes and other enhancements that took place between this and the last WordPress release.

Indeed, with the insane amount of new customization options now available a new theme upgrade may be in order in the coming months.

Geeze, it doesn’t seem like that long since our last redesign, but I guess it was almost a year ago.

New Features

Liking comments

This feature was actually implemented a few months ago after a particular discussion took place where I felt that rather than repeating myself or others in the thread, it would be helpful if readers and commentators could “like” a particular response.

So, now you can.

There is no “dislike” button because I feel, as a rule, you guys are pretty civil about how you interact with each other and there’s simply no need for it. If you dislike what someone’s saying, a reasoned response is almost always more helpful than noting a negative sentiment. Continue reading »