Frolix-8

Which PKD Story Are We In Today ?

Your Friday Sign of the Times

The Hood Maker - "Not only could the cell phone signals alter a person's behavior during the call, the effects of the disrupted brain-wave patterns continued long after the phone was switched off."

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said - " "We want to put the issue to rest," he said, noting that all along, the FBI only wanted to talk to the men."

Radio Free Albemuth - "Mike Schuck, chief executive of AABC, says that theft by members of staff costs the British economy billions of pounds each year and rejects the notion that the register is a blacklist."

Sales Pitch - "If you’re gonna say, ‘Buy my insurance because of these boobs,’ I say ‘No thanks.’ But if you say, ‘What’s more Brazilian than a naked Brazilian and her Brazilian drink,’ I say, ‘What time’s happy hour.’ "

VALIS - "Case two was a 62-year-old surfer. He heard the opening bars of Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Child for six months, when there was really no sound there. This man had mild deafness and smoked cannabis but otherwise had no other relevant medical history."

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - "And the only thing that'll be able to help them... is a fleet of flying trucks that look an awful lot like beefed-up versions of Star Wars' land speeders."

Farcebook

Second Variety - "...this August, we'll see an unmanned buggy that can analyze a gunman's movements, a self-propelled, remote-controlled camera and minuscule helicopters used for reconnaissance missions."

We Can Remember It For You Wholesale - "Hoffman is on a quest to find his memories and figure out why the people he's killed keep coming back to life."

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--- Dick-Headline --- First-Ever Example of a Computer Hack Attacking People's Brains

"Once you wiped away my tears and cleaned my grated knees. You hang-glide with the Numanoids and stopped my rare disease - the one in which I get these silly visions in my mind and have to write them all down for the nurse." Half Man Half Biscuit, Numanoid Hang-glide (This Leaden Pall, Probe Plus Records 1993)

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Which PKD Story Are We In Today ?

Johan Lorbeer

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - "The Carry On installation features a series of suitcases fitted with robotic arms and micro-cameras which survey their surroundings. Why did you feel the necessity to develop a work that explores surveillance and paranoia?"

The World Jones Made - "One of the things art should do is make you think and question things."

The Impossible Planet - "Humanity, the pack of glorified monkeys that we are, has decided to see no evil. Places that might have never been seen by human eyes are already full of our refuse."

Shell Game - "What if your cell phone calls, your television, your GPS system, even your bank transactions, could be taken out with a single missile?" the military ad asks. "They can."

Dr. Bloodmoney - "Eventually the notion of setting off hydrogen bombs in orbit started to seem like a bad idea."

Radio Free Albemuth - "The main theme of the book, as detailed in chapter 1 is critical awareness."

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said - "The programme in Essex has been successful, even though it may raise human rights issues about such tough tactics, especially if those harassed by the police have not been found guilty of any criminal offence."

A Scanner Darkly - "This argument over drug classification is distracting attention away from where the real and substantive debate on whether drugs should be illegal or regulated." AND "If the mayor is expecting tube and bus staff to confiscate people's drinks then they are effectively being forced into a policing role for which they are not trained."

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--- Dick-Headline --- Dance, Robot Snake Girl, Dance!

"The lady in red hides under the bed from her husband who quotes Chubby Brown." Half Man Half Biscuit, He Who Would Valium Take (Voyage To The Bottom Of The Road, Probe Plus Records 1997)

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Which PKD Story Are We In Today ?

America, by dog'S faint!!

We Can Remember It For You Wholesale - "So, if we dared, could we use the resources of modern science to improve human memory?"

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said - "Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe."

Sales Pitch - "One could even argue that it’s a classy spot. Why? Because I would have expected Axe to show two women rubbing sunscreen all over each other, possibly while watching prison porn."

The Mold of Yancy - "Yummy, yummy rich people. What a tool she is. Never mind that she was against a gas tax holiday in 2000."

Farcebook

The Zap Gun - "In development for more than 30 years, the research is beginning to bear fruit, and may soon spawn more powerful bombs, warheads that tear apart stone and concrete, mines that can be set to stun or kill, and grenades that can swat rockets or mortar rounds out of the sky like flies."

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep ? - "The device has been used seven times, and has been shown to provide very stable anesthesia to patients."

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--- Dick-Headline --- Space is compressed by a fast turn of your head

"I should have just got a job on the bins. The pay’s better and I’d know some hard blokes. And I wouldn’t have to pretend that I know what 'rhetorical' means." Half Man Half Biscuit, Lark Descending (Editor's Recommendation, Probe Plus Records 2001)

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Which PKD Story Are We In Today ?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep ? - "- Replicants will produce realistic chain of events between many users without explicit scripting behavior.

