I'm in love with Cyanide and Happiness, my new favorite web comic, so you might see a lot of it from me for the next few days (i.e. until my affections wander elsewhere.)

National Geographic seems to like trippy science photos...

Nintendo 64 controller becomes bong. At last. Of course.

Thanks Slog and BoingBoing for the heads up.

File this under so bleeding edge it's scary. Scientists have found that when you program a computer to detect and predict color distribution in any given field based on the way a human child would learn to do it, the computer falls for the same optical illusions we do. The computer sees two shades of gray in the bars above, like we do. There is only one. This illusion is based on the way our brain uses contrast to detect line, shade, and depth.

Okay, this is dumb, but when has that stopped us from posting something before?

So low budget, it could have been a "Tales from the Tripside" sketch...

And now it's time for Drugged Thoughts, with James Kent. From the drug comedy DVD Tales From The Tripside.

We here at DoseNation would like to remind you to please, please, only use drugs for Good, never for Evil. Here, for instance, is an example of what not to do: a woman suspected of killing not one but two husbands by slipping them ethylene glycol (of antifreeze fame) then decides to poison her daughter with a cocktail comprised, apparently, of Ambien, Ritalin, and whatever might leave "traces of opiates, codeine, morphine and hydrocodone" in someone's system (I'm guessing it was opiates, codeine, morphine and hydrocodone, personally). Then, when her daughter passes out from the cocktail, the woman writes a phony suicide note in which the daughter confesses to killing the two husbands. The woman then calls 911, apparently not stopping to check if the daughter was, like, still alive (she was).

Apparently, when you do that to your daughter, it's only second-degree attempted murder. My limited understanding of murder laws suggest that second-degree murder is non-premeditated, but really, if you can take the time to cram that many drugs in your daughter's cocktail, then scold her to finish it, then type up a freaking suicide note, you're not exactly operating in the "heat of passion". You're operating in the "world of a B movie."

Anyway, just thought I'd share.

Here's a sampling of salvia-related headlines from the past month:

• Readily available drug hits streets
  
• Parent Discovers Child Has Hallucinogen Available Legally
  
• Ingredient in incense being used as alternative to LSD
  
• Salvia: A Legal Drug Used By Some Teens to Get High
  
• Salvia: A Potent and Legal Drug Gaining Popularity with Young People
  
• Mom Says Legal Herb Killed Son
  
• Hallucinogenic salvia gaining popularity
  
• Teens tape getting high and post it on web
  
• Availability of salvia devinorum concerns some councillors

There's been a constant drum beat along these lines since before we started this blog, but these stories keep coming, each one a little light bulb going off in a different community where some little local news outlet suddenly discovers salvia for the first time, and then freaks the fuck right out about it. I stopped reading these stories a looooooooong time ago, but today, I felt compelled to check out "Parent Discovers Child Has Hallucinogen Available Legally," which features the textbook salvia scare story lede:

Police say it's the best kept secret in the drug community. A type of plant that's completely legal and your child could be using it. It's called Salvia Divinorum. This is a drug that's just now getting some attention.

And of course, the story features the requisite menacing warning from local law enforcement:

"It is very scary and there are things that are out there that are perfectly legal that have really bad reactions once it gets into the body and it wasn't designed to be in the human body for starters."

You hear that? It wasn't designed to be in the human body. Which is really how future legislation ought to be guided: designed to be in the human body? Check, sell it at Wal-Mart. Not designed to be in the human body? Make it Schedule One. It's pretty easy when you break it down like that.

Sorry, I don't actually have a point here...

For those of you who read DoseNation regularly, you may have noticed some white space on the pages that was not there last week. This is because Google has added DoseNation to the list of sites too offensive to run ads on. From their form letter:

We currently do not run paid Google ads on web pages that are determined to contain potentially sensitive or mature content by our automatic contextual advertising system. On such pages, no ads or unpaid public service ads may appear.

We understand that not all pages automatically categorized as sensitive or mature will contain such content. At this time, we are unable to manually alter the page category in order to serve paid Google ads to these pages. However, please note that we are always working to improve our ad serving technology.

Considering that Google AdWords still run on tripzine.com, I can't for the life of me figure out what tripped the AdWords sniffer and booted our content from displaying ads. I blame Scotto.

On Monday night of this year's Burning Man festival, when Larry Harvey saw the figure he first built over twenty years ago burst into flame before its appointed time, the man's immediate reaction was laughter. A pure and perfect response. Harvey also noted that he laughed only after he knew that the fire was under control and that no one was apt to be hurt. (I'll be honest: I laughed without knowing if anyone had been injured.) Soon afterwards, Harvey told a blogger that the early burn would turn the festival into a "narrative of community and redemption," as attendees got to see or assist in the public rebuilding of the statue.

I appreciate where Harvey is coming from, but this sounds like a pretty kumbaya take on what looked to me and many others like an increasingly hidebound institution's inability to react creatively to a disturbing and unexpected marvel left steaming on their doorstep. So many things could have been done at the time—parade the body of the blackened man to Center Camp, or distribute his dismembered planks to the plazas like the chunks of Osiris, or place the corpse in the arms of the new man.

Sadly, the organization did not improvise with the Event. Instead, they acted a bit like a colony of ants and simply cleaned up the mess and replicated the established model. The repetitive nature of the task, performed behind guard and beneath those garish lights without poetry or mirth, spoke less of community and redemption than of the empire of work. The second man was not a phoenix; it was a clone.

Perhaps this helps explain why the official Saturday night burn of 2007 was probably the most boring on record. Admittedly, I've seen these things into the double digits now. But I am also jaded about being jaded and still enjoy the sparkle, the roar, and especially the first surge of the acolytes toward the pyre. But Saturday night's fireworks had all the whizbang of those little doodads that blink on websites, and the conflagration itself was so drawn out and tepid that many of the revelers around me just walked away or started talking about DJs.

So what made it boring? She that hath an ear, let her hear: Because the base structure was too strong. It was too rigid. It didn't give. It didn't surprise. If attendants hadn't manually pulled the scarecrow down, he would have stood there all night, like the living dead.

But I am not really interested in second-guessing the organization. They build a crazy, immensely entertaining and inspiring city in the middle of nowhere and then tear it down without killing people or getting arrested. They have a lot on their plate.