Bruce Eisner's Vision Thing

Lycos Discussion Search Beta can help you get a free Gmail account

I just tried the Lycos Discussion Group Search Beta with the search term, "free Gmail invites." The results make it look better than any other search engine for things like this.

Lycos Discussion Search Beta Yields Interesting Results

I found the new new Lycos Discussion Group Search Beta while looking through my web stats this morning. Someone had found Bruce Eisner's Vision Thing with it. I tried it out and it gave me a variety of hits I have never seen before including Google's group search and others.

Here is what Lycos says about the search:

"Lycos Discussion Search provides you the tools to search and retrieve information from millions of discussion threads and conversations taking place on the World Wide Web. These interactive conversations may include listings from some of the more popular community listings."

"If you have an interest or need some information about a person, place or thing - find out what other folks are saying and search for a discussion on your interested topic. Lycos is working to provide you ONE place to find information about all your interests and your friends, family and colleagues, both current and future."

Lycos says that they do not target blogs with the new search. However they admit:

" ... you may see from time to time, Blog results that show up. Largely, Blogs would appear in results when they have features that are similar to typical forums, bulletin boards, or other discussion sites."

Care2 Join an Activist Social Network?

Care2 is an activist social software-based network for people who care about things, I've been a bit hesitant to join new social software networks because I can barely keep up with those that I belong to already including Freindster, Tribe, My space and Out.

I've also joined some business related ones such as the Allyson Network and Linked In but haven't taken much time to participate on those.

But since activism is how I see my future, I decided to join Care2 and find out if it is useful and friendly. Perhaps my biggest disappointment with my social software involvement is that I have not made any new in-the-flesh friends. Having moved to Las Vegas from Santa Cruz about a year and a half ago, I need to make new friends and my social software involvement has not helped thus far.

So having read about Care2. Com while reading my feeds on Feedster and coming across a post about Care2Blogzen.

Everything Pop Culture

In the process of doing some research on counterculture, I found Pop Culture which indexes the last century of pop culture. While pop culture IS NOT the same thing as counterculture, there are some parallels and they become evident in exploring some of the links on this wide-ranging site, which covers each of the last ten decades as well as TV, movies pop music, theater and more. This site is part of the "FCCJ Deerwood Center Library's Web References" which contains 26 different topics in all.

Commercials use humor to lighten the seriousness of this years campaign

While avoiding CNN and the network news (no I rarely watch FOX because I often eat while watching the news), I found some of the following political commercials on Slate. Because some of the links from "Not for Broadcast: This year's best political ads are online." By Alexander Barnes Dryer are dead, I went and ferreted the best of them and include them below.

The longest and by far the funniest is a spot by Will Farrell of Saturday Night Live fame. It is also the hardest to get. You need to go to this link. You will see one movie there called ferrell_qt_hi.mov Right click on it and save it to your desktop or wherever you want to find it. Then play it by either clicking on it or watching it with your favorite media viewer. It is worth the work

Here are some of the other ads mentioned in the article with direct links

The Media Fund

Show Bush The Door

State of the Union ...Not Good

A bunch by Viral Marketing select the ones you want

Moveonpac

'No more years!' chant Bush foes

I've been trying to avoid the news lately now that the Republicans are making their big PR pitch. But I was happy to come across this story -- a peaceful demonstration which the BBC later reported included hundreds of thousands of people.

The MSNBC headline story begins, "'No more years!' chant Bush foes" begins, NEW YORK - Bearing flag-draped boxes resembling coffins and fly-swatters with President Bush’s image, more than 100,000 protesters peacefully swarmed Manhattan’s streets on the eve of the Republican National Convention to demand that the president be turned out of office.

Some more good coverage of the protests can also be found on MSNBC, one of their "Hardbloggers" David Shuster who is able to brag a bit about the accuracy of his predictons for a peaceful demonstraton. Also a great picture slideshow below his story.

Hippie Dictionary Tells It Like It Is

The Hippie Dictionary is a book that has gotten quite a bit of press the last few days.
"Hippie Dictionary tells it like it was, man" by By Greg Frost on Reuters begins: "Are you feeling screwed, blued and tattooed because the man slipped it to you? Like, stay loose, hit the pad and share a thumb with your pash."

"Huh?"

