Bruce Eisner's Vision Thing

Business 2.0: "Feedburner Brands the Feed" -- The Return of "Push Technology"

Link for this Post: "Redefining the RSS Feed" John Heilemann, Business 2.0 Magazine.

Those of you who subscribe to my RSS Feed know that I have used Feedburner as my feeding station for almost a year now. Recently, Typepad's developers Six Apart worked out a deal with Feedburner so that using Feedburner became a lot easier.

Feedburner is making a business out of RSS. Here is an excerpt from the Business 2.0 article:

Mention to Dick Costolo that, for most of this generation's Web startups, getting funded has been a snap, and he emits a rueful laugh. "Not for us," recalls the CEO of the content syndication outfit FeedBurner. "Most venture capitalists we met couldn't spell RSS - let alone understand it."

That was in 2004, and Costolo and his three co-founders were toiling in obscurity in their Windy City headquarters. "I don't know how many times we heard, 'We like you guys, but you're in Chicago,'" Costolo says. "Which really meant 'We don't get it.'" More from Business 2.0 How startups go global How Fox Interactive got so sly Redefining the RSS feed Fastest Growing Tech Companies Current Issue Subscribe to Business 2.0 Two and a half years later, a lot more people get it - as FeedBurner's meteoric rise vividly demonstrates. Today the company manages more than 300,000 feeds that use the RSS (really simple syndication) format or a variant thereof, and its customers range from the humblest bloggers to the mightiest publishers:

I've been on the Internet going on almost twelve years now and in the early days when you asked people what the next "big thing" would be, they said "push technology." The article says this about "the return of push technology":

Before explaining why that's so, it might be helpful (at least for the uninitiated) to start with the ABCs of feeds. RSS is what used to be called a "push" technology: It lets publishers stream Web content instantly to users who've subscribed to their feeds, and lets users keep up with a large number of sites without having to check them manually.

When new content is posted on a site, subscribers are notified and sent either full versions or summaries of the fresh material (along with links back to the site), which they can read inside what's known as an aggregator, such as NewsGator's FeedDemon. (Both Firefox and Apple's Safari browser have built-in feed readers.)

You can read the full article on Business 2.0 hosted by CNET at the link at the top of this article.

As Online Ads Grow, Eyeballs Are Valuable Again on the Web -- New York Times

Link for this post: "As Online Ads Grow, Eyeballs Are Valuable Again on the Web" by Bob Tedeschi, New York Times.

I've had two websites since 1995 and I've noticed that traffic is defiantly increasing on both sites.. My site Mind Media was once of the first commercial websites that sold products and Island Web is the longest continuing counterculture site still around.

Here are a couple of excerpts from the Times piece:

THE great eyeball chase is back in full swing. And it does not matter that the eyeballs may not be buying anything. With online advertising revenues growing quickly, new information-rich sites of all kinds are mushrooming across the Web.

Sites devoted to big-ticket purchases — particularly cars, real estate and travel — are feverishly refining features and marketing strategies in an effort to attract the growing number of consumers searching the Web for buying advice. Unlike sites like Amazon.Com they do not actually sell any products, but they make a good living selling ads to deep-pocketed companies that do.

     *******************************************************

But playing a big part in TripAdvisor's success, and that of other editorially focused sites, is Google. The search giant greatly accelerated the adoption of so-called pay-per-click text ads, which generate revenue both for Google and for the site where the ad appears. TripAdvisor began displaying the ads in late 2001, to sudden and great effect. According to Ms. Johnson of Forrester, that is the most important element in the resurgence of media sites. Good timing, she said, has been critical.

"The thing the older sites did well was stay alive long enough for the rise of Google," she said. "They got hit by a pitch."

So I guess I'm on first base. Now all I need is someone to double me home -- or have the pitcher balk three times.

Google Offering Premium Streaming Videos For Free as Test

Link for this Post: Free Today Videos on Google Video

Google is testing its new ad supported video business model by offering some of its premium priced videos for free. Included are movies, sports, classic movies,documentaries and cartoons plus more.