- Replicants must be capable of implementing multiple user roles similar to roles found on operational networks."

Ubik - "Get ready to pay atelier sneaker prices for these babies, because designer MSTRPLN (not to be confused with MSTRKRFT) and Ubiq (not to be confused with Ubiquio) teamed up to produce some straight black Nike Dunks with built-in WiFi detection. It's called A Step in the Right Direction, and we might actually agree."

The World Jones Made - "Why the seal attempted to have sex with the penguin is unclear."

Foster, You're Dead ! - "What we do know is that somebody, somewhere in 2005 was expecting to deal with radioactivity -- and being sold inadequate protective gear to do. So the mystery is: Where did the vest come from?"

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--- Dick-Headline --- Massive Attack Makes Blade Runner Melt Down

"I've got a better frown than Tony Iommi." Half Man Half Biscuit, 4AD3DCD (This Leaden Pall, Probe Plus Records 1993)

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Which PKD Story Are We In Today ?

Monday is Dark-Haired Girl Day

The World Jones Made - "Muslims at the provisional mosque in a derelict supermarket on the other side of town are feeling under siege."

The Golden Man - "Kintaro (a.k.a. “Golden Boy”), a popular child folk hero embodying strength and bravery..."

Sales Pitch - "I assume it’s a female sex enhancer, or some manner of potion that makes you shrink and hallucinate."

The Zap Gun - "It all sounds pretty gruesome, and when you realize that he's describing about the generation of high-pressure shockwaves around the retina, it sounds like he's talking about a weapon which will make eyeballs explode."

A Scanner Darkly - "Activity in the orbitfrontal cortex, which is thought to be responsible for feelings of dread and anxiety, quickly shut down."

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--- Dick-Headline --- Robot Planes Target Smithsonian

"So, to sum things up, we must act soon. ‘Cause at high noon a tyrannical loon is going to flip and blast us all to probable bits." Half Man Half Biscuit, A Song For Europe (Some Call It Godcore, Probe Plus Records 1995)

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Which PKD Story Are We In Today ?

Confessions of a Crap Artist - "There's aliens, real-life aliens on a wall," one unidentified girl said. "No one believes us."

The World Jones Made - "They believe it will make their children strong and say no accidents have ever happened."   [ link to video which plays automatically ]

The Simulacra - "Professor Nutt says that psychotherapies are not tested by the same strict criteria faced by drug treatments."

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep ? - "Detecting emotional cues is hardly a new endeavor, but this so-called Robometer concept device takes a slightly different (but not entirely unique) approach to things, with it actually promising to help you feel happy by prompting you when you stray too far into tediousness."

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--- Dick-Headline --- Is Cheap Video Surveillance Possible?

"I keep well away from places where they tend to wear glasses I am certain they don't really need to wear." Half Man Half Biscuit, On Passing Lilac Urine (Editor's Recommendation, Probe Plus Records 2001)

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Which PKD Story Are We In Today ?

The Electric Ant - "Vetting a chip with a hidden agenda can't be all that tough, right? Wrong."

The Penultimate Truth - "...new research suggests that comparing a current situation with an even worse atrocity comes with a price - it desensitises our judgment of future moral violations."

A Scanner Darkly - "If you wanted a sure sign that the Orwell-ization of Great Britain is underway, then look no further than this."

Second Variety - "The idea is that a variety of crawling or flying mini-droids will be produced, able to go into situations where human troops might fear to tread..."

The Unreconstructed M - "Watch as a modular robot made by scientists at the University of Pennsylvania reassembles itself when kicked apart."

Survey Team - "It would be good news if we find Mars to be sterile. Dead rocks and lifeless sands would lift my spirit."

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--- Dick-Headline --- $160 Billion Robotic Army Network Passes First Big Test. Kinda.

"I want the hand-held pumps. I want the Sci-Fi meet. I want Dave and Marjorie to refer me to the blackboard." Half Man Half Biscuit, C.A.M.R.A. Man (Voyage To The Bottom Of The Road, Probe Plus Records 1997)

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Which PKD Story Are We In Today ?

The Hanging Stranger - "The 47-year-old academic says he wasn't even aware alcoholic lemonade existed when he and Leo stopped at a concession stand on the way to their seats in Section 114."

The Zap Gun - "Laser Guided Energy is a transformational weapon technology by which a controllable high voltage electric charge can be precisely guided by a laser through the atmosphere to induce a range of controllable effects against a variety of potential military and security targets." AND "Gaubatz says he saw first hand the military testing the ray gun on... goats."

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep ? - "A long-range study being presented at the upcoming meeting of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons demonstrates how patients, over a 10-year period with brain implants, gained increasing control over their moods and obsessive behaviors."