It goes on to explain that if you don't understand you can "check out "The Hippie Dictionary" by John McCleary. Using the new book to translate, readers come up with the more conventional: Are you feeling mistreated by the authorities? Relax, go home to bed and share a very large marijuana cigarette with your significant other."

I must have mentioned this before but I was a hippie from 1967 until the beginning of the 'Seventies. But I would not have understood the phrase that was translated so well by the dictionary. But I think they might have picked a bad example. I haven't read the dictionary yet and probably won't read from beginning to end. But then do people read dictionaries. I think not.

The last time I saw a specialized dictionary such as this get a lot of press was actually back in the 'Sixties, when the Dictionary of American Slang was published. That book was filled with obscure but colorful language and this one may replace it on American's coffee tables

I do like the philosophy author -- whose web site is here -- expresses about the era he has indexed:

"McCleary feels strongly that the hippie era marked the "intellectual renaissance" of the 20th century.

"If the hippies had been listened to (then) 9/11 would not have happened," he added. "Had the hippie ideals been followed, we would be in a different world altogether right now."

"In fact, the book's entry for the term "hippie" says, "The true hippie believes in and works for truth, generosity, peace, love and tolerance. The messengers of sanity in a world filled with greed."

Bernstein and Woodward on Larry King: Watergate and the state of Bush's mind

I watched a Leary King interview this weekend with journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward who working as a team thirty years ago first broke the story of Watergate. In the interview which had first been aired on August 9, the two disagreed about how to view the current administration.

Of course, Woodward recently published his account of the Iraq War with the full cooperation and approval of Bush. When opened up to phone questions, a caller asked Woodward "John Dean has stated in his book that the invasion of Iraq and the deceptions involved was a worse scandal than Watergate. Since you have written about both, what is your take on that?"

Woodward replied: "I don't agree with John Dean. He was there. He was a participant in the crimes of Watergate. I think you can certainly have strenuous objection to the war in Iraq, and on moral grounds you can have a very serious objection to it, and oppose it. I don't think there is anything on that scale, and in the work I've done, I have not seen that there were crimes committed. Now, some people will look at a war and say, that is a crime in itself, particularly if it's an unnecessary war. My view as a reporter is that the jury is still out on that. We do not know whether this was a good war or a bad war, a necessary one or an unnecessary one."

King asked Bernstein to reply. He said: " ... first of all, I think that Watergate and this war and this president, Nixon and George Bush are apples and oranges. At the same time I think that this war was -- that we went into this war with some serious misrepresentations by the president of the United States. That the president of the United States, through the way he has conducted this war, has raised serious questions about his suitability for the presidency. But not on psychological grounds perhaps, so much in terms of really competence, and his ability to understand the world in a way that we expect the president to. That this war, in fact, I think the jury is in on a lot about this war, and that it has disastrous consequences for this country."

Also in the interview, Bernstein said: I think that the time finally is here for something I've never engaged in myself, but perhaps it's time for some real psychobiography. It's really time for some psychological analysis ..."

What Bernstein did not know nor did I at the time, but such a psychological biography of Bush has recently been published. Authored by George Washington University psychiatrist Dr. Justin Fran, Bush on the Couch. The doctor feels that a proper diagnosis could only come from actual sessions with Bush in person, but finds that there is ample material to work with because of his high-profile, public life.

Bush on the Couch's publisher, Harper-Collins, summarizes the book this way: "At once a compelling portrait of George W. Bush and a damning indictment of his policies, Bush on the Couch sheds startling new light on an administration whose record of violence and cruelty seems increasingly dependent on the unstable psyche of the man at its center. Insightful and accessible, courageous and controversial, Bush on the Couch tackles the question no one seems willing to ask: Is our president psychologically fit to run the country?"

Publisher's Weekly says of Bush on the Couch: "Bush Administration policies are not only a "great catastrophe" but the products of a disturbed mind, according to this provocative blend of psychological case-study and partisan polemic."

Need a Girlfriend? Get An Artificial Life!

According to the BBC World News in "HK firm develops cyber girlfriend" now millions of men without girlfriends can have a virtual girlfriend. She will "appear as an animated figure on the video screen of a mobile phone."

Although certainly different in many ways that having a real girlfriend, there is one way that the new virtual girlfriends -- made by the Honk Kong firm Artificial Life -- will mimic the behavior of many real ones. " ... each girl will behave differently - depending on how much money is spent on her."