Seed: The Future of Fusion

Link for this Post:: Seed: The Future of Fusion by Britt Peterson

Seed Magazine features a hopeful article about the possibility and potential of fusion generated energy.The subhead of the articles title reads:

• "After years as a purely experimental science, a decade-long international effort will make nuclear fusion a reality."

You can read the full article at the link at the top.

Summer Solstice

Today is the Summer Solstice. I found this bit about the day while Googling:

Summer Solstice:
Midsummer, or Litha as Pagans call it, refers to the time centered upon the summer solstice and the accompanying religious celebrations. The longest day of the year, summer solstice signifies a turning point in which life is at its peak; darkness will come and life must end for the cycle to begin again. Many of the Midsummer traditions and celebrations have non-Christian origins. People in countries who celebrate the summer solstice vary in rituals, but several common threads run through most cultural practices: bonfires or burning effigies, fertility rites, wearing wreaths woven of local vegetation as crowns

So spring is gone and summer here.

Note: image from Pagan Alliances USA and the quote from SOF: Pagans Ancient and modern

My Pick of the Top 25 Psychedelic Posts from Vision Thing

I send out a newsletter called the Island Views Electrozine which has been published 41 times in the past ten years. You can get the newsletter via email by subscribing to it through this link. Here is the latest issue.

ISLAND VIEWS ELECTROZINE No.41
June 2006
Edited by Bruce Eisner
Top 25 Psychedelic Features from Vision Thing
+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--

Aside from an Island Flash attempting to sell some Bicycle Day Posters (which didn't sell), there has not been an Island Electrozine since February. So I went and gathered the top 25 psychedelic posts from my blog Vision Thing. If you like what you read here and want to get these updates faster, subscribe to the Vision Thing Feed by clicking here.

My Pick of the Top 25 Psychedelic Posts from Vision Thing (March 2006 - Now)

1) Sundance Channel Premiers Documentary "The Drug Years" -- Also on VH1 Updated Twice

Taking a welcome detour from has-been celebrities, VH1 joins with Sundance Channel (which will repeat the project starting June 16) on this four-hour documentary, which brings a refreshingly un-jaundiced eye to illicit drug use and its impact -- then and presumably now --on the so-called "culture wars." The first two hours provide fascinating insight into the growth of the counterculture, music's influential role, how its imagery was adopted by movies and Madison Avenue, and the eventual hangover. All told, it certainly merits tuning in, whether or not you turn on and drop out. Visit this story through this link

2) "RU Sirius interviews author of new Timothy Leary biography" Boing Boing

Boing Boing Post about the Interview I've posted about the Mirimax Leary biopic starting back in April of last year. Everything I'd heard about it was that it was going to be portray Leary negatively. So when Robert Greenfield's new bio of Leary came out this month, it turns out that the movie is based on his book.I have not had a chance to read the book but everything I've heard about it is that Greenfield dug up all of the dirt from the dark side of Leary's life and pieced it together with a judgmental narrative. RU Sirius interviews Greenfield and a lot of this comes out in the interchange. Visit this story through this link

3) Arthur Magazine Features "You're On Acid Again" by Jeremy Narby --Free PDF

Swiss anthropologist-author Jeremy Narby talks with Jay Babcock about what hallucinogens like LSD and the Amazonian drink ayahuasca have to teach us in the 21st century. Introduction by author Erik Davis, with a full-color illustration by Arik Moonhawk Roper. Visit this story through this link

4) "Contemporary Psychedelia: From Transcendence to Immanence" Peter Bebergal on Zeek.Net

This piece is about "psych-folk" a genre of new psychedelic music that has been part of a renewed interest in psychedelic sounds. Here is an excerpt from the beginning of the extensive piece:

What is loosely termed 'psychedelic music' has lately undergone a resurgence. Many mainstream musicians such as The Flaming Lips have drawn on its more accessible pop elements, drawing mainly from 60s British and American artists, while more alternative acts, such as the unequivocal Acid Mothers Temple and the splendid Swedish band Dungen, have moved deeper into At the leading edge of the psychedelic revival is a sub-genre often called psych-folk, as it usually involves some fusion of traditional American and British folk elements alongside experimental forms, usually containing, but certainly not limited Visit this story through this link

5) "10 years since Timothy Leary's death" on Joi Ito's Weblog

I've heard from some of Timothy Leary's friends the past couple of days, remembering that it has been an entire decade since Tim died. Joi Ito remembers him on his weblog. Here is an escerpt:

"Timothy Leary passed away 10 years ago today. I was with him the evening before he died and I still remember his humor even in his final hour. I met Timothy Leary in Tokyo in the summer of 1990. Tim was excited about virtual reality and had told his friend David Kubiak in Kyoto to help him track down "young Japanese kids who know about virtual reality" Visit this story through this link

6) A Cracked Guide to Futuristic Super Drugs

When I was a kid back in the last century, I read a lot of comic books (age 5-8). A year or so later, I was reading Mad Magazine and its sometimes funnier competitor Cracked. So while trolling for news on the blog, Theories, Predictions, Opinions & Other Nonsense I discovered Cracked.Com which leads with this funny little piece on Futuristic Super Drugs. Of course among them was a non-pharmacological "drug" from future called the Orb in the Woody Allen's 1973 sci-fi farce, Sleeper. Visit this story through this link

7) Popular Science: Will Drugs Make Us Smarter and Happier?

In a special Issue that Popular Science I found this speculative article about potential futures for cognitive-enhancement drugs. Visit this story through this link

8) Jack Shafer on Slate.Com: What's the Story, Morning Glory?

On a slow Memorial Day Weekend, I enjoyed this story by Jack Shafter taking a jab at a Washington Post staff writer's story about the "rediscovery" of the morning glory seed as the source of a natural "trip." Since my first psychedelic experience was catalyzed by those seeds with names like Heavenly Blue and Pearly Gates, I took notice that the world has come full circle. Or has it? Visit this story through this link

9) AlterNet: How the Right Stole the '60s (And Why We Should Get Them Back)

Here is an excerpt from this much commented on Alternet essay by Aston Taylor: Regardless of whether we were raised in the hippie tradition, those born too late to remember the '60s firsthand have heard an awful lot about the decade, most of it bad. The period has been trivialized, commemorated and castigated ad nauseam. It's been reduced to a risible relic, a series of clichés about hippies and protesters and lost idealism. Visit this story through this link

10) Acid Trip -- Self Portraits by an Artist --on AnaLogik Multimedia house Website

One of a series of nine drawings were done by an artist under the influence of LSD -- part of a test conducted by the US government during it's dalliance with psychotomimetic drugs in the late 1950's. The artist was given a dose of LSD 25 and free access to an activity box full of crayons and pencils. His subject is the medico that jabbed him. Visit this story through this link

11) "Deadhead" Summer Festivals -- Rex Foundation

The Grateful Dead performed more benefits than anyone. In the fall of 1983, the Rex Foundation was established as a non-profit charitable organization by members of the Grateful Dead and friends. The Rex Foundation enabled the Grateful Dead to go beyond responding to multiple requests for contributions, and preactively provide extensive community support to creative endeavors in the arts, sciences, and education. The first benefit concerts for the Rex Foundation were held in the spring of 1984 at the Marin Veteran’s Memorial Auditorium. Since 1984 the Rex Foundation has granted $7.7 million to some 1,000 recipients. Visit this story through this link

