Eight Kinds of Ice

2001-03-29T17:56:00.000-06:00

2001-02-07T07:09:00.000-06:00

2001-01-13T17:01:00.000-06:00

Have I already blogged McSweeney's? If not, consider it blogged.

2001-01-01T20:37:00.000-06:00

Year Two Of This Millennium in which Jon Carroll resolves the real beginning of the millennium in his own inimitable fashion.

2000-12-24T22:12:00.000-06:00

Useless Information Home Page.

2000-12-24T20:03:00.000-06:00

More on Philip Pullman His Dark Materials with excerpts and a section on the alethiometer.

2000-12-24T19:54:00.000-06:00

Interesting interview with Philip Pullman, author of children's books for adults, and fantasy for those who don't read genre fiction...

2000-12-24T19:34:00.000-06:00

Lots of good stuff from Michael Moore.

2000-12-04T17:05:00.000-06:00

FEED | Essay: The Money Men

Alan Greenspan is the current king of the world's system of unbacked paper money, and he has been a benign monarch. To realize how grateful we should be for Greenspan's relatively calm and steady hand on the printing press, consider the western world's first king of paper money, a Scottish escaped murderer named John Law who destroyed France's financial system in the early eighteenth century.

2000-12-01T16:17:00.000-06:00

Five interesting cookie recipes.

2000-11-29T21:31:00.000-06:00

The Million-Dollar Nose - 00.12 a great article about Robert Parker, Jr., the wine critic.

"Parker got as belligerent as he gets. He said, "Look. I came here at the end of the day. You said I could taste your wine. I've been bitten by your dog. If I was wrong about this wine, I will be the first to say so.""

2000-11-28T11:25:00.000-06:00

Free Thoughts: Sam Smith's Favorite Quotes

2000-11-27T21:47:00.000-06:00

Amusing slashdot thread discussing the Einstein-Bose Condensate which is:

"The Einstein-Bose condensate recently created in Boulder laboratories is a new form of matter predicted to exist at low temperatures. Atoms of a type called bosons are all cooled to the same state, very much as photons of light (another kind of boson) are all in the same state (direction and wavelength) as they emerge from a laser."

2000-11-22T15:33:00.000-06:00

I knew it! Iceberg Lettuce does not deserve its bad rap.

2000-11-22T10:35:00.000-06:00

Totally incoherent Jon Carroll column... should long time readers worry?

2000-11-17T22:04:00.000-06:00

The Man Who Wrote 10,000 Grooks is an article I wrote about Piet Hein, as an entry in Salon's "Brilliant Careers" contest. I guess I lost (some sort of notice would have been nice...) but that doesn't mean you can't read it.

2000-11-17T21:38:00.000-06:00

Serendipity: gotta love a page with major sections on Maria Callas (the opera singer), psychedelics, and grammar.

2000-11-15T18:01:00.000-06:00

More map esoterica: Mappa.Mundi Magazine - A Shared Reality

"Maps have always been consensual hallucinations filled with imaginary borders, islands, and oceans, not objective truth."

2000-11-15T17:44:00.000-06:00

I found this article on Mapping MUDs quite interesting, but then I'm a Land Surveyor with an interest in the internet...

"Anders, in an email interview, said his motivation to map MUDs was because they are designed by the players rather than professional architects, and they offered "…a source of great opportunity for architects since MUD spaces aren't subject to the consequences of material construction - and could possibly supplant built spaces in the future.""

2000-11-14T18:27:00.000-06:00

13 Myths About the Results of the 2000 Election

2000-11-14T17:58:00.000-06:00

If you've ever seen this footage of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge ("Galloping Gertie"), you'll probably enjoy this detailed background article from failure magazine.

"Henry Petroski, professor of civil engineering at Duke University and author of "Engineers of Dreams" and "To Engineer is Human" concurs that cable-stayed bridges are demonstrating behavior not anticipated and being built longer and more slender than is wise—the same ingredients that contributed to the Tacoma Narrows disaster. "There are these warning signs," he says. "There's a long history of bridges that have failed, and they generally fall in 30-year cycles. We're about due...and cable stayed-bridges bear careful watching."

2000-11-10T21:50:00.000-06:00

For no special reason, my brother-in-law on a Kodiak Island beach, with a friend.