Bush's Campaign Lawyer Linked to Swift Boat Ads

Bush Campaign Lawyer Tied to Group's Anti-Kerry Ads By Adam Entous
CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - A top lawyer for President Bush's re-election campaign has been providing legal advice to the group that has accused Democrat John Kerry of lying about his Vietnam War record, informed sources said on Tuesday.

The sources, who asked not to be identified, said Ben Ginsberg, the Bush campaign's chief outside counsel, has also been giving legal advice to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group that is attacking Kerry

New Research with Fruit Flies Shows Impaired Clock Genes Lead to Longer Sex

A promising bit of research by way of the New Scientist The article: Impaired clock genes boost fly sex times discusses some breakthrough work with fruit flies by which for the first time it has been demonstrated that the "so called clock gene" effects things on a minute-by-minute timescale. The report goes on to describe the study this way:

"The chance discovery came while researchers were looking at the effect on fruit flies’ reproduction of the removal of the genes timeless or period, which are involved in regulating daily wake-sleep cycles known as circadian rhythms. A student noticed the mutant males copulated for 30 to 50 per cent longer than the 15 minutes that other fruit flies mated.

“They lost track of time,” says Jaga Giebultowicz of Oregon State University, Corvallis, US, who led the study.

The article concludes with some speculative thoughts by the primary researcher, Ezio Rosato, an expert on clock genes from the University of Leicester, UK. He told the New Scientist:

"Whether removing timeless and period genes in humans would have the same effect on length of sex as fruit flies, remains to be seen. That would be a very nice experiment to do.”

Wikipedia co-founder on his vision of an online Library of Alexandria

The Online Library of Alexandria by Stefan Krempl on Telepolis is interviewd on the history and his future vision for Wikipedia.

The Rich Keep Getting Richer and the Poor Poorer Revisited

From the Haves and the Havenots on the CommUnity of Minds blog *which was reposted from USA Today:

Over two decades, the income gap has steadily increased between the richest Americans, who own homes and stocks and got big tax breaks, and those at the middle and bottom of the pay scale, whose paychecks buy less.

The growing disparity is even more pronounced in this recovering economy. Wages are stagnant and the middle class is shouldering a larger tax burden. Prices for health care, housing, tuition, gas and food have soared. The wealthiest 20% of households in 1973 accounted for 44% of total U.S. income, according to the Census Bureau. Their share jumped to 50% in 2002, while everyone else's fell. For the bottom fifth, the share dropped from 4.2% to 3.5%.

Future Hi: Conversation: Politics & Psychedelic Futurism

Future Hi: Conversation: Politics & Psychedelic Futurism brings up the significant difference in a PAZ and a TAZ. No this is not a new dance craze nor is it a kind of candy (that's PEZ not PAZ).

Oh by the way, I invented the term PAZ during those fun Rave House days and nights in San Fran in the early 'Nineties as cited on the Hyperreal.com web site.

Hakim Bey liked the idea so much he wrote about it as well Permanent TAZs. You can tell its the early 'Ninties with the bright light purple background of his pronouncement. He points out some of the immediate objections and barriers to PAZ's permanent existence. Well semi-permanent existence. In this universe, all things no matter how permanent eventually pass.

As Timothy Leary said in his translation of Lao Tsu's Tao Te Ching. Psychdelic Prayers and Other Meditatons which he co-

All things pass
A sunrise does not last all morning
All things pass
A cloudburst does not last all day
All things pass
Nor a sunset all night

But Earth... sky... thunder...
wind... fire... lake...
mountain... water...
These always change

And if these do not last
Do man's visions last?
Do man's illusions?

During the session
Take things as they come

All things pass

But while we are here, we need a village based on a collective vision of a more sensible way of living with one another.

Human's "hard-wired" attention to negative information means that attacking opponents often wins elections

"Accusers All: Going Negative: When It Works" in the Sunday New York Times includes a quote by Kathleen Hall Jamison of Annenberg's Public Policy Center. She told article authors Jim Rutenberg and Kate Czerniak:

"There appears to be something hard-wired into humans that gives special attention to negative information, I think it's evolutionary biology. It was the wariness of our ancestors that made them more likely to see the predator and hence to prepare. The one who was cautious about strange new food probably didn't eat it, they sat back and watched other people die. There's a reason to be hesitant about that which is vaguely menacing."

