Head
DMT Is in Your Head, but It May Be Too Weird for the Psychedelic Renaissance …
You know that psychedelics are making a comeback when the New York Times says so on page 1. In “Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In,” John Tierney reports on how doctors at schools like Harvard, Johns Hopkins, UCLA and NYU are testing the potential of psilocybin and other hallucinogens for treating depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, alcoholism–and for …
Read more on Scientific American
Bahais in My Backyard
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2540441001807010408
Bahais In My Backyard offers a rare glimpse into the dealings of the Bahai religion, which plays a prominent role in the current history of Haifa.
World peace is the objective of the Bahai faith – a mysterious and widespread religion. This is an investigative road movie about two overachieving directors, a prophet’s great-granddaughter, and a CIA agent. A detective-like quest after the Bahai religion, which originated in Iran some 150 years ago, and ended up building its world centre on Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel.
Asaf grew up next to the beautiful Bahai gardens, staring out of his bedroom window when the Bahais excavated the entire Mount Carmel and built a secret underground city. He shared his thoughts and fears with Naama. They join forces to try and find out what lies beneath the Bahai Gardens – and document it cinematically. The directors’ mission begins in their backyard, using their un-polished detective skills to garner as much information about the underground city as possible. They make numerous trips to the Bahai gardens as “tourists”, trying to find loop holes which will gain them access them to the floors below. They meet people who have worked for the Bahai under ground, and who are willing to anonymously reveal what lies beneath.
The story turns international, when the two directors follow a worldwide espionage affair. Dr. David Kelly, the MI6 agent – an expert on weapons of mass destruction, and a Bahai follower – was found dead in the woods of Oxfordshire, England. The directors meet with a British intelligence analyst, the head of the Bahai faith in England, and an investigative journalist. They meet some elderly and sweet Bahais who knew both Kelly and the American CIA agent, but who are uncomfortable giving out ‘classified’ information. It is only then that Asaf and Naama realize that chasing a CIA agent and a dead scientist is stretching their detective skills.
Link: Bahais in my Backyard
Terrence McKennas Library Burnt Down
In a tragic loss of knowledge , Terrence McKenna entire collection of books and personal notes has been lost in a fire started by a fast food chain restaurant. The only thing salvageable is list of all the works it contained.
Terence’s brother Dennis owns an index of Terence’s collection, which will at least give us an overview of his library—sorta like a playlist without the MP3s. But even this valuable document will not replace the body of knowledge itself—a body that had become, in the weird ways of the memetic world, a kind of second body for Terence’s fabulous and fascinating mind. No budding head will ever be able to poke through this collection again, with its faintly perfumed volumes on Chinese alchemy and butterflies and hash. And the world has one fewer 1659 folio of Isaac Casaubon’s A True and Faithful Relation of what passed between Dr. John Dee and some spirits, and one fewer old-school copy of Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy, which Terence swapped for a pound or two of yummies back in the day. The content of these books, at least, is reproducible; Terence, of course, was one-of-a-kind.