2000-11-10T06:49:00.000-06:00

Japan Amazed as Archeologist's Magic Exposed as Sleight of Hand: L.A. Times article must lead us to ask, "What good are experts?"

"In September and again last month, Mainichi reporters hid video cameras in the ruins of Fujimura dig sites. Shots taken Oct. 22 show him driving up at 6:18 a.m., looking around furtively and removing a plastic bag from his pocket. He then digs several holes, buries stoneware and stamps the dirt down for "discovery" later when his colleagues are presumably around to witness the find."

2000-11-09T17:04:00.000-06:00

I'm not saying that I agree with everything in this Atlantic Monthly article about dog genetics but I am saying it makes for fascinating reading. Robot Wisdom led me to this.

2000-11-08T16:41:00.000-06:00

CounterPunch has a truly moving obituary for the Arch-Druid, David Ross Brower

2000-11-08T15:49:00.000-06:00

BBC News | SCI/TECH | Patient gives old heart to museum

Robert Moss walked into the Science Museum in London, UK, on Tuesday and put the diseased and enlarged heart removed from his chest into a display cabinet.

2000-11-07T21:15:00.000-06:00

In case you were looking for the official TinTin site.

2000-11-07T21:03:00.000-06:00

I guess everyone knows about sodaconstructor "the online toy where you can build and play with things made out of masses, springs and muscles" by now.

2000-11-06T20:15:00.000-06:00

Scott McCloud is the author of Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics but before you tune out, THEY'RE ABOUT MORE THAN COMICS! Both books, particularly the first, are more genuinely useful to anyone seeking to express themselves than any of the books that are part of the creativity trend. Give them a try. And check out Scott McCloud's latest creative effort, Zot!, in which he seeks to try out some of his ideas in web-based comics.

2000-11-06T11:43:00.000-06:00

Review by Jon Carroll of an interesting book about retail store layout, with an interesting thought about Public Transit appended at end.

"Read this book, and you'll never look at a store the same way again. You will see advertising through a new pair of eyes. You'll begin to see the skeleton beneath the skin of marketing."

2000-11-05T08:39:00.000-06:00

Overlawyered.com: Great lawyer jokes... except they're not jokes.

2000-11-05T08:35:00.000-06:00

Janet Frame was, in 1952, ``deemed to be a suitable subject for Prefrontal Leucotomy Operation''. The goal of this highly invasive procedure was to offer her relief from the schizophrenia that she did not in fact have. The result was likely to have left her ``vegetative'' with her ``depressions or obsessions intensified''.

Six days after Frame's poorly advised mother signed the consent for her daughter's surgery, Frame won New Zealand's sole major literary prize for her first book, a collection of stories called The Lagoon.

2000-11-04T18:32:00.000-06:00

Somewhat navel-gazing and optimistic history of weblogging from Rebecca's Pocket. If I understand her conclusions, this link fulfills a prediction of hers - and she finds it fascinating...

2000-11-04T11:30:00.000-06:00

High weirdness in mirrors? Yep, according to this Linguafranca article. Scroll to bottom for True Mirror source.

"There is nothing very strange about the fact that ordinary mirrors reverse left and right, is there? "Left" and "right" are labels for the two horizontal directions parallel to the mirror. The two vertical directions parallel to the mirror are "up" and "down." But the optics and geometry of reflection are precisely the same for all dimensions parallel to the mirror. So why does a mirror treat the horizontal and vertical axes differently? Why does it reverse left and right but not up and down?"

2000-11-04T11:10:00.000-06:00

A very detailed, somewhat mind-blowing, article about fingerprints as evidence from Linguafranca.

"The authority of fingerprint evidence rests on two contested assumptions. Although conventional wisdom since the nineteenth century has accepted the doctrine that no two fingerprints are alike, no one has really proven the proposition's validity. But if the question of the uniqueness of fingerprints seems pedantic, consider a more practical concern: How reliable is fingerprint evidence anyway? Can forensic technicians really match a fragmentary or smudged print taken from a crime scene to one and only one human fingertip, to the exclusion of all others in the world? At a pretrial hearing in the Mitchell case, this important question would receive its first airing in a U.S. courtroom."

2000-11-04T06:49:00.000-06:00

Cool optical illusion Count the Black Dots! Found on Sylloge.