Beltway Guru Says the Election "Is Kerry's to Lose"

Times Essayist Andrew Sullivan in The Australian, "Writing on wall for another one-term Bush " suggests that the inside money is on Kerry. As his source, he touts the opinion of Charlie Cook of the National Journal who he says has "guru-like status among the cognoscenti" in Washington. Cook, who he says "knows polls and districts and congressional races the way a sea-fisherman knows tides and currents and shoals" has made his call in this years election. According to Sullivan, insider Cook sees it this way:

"Bush must have a change in the dynamics and the fundamentals of this race if he is to win a second term. The sluggishly recovering economy and renewed violence in Iraq don't seem likely to positively affect this race, but something needs to happen. It is unlikely Bush will get much more than one-fourth of the undecided vote, and if that is the case, he will need to be walking into election day with a clear lead of perhaps three percentage points."

"This election is certainly not over, but for me it will be a matter of watching for events or circumstances that will fundamentally change the existing equation - one that for now favours a challenger over an incumbent."

New York Times: Bush Behind Swift Boat Ads

The New York Times today ran this indepth expose: "Friendly Fire: The Birth of an Anti-Kerry Ad" By Kate Kernike and Jim Rutenberg Their conclusions:

"A series of interviews and a review of documents show a web of connections to the Bush family, high-profile Texas political figures and President Bush's chief political aide, Karl Rove."

This may be Bush's Watergate! Commentary on this by Donald A. Collins in the Washington Dispatch --
"One Dirty Trick Too Many?"

IdeaWorld -- My Words in Art

When I went to the Yahoo Search Engine blog mentioned in the last post, I tried out the "new and improved" Yahoo! Search (don't tell anyone but I mostly use Google). Always interested in what people are waying about me, I searched on my name and in the results wsa a link to "IdealWord: Screen Experience Vs Physical Output *~··.,¸¸.·)" At first I did not "get it." What does this have to do with me. Then I looked more closly.

The image uses exerpts from Mind Media Review which I have edited for the past ten years (we were one of the first online 'zines starting back in 1994. Apparently he has achived and embedded my words in his graphics. But he does not do this only do this on this page but if you "Enter Idea World" there are several more pictures with my words included as shadding and texture including "Life Coach 67" and "Emotional Intelligence 61." You never know how your words will end up being used.

Yahoo Starts Search Engine Blog

By way of Padia's Search World comes this,

"The Yahoo! search technology team has launched their own blog, which will give "a look inside the world of search from the people of Yahoo!. Now, that will be interesting. In just a few months Yahoo! has managed to merge several strong search engine development teams (from Inktomi, AltaVista and AlltheWeb), added new services (including local search and a toolbar), bought the Kelkoo comparison shopping search engine and become a serious challenger to almighty Google. "

I'm still trying to figure out why the Little "Add to Yahoo" buttons I added to my blogs a few weeks ago stopped working. You can go to the "Yahoo" search blog" here.

Are you Retro or Metro? Read the book for free!

In today's New York Times, Hiding in Ads Is Campaign for a Book on Politics
By Brian Wingfield which begins: "For the past week, enigmatic "Retro vs. Metro" advertisements have created a buzz among newspaper and Internet readers.With just two photos and minimal text, the advertisements contrast what they call "Retro" icons - Newt Gingrich, Mel Gibson, oil derricks and a map of Alabama - with "Metro" ones - Hillary Rodham Clinton, Michael Moore, solar-powered windmills and a map of California."

I know by now my readers have had enough politics for awhile. In fact, I bet you didn't know I had it in me. What you didn't know is that my first college major was Political Science and that one of my earliest memories is going to the Polls with my mother as she cast her vote in for Adlai Stevenson in the 1952 election.

Of course, later I became a new left radical with SDS credentials. Later, I quit the polical life for the hippie vagabond life. Now years later, I've dropped back in with a vengeance. Actually I was going to change the subject for a bit but then I cam across an entire free book while reading Metafilter tonight. When I read that you could download the entire book for free, I had to add this -- one more political post but one that will keep you busy reading for awhile. You can download the entire book here. Well you know how much I like free things ...

Oh you can buy the book at Amazon if you hate reading off computer screens.

