Rak Razam interviews Dan Schreiber

I'd not heard of either of these gentlemen till yesterday but the podcast interview was for me (three times now) a delight to listen to as it's chock full of modestly articulated but  fabulously mystical dialogue. 

Gentle, considerate, unhurried. 

The kind of interview you simply never heard before the internet came along. A credit to both of them and for me the extra bonus of a couple of very nice ideas that articulated answers to questions I have about consciousness and emergence. I now aim to make the Gold Coast in Australia my first port of call. That's Melbourne and Sydney that just slipped to second and third place on a podcast.

Hey Jude

Ramones versus Misfits

Even critics who initially perceived the Ramones as a studied parody of a rock and roll band began to complain that the joke was wearing thin - What goes around comes around.


The documentary is excellent.

Infographic Of The Day

No China! More stats over at The Economist who still haven't done an online Big Mac Index (wasted brand equity sitting there gathering digital dust).

Mindfulness by John Kabat-Zinn

It's a little bit odd that Google (or God as somebody called it the other day given how many requests we make) is responsible for me actually making a little time to see what meditation is all about. I don't remember how this tipped up on my screen but the reality is that John Kabatt-Zinn is like a black belt meditation zen master or something and paid by Google for this session which is about as simple as it gets with a few thoughtful comments. Who knows you might find someone you don't recognise or even better forget someone you know quite well. I think most importantly is timing for this so if it isn't the right time then you know where to find it in the future (or not).


Correction: He implies he isn't getting paid in this. He's still like the Ultra fight Club champ of meditation. Soothing voice.

Must Affect The Brain In Some Way.

Classic. I remember the first time Michelle in the office near Bournemouth where we worked gave me an acid music cassette and I played it in my car for a few weeks on the daily drive on the M27 from Southampton. It was like nothing I'd ever heard and my brother thought it was his sanity he'd lost when I woke him up from a nap by playing it at home. I still like acid loops and riffs in music as it's a distinctive sound but I've moved on to the jazz of electronica otherwise known as minimal tech. Probably boring to most and so now I listen to the youngster rave on about dub and it's not the same is it? OK just kidding.

Via Richard Buchanan (I've forgotten your twitter account you use it so seldom)

McKenna On The Money #1

It seems like most of McKenna's stuff is turning up on Youtube these days as I just completed a marathon 62 item playlist set from one of his workshops recently. It's an awkward way to listen to a long long podcast but there are so many gems in there its worth the effort.

I intend to try and make clips of some of the shorter and more interesting soundbites that are more in the way of cultural observations as a 'gateway drug' to his longer sets like the one above which is touching, as I think it was organised by the Mathematician and friend Ralph Abraham at Berkeley where McKenna left his studies early in the late 60's and if I'm not mistaken Ralph still lectured. (Incidentally Ralph appears in the Spirit Molecule documentary too)

McKenna is unsurpassed when up against a home crowd of entheogen aficionados but here he wasn't always so sure of the crowd temperature and is thus slightly more cautious than usual though still connecting warmly with the mainly campus crowd. The full set is called Taxonomy of Illusion on Youtube.

Gravity

The Mushrooming Science

Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., is Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurosciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His principal research focus in both clinical and preclinical laboratories has been on the behavioral and subjective effects of mood-altering drugs. He is also currently a member of the Expert Advisory Panel on Drug Dependence for the World Health Organization. The most interesting find (and not unusual for anyone studying entheogens) is that the Psilocybin mushroom is measurably more real than the reality you are experiencing while reading this. 


Additionally according to the scientific results, it is also in the top five experiences ever; such as child birth, marriage and other spiritually moving and deeply human experiences in life.


What's the point? Well as Joe Rogan pointed out in a video I saw earlier. It's not very good for capitalism and the military industrial complex. 


Weird how top down hierarchical religion and government deemed it illegal and immoral.


I just can't figure it out. Can you?

Thailand's Tropical Gulag

The troubles down south have been going on a lot longer than the reductionist story of Reds versus Yellows. It's straight forward ignorance, chauvinism and arrogance coupled with territorial insensitivity and inflexibility to subsidiarity, that only exists due to the geographical and historical idiocy of the British empire in that part of the world . 

I used to occasionally cross the border at Narathiwat though that is no longer sensible given the violence that takes place in that part of the world. It's evident to me that the muslims down South or rather less materialistic cultures are de facto materially/fiat currency poorer in the the 21st century than materialist cultures that value stuff over non stuff. 

Things like feelings and consciousness for example. We should be aware of that when assessing a balance sheet for the superiority of cultures. Once again Al Jazeera does more serious and more pertinent content than any other global news organization.

Brands & Social Media

Doug Rushkoff (who put me on to Terence McKenna) thinks he may have gone over the top on this talk but I think it's smart and cogent. I would have liked to embed this in my page here but the organisers of the branding conference don't quite get the mechanics of what makes a brand in the 21st century. It's about a half hour and is a must see video.

Quora Versus Yahoo

Via Jay Dolen

American Twitter: Who & How

Via We are Social

Is Science Predicated On Woo Woo?

Behaviour Change

As much as for me as for anybody. Via Mike

Terence & Typography

Lazyscope

It all very much depends on how you use Twitter and drilling that thought down a bit further; what types of user experience you either have or wish to have. For example sometimes I like to have Twitter alerts on while I'm watching a movie or other times I want a really low level intrusion experience. Lazyscope is a bit different because if you're in content reviewing mode i.e. Interested in taking a better look at the content being linked to in tweets without opening up a new tab or browser, then it's a great tool and one I like to use when the intensity of Tweetdeck is too much for getting on with other tasks. You can add RSS and Google reader's feeds to it as well as some other stuff if that sounds interesting.

War Porn - Festival of Dangerous Ideas

I was all prepared to criticize P.W. Singer in this talk, properly entitled Wired for War at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. He's too young to work at a think tank, he must be immoral for working at the Pentagon, he's too tall and so on and so forth but in conclusion it's a useful exploration of technology acceleration in war though it really is depressing to hear a well framed adumbration of war technology squared when the reality of an ecologically strip mined planet with obesity and hunger as the definitive wellbeing paradigm is where the good brains should really be put to work.

Update: Original video censored or deleted. Replacement is a similar presentation.

Myth Matters

Brilliant story telling from around the world that is echoed time and again through the lens of fractal and recursive geometric patterns illuminated by Joseph Campbell. I love the way he talks about the need for fresh metaphors to illuminate ancient religions including his advocacy of Star Wars to that end.

RGB

Two completely different directions but this and the last post are both executions I really like, though that doesn't mean I think they are effective. Liking something is a little too subjective from a planning perspective as I may be projecting my bias against cars and thus for environmentally responsible motoring, though that too is up for debate given the manufacturing footprint both of these may or may not require. Like I said, I just like the work. I'm feeling too lazy to figure out if they would actually work.

This execution via AJ