Not By Its Cover - "I think it would be helpful to have a version of this printer that has a dial that would let you choose how long the print lasted. An hour, a day, a month - you pick."

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--- Dick-Headline --- South Korea to Build Robot Cities by 2013

" 'Milky drink and Sudafed, that should sort you out,' she said." Half Man Half Biscuit, Restless Legs (Achtung Bono, Probe Plus Records 2005)

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Which PKD Story Are We In Today ?

Christophe Huet

Faith Of Our Fathers - "Now a group of researchers with the United States Department of Energy are studying the drug, watching how it affects the brains of non-human primates, to find out if it has any therapeutic value."

The World Jones Made - "Art is life, life is art."

The Penultimate Truth - "Israel's newest soldier."

Solar Lottery - "How you appear in the virtual world could affect your behavior in real life, according to researchers at Stanford University."

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--- Dick-Headline --- Kid, Meet Your Old Man (and his Robot Body)

"Say 'hello, spinal curvature'. Get used to the mirthless furniture. Now we've kissed, I've written this list - I thought you ought to know..." Half Man Half Biscuit, Them's The Vagaries (Cammell Laird Social Club, Probe Plus Records 2002)

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Which PKD Story Are We In Today ?

Monday is Dark-Haired Girl Day

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said - "Now it turns out that the new agreement allows for the countries to swap data on suspects' ethnic origin, religious beliefs and union membership -- and even sex lives."

Clans of the Alphane Moon - "Atrapados: La enfermedad mental en las cárceles estadounidenses."

A Scanner Darkly - "Border security officials believe the machines can do a better job than humans of screening passports and preventing identity fraud."

Dr. Futurity - "The new material could help save lives on the battlefield and in civilian situations, where trauma victims often bleed to death before they can be transported to a hospital or other medical facility."

The Electric Ant - "The MACS project does not attempt to get robots to perceive what something is, but how it can be used."

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - "The new 'bionic eye' device uses a special prosthetic that sits on the surface of the eye; thirty electrodes pass on the image data."

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--- Dick-Headline --- Why Do Anti-Heroes Rule Science Fiction?

"I'm Slim Shady. I'm the real Slim Shady. The other Slim Shady's gone to play tennis." Half Man Half Biscuit, On Passing Lilac Urine (Editor's Recommendation, Probe Plus Records 2001)

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Which PKD Story Are We In Today ?

Clans of the Alphane Moon - "According to Moeller and her co-workers, the new finding goes a step further by showing that having a dominant personality can actually bias people towards the vertical dimension."

A Scanner Darkly - "It will provide the most sophisticated armor of any major urban area in the world — one that relies on brains as much as brawn, on barely visible technology as much as brute stopping power."

The Crack In Space - "Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, coming back from the brink to reunite and populate the world. Truly an epic drama, written in our DNA."

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - "So these quacks will start selling mobile apps that promise to "focus" cell phone radiation to certain regions of your brain that you want to develop more quickly."

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--- Dick-Headline --- Robotic soccer players seek to challenge humans by 2050

"When you're holding tea and toast and there's no-one else about, do you switch the kitchen light off with your chin?" Half Man Half Biscuit, Lock Up Your Mountain Bikes (Look Dad No Tunes, Probe Plus Records 1999)

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Which PKD Story Are We In Today ?

Confessions of a Crap Artist - "The really weird thing? The lights also look exactly like a scene from Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

We Can Build You - "Fludihand is also designed to have a more natural feel than previous prosthetics..."

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - "What is it like to look through a "bionic eye?" "

Nanny - "The REEM robots are evolving fast..."

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep ? - "One of our favorite bots, Honda's versatile ASIMO, will finally spread its wings and embrace the artistic future it's always hoped for."

The Penultimate Truth - "Look Japan, we know you love your robots but is it really prudent to equip them with them frigging laser beams? Why not just hand them maps to our vital organs and special hoses to juice our babies?"

The Hood Maker - "A quick pulse on the belly could mean stop; a zap on the shoulder could mean go. The signals would be sent from a haptic glove, up to 100 yards away."

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--- Dick-Headline --- Robots closer to domination with 'Bum Bot'

"Some say, some day, one of these fine nights, the council's gonna ask Radiohead to switch off Blackpool lights." Half Man Half Biscuit, On Passing Lilac Urine (Editor's Recommendation, Probe Plus Records 2001)

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Which PKD Story Are We In Today ?

Stability - "Terms like "police state" are hurled around..."

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said - "Quickly a woman and a guy wearing BARGAIN MADNESS shirts joined in the melee and forcibly grabbed my friend and held him against his will. We were both informed that street photography was illegal in the town."

The Minority Report - "The new system, which will be available from Tuesday in Japan, will rate districts by level of risk."

