Archive for May 2007

It's great to find a band on tour soon after discovering them. The Brian Jonestown Massacre have just announced dates through July at festivals in Denmark, Ireland, Scotland and Oxfordshire, and in venues in Newcastle, Liverpool, Birmingham, London, Stockholm, Gothemberg, Manchester and Cardiff. As of posting, tickets for Birmingham, London and Liverpool... More »

So, having signed up for the exciting Metageum conference in Malta this November, the question of travel arises. More specifically, how does this sit with my "no air travel unless essential" plan? First off, why no air travel? Carbon emissions, of course. Jim Bliss, my ex-engineer friend whose head for maths... More »

The ever-clued-up Bob Trubshaw just brought an exciting-looking week-long conference in Malta to my attention: Metageum 2007: Exploring the Megalithic Mind An inter-disciplinary international conference on approaches to understanding the origins of our megalithic legacy - The Caraffa Stores, Birgu, Island of Malta - 3rd-11th November 2007 Speakers that I'm familiar with include earth mysteries... More »

July's Fortean Times contains a glowing review of Dreamflesh Journal Vol. I: Jam today! Part of the pleasure of forteana is the psychological liberation of stepping outside the bounds of conventional reality. The lively mind likes to cock a snook at the leaden head. What if there were a whole realm... More »

Debunking is a delicate process. At least, it should be. All too often a "myth" (in the modern sense of a false image of something) is debunked in a way that is almost wilfully blind to the baby in the bathwater. Naturally, the encrusted mental habits that this kind of myth... More »

Bristol's Festival of Ideas kicked off today with a short lecture by social philosopher Steve Fuller, which I popped along to. A flaky friend didn't show, so you, my dear readers, get what would have been my post-lecture pub ramblings. Before we get the first round in (mine's a pint), let... More »

Thanks to our insatiable desire for amusing animal videos on the web, the outdatedness of the notion of tool-use as a quality that raises us above "mere" animal status is pretty well-known now. Betty, the hook-making crow in a lab in Oxford, probably got the ball rolling, easily out-performing the rudimentary... More »