2000-11-04T06:44:00.000-06:00

Interesting in retrospect June 1999 backgrounder from Salon about Bush campaign.

Donald Evans, Karen Hughes, Joe Allbaugh and Karl Rove are orchestrating Bush's run for the White House. All of them are white, close to Bush in age, Southern-educated and have extensive political résumés.

2000-11-04T06:22:00.000-06:00

On a Particle's Trail, Physicists Seek Time: Interesting NY Times article about the Higgs Boson, CERN internal politics, and a $60,000,000 remodeling delay. Requires registration.

2000-11-03T07:28:00.000-06:00

If you've ever heard Sturgeon's Law, "90% of everything is crud" and wondered what sturgeons have to do with it, you can read about it here.

2000-11-02T16:25:00.000-06:00

The Sentencing Project Worth reading, if you've been wondering where a ton of your tax money is going, and how you're benefiting...

America has just replaced Russia as the world leader in its rate of incarceration and incarcerates far more prisoners than any other nation -- nearly 2 million. In next week's election, 4 million Americans will be locked out of the voting booth as a result of laws that disenfranchise persons convicted of a felony. In swing states such as Florida, where more than 600,000 persons are disenfranchised, these laws could directly affect the state's electoral outcome. The racial disparities of the criminal justice system have led to 13 percent of African-American males being excluded from the electoral process. Ironically, 50 years after the beginnings of the civil rights movement, an increasing number of African Americans are excluded from the political process each year. We no longer have laws that require literacy tests or poll taxes, but the racially disproportionate results today resemble those of a hundred years ago. MARC MAUER, SENTENCING PROJECT

2000-11-02T06:13:00.000-06:00

From the "It's my blog and I'll post what I want" department comes this photo of huge mud catfish pulled from the Rough River in Kentucky, by my grandfather, Harris Walker. The little girl on the right is my mother. Harris once made the local paper for snagging a 50.5 pound mud cat.

2000-11-02T06:03:00.000-06:00

Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point is a funny, gracefully written, profound and short book that describes what appear to be the actual mechanisms underlying large-scale social phenomena, like crime statistics going down in big cities. For an introduction to Gladwell's style and themes, check his website which archives all his New Yorker articles and Talk of the Town pieces.

2000-11-01T17:25:00.000-06:00

Fresh Air: Tuesday - October 31, 2000

Funny, interesting interviews with Al Franken (working for Bush campaign) and Bill Maher (cynical Naderite). Sounds okay on my 48k connection.

2000-11-01T07:42:00.000-06:00

Jon Carroll's Halloween column, "Disappearing Trick: No Treats This Year" makes a strong case for non-participation.

"EVERYONE WHINES ABOUT commercialism, but no one does anything about it. Halloween is now a $4 billion holiday in this country, according to NPR, second only to Christmas in money spent. It's ahead of Valentine's Day and Mother's Day and all those other times in which money is pointlessly hurled away to prove the love that should be proved in nonmonetary ways the 364 other days of the year."

2000-10-31T21:20:00.000-06:00

Thanks very much to all of you sending me email in response to my post yesterday. Comments were generally positive, which I appreciate, and I will be trying to keep this site interesting for anyone who makes it a part of their daily/weekly routine. Thanks again, cheers!

2000-10-31T21:11:00.000-06:00

The "Tragedy of the Commons" is a philosophical idea with broad application. I recently saw it cited in an interesting discussion of why Gnutella and other peer-to-peer systems might fail. Here is a not exciting, but thorough, discussion by Garrett Hardin of this idea, which will - tragically - help you to see it everywhere, and here is a page full o' links using Hardin's paper as a starting point.

2000-10-31T20:50:00.000-06:00

BuzzWhack: The Buzzword Compliant Dictionary effectively tracks buzzwords currently making the rounds. I seem to be benefiting from "word-of-mouse", lately - funny how a buzzword seems less offensive when it fills a need...

To relate this to the theme of my weblog: if language can help us see, abuse of language can blind us. Certainly, once a buzzzword has been slapped on a company, a concept, a person, etc., there is a certain amount of semantic fog obscuring reality. Kudos to John Walston for a well-organized site.

2000-10-30T20:54:00.000-06:00

Good short bio of the neglected genius Mervyn Peake.

