Just to review some recent writings:

I've been surveying more of the conspiracy literatures c/o
Laughing Horse Books and Video Collective. One starts to
get the flavor (not always savory, some better than others).

Koski had mentioned the Vatican and Masons, not just me,
and one has to bring these along in one's stories, or
perhaps one is not challenged to do so. When it comes
to curriculum writing and the K-16 system of public
education in the USA, there's rather inevitable overlap
with many of the subcultures, not excluding the Church of
the Subgenius, recently acknowledged here for having a
special relationship with Devo (we'd been listening to
Jocko Homo).

Where I connect the Vatican into my recent projects is
through the previous Pope's visit to Cuba, about which a lot
might be said and written. Both the Cuban Revolution and
the Vatican may be interested in raising funds through a
kind of educational gaming enterprise, as the latter is not
inconsistent with the core ideological formulae of either.
The business model is not about money changing in the temple.
It's closer to church bingo, but does more with simulations
that reward skillful play. I've spelled out a lot of the
philosophy in my Coffee Shops Network journal and boot track.

True, many Cubans had a bad experience with those casinos,
run by organized crime, the headquarters of which then
moved to Las Vegas. However the word "casino" does not
dictate what games, if any, get played within. Check out
the casino on Catalina and its history, if you don't believe
me (Catalina being an island off the coast of Los Angeles).

I also mentioned about containing the dogma of Corporate
Personhood, mentioned in Grunch of Giants and taken up in
'Unequal Protection' by Thom Hartmann. There's a subculture
that believes in such Persons, but those superstitions need
not propagate to the entire world unchallenged. If Ben and
Jerry's was to set up shop in Havana, perhaps as a manufacturing
plant, then its API in terms of objects, vis-a-vis the
surrounding ecosystem-economics, might need to be designed
somewhat from scratch, perhaps in Python computer code.

Keeping the product high quality, and preserving a sense of
good will among the public, towards the company image and name,
would be two important goals of the project. In the meantime,
other, more ephemeral jobs, such as making S3 cartoons, might
engage a network of studios from Austin to Portland to Honolulu
to Singapore to... just imagine some web. Havana could have a
piece of that action as well, given the ravenous appetite of
the public schools for these technical animations (why I call
Portland "toon town" is because we make them too).

That's about where I'd come to. I took back "mitey-cigars" as
too resonant with tobacco mites.

I've been running this all by a number of people in my zip code,
including fellows associated with the Linus Pauling House.

They're also aware of my work to counter the Qyooban Embargo.

Regarding the Masons, my approach there was to acknowledge that
McMenamins, a local brew pub and theater network, has done a
great job of perpetuating some of the Masonic spirit, simply by
treating the inherited properties with respect and with a "gay
science" (an alchemy, traces to Nietzsche etc.). Cozier relations
with Cuba might earn McMenamins an inside track on Cuban cigars,
to be sold legally through its cigar bars and gift shops.

Then there was Operation Padlock and the proposal that Princeton
be more stringent in granting philosophy credentials -- gotta have
some 'o that buckaneer lit.

Of course I'm aware that the conspiracy literature tends to pit
Catholics and Masons against one another. There's been some
competitive recruiting, I'm sure that's true, and some ugly events.
I'm not going to sort through all that stuff here. I've reviewed
'Da Vinci Code' (the movie version) and tried to do my share of
homework regarding all the historical feuding that goes on.
I think the future is not always saddled with the karma of the
past, though karma does entail a kind of inertia and forward
propagation of consequences.

I'm not unaware of inertia, lets put it that way.

I hope this little summary has proved somewhat enlightening.

Kirby

Note: S3 cartoons (mentioned above): that's somewhat esoteric but
refers to a genre designed to impress people with the positively
logical features associated with triangular and tetrahedral
mensuration. I've filed briefings to mathfuture and places
regarding the Island Civilization and/or Martian Civilization we
might script around. An undersea civilization might combine
these elements. My 'Heuristics for Teachers' on Wikieducator,
designed for math teachers in Quaker schools etc., gives a lot
more background.