Arts & Letters Daily is now dead, but conveniently, Philosophy & Literature has a striking resemblence to my old beloved.

A few weeks ago, i read an interesting cover story about psy trance that i’ve since seen passed around a couple dozen times, which reminded me that it belonged up here, for all of you curious about the silly music that i so adore.

Through a funny set of events, i was just pointed to a geek who writes a colum called techsploitation, which is absolutely entertaining, even if she is a bit too enthralled with MIT. But then again, it’s my awareness of MIT culture that makes things like “Fear of Necco” utterly entertaining…

Since that last one was a bit serious, i thought i’d throw in an entry just for fun.

U.N. upholds “dwarf throwing” ban. A tiny stuntman who protested against a French ban on the bizarre practice of “dwarf throwing” has lost his case before a U.N. human rights body which said the need to protect human dignity was paramount.

A former student of my old advisor passed away last week and a friend sent me the obituary so that i could send him my condolences, as i did not know. This man seems to have done a lot of good things, most notably inventing “shareware.” Death is always a somber thing, but i couldn’t help at laughing at two different parts to the obit because they just made me think so much about my relationship to Brown and to my old advisor.

First, was my advisor’s description of him: We would have these long arguments about what was good for the user. He had this very gentle flower child demeanor and philosophy. This probably seems like a perfectly reasonable statement to be read in the NYTimes. Yet, when i read it, i can picture him saying it in his funny “i love you but i’m going to mock you” way that makes me immediately hug the man. It is exactly this ability that makes me adore him so very much, and i do wonder what he will say about me in my obituary, as i know it will be teasing no matter what.

The second part of the obit that made me giggle was: Mr. Wallace had a long interest in psychedelic drugs, which he thought were misunderstood in the United States. In 1996, he started Mind Books, a source for books about psychedelics. In 1998, he founded the Promind Foundation to support scientific research and public education about psychedelics.

Ok.. Brown computer graphics somehow automatically equals interest in psychedelics for so many of the people that i know. Plus, as this guy definitely had a political direction to his technology (shareware), this just rang so many bells. I think i would’ve liked the crazy technophiles who were at Brown in the “golden years.” Can you just imagine? A whole group of folks trying to invent ways to make the computer do amazing graphical techniques while believing in the power of technology and the mind expansion qualities of psychedelics? In my head, technologists equal the stereotypes that are embodied in this notion. Yet, as i’ve learned, this is *not* the reality of technologists today….

As a former student of Andy‘s, i was indoctrinated into believing the power of educational software, but frankly, most tools used to teach tend to bore me to tears and most uses of Flash/Java to explain concepts have about the same education weight as a CS15 skit. That’s not to say that they’re bad, just that they’re not that informative.

For that reason, i am pleasantly amazed by how impressive these perception illusion Flash demos are. As an undergraduate, i did a lot of studying about perception and color and whatnot, so i’ve always been particularly psyched by Adelson‘s research on perception and lightness. But these examples make the concepts clear and powerful, far more than the terrible text-book equivalents. Yay for really good educational uses of Flash!

I love pets, and find that i absolutely need to have them around me for any level of sanity. The place where i’ve been staying has this great big boy cat, but he only likes to be outside, so i have to risk the cold when i want to play. I end up playing with every puppy i pass on the street, and all of the stray cats too. And i know that getting a pet is one of my top priorities for when i move (along with getting a gym and a doctor that i can see more than once). Luckily, i can justify my need to have a pet through recent stress-release research. Now, if i could only convince a landlord of that…

Wow – i really do not see enough art these days. Part of it comes from the fact that i don’t associate Boston with punk art, but last night i was reminded that it really does exist and it is quite fun. Down at the Cyclorama there was an exhibit called Bring The Noise which featured the Obey Giant work as well as the Secret Asian Man comics and a bunch of other rad graffitti art, paintings and photography. To top it off, the opening came with the normal round of beer, but also an added DJ feature… mmmm… very yummy. I’ve always loved the Obey Giant work for its political slant and its very punk attitude, so to see it amongst a lot of other rad local challenging work was just great! Too bad the exhibit was just one night…

I’m so glad to see Google News come alive. Prior to last September, i would read about 5 or 6 newspapers a day, but afterwards, i just found it too painful: they all talked about the same thing from an unbearable conservative slant. It’s not that i didn’t want a mainstream perspective, but that i wanted all of the silly news to be aggregated. And voila!

Now, the only question left to ask is how long until Google puts together their own blog? And how will that affect the long bet?

here’s a great little advert for the democrats…