"Critics remain divided over Peake's reputation. This is mainly because unlike other major writers of the 20th century, Peake seems to tackle no important or topical themes such as war, sex, politics or marriage. Instead Peake appeared to use his titanic imagination to create a dense, eccentric world of nightmare and nursery rhyme. However, a closer reading of his work as poet, novelist, short story writer and playwright reveals a powerfully insightful mind which transfigured the horrors and joys of the world into a highly controlled satire."

Interested? Then dive into Titus Groan and/or Gormenghast the first two books of the Gormenghast trilogy. For more incentive, read the reviews at amazon in which one reader tries to award a million stars...

2000-10-30T20:25:00.000-06:00

I may not be famous, yet, but an article in the Wall Street Journal just mentioned me, and it certainly made my mother proud. If you're visiting here as a result of the article, please drop me a line

"Who hasn't been to a neat site and thought, hey, more people should know about this?" muses Angus Stocking, a 36-year-old land surveyor and novice weblogger in Beaver Dam, Wis. After reading and enjoying other weblogs, or "blogs," he recently decided to create his own, which is now online (eightkindsofice.blogspot.com).

2000-10-29T07:10:00.000-06:00

A pretty good juggler's page by James Jay, but not nearly as many links.

2000-10-29T07:06:00.000-06:00

Extremely irritating juggling page with some good links and animations.

2000-10-29T06:57:00.000-06:00

An interesting Java applet... if you like juggling.

2000-10-29T06:44:00.000-06:00

It seems to me that journalism's mandate to check sources and be verifiers of truth eroded some time ago, if in fact it ever existed. For some hilarious anecdotal evidence of this, read this article, found in The Baffler. Scroll way down to the story about "Teloperator's Rex, Inc."

2000-10-21T20:21:00.000-05:00

Time for a reality check.

2000-10-21T20:14:00.000-05:00

The Museum Of Jurassic Technology

Exquisite, if bizarre, truth? Hoax? Waste of time? You make the call.

2000-10-18T10:23:00.000-05:00

I wrote an article about "Mind Mapping: The Swiss Army Knife of Thinking Tools" which can be viewed at the Professional Surveyor Archives.

2000-10-17T21:08:00.000-05:00

In this snippet from This American Life ADM executives are taped discussing illegal campaign contributions. Taken from "The Informant", by Kurt Eichenwald.

Americans for the first time can find out the truth about what corporate executives think of campaign finance laws -- and how laughable they find the cost of fines for illegal contributions versus the price-tag for disappointing politicians in need of cash.

2000-10-17T20:43:00.000-05:00

I found this at the NOAA site. I hate to say it, but something provided by the Federal Government appears to be both useful, convenient and even seems to have some fun personal touches. All images provided can be freely used, so long as they are credited. Worth nosing around in, there are lots of great marine photos here, and other sections such as my favorite, the Treasures of the Library.

2000-10-16T12:45:00.000-05:00

"If international observers were to oversee this year's US presidential campaign, there is little doubt they would declare the process undemocratic. The ruling parties -- the Democrats and the Republicans -- have used their power to restrict the opposition parties' access to the most important media events of the campaign. They have used police to prevent an opposition candidate from attending a major campaign function, and have excluded an official party's candidates from the regular ballot. And as a result of politically motivated, racially biased policies, an ethnic minority is disproportionately disenfranchised."

from Progressive Review

2000-10-16T12:35:00.000-05:00

Jon Carroll makes use of the interesting concept introject. Avert eyes when arriving at any paragraph containing the word 'quotidian'.

2000-10-10T07:46:00.000-05:00

Whatever happened to the buckyball?

2000-10-07T16:53:00.000-05:00

I wrote this about my face, and it has even been published (on paper!) a couple of times.

2000-10-05T11:45:00.000-05:00

Neat article by Clay Shirky, called "Shirky: Playfulness in 3D Spaces-Why Quake is Better Than VRML".

2000-10-04T13:03:00.000-05:00

Last Sunday, I went to a wedding at the breathtaking (if you can find a way to get a good look at it) Monona Terrace. The picture above was found at hypertextbook.com and is about the best picture that can be taken of the Terrace, unless you are actually out on the lake. Nothing this large, expensive, and individual is without controversy:

"The Monona Terrace Convention Center has been compared to half a wedding cake, a parking lot for UFOs and, on a foggy days, a ghost rising from Lake Monona. The State Capitol, after decades of dominating Madison's skyline, finally has a rival landmark... It may have taken longer to build than any other public building in modern history."

