I was riding my bike past a camp a few years back when two little girls running a lemonade stand stopped me. I had a glass, chatted for a while, and just as I was riding off a little boy in their camp asked for a glass. One of the little girls grabbed it away from him, and said that "No! This is spe...

Anyone had a chance to read "Yoga For People Who Can't be Bothered To Do it" by Geoff Dyer? It doesn't deal with BM exclussively, but the BM component is a crucial to the overall feel of the book. Check it out if you get a chance. It's less about the details of Burning Man then it is about it's esse...

Anyone experience synchronicity at Burning Man? I’ve had a few experiences with it myself, as have a few friends. It almost makes me think that something weird is going on out there in the desert. The first was in ’98 when a friend and I were in the open playa. We found an old school desk, and thoug...

So I had a chance to interview Larry Harvey for a CBC program called ZeD. The broadcast version finally aired on March 10th, which means that it is now available online for people to view. Please check it out here: http://zed.cbc.ca/go.ZeD?user=Acquilad&CONTENT_ID=92697&page=content The actual inter...

Yeah, that rocked. Fun little film! Man I didn't see half that stuff. Where the Hell was I?

So what is going on over in their group? Does it seem like there are a lot of people discussing this?

Not to be super paranoid, but I don't think joining the Yahoo group is such a great idea. These guys have proven that they are more interested in getting press then they are in talking. The last thing we need is them pointing to a huge number of registered users, and saying "see... all these people ...

I don't know what EIR or for that matter an EIS stands for. I assume some sort of environmental assesment. Frankly sure... I'd be down with that. I think Burning Man can address the issue of improving its environmental impact on the Playa. However if we are told basically "no you shouldn't be here",...

I'm not really sure how to approach this. Unfortunately stopburningman.org basically declared all out war in that they clearly wish to shut down the event despite what they may say. I mean if this isn't the case they'd have called themselves "cleanupburningman", or "burnresponsibly" or something lik...

Probably "Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It". Check out a review here:

http://contemporarylit.about.com/librar ... 052503.htm

I have to say I'm changing my opinion on what to do about the trolls. I hate the idea of banning anyone unless they are actually a danger. These little farts are little more then a nuisance. Still... I kinda hope they choke on something. To bad about the Contessa being banned, but yeah... I saw that...

"it's just my art, silly." Which is what I think should be said to a person who has just received a well deserved face punching. Yeah... call me a fascist, but I'm happy to see people like this tossed... and I don't actually advocate "face punching" - I just like to talk big. The funny thing is, peo...

Throw the bums out. They aren't Communists, Jews, or Catholics. Just plain old-fashioned assholes who are doing everything they can to piss on really good party. The thing is, they are using our ethos against us. We just need to decide how far we let them go. Sometimes they might bring up a valid po...

I never said that diversity is not limited to the former British colonies. I am saying that there is no where near the level of diversity as found in the colonies. You've cited some examples where possibly a dozen cultures have crossed paths in relative peace, but I am talking about thousands living...

It isn't just about the money. The cultural mixing is pretty cool too- though we have this in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand as well. North America is an unparalled mix of cultures from around the world. I remember reading in National Geographic that there were people decended from close to 1000...

Whether or not any other nation could have conceived BM is kind of moot. None did, so it's really hard to say. Frankly though I don't think so. America is probably one of the single most interesting social experiments in human history. There is so much weirdness going on that is impossible to wrap y...

Interesting idea, but I think that basically this will lead to us creating ghettos within our city, and this might only serve to enhance the problem. For the time being, people are forced to interact with all sorts of different people. As a result we do actually have community standards, and these a...

Drug gifts are rare for guys. In five years of coming to BM with piles of friends who do tons of groovy stuff, there have been three incidents of drug gifts. Two were e, one a pot cookie. Not great odds, but I admire your sense of hope! Still... anyone wanna adopt some Canadians in the future?

I love taking drugs at Burning Man, but this was the first year where I realized that I could probably be quite happy not taking any. Still, blasting across the desert with a head full of chemicals towards what looks like a giant jellyfish is pretty fun. My biggest wish is that all the gawdamned hip...

For anyone interested in becoming more involved in the Vancouver community please consider coming out for our town hall meeting on Sunday, September 28th at 5PM. The meeting space (Placebo) is located at 1183 Odlum Drive, Suite 101. Tell yer fellow Burners to show up if they want to have their say!

I always feel a little edgy when travelling in the US. This is usually compounded after leaving BRC when I show up in the gas station in Cedarville (northern route), and slap my Visa down on the counter covered in comics making fun of Hilary Clinton from Hustler. My chipped nail polish never fails t...

Damn you people... I have work to do.

"but unfortunately the masses in the u.s. have not even come close to catching on. " Well that's the rub isn't it. People have the freedom, and availabilty of radical ideas, and yet they aren't terribly interested in looking at them. What do we do about that. We certainly can't continue to hide behi...

"This is what I think we have done in terms of all genocides, acted far too late" But the point is, we are now begining to act. We are begining to interfer when it happens. I can only imagine how unbelievably hard it must be to marshal the will required to do so. Sure it's pretty easy to just say "l...

"just like the media" Never before in human history h as there been greater access to information. First of all, most Westerners can read - if not think critically. We all have a bit of dough, enough anyways, so that we can purchase any number of magazines or newspapers. Then there is the internet. ...

"shifting values, or a desire to cover their asses and not be regarded as mass murderers?" I don't know. Maybe a bit of both. Regardless they are evolving along this path because people don't want to see cities carpet bombed. Personally I believe in the shifting values approach. True mass murderers ...

Actually a lot of people were doing something about Rwanda, and were basically blocked by the UN. France and the US who are currently at each other's throats were basically the forces behind denying a larger UN force that could have minimized the suffering. Canadian General Romeo Dallaire did what h...

The cases of genocide are interesting, because for the first time in our history we are starting to do something about it. We've reached a point where we will at least consider comitting lives, and massive resources to put a stop to this. It doesn't always work, and "our" methods are not always agre...

Has anybody ever considered the fact that the vibe changes by the end of the week not soley because of the "yahoos", but because the bulk of the population has had very little sleep, and has taken tons of mood altering drugs all week? I saw tons of people I would describe as core burners wandering a...

"On the contrary, I think a case can be made that, per capita, planetwide, there is less now than there was a few millenia ago when everyone in a particular warring tribe got cot up in the madness of war." Absolutely. Things have changed quite radically. There are six billion people living on this p...