Smart Mobs Introduces Us to Votesters: Technology to Make Your Vote Count

Jon Lebkowsky begins: "Votesters is a partisan social network the goal of which is to collect enough registered voters to make a difference in the November election. The goal is to defeat Bush, but the technology isn't quite there yet.' Read more at Smartmobs or go to Votesters.

Positive Vs. Negative -- Will Positive Win?

Daily Kos in "Attack, attack, attack" points out the differences between the Kerry and Bush campaigns. That post was inspired by an earlier comment by Eschaon who said, "For all the talk of Bush haters, I think journalists should take note of how the two campaigns are crafting their appeals."

Based probably on the experiences that Kerry and Edwards had during the primary as well as Edwards

Conservatives Beginning to Grumble about Bush

Some of the strongest arguments against the Bush Regime have oddly been coming recently from the conservatives. "The Conservative Case Against George W. Bush" By William Bryk in the current issue of the Negress (NP) presents a powerful case against re-electing Bush in the tradition of National Review's retiring founder William Buckley. In the Washington Post, a review of Stefan Helper and Jonathan Clarke's The Noe-Conservatives and the Global Order by Stanley I. Cutler shows that the more sensible of the conservatives are beginning to see through the Noe-Con's con job. These articles come after the well written piece this May in Nation, "Even Conservatives Are Wondering: Is Bush One of Us?" by Eyal Press.

Fox News -- Fair and Balanced?

Outfoxed - Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism is a DVD worth owning and showing to friends and family.
A description on the cover "Outfoxed" examines how media empires, led by Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, have been running a "race to the bottom" in television news. This film provides an in-depth look at Fox News and the dangers of ever-enlarging corporations taking control of the public's right to know.

Could Psychedelics Become Prescription Pharmaceuticals Asks the BBC

"Medicine hope for psychedelic drugs" By Arran Frood This hopeful little piece starts: "Could illegal hallucinogenic drugs like LSD and psilocybin ever become credible prescription medicines? It might sound far-fetched, but just a decade ago it seemed unlikely that the prohibited and mildly hallucinogenic drug cannabis would become a mainstream pain-killing medicine.

But it is happening: Cannabis pain-killing pills and sprays are being developed to help people with multiple sclerosis, cancer and Aids. Now some scientists and psychotherapists think more powerful psychoactive drugs like psilocybin, found in 'magic mushrooms', could have a future as medicinal agents for a number of conditions. "

I guess if I live long enough, the media will forget about the 'Sixties. In the UK, they already may be forgetting.

Counterculture Through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House

RU Sirius has for the first time published a book under his real name -- Ken Gofmann. Well RU has finally gotten serious with what appears to be an important intellectual tryst in the area of alternative culture theories. Published in collaboration with the editorial sytlist Dan Joy, Counterculture Through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House is now available for preorder at Amazon.

Here is an exerpt from Kirkus Reviews about the book:

"A popular frolic undergirded by a wealth of research and a seriousness of intent, from two stalwarts of the alternative consciousness media. Countercultures wax and wane, write Goffman, a.k.a. R.U. Sirius (How to Mutate and Take Over the World, 1996, etc.), and Psychedelics Encyclopedia contributor Joy, but they have always been with us: freethinking, innovative, subversive, individualistic, antiauthoritarian, troublemaking, skeptical of received opinion, and against all constraints on individual creative will. Goffman and Joy have chosen 13 countercultural moments for "their likely familiarity to a broad contemporary readership," though they also introduce additional renegades and misfits such as Diogenes, the man who told Alexander the Great to "get out of my light" (a countercultural rallying cry if there ever was one). In a modestly groovster tone that works well with the topic at hand, they cover Socratic critical thinking and humor; Jewish subversiveness from Abraham (our first dropout) to Bob Dylan; the graceful spontaneity of Taoism, its revolt against rationalism, objective certainty, and the limits of language; the Sufis' elevation of the individual to sacred status; the troubadours ... Transcendentalists and the Surrealists ("the unexpurgated, uncensored unconscious"), the restless and proliferating artists of blues and bebop, the mutating and maverick self-realizations of the Beats, hippies, glitters and glams ("the first countercultural rebellion against hippie conformity"), punks, and hackers, whose belief in the freedom of information harks back to the roots of counterculturalism. Goffman and Joy don't find all is beautiful in the countercultural garden ...  But without society's thorns, what a dull, uninspiring world it would be, with so much less laughter and pleasure."