The Terrace is touted vigorously as a Frank Lloyd Wright design, but is it? I can say definitely that it is a beautiful place for a wedding. As my friends plighted their troth, seagulls flew and kited outside, boats skittered about, and darkness settled gradually on the lake and surrounding homes.

2000-10-03T13:55:00.000-05:00

Um... Fresh Air, another show I like but don't get to listen to much, is also available on Real Audio. What else have I been missing that I didn't have to miss?

2000-10-03T13:48:00.000-05:00

Hyprocisy, the vaseline of political intercourse:

. . . Not surprisingly, it fell to Czech President Vaclav Havel last week to give poetic expression to these anxieties. 'We often hear about the need to restructure the economies of developing countries and about the wealthier nations being duty-bound to help them accomplish this," said the playwright who led his own country from communism to capitalism. "But I deem it even more important that we should begin to think about another restructuring, a restructuring of the entire system of values which forms the basis of our civilization today.'" from the Washington Post:

Compare to President Havel's actual treatment of prisoners in his care.

THE LIST
Reports of Treatment
of Prisoners in Prague

[From the Prague Legal Team and INPEG organizers via Indymedia]

- Women have been strip searched by male officers and forced to perform exercises for the enjoyment of the officers
- Many have been continuously denied food/water/sleep
- Only women and fascists are allowed water.
- Men are forced to pay officers for water.
- Prisoners are first being taken to isolated areas and beaten before taken to the station
- Two Norwegians witnessed people being in the station being handcuffed to a wall, then severely beaten
- Numerous prisoners have been handcuffed and beaten in cuffs, put on tables and chained down with their legs spread open.
- Men have had their genitalia twisted and punched.
- Prisoners have been first handcuffed then thrown down stairs.
- Twenty-two prisoners were forced into a 4 square meter cell, piled on top of one another.
- Thirty prisoners were detained overnight in an outdoor courtyard with no food or blankets of any kind
- Many witnessed an Israeli man who was severely beaten. He has a broken leg and possibly a broken rib but has been denied medical attention.
- Prisoners with diabetes have not been fed
- Prisoners have been refused individual medicines necessary for their survival - Czech activists are being beaten more severely and detained longer.
- Israelis are facing more brutality than other international activists
- A German woman was forced to pose for photographs with different clothes and different positions
- One man was forced to pose for photographs also in different outfits, wearing glasses, wigs, etc.
- Witnesses saw a woman fall or jump from a window and break her back, at which point she was brought back into the station.

So far, protesters at Seattle, Australia and now Prague have been beaten up by local police trained and equipped by non-local money, have had ordinary civil rights suspended before and after arrest, and have seen their predominantly peaceful, well-coordinated protests reported as violent free-for-alls by traditional media.

The above items are taken from Progressive Review's fast news page, which you should read daily. Scroll way down.

2000-10-02T12:52:00.000-05:00

An innovative attempt to get kids to spend more time outdoors. Photographed by myself just outside of Kenosha, Wisconsin.

2000-10-01T16:17:00.000-05:00

Here's how I learned about This American Life; every Sunday, for months, as my family and I drive home from our religious meetings, I've been catching the last 10 minutes or so of this funky show on public radio - This American Life. It took me awhile to realize that something special was going on (T.A.L. doesn't come across well in just ten minutes), but eventually I started to get it and I began to wish I could listen to all of it. Well, guess what? The web site has all of the shows on Real Audio, and they sound great on my 56k connection. As I type up this post, I'm listening to "Fiasco", a '97 episode, and periodically snorting with laughter.
Give it a try, if this isn't old news to you. Ira Glass is some sort of genius, and can be counted for a fresh take on just about any subject he tackles. I love the convenience of being able to listen whenever I want to.

"One of the problems with our show from the start has been that whenever we try to describe it in a sentence or two, it sounds awful. It's a bunch of stories -- some are documentaries, some are fiction, some are something else. Each week we choose a theme and invite different writers and performers to contribute items on the theme. This doesn't sound like something we'd want to listen to on the radio -- and it's our show."

2000-10-01T08:00:00.000-05:00

If It's Out There, It's In Here an interesting review of an interesting book about an interesting idea. From the N.Y. Times.