12) The Observer -- 2050 - and immortality is within our grasp

This may be a year old story but since its the first time I read it, I thought I'd share it with you. In this piece, David Smith, technology correspondent for the observer wrote (May 22, 2005) Aeroplanes will be too afraid to crash, yoghurts will wish you good morning before being eaten and human consciousness will be stored on supercomputers, promising immortality for all - though it will help to be rich. These fantastic claims are not made by a science fiction writer or a crystal ball-gazing lunatic. They are the deadly earnest predictions of Ian Pearson, head of the futurology unit at BT. Visit this story through this link

13) Thedrugsindex.org -- Psychedelic Portal and Blog

This site is a psychedelic portal site with variety of resources. Here is how the site describes its purpose: From every mountain and valley the world over, come ancient flowers and plants of simple beauty. Some hold a natural wonder. Chemicals that relieve pain and inspire divine euphoria. At times they have been hailed as a gift from heaven, but in the last century they have been condemned as a menace to mankind. Once marijuana, cocaine, opium, ecstasy, LSD and even heroin were perfectly legal. Today they are the enemy in a War On Drugs. Did these plants and drugs change, or did we? Visit this story through this link

14) Oz Magazine Historical UK Sixties Counterculture Online

Oz Magazine was one of the most significant members of the Underground Press, that print phenomenon of the Sixties Counterculture. Visit this story through this link

15 )Welcome to the CounterCulture Wiki

While browsing the Australian mega-blog Wilson's Blogmanac, I chanced upon a portion of the site which looks to be an interesting and ambitious project. Called the "CounterCulture Wiki" here is how the wiki introduces its purpose: But what does 'Counterculture' mean? It's a wide term, and we won't try to narrow it too much. Our wikia is about the Counterculture of today and through history. Our realm covers centuries, decades, years, days and fleeting moments. Great social movements, inspiring men and women, and partly baked ideas. We take a wide view, that's why the person in our logo is Gerrard Winstanley (1609 - 1676), with a hippie flower in his hair. Visit this story through this link

16) The Race For The Timothy Leary Biopic -- Inside Entertainment

Here is an inresting little bit of news about the making of one (or more) biographies about Timothy Leary. Here is an excerpt: (KP International) – The race has begun between Hollywood heavyweights to see who can produce a Timothy Leary biopic first. Visit this story through this link

I included the next item which continued the idea

More on Timothy Leary Movie Biography

Winona Ryder and Leonardo DiCaprio are battling it out with Darren Aronofsky to make the first biopic of counter-culture icon Timothy Leary. Ryder, Leary's god-daughter, and her father Michael Horowitz, Leary's best friend, have signed to be creative consultants for a forthcoming project by DiCaprio's production company Appian Way. DiCaprio's father, comic book writer George Winonaryderap_1 DiCaprio, was also a friend of the Harvard University professor and LSD pioneer. Aronofsky is also planning a biopic of Leary, who died in 1996 aged 75, writes the New York Daily News. (This news article provided by World Entertainment Visit this story through this link

17) Have You Heard?

Have you heard of Gerald Heard? Have you heard Gerald Heard. This is your chance. The picture at the right is Gerald Heard with his close friend Aldous Huxley Visit this story through this link

18) Four Free Online Mind Videos By Way of The Hyperaware Consciousness Blog

I watched these videos and enjoyed them. They came by way of a post on an excellent blog by Daniel Scott Poynter: The Hyperaware Consciousness 4 Free Online Mind Videos. There are more commentaries on these videos on the post. Visit this story through this link

19) My All-Time Favorite Movie "I Love You Alice B.Toklas" on Exquisitely Bored in Nacogdoches

My favorite movie of all I have seen is I Love You Alice B. Toklas, a 1968 comedy staring Peter Sellers. Aside from it being a good flick in its own right, another significant contribution to making the movie memorable is that the first time I saw it, I was on 500 micrograms of Owsley LSD. Visit this story through this link

20) AlterNet: Bring the Sixties Out of the Closet

Bring the Sixties Out of the Closet by GenXer Don Hazen says: "We need to resurrect the good '60s -- a time when acting, despite being messy and imperfect, made a lot of good things happen." Read the full story on Alterernet. Visit this story through this link