Rock the Vote with Customized Instant Messages

Rock the Vote Goes IM By Daniel Terdiman features the latest use of instant messages and text messaging to mobile devices as a way of getting 18-24 year olds to vote in this November's presidential election. According to the article, "Thousands of "street team" volunteers will reach out by instant message to countless numbers of Rock the Vote members." This piece came via a post by Jon Lebkowsky on Smart Mobs.. The Wired article also references back to the Smart Mobs site and Smart Mobs book author Howard Rheingold.

One Thousand Reasons to Vote Against Bush

Here are the reasons in alphabetical order. Here are the reasons by category. Here are the reasons in chronological order.

No matter how you sort them, there are a lot of reasons to vote against Bush.!

35 years after, Woodstock lingers in popular imagination

35 years after, Woodstock lingers in popular imagination by Michael Hill of the Associated Press says in his widely circulated news release:
"The steady dribble of nostalgic baby boomers and curious Gen-Xers visiting this remote field shows how Woodstock still reverberates in the popular imagination. Even as the hippies of Woodstock become eligible for AARP cards, the concert remains a symbol to many of the transcendent power of music. From Live-Aid to Lollapalooza, no concert has mustered the same cultural cachet."

Thirty-five years ago, I was a long-haired, bearded hippie hitchiking east toward Woodstock. I never actaully went there. Rather I ended up in Goa, India where I spent the last month of the 'Sixties and the first month of the 'Seventies.

John Perry Barlow 2.0 on Reasononline

John Perry Barlow 2.0 The Thomas Jefferson of cyberspace reinvents his body -- and his politics. Interviewed by Brian Doherty helps us catch up with the former Republican cattle rancher from Montana who now blazes trails of freedom in cyberspace. He is best known for his work with the Electronic Freedom Foundaton and lyriscist for the Grateful Dead. He also has a web log at BarlowFriendz.

From the Madness of Crowds to the Wisdom of Crowds

Las week during a phone conversation with a friend by the name of Will Penna he told me about a book he is reading -- Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki.The title was a bit mysterious to me as I was trained to be a psychologist and when we studied crowd behavior, we were usually first refereed to a book written in the 19th Century Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds which true to its title portrays crowds as crazy. Most of the social psychology literature of the past century has concurred with this negative portrayal of the nature of crowds.

While talking to Will on the phone, I looked it up on Google and found a link to More on the Wisdom of Crowds on the How to Save the World blog which I also subscribe to. I quickly got up to speed on Suroweicki's view of crowds which valued them for their collective wisdom rather than dissing them as mere mobs.

New MAPS Bulletin Good Summer Reading for Aspiring Drug Researchers

The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies or MAPS for those who wish to avoid tounge twisters has the Summer Issue of their interesting MAPS Bullitin online.

Links to Utopian Things

Here is an interesting new set of links in ScienceDaily filed under the topic "Society: Future: Utopias". The way this newly discovered (by me) directory works also profides references to related topics such as "Society: Lifestyle Choices: Intentional Communities" and "Society: Politics: Alternative Political Systems." I like the way this site is set up and it is worth spending some time exploring.

Searching Using Microsoft's New Search Technology

I just got through searching with Microsoft's preview of their new MSN search technology. I have to say that I am impressed by it -- it seems to out-google Google.

Here is what they say about it:
"Welcome to a sneak peek of MSN's new search technology
What do we have under the hood? A brand new algorithmic search engine -- built from the ground up -- on Microsoft technology. Give it a spin and tell us what you think."

The Guy Who Pulls Bush's Strings

George W. Bush is depicted in the excellent documentary Bush's Brain as a puppet whose strings are pulled by Carl Rove, the high-powered political operative first employed by Bush's dad, George The First. The film is based on the top-selling book, Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential by James C. Moore and Wayne Slater. Show the movie to your friends, your parents, your kids, your boss, your employees, strangers, everybody.

For another take on Bush's spin-Meister's, All the President's Spin : George W. Bush, the Media, and the Truth by Ben Fritz , Bryan Keefer and Brendan Nyhan is a good read.