The Transmigration of Timothy Archer - "How would prospective clients be influenced by information presented by a psychologist at the outset of therapy regarding the psychologists' personal religious background?"

Galactic Pot-Healer - "Behavioural evidence suggests that cephalopod molluscs may have a form of primary consciousness."

A Scanner Darkly - "If you live in the city of Bath in the UK and carry a Bluetooth-enabled device, your movements may have been secretly monitored..."

We Can Build You - "The military has been working on regrowing lost body parts using extracellular matrices and scientists in labs have grown blood vessels, livers, bladders, breast implants, and meat..."

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--- Dick-Headline --- Poignant killbots want peace

"Praise the lord, you all look so beautiful. Bulging waistcoats, thirty inch of neck." Half Man Half Biscuit, The Len Ganley Stance (Back In The D.H.S.S., Probe Plus Records 1985)

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Which PKD Story Are We In Today ?

A Scanner Darkly - "This confirms that this Government is happy to hand over potentially huge amounts of information on British citizens under the catch-all pretext of 'national security'."

James P. Crow - "It's suggesting that the jobs of 3.5 million people in Japan could be filled not with younger folks, but with mechanical creatures by 2025."

Mr. Spaceship - "This is a Prostethetic Commando, a robot whose processor is a human brain taken from a felled soldier or police officer."

The Minority Report - "Like the Minority Report notion of "pre-crime," where someone is convicted for contemplating a criminal act they haven't yet acted upon, this article raises the intriguing question of whether a soldier could be convicted for the mistake made by a pre-conscious brain wave."

The World Jones Made - "The sewing ritual helped me come to terms with the fact that events in my life are not always within my control, and that sometimes I am subject to the uncontrollable forces of the world."

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--- Dick-Headline --- Would you elect the president via text message? 61 percent say 'Y'

"Boring though this film may be, slumber still won't visit me..." Half Man Half Biscuit, Restless Legs (Achtung Bono, Probe Plus Records 2005)

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Which PKD Story Are We In Today ?

Monday is Dark-Haired Girl Day

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said - "The application delivers a real-time feed of police news and appeals for information."

Foster, You're Dead ! - "If you're selling radiation fallout shelters these days, you have to target isolationist kooks. But there was a time when they were a mainstream product."

The Man In The High Castle - "A single village in China is responsible for cranking out 60% of the world's paintings."

The Mold of Yancy - "To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world."

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--- Dick-Headline --- Libet Redux: Free will takes another hammering

"Michael Ball or The Fall, I can listen to them all." Half Man Half Biscuit, Irk The Purists (Trouble Over Bridgwater, Probe Plus Records 2000)

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Which PKD Story Are We In Today ?

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said - "I wasn't very pleased because I was taken through the crowd and through the barriers at the front and people were probably thinking 'I wonder what he was doing.' "

The Transmigration of Timothy Archer - "Just as God can't be seen directly, neither can the guru's perfection. It has to be taken on faith. And believe me, many disciples do."

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - "An automated device has been developed that evolves a biological molecule in just a few days."

Clans of the Alphane Moon - "Further evidence that emotions are in the driving seat of morality surfaces when people are probed on why they take their particular moral positions."

Solar Lottery - "The procedure, which does not involve puncturing the cortex, places an electrode sheet at the central sulcus, a fold across the center of the brain near the primary motor cortex (which is responsible for planning and executing movements)."

Beyond Lies The Wub - "The department is investigating a report that deputies used a Taser electric stun weapon on a cat at Theo Lacy jail, a department spokesman said today. A cat’s corpse was later found on the jail grounds in Orange."

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--- Dick-Headline --- Feds Charge California Woman With Stealing IDs From the Dead

"If I'd've known they were coming, I'd've slashed me wrists." Half Man Half Biscuit, Paintball's Coming Home (Voyage To The Bottom Of The Road, Probe Plus Records 1997)

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Which PKD Story Are We In Today ?

Self-Illumination

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep ? - "...thanks to building blocks developed by European researchers, machines that ‘feel’ may no longer be confined to science fiction."

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - "The church uses a powerful hallucinogen called ayahuasca as a sacrament."

The Minority Report - "Although international law does not create a per se prohibition on the use of these weapons, the potential misuse of such weapons radically challenges traditional notions of criminal responsibility by effacing the distinction between thought and act."

The Crack In Space - "Critics have contended that the machine could produce a black hole that could eat the Earth or something equally catastrophic."

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--- Dick-Headline --- Looking for Life on Other Planets? Look in the Mirror

"They say, 'Plenty more fish'. I say, 'Amoco Cadiz'." Half Man Half Biscuit, Keeping Two Chevrons Apart (Four Lads Who Shook The Wirral, Probe Plus Records 1998)

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