"I regard belief as a form of brain damage."
― Robert Anton Wilson

Tomorrow marks the fifth anniversary of Robert Anton Wilson's death. Bob was a writer of fiction and non-fiction, most notably the Illuminatus! trilogy (co-written with Robert Shea) and the non-fiction memoir Cosmic Trigger: The Final Secret of the Illuminati. — Read the rest

Ohio artist Robert Brandenburg "hijacks" existing mass-produced oil paintings to great effect. He has a solo show, appropriately titled "Pooh… and Other Sh*t," opening tomorrow at Gallery 1988 in Venice, California. From his artist statement:

These pictures began as a family tradition of giving each other 'gag gifts' for Christmas; I took cheap oils from a local flea market and embellished them with absurdities.

A U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) application shows that Robert and Diane Maresca of Long Island, New York, are seeking to trademark the phrase "Occupy Wall St." so that they can place it on "a wide variety of goods, including bumper stickers, shirts, beach bags, footwear, umbrellas, and hobo bags." — Read the rest

A touching reminder of Britain's fast-vanishing rural heritage from the archives of the great and underappreciated documentary filmmaker, Lee Titt.

Six women from Essex County, New Jersey were hospitalized after getting black market butt enhancement procedures in which they were injected with the kind of non-medical grade silicone you can buy at the hardware store. I've read about similar practices in drag queen communities as well. — Read the rest

Anthropologist Wade Davis is an incredibly engaging and eloquent explorer of the world's cultural diversity, what he calls the Ethnosphere. He has written a slew of amazing books about the dangers faced by disappearing cultures, both to the people whose vibrant cultures are getting wiped out, and to us. — Read the rest

Mark Dery is guest blogger du jour until August 17. He is the author of Culture Jamming, Flame Wars, Escape Velocity, and The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium. He's at work on The Pathological Sublime, a philosophical investigation into the paradox of horrible beauty and the politics of "just looking." — Read the rest

Continuing last week's spate of Daniel Pinkwater reviews (see the earlier posts on The Neddiad and The Yggyssey), I'm here today to tell you about The Education of Robert Nifkin, one of Pinkwater's true geek-inspirational masterpieces.

I missed Nifkin the first time around (it was initially published in 1998), but I'm pleased to have corrected that oversight, especially since the latest edition, from Houghton Mifflin's Graphia imprint, comes with a fabulous Shag-illustrated cover. — Read the rest

Randall Roberts wrote a long profile of Devo co-founder Mark Mothersbaugh for the December 5, 2007 edition of LA Weekly. The article has links to a lot of good video clips.

From the start, continues Mothersbaugh, he and Casale were drawn to the Pop-art movement, inspired by Warhol, Rauschenberg and others who blurred the lines between commercialism and fine art – and by ad men who did the reverse.

The New Atlantis has a long, interesting article about J. Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Manhattan Project.

It was Oppenheimer whom the public lionized as the brains behind the bomb; who agonized about the devastation his brilliance had helped to unleash; who hoped that the very destructiveness of the new "gadget," as the bombmakers called their invention, might make war obsolete; and whose sometime Communist fellow-traveling and opposition to the development of the hydrogen bomb—a weapon a thousand times more powerful than the bombs that incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki—brought about his political disgrace and downfall, which of course have marked him in the eyes of some as all the more heroic, a visionary persecuted by warmongering McCarthyite troglodytes.

I'll be on a radio show called Your Call today at 10am to talk about Make and DIY. I'll be joined by my friend Shoshana Berger, editor of ReadyMade magazine.

It's on 91.7 KALW in Berkeley San Francisco. You can listen to the KALW stream here, and an archive will be available after the show here. — Read the rest

In the new issue of Asimov's Science Fiction, SF author Robert Silverberg writes about Philip K. Dick and Artificial Life Inc.'s Vivienne, the "networked movile interactive companion… waiting for your loving care." Silverberg reflects on the flirtbot as yet another figment of PKD's imagination that has recently become (sur)reality. — Read the rest

In a couple hours, I'm leaving for Reboot, Denmark's annual, spectacular technology conference. This year's line-up of speakers is nothing less than stellar:

Douglas Bowman, Stopdesign;
Lee Bryant, Headshift;
Paula Le Dieu, BBC;
Jason Calacanis, Weblogs Inc.;
Ben Cerveny, Interaction designer and author;
James Cherkoff and Johnnie Moore of OpenSauceLive;
Régine Debatty, we make money not art;
Cory Doctorow, EFF / Boing Boing;
Anders Bertram Eibye, The Danish Design School;
Jyri Engeström, Aula, blog: zengestrom.com;

Scientists have announced the discovery of an unknown family of rodent sold as food in Laos. The species studied by scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society is known locally as kha-nyou and is thought to have split from other rodent families millions of years ago. — Read the rest

Here are a bunch of MP3s with lectures and interviews with psychedelic neuronauts Robert Anton Wilson, Mark Pesce, and the late Terrence McKenna (who I just learned owned an original set of Ernst Haeckel books). Link (Thanks, Matt!)

UPDATE: More McKenna lectures (not very good sound quality) here. — Read the rest

Bloomberg reports that Google has hired Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to manage its initial public offering this year.

The sale by Google, the world's most used Internet search engine, would be the biggest IPO since CIT Group Inc.'s $4.87 billion deal in July 2002.

This is an astonishing story about a disabled veteran/information studies grad husband-and-wife team in Florida who set up a noncommercial website called "Virtual Office Team." Robert Half International, a California company, sicced its New York lawyers on the poor couple, who have $100 in the bank and live on VA benefits. — Read the rest

Ingenious maker Mark Rober, best known for his backyard squirrel obstacle course and porch pirate glitterbombs, has now built an underwater maze to entertain his brilliant octopus.

"This is my pet octopus named Sashimi," Rober explains. "And this is a vault filled with all her favorite food. — Read the rest

Porch pirate bomb builder and backyard squirrel obstacle course maker Mark Rober tries to elude a mighty sniffing dog and handler. His scheme is to cover his tracks with smelly sock dragging drones, hurricane-power fans, tempting trails of distracting dog snacks, and the beloved movie and tv trope of a fugitive running though a river. — Read the rest

YouTube engineer Mark Rober, Joe Bernard of BPS.space, and a team of others, spent three years and a number of frustrating attempts trying to launch an egg into space and then dropping it in such a way that it could safely land back on Earth. — Read the rest