You Shop As You Vote -- Walmart Vs. Costco -- Costco's Winning

Shop the Vote Wal-Mart = Bush. Costco = Kerry. Costco's Winning By Daniel Gross is an insightful political piece. I had a chance to see John Kerry speak yesterday here in Las Vegas at the UNLV's basketball stadium packed with an estimated 15,000. I did not have to show my Costco card but I do have one. But I live half a mile from one of those super-sized Walmarts, the ones that look like airplane hangers. I joke half seriously about how someday we will be born with a shopping cart in our hands at a Walmart maternity center, make our way through the aisles until many years later we die and get a roll-back special on a funeral. Then we check out.

If you get far enough in the article to the reference "new luxary" -- it takes you to an extended piece about a book called Trading Up: The New American Luxury, by Michael Silverstein. You can download the introduction to the book here.

They Must Be Out There Somewhere -- Similar Minds That Is

It may look a bit medieval from from the picture but SimilatMinds is actually one of the most modern of the new social software communities. You take a specially designed psychology test to join. Based on your results, you can search for ... similar minds. What else?

There are a lot of similar minds in the database to find and I'm enjoying this new twist on what a year and a half after Friendster's introduction has become an old theme. You can also take a lot of other free tests listed including Enneagram Tests, Myers-Briggs-Jung Tests, Big Five Tests, Personality Disorder Test, Compatibility Test, Career Test, Eysenck Personality Test, Word Association Test and more.

Who is Brian Barritt?

I never met Brian Barritt. I first heard his name while reading the Timothy Leary literature during my youth. Brian's name came up in Tim's discussions of his fugitive life in the early 'Seventies. I mention all of this because apparently Brian is alive and well and you can read about him on his personal web site and read his The Road of Excess: A Psychedelic Autobiography to find out even more about Brian and the times he lived through.

Oh, about the picture in the post. That is Timothy Leary, Brian Barritt and members of the German rock group, Ash Ra Temple in Switzerland. The year is 1973 and the group is recording a very interesting album called "Seven Up" According to the original album sleeve, the album was recorded on pure Sandoz.

Cuddling Strangers the Latest Craze

You know its the "dog days of August" journalistically when stories like "Cuddling strangers latest craze for New York singles" By Herbert Lash show up on Reuters. If youare in NYC and want to get in on the action, you can visit cuddleparty.com for details. Pictures are from "Gimme a Hug" a piece by Greg Bessenger in the New Yori Daily News.

Reminds me of my days of endless ecstasy in the eighties. Anyone for a cuddle?

How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web

August 2009: How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web By Paul Ford
(Please note that this story was written in 2002" was spotlighted last month on PatternHunter. It is a fictional piece written just a couple of years ago and some of it is already coming true. What has not helps educate us to what is possible.

Social Networks Mean Business

Online social networks go to work Where personal connections lead to professional allies By Xeni Cardin on MS NBC demonstrates has a couple of implications which immediately come to mind. Probably most prominent is that Microsoft's news agency is gearing up to pitch web logs and social software to businesses as the "next great thing." The other implication is the story that the article spells out. Social software networks, which started out as gloried dating boards may have their most important uses not in lining up a date on Friday night. Rather, their best uses might turn out to be in the world of commerce.

Timeline Comparing the Lives of Bush and Kerry Reveals Interesting Synchronicities

Timeline Comparing The Lives of Bush and Kerry by Todd Smyth in Independent Media TV shows some surprising inverse connections in personal life history. This article came by way of ongoing research on the topic of the day at memes.org. For more on synchronicites and what they mean, see Fushion Anomoly.

And Since We Are On the Subject of Memes ... Susan Blackmore's New UK Meme Central

Susan Blackmore -- who's excellent book, The Meme Machine is a great introduction to what memes are about -- has launched a new web site: UK Memes Central . According to Ms. Blackmore, "You will find here a simple explanation of the basic ideas about memes, links to other memes sites, and to some of the people involved in memetics, an annotated list of basic publications on memes "

Susan Blackmore has just published a new book which looks at the nature of consciousness and its relationship to memetics with the promising title: Consiiousness: An Introduction.

How to Turbocharge Your Search Rank and Contribute to the Science of Memetics -- Help Make Blogs More Visible!

GoMeme 2.0 -- Copy This GoMeme From This Line to The End of this article, and paste into your blog. Then follow the instructions below to fill it out for your site.

Steal This Post!!!! This is a GoMeme-- a new way to spread an idea along social networks. This is the second generation meme in our experiment in spreading ideas. To find out what a GoMeme is, and how this experiment works, or just to see how this GoMeme is growing and discuss it with others, visit the Root Posting and FAQ for this GoMeme at www.mindingtheplanet.net .
By adding this GoMeme to your Weblog you can get higher Google rankings for your site, and help your friends get higher Google rankings too. Your blog will be linked from every other blog that discovers this GoMeme downstream from your blog (from your readers, their readers, and so on). And that will raise your Google rankings in proportion to the number of downstream bloggers that get this GoMeme from you and post it to their blogs. The more people who blog the GoMeme from your blog, the better your Google rankings will get.
By hosting this meme on your blog, you will also be participating in an experiment to generate a distributed Blog survey and test how memes spread through social networks. The dataset from this experiment is public, open and decentralized -- every blog that participates hosts their own data about their own blog. Anyone can then get the whole dataset by just searching Google for this unique string: 98818912959q This code is the "global unique identifier," or GUID for this GoMeme -- it marks every web page that participates in this GoMeme so that it can later be found with all the others. (Note it may take a week or longer before Google indexes your blog, so be patient).
Disclaimer
This is purely an experiment and is just for fun. We are really just curious to see what will happen and this is not a commercial project. Participation is voluntary. We don't mean to annoy anyone. However, if you don't have much curiosity, or at least a sense of humor, you may find this experiment to be upsetting. In that case, you might try drinking a good strong cup of coffee. If after that you are still unhappy with us, just don't read any further and have a great day! (If you don't want your blog to get better Google rankings, that's purely your choice!) On the other hand, if you are interested in exploring new technologies and pushing the envelope, then keep reading and we look forward to your participation in this experiment. We also request that participants in this experiment refrain from spamming anyone with this GoMeme. To spread it, just put it on your blog; that should be enough.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR ADDING THIS GOMEME TO YOUR OWN SITE
Step 1 First, to add your site to this experiment, copy the GoMeme to your site from the "Copy This GoMeme From Here" heading above to the End of this article. Please copy this whole article and try not to alter the text so that it is authentic for the people who get it from your blog. If you would like to come up with your own catchy headline, or anything else to help your GoMeme spread, feel free! Let's see what works best.
Step 2: Now, fill in your answers to these Required Survey Fields (Note: Replace the answers below with

Why We Need a Strong and Healthy Ego

The Creative Process and the Psychedelic Experience an essay by Dr. Frank Barron featured in the Psychedelic Library. I've spoken about him a few times previously in this web log. I met Frank Barron in 1978 while I was attending the University of California, Santa Cruz. I was an undergraduate and Frank a full professor of psychology. He became my mentor and I was friends with him until he died. Perhaps it is no coincidence that he passed in October 2002, the same month I left Santa Cruz for Las Vegas . I had lived there for 26 years. In a way, some part of me died with Frank and I almost feel like I've been in an after-death state since I moved to Vegas.

Frank was the guy who turned Timothy Leary on to psilocybin and invited him to Harvard University. I had met Tim two years before and perhaps one of my greatest memories was getting Leary and Barron together for Lunch at the Crows Nest Restaurant, a Santa Cruz restaurant overlooking the Monterey Bay. Frank also taught at Esalen Institute, Big Sur.

In the essay, Frank talks about his study of exceptionally creative people. He found that the more creative the individual, the more likely that person was to have high scores on tests measuring psychopathology. He developed a special scale of MMPI -- the test he used to study people's personalities. He called the scale "ego-strength" which meant an individuals ability to turn their visions into real world creations and a bit more as well. In "Why We Get High" an essay I published about ten years ago, I talk about the meaning of ego:

Grokking the Transparent Network

Common Ground: Grokking the Transparent Network is an reprise of the 13th Digital Be-In held in San Fransisco last May. It was the first of the series that I missed and I did not miss it because I'm superstitious. SF is a long drive from Las Vegas.
So if you have read Stranger in a Strange Land, you are hip to the "grok" word. Michael also explains for the first time what a "transpearent network" is. "Transparency refers to elegantly designed technologies that become increasingly invisible to the user."

What a great job of network marketing.

The Writer's Block

The Writer's Block: 2002
is where I ended up trying to cure my writers block today. I will update this post so anyone who comments, be warned. I am publishing this incomplete.