Brain Candy #81 - Everything You Know Is Wrong

I've just got a few random links for you this month. If any theme develops, it's an accident.

Does the title of this article sound familiar to you? If so, you might be familiar with an old improvisational comedy troupe called "The Firesign Theatre." It was the title of one of their albums, from 1974. I've been a fan for decades, owning several of their albums and CDs. Of late, they have a web site, a it's a nice one indeed, at www.firesigntheatre.com. To get much out of it, you'll need a Flash-enabled browser. They've taken some of their old audio routines, and perhaps some new work and added some Flash animation to go along with it. Go to the Funway and poke around. Make sure to see the "Mark Time" Flash animations.

In Brain Candy #73, I talked about the possibility of earthquakes in the central United States. The US Geological Survey now has a map that you can download to look at earthquake frequency from 1699 to 2002. It's pretty big, but they've done a good job to make it easy to work with. You'll find it at pubs.usgs.gov/imap/i-2812/. The geological hot spots are interesting.

Sometimes I find strange, but appealing sites. Would you expect to be interested in a site called "The Test Card Gallery"? You can find it at www.meldrum.easynet.co.uk/mhp/testcard/index.html. For those of you who are relatively young, television stations used to go off the air late at night. Sometimes they would be physically shut off, but at other times, they would broadcast a test card. In the US, it most often was a calibration chart, which also featured a prominent drawing of an Indian head. In a number of British Commonwealth countries, the non-technical part of the chart was a picture of a little girl among her toys. Other countries had other things. It's actually kind of interesting - you might want to take a look.

If you're very familiar with the Grateful Dead, you've seen their 'bear' art. Do you know the story of the 'Bear,' though? It's long and involved, involving a controversial, legendary counterculture figure named Augustus Owsley Stanley III, also known as AOS3 as well as 'the Bear.' He was the soundman for the Grateful Dead in the early days, as well as being the artist who drew these bears. People would find them on the papers they bought from him, which also contained a tiny amount of something else. For another of his claims to fame is that he is considered by those who know about such things to be the greatest LSD chemist who ever lived. There is some interesting web material about Owsley, who now lives in the middle of nowhere in Australia. Life and the world has changed a lot since the late 1960s and he has some interesting insights on things, especially so to a chemist like me. Anyway, he also has a website where he displays recent art he has created. You can find it at www.thebear.org.