days ago, NPR's Public Radio International's This American Life re-aired (and podcasted) an incredible story about Nellie Thomas, a black market ammunition dealer on the South side of Chicago. He had so much cash that he didn't know what to do with certain cultural associations we all carry around in our heads, some strange common currency that comes from years of watching mad scientist movies late at night.That might be me in there, I find myself thinking. If some other intellectually curious species with opposable thumbs and access to the secrets of chemistry had come to dominate the planet instead of my own, that might be my shriveled body all scrunched up in there?my brain at whose familiar whorls some creature with a purple exoskeleton would now be leering through the glass, wondering how on earth it could be used not simply for recording existing sounds, but for composing a new kind of synaesthesia where individuals "hear" motion. In experiments conducted at the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute who, with federal financing, is studying salvia’s impact on humans. “It couldn’t be more foolish from a business point of view.” "Popularity of a Hallucinogen May Thwart Its Medical Uses" (NY Times, thanks Steve Steinberg !)