21) The Sky Has Eyes -- New Psychedelic Art Blog by Larry Carlson

I've posted about Larry Carlson's trippy flash art Medijate. He has now launched a blog to put up his most current work. According to the SKYHASEYES BLOG you get: Your daily dose of surreal energy. This blog is a growing collection of Larry Carlson's amazing art (flash movies, video, soundtracks, web art, collage and digital artworks). Visit this story through this link

22) Neurologic by Timothy and Johanna Leary

This site features a reproduction of the original printing of Neurologic authored by Timothy Leary and his then wife Johanna Leary. The book was one of the early publications (but not the earliest) of what became his "Eight-Circuit Model of Consciousness." As in Politics of Ecstasy where it was called "The Seven Tongues of God," the theory at the time still had only seven levels, this time called circuits. It is currently out of print. Visit this story through this link

23) Electric Acid Kool-Aide Test Turns 40 - The Tripster in Wolfe's Clothing on Columbia Journalism Review

Electric Acid Kool-Aide Test by Tom Wolfe -- an almost fictional piece of non-fiction from the late Sixties which created legends just turned 40. Jack Shafer writing in the latest issue of the Columbia Journalism Review remembers: Loolaidmore Tom Wolfe writes himself into the second sentence of his book about Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, describing a boaty ride up and down the streets of San Francisco in the open bed of a Day-Glo-painted pickup truck. It’s better than a half-year before 1967’s Summer of Love, and the New York City clotheshorse and leading practitioner of New Journalism looks dowdy compared to the beaded, feathered, medallioned, and headbanded crew of Kesey. Visit this story through this link

24) Autopoiesis & Cognition

An old friend of mine, Mchael S. has apprently gotten into blogging. I found his site by way of a link-back. As usual, Michael has been digging up some good data. Check his blog out. Visit this story through this link

25) High History of Buddhism By Rick Field from Tricycle Magazine

This piece is the famous best-selling issue of Tricycle Magazine, an eclectic buddhist magazine The controversial issue was from 1996 (the good old days) titled Psychedelics and Buddhism: It included vews from John Perry Barlow and Rick Fields; interviews with Terrence McKenna and Jack Kornfield; a roundtable discussion with Robert Aitken, Richard Baker, Ram Dass & Joan Halifax. Visit this story through this link

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Techcrunch Download Your TV - The Current Option

Link for this Post: Techcrunch Download Your TV - The Current Options

TechCrunch has a nice summary of the ways that you can now download TV rather than having to watch it or TIVO it. Hers is an excerpt:

Downloadable television, first made popular by Tivo and its competitors, is compelling stuff. As consumers become accustomed to watching a show whenever they choose, pausing at will and fast tracking through commercials, tuning in to a station at a scheduled broadcast time seems quaint at best. Today, 7% of U.S. households have a digital video recorder, or DVR and most cable companies offer a DVR as an option.

File trading networks, such as bittorent, are also extremely popular (if sometimes illegal) choices for consumers wanting access to time-shifted television content. While DVRs are great, content producers and distributors are less than thrilled by the loss in revenue from all those skipped commercials. Also, DVR’d shows cannot be easily transferred to mobile devices or otherwise viewed away from their home television. Some consumers want more
         ****************************************************************************************
By January 2006, iTunes offered over 40 television shows for download, including, most recently, additions from Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and MTV with episodes of such shows as the Daily Show, Spongebob Squarepants, South Park, and Punk’d. Showtime added some content in February.

The networks, though, are hoping that iTunes will not be the only way people watch TV on their computers. CBS, Fox and ABC are all experimenting with their own direct downloads or streaming

TechCrunch reviews all of your current options at the link at the top of this post.

