• WorldChanging, the book: The best environmental blog will soon give birth to a book, A User’s Guide for the 21st Century, complete with an intro by former president-elect Al Gore and sections on everything from biomimicry to women’s rights to green space exploration. The book’s not available ’til November 1, so you’ll have to content yourselves with the blog for now. (Hat tip to Kiki for pointing me to the blog in the first