"We learn from Rosen's book that the basis of the resemblance between the Talmud and the Internet lies in the fact that everything can be found in either of them if you know how and where to look."

2000-09-30T21:21:00.000-05:00

Just a few hours after I posted yesterday, I found a much nicer color chart and then I found an excellent utility that lets you zero in on satellite photos anywhere in the world - and the overview photo looks a lot like the Peter's Projection I was talking about. I found both of these at Paracelsus Rambles and also learned about Mappa Mundi, a well done zine with maps as a theme.

All this raises a few points of interest. First, we tend to see more of what we're looking for. I have a sudden interest in color charts, and find a couple of nice ones popping up in places where I haven't noticed them before. This is not just being sensitized. I contend that we actually create our perceptions based on what we're looking for. Not that the color charts, or links to them, weren't there previously - I'm not suggesting magic, or even synchronicity - but that the world I perceive, that is, the world I live in, began to include color charts as a possibility, and I began to notice them. This explains some of the functionality that makes visualization and positive thinking techniques work so well - if what we want exists around us, we can use these techniques to start noticing it.

Here's another point of interest - you could have been led to these sites by just reading Paracelsus Rambles. Obviously, I will need to find my own interesting sites, and I will, but it emphasizes for me the potential power of blogs - find a blogger who interests you, and s/he will help you see.

2000-09-30T10:48:00.000-05:00

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate." -- Noam Chomsky (found at Progressive Review)

Sometimes I feel like mounting a bumper sticker that says, "I don't take drugs, and I'm against the drug war". I would be in good company. Check out, for instance, these longish statements by William F. Buckley, Jr. or Noam Chomsky. Still calm? Read all of Sam Smith's Drug Wars page.

2000-09-30T07:23:00.000-05:00

I just spent a wonderful morning learning how to tweak the standard blogger template. This Color Chart was very helpful - I kept flipping back and forth between it and my template code, figuring out what colors I could cut and paste. Also learned a few things by viewing some other folk's sources. I love the feeling of being a beginner.

2000-09-29T20:24:00.000-05:00

I'm a Registered Land Surveyor, and I know the importance of a good map. Since the Earth is round and maps are flat, all maps are badly distorted - but some are more distorted than others. The Peters Projection concentrates on getting area correct. Each square inch on this map represents an equal number of square miles. Take a look. You'll be amazed to see how big Africa and South America really are - and how small the United States is...

2000-09-29T16:28:00.000-05:00

Here's a site that has been expanding my perceptions in all sorts of interesting ways. Days of reading, including a non-hysterical take on Arkansas Sudden Death Syndrome

2000-09-29T15:24:00.000-05:00

According to a passage in Robert Pirsig's "Lila" some Alaskan Indian languages have words for eight kinds of ice, and regularly see these eight kinds of ice in their daily affairs. Hindustani, by contrast, has just one word for snow and ice, and speakers of Hindustani don't usually register a difference between these forms of solid water. Language affects perception.
I have some personal experience with this phenomenon - and I'm sure you do too. Mine dates from about 1980, when I was 16 and living in Glendale, CA. I lived in a fairly typical L.A. suburb, except that it was long and narrow, squeezed between two sets of hills. If you had asked me, I would have said that there was little birdlife in my neighborhood, just Robins and Sparrows. But then I got into birding in a big way. Because it was L.A., and because I had just got my driver's license, I drove all over to various birding spots, to the odd bits of untouched space left in the big city. But then a funny thing happened - I started to see all kinds of birds right in my neighborhood. California Thrashers, Nuttall's and Ladderback Woodpeckers, Oregon Juncos, Vireos, Kinglets, Titmice... dozens and dozens of bird varieties, where before I had only seen a few. What had changed?
Obviously the birds had always been there - but I never saw them. I couldn't see them. I didn't have the words for them, didn't know they existed. When I acquired the language, I acquired the ability to see more birds than I had before. I have had similar experiences with the board game called Go, with mushrooms (thank you David Arora), with juggling and with lots of other 'languages'.
I believe that this is an important phenomena, and hope to continue exploring it in a public way on this weblog. Ultimately, I hope that this site will help myself and others to see better.
However, I'm just starting, and know very little of the 'language' of this new medium. Bear with me.