 

Google Seeks More Power New York Times Technology

"Hiding in Plain Sight, Google Seeks More Power" by John Markoff and Saul Hansell in the New York Times Technology section

Google is building a giant computing center in Oregon. Here is a couple of excerpts from this article :

On the banks of the windswept Columbia River, Google is working on a secret weapon in its quest to dominate the next generation of Internet computing. But it is hard to keep a secret when it is a computing center as big as two football fields, with twin cooling plants protruding four stories into the sky

****************************************************

Google is known to the world as a search engine, but in many ways it is foremost an effort to build a network of supercomputers, using the latest academic research, that can process more data — faster and cheaper — than its rivals.

Read the rest at the link above. Note: the picture is from the Times article.

"RU Sirius interviews author of new Timothy Leary biography" Boing Boing

Links for this post:

Download the RU Sirius interviews Robert Greenfield, author of the new Leary biography (MP3)

Boing Boing Post about the Interview

I've posted about the Mirimax Leary biopic starting back in April of last year. Everything I'd heard about it was that it was going to be portray Leary negatively. So when Robert Greenfield's new bio of Leary came out this month, it turns out that the movie is based on his book.

I have not had a chance to read the book but everything I've heard about it is that Greenfield dug up all of the dirt from the dark side of Leary's life and pieced it together with a judgmental narrative. RU Sirius interviews Greenfield and a lot of this comes out in the interchange.  More about all this later on this blog.

Note: Foto via my friends at Sound Photosynthesis

No Tolls on The Internet -- Washington Post

Link for this Post: "No Tolls on The Internet" by Lawrence Lessig and Robert W. McCartney -- Washington Post

The vote for Network Neutrality is soon and this piece comes as a reminder to what's at stake.

Popular Science: Will Drugs Make Us Smarter and Happier?

Link for this Post: Popular Science: Will Drugs Make Us Smarter and Happier? by James Vlahos

In a special Issue that Popular Science I found this speculative article about potential futures for cognitive-enhancement drugs. Here is an excerpt:

The prospect of drug-enabled superminds is not just a futurist’s fantasy. In the past 20 years, scientists—aided by advances in computing, brain imaging and genetic engineering—have made significant progress toward understanding the biochemical systems that regulate cognition and emotion. This knowledge has raised the possibility of manipulating those systems more powerfully and precisely than ever before. One prominent neuroscientist, Anjan Chatterjee, calls what’s coming the era of cosmetic neurology. “Prospecting for better brains may be the new gold rush,” he says.

The article profiles several researchers looking at aspects of cognitive enhancement. It also covers ethical questions. You can read the complete article at the link above.

Note: image above is from article

Variety Timothy Leary lives Miramax high on Harvard legend's biopic Based on a Hatchet Job Bio Book by Robert Greenfield

This is from Variety, the Hollywood trade paper:

Accoring to Variety Miramax nabs the rights to 'Timothy Leary: A Biography.' biopic of Timothy Leary for the bigscreen after snapping up rights to the upcoming tome "Timothy Leary: A Biography" by Robert Greenfield this week.

Scribe Bill Wheeler (Miramax's "The Hoax") has been tapped to adapt; he'll also serve as a co-producer.

Greenfield's book tells the story of how Leary, a Harvard professor, rose to become a prominent voice of the 1960s anti-establishment movement.

Greenfield is a former associate editor of Rolling Stone's U.K. operation and also the author of the books "S.T.P.: A Journey Through America With the Rolling Stones," "Bill Graham Presents: My Life Inside Rock and Out" and "Dark Star: An Oral Biography of Jerry Garcia."

Harcourt Books will publish "Leary" on June 6.

City Entertainment's Joshua Maurer will produce the movie.

From all I have heard, this is going to be a hatchet job on Tim's life, just as the book is.

I'll be writing more about all of this.

The Wiki for Finding Web Service & Mapping the Web 2.0 World

Links for this post:

The Wiki for Finding Web Service and Open APIs

Map of the Web 2.0 World

On JSpot the Wiki creator, by chance i found a Wiki about seb 2.0.

