An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together …

• “‘Moorish American national’ charged with trying to take mansion” — Dan Morse, Washington Post [HT Technoccult]
  

  “Taking part in an odd and perplexing phenomenon popping up in cities across the country, Butler said the Bethesda mansion belonged to him because he is a Moorish American National. He’d drawn up paperwork that he said proved it all, with references to a 1787 peace treaty and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.”

• “Nostradamus and his pot of jam” — Giles Foden, The Guardian [HT Watkins Books]
  

  “if a man were to have a little of it in his mouth, and while having it in his mouth kissed a woman, or a woman him, and expelled it with his saliva, putting some of it in the other’s mouth, it would suddenly cause … a burning of her heart to perform the love-act”

• “How to create an eBook the open source way” — Bryan Behrenshausen, opensource.com; from the get-to-it dept.
  

  “The method I outline here reflects two desires: to create open eBooks in open formats using open tools, and to avoid unnecessary complication by involving as few of these tools as possible.”

• “It’s time to start teaching philosophy as a formal subject in our secondary schools” — Steven Lydon, The Irish Times; from the I-think-therefore-I-can-can dept.
  

  “Not teaching philosophy is a bit like not teaching English. People will do it anyway; they’ll just do it badly. More than any other discipline, philosophy teaches you how to think well. Rigour and creativity are consciously being developed and the subject enables you to make a clear distinction between true and false.”

• “THE LAST DAYS OF ALEISTER CROWLEY, THE GREAT BEAST, AT HASTINGS” — Rodney Davies [also]; from the expect-consignment-of-frozen-meat dept.
  

  “In 1975, while staying at Hastings, England, with my aunt, I was fortunate enough to be introduced by her to Kathleen (or ‘Johnny’) Symonds, a charming widow in her 60s, who had not only been Aleister Crowley’s last landlady but who was with him when he died in 1947.”

• “An Early Christian Cryptogram?” — Duncan Fishwick, CCHA, Report, 26 (1959), 29-41
  

  “A vigorous and protracted debate has been illuminated from time to time by the brilliant researches of modern archaeology; but despite almost eighty years of academic controversy no conclusive solution has yet been found to the mystery of the ‘magic square’.”

• “Man charged with blowing up family dog” — Lisa Balick and KOIN 6 News Staff; from the is-god-to-live-in-a-dog? dept.
  

  “A father with children in the house who was preparing for ‘the Rapture’ blew up his family’s Labrador Retriever because the devil was inside the dog, court documents showed.”

• “He Wears the Ring of Baphomet” — Femi Fani-Kayode, SpyGhana.com; from the groovin-up-slowly dept.
  

  “He destroys their restrictive thought-processes and their cool rationality with his burning sex appeal, his unrestrained and raw power and his primitive passion. Once he has ravaged them and had his wicked way they cannot let him go. They alone must enjoy the sheer pleasure that his tireless weapon and insatiable tongue brings. This man stirs passions that no mortal is meant to stir. He is a labial lover. He is a burning fire. He is a danger to women. And he wears the ring of the Baphomet.”

• The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories: A blog about the psychology of conspiracy theory beliefs [HT Egil Asprem]
  

  “In this study we found that conspiracist comments were much more likely to argue against the official account than in favour of their own interpretation. Conversely, conventionalist (anti-conspiracist) comments were more likely to argue in favour of their own interpretation than against the conspiracy theories. This result agrees with our theory that belief in conspiracy theories can be more accurately characterised as a disbelief in official or received explanations — that the content of the conspiracy theory doesn’t matter as much as the fact that it opposes whatever the official explanation is. The focus is not on promoting an alternative explanation, but in debunking the official story.” [via]