From Clifford Bean, President of the Society for the Exploration of the Strange Uncharted Mountains
Greetings!
A whispered welcome to our readers near and far.
I am President of the Society for the Exploration of the Strange Uncharted Mountains, just outside of Nibbling, Minnesota, where the author of this web site, Chow Non Phat, is currently hiding out in the foothills.
You may find this clandestine web site a little rough in spots. There’s a lot here, and we’re needing to inform you about copyright concerns.
But first, we’d like to give a special thanks to our sister organization, the Royal Queen Victoria Society of Nibbling, Minnesota, for their support and encouragement in our continued effort.
You are probably wondering why we “Nibblers” became involved in this effort. After all, a Chinese Intelligence Agent is involved, and understandably, you’ll view him as an enemy, don’t cha know?
Trust me, we are as patriotic as anywhere in America. Our friends are a united front! Thrown together in our human predicament, we are true grit.
How it all came aboot is a story worth telling. It all started with Hector Klumpp, a native of Nibbling like myself, and one of my oldest friends. We are very proud of Hector, who is the founder of the ever expanding, nationally popular family, the Nihilist Lites of America.
Well, before the Nihilist Lites of America came aboot and Hector became famous, he met Chow Non Phat and they became best friends. Hector, like so many of us here in Nibbling, Minnesota, was a Beefy Nihilist. It was Chow who influenced Hector and encouraged him to begin to think more broadly.
If you’ve heard of Hector, the rest you know — how Hector’s growing popularity led to his invitation to become Commandante of the Border Patrol in the Department of the Public Square, where he served for a short time in both the Obama and Trump administrations.
This is where Chow came onto the radar screens of so many Americans. When Hector was appointed to the Border Patrol, he asked for help from his best friend Chow. This led to Chow getting appointed as the official liaison of the Chinese government to that cabinet level department. This was before, of course, Hector knew he was a spy.
Chow’s appointment is how many of us here in Nibbling came to become friends with him, and the woman he loves, Paula Wong, who once was a famous actress in Hollywood. You may have seen her in that hit movie, The Wondrous Wolf Warrior Woman. She is the bomb!
But oh fur jeez! all that was before everything got so crazy — before Hector got fired from the Trump administration, before Chow was exposed as a spy and everything blew up, don’t cha know? Now that Hector has been arrested, Chow and Paula are both on the run (please believe me, they are not the bad guys here). So, Chow has asked us to play a role in helping him in his effort to spread this research to Christians in America.
Chow’s reasons for desiring for this research to spread (which he’ll explain herein) are both personal and world-wide. He is concerned with saving lives.
And so are we.
The more people who read research, the better; for the life of our beloved country may depend upon this innovative way of seeing.
But there is something else we need to tell you about all this.
As you’ll see, it is full of quotes. And there is an issue we’re trying to deal with related to all these quotes. Marshall Artz, who is our Pro Bono legal consultant in this effort – which is a service he often provides because he loves U2 — informed us that our use of quotes on this website — may violate our copyright laws in America.
But, he also believes this may fit with an exception to those rules. He then introduced us to what is called the Fair Use Doctrine …
Fair use is a doctrine in the law of the United States that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to balance the interests of copyright holders with the public interest in the wider distribution and use of creative works by allowing as a defense to copyright infringement claims certain limited uses that might otherwise be considered infringement.
….
Examples of fair use in United States copyright law include commentary, search engines, criticism, parody, news reporting, research, and scholarship. Fair use provides for the legal, unlicensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author’s work under a four-factor test.
And there is a key factor in determining whether the fair use doctrine applies…
The first factor is “the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes.” To justify the use as fair, one must demonstrate how it either advances knowledge or the progress of the arts through the addition of something new.
….
A key consideration in recent fair use cases is the extent to which the use is transformative. In the 1994 decision Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music Inc,[11] the U.S. Supreme Court held that when the purpose of the use is transformative, this makes the first factor more likely to favor fair use.[12] Before the Campbell decision, federal Judge Pierre Leval argued that transformativeness is central to the fair use analysis in his 1990 article, Toward a Fair Use Standard.
And here is something Judge Leval wrote in that article:
I believe the answer to the question of justification turns primarily on whether, and to what extent, the challenged use is transformative. The use must be productive and must employ the quoted matter in a different manner or for a different purpose from the original. …[If] the secondary use adds value to the original—if the quoted matter is used as raw material, transformed in the creation of new information, new aesthetics, new insights and understandings—this is the very type of activity that the fair use doctrine intends to protect for the enrichment of society.
“Toward a Fair Use Standard“, 103 Harv. L. Rev. 1105, Quoted in Toward a Fair Use Standard, Wikipedia
And that has been our experience. Transformative. Chow has introduced us to such a different way of seeing the unfolding drama in America and the world, that it helped us to think more broadly.
We know, of course, that you may think of us as some kind of “Minnesota extremist nutcase”, but maybe this will help you see more clearly…
Extremism is not only a potential defense of liberty; it’s also often the source of new ideas and decision paths that aren’t visible to the mainstream. Most significant social change first takes the form of an “extreme” position, far from the centrist fifty yard-line of conventional wisdom. A society where extreme positions are not granted a meaningful voice is a society incapable of fundamental change.
Steven Johnson, Farsighted
And one of Chow’s most important questions is what all of us here in Nibbling, Minnesota are wondering too…
How will this all turn out here in America?
But, it’s especially haunting for us… because daily we see those Strange Uncharted Mountains, near where Chow and Paula are hiding out.
And if you really want a haunting experience, hang out with them (though I’ll never disclose their location) under the ocean of stars visible at night. Chow and Paula have been blown away by the experience.
Unlike me, they are experienced world travelers, and they tell me the stars at night in the Strange Uncharted Mountains is a view of the cosmos that is unlike anything they’ve seen anywhere else in the world. Paula gave a good description to me the other day. She told me, “It’s like standing under a rushing waterfall: impossible not to get wet.”
It’s strange, I know. But, that’s how it is in the Strange Uncharted Mountains.
And if you ever have an interest in taking a trip up into them, our prices are astronomical! You’re sure to get lost in the uncertainty and come out drenched in mystery. Feel free to contact us at The Society for the Exploration of the Strange Uncharted Mountains.
Clifford Bean
President, The Society for the Exploration of the Strange Uncharted Mountains
P.S. Here are a couple of our ads, along with one from our pro bono lawyer friend, Marshall Artz:
Can you see this duck rabbit?
If so, you might have the kind of vision
necessary for a great adventure. Talk with us.
The Society for the Exploration of
The Strange Uncharted Mountains
“Don’t die without going there!”
Add us to your bucket list today.
Clifford Bean, Society President
You can’t map the unmappable,
but you can join us on a journey of wonder
as we explore the mystery!
The Society for the Exploration of
the Strange Uncharted Mountains
Clifford Bean, Society President
Marshall Artz, Attorney at Law
Aggressive Representation
To Get You
What You May
or
May Not Deserve.
“We never let up, we never give up.
And we pull no punches!”
Res Ipse Dixie!