BusinessWeek Online Web 2.0 Guide

Link for this Post CEO Guide to Web 2.0

BusinessWeek Online has one of its magazine long features -- this one on the buzz over Web. 2.0. Here are some of the features in the magazine:

• Web 2.0 Has Corporate America Spinning
• A VC's View of Web 2.0.
• O'Reilly's Guide to Web 2.0 Podcast
• Tipsheet: How to Harness the Power of Web 2.0

The article is a good introduction to what has become a super sexy topic on the blogosphere

Arthur Magazine Features "You're On Acid Again" by Jeremy Narby -- Free PDF

.

Link for this post: Arthur Magazine Issue No. 22

The new issue of Arthur Magazine -- an eclectic print magazine -- features this article:

Swiss anthropologist-author Jeremy Narby talks with Jay Babcock about what hallucinogens like LSD and the Amazonian drink ayahuasca have to teach us in the 21st century. Introduction by author Erik Davis, with a full-color illustration by Arik Moonhawk Roper.

The entire  issue of the magazine is available as a PDF download at the above link.

"Contemporary Psychedelia: From Transcendence to Immanence" Peter Bebergal on Zeek.Net

Note: The above picture is from the article cited below

Link for this Post: "Contemporary Psychedelia: From Transcendence to Immanence" Peter Bebergal on Zeek.Net

This piece is about "psych-folk" a genre of new psychedelic music that has been part of a renewed interest in psychedelic sounds. Here is an excerpt from the beginning of the extensive piece:

What is loosely termed 'psychedelic music' has lately undergone a resurgence. Many mainstream musicians such as The Flaming Lips have drawn on its more accessible pop elements, drawing mainly from 60s British and American artists, while more alternative acts, such as the unequivocal Acid Mothers Temple and the splendid Swedish band Dungen, have moved deeper into

At the leading edge of the psychedelic revival is a sub-genre often called psych-folk, as it usually involves some fusion of traditional American and British folk elements alongside experimental forms, usually containing, but certainly not limited to, psychedelic tropes. Sometimes the folk sound takes precedent, and what is psychedelic is more subtle. In other cases, the folk elements are woven into noisy rock structures, often giving a kind of melancholia to discordant and aggressive frameworks

Read the rest at the link at the top.

"10 years since Timothy Leary's death" on Joi Ito's Weblog

Note: Picture above is from Joi Ito's post cited below

Link for this post: "10 years since Timothy Leary's death"

I've heard from some of Timothy Leary's friends the past couple of days, remembering that it has been an entire decade since Tim died. Joi Ito remembers him on his weblog. Here is an escerpt:

Timothy Leary passed away 10 years ago today. I was with him the evening before he died and I still remember his humor even in his final hour. I met Timothy Leary in Tokyo in the summer of 1990. Tim was excited about virtual reality and had told his friend David Kubiak in Kyoto to help him track down "young Japanese kids who know about virtual reality". I wasn't a VR expert, but I was into computer graphics, games and the rave/club scene. I had also just opened a nightclub in Tokyo. David, who lived in Kyoto, directed Tim to me and several others ...

Read the rest including comments by Tim's son Zack Leary and by Michael Gosney at the link above.

"Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Rolling Stone

Link for This Post: "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. Rolling Stone

Here is one except which sums up the point of the essay:

... what is most anomalous about the irregularities in 2004 was their decidedly partisan bent: Almost without exception they hurt John Kerry and benefited George Bush. After carefully examining the evidence, I've become convinced that the president's party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004. Across the country, Republican election officials and party stalwarts employed a wide range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix the election. A review of the available data reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004(12) -- more than enough to shift the results of an election decided by 118,601 votes.(13) (See Ohio's Missing Votes) In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots.(14) And that doesn?t even take into account the troubling evidence of outright fraud, which indicates that upwards of 80,000 votes for Kerry were counted instead for Bush. That alone is a swing of more than 160,000 votes -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.(15)

This well documented and exhaustively researched article so you should &visit Rolling Stone to get all the data.