A one hour informal lecture by Alexander Shulgin, the chemist who invented most of the modern "psychedelic" and "entheogen" drugs Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z14oZqon5NM (others linked from youtube) He talks about how remarkable it is that a fairly simple molecule such as mescaline can be so transformative to our subjective experience. So what happens when you tweak the molecule in various ways? What do the variations do, in turn? Can we find any rules that govern this relationship? More generally, his idea is that if we want to study this thing we call "consciousness" --- our subjective experience --- then it's useful to be able to twiddle the knobs a little, and these drugs potentially give us a way to do that. He sees himself as a tool-maker, developing experimental apparatus that other researchers ought to be able to use productively.

Should we also have a rule saying, "Please avoid upvoting recommendations just because you personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific virtue in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect." ?

If you're like me, most media you consume is some combination of dark, violent, and/or ironic. Chihayafuru, on the other hand, is sincere, heartwarming, and beautiful. It's also about an obscure Japanese card game about memorizing poetry, but don't let that put you off. It's exciting. Really. Click the link above to watch for free - an Adblock browser plugin will skip the video ads for you.

House of Cards, the American made-for/by-Netflix remake, is actually quite good. The original British version with Ian Richardson is probably better, if a bit dated by its post-Thatcherist setting. In a nutshell, Kevin Spacey plays Francis Underwood, the majority Democratic whip in an alternate reality where the Democrats won 2008 with someone other than Obama. After re-election, Frank is passed over for Secretary of State, and then starts using his connections to bring down the administration. There's a lot of sex, drugs, violence, backstabbing, and political intrigue. Some of the critics I've read are annoyed with the bluntness of the action and the occasional weakness of the writing. On the other hand, because it was written for the Netflix format, all of the first season is available at once, and each episode can be as long as it needs to be. There aren't any commercials, so what you get is a smooth, continuous plot from start to stop. The series' running gag is that Francis breaks the fourth wall on a rather frequent basis, so you'd have to like Deadpool-esque main characters, too. My main concern (I'm only two episodes in) is how the politics of England (which were kind of necessary to fill out the plot of the UK series) are going to translate to politics in the US version.

I watched Life of Pi in 3D. I thought the visuals were very beautiful, but the message sillier than ever and the ending seemed to pull its punch compared to the novel. I made some cynical jokes about it on Google+. Anime (descending): * Monster * Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita * Thermae Romae * Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo * Upotte!!

I thought The Imposter) was a great illustration of various human thought patterns, such as the desire for narrative. E.g. ng bar cbvag gur qrgrpgvir qrpvqrf Obheqva vf cebonoyl n fcl, orpnhfr jul ryfr jbhyq fbzrbar sbervta cergraq gb or n zvffvat puvyq? Yngre ur qrpvqrf gur snzvyl xvyyrq Avpubynf, orpnhfr jul ryfr jbhyq gurl unir npprcgrq Obheqva?

Language in Thought and Action, by S. I. Hayakawa. It goes without saying that this book is highly recommended. To those who've read the sequences, and have therefore had just a bite of the hearty meal, you should really get it. An anecdote about how I came to find this gem: My grandfather is a retired linguist, and in his library, in a house I grew up in, he keeps, and still has, a gigantic collection of books. A member of that distinguished class of "books older than me", this book is a part of his linguistics collection, and I didn't even know he had it until a few weeks ago when I was having a conversation with my uncle in said library. The title jumped out at me, and I haven't been this happy about finding a book in that room since I found my mother reading Kahneman.

Descending order: * Takeda, The Notenki Memoirs: Studio Gainax and the Men Who Created Evangelion, (review) * Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (review) * Manzi, Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics, and Society (review) * Friedman, Legal Systems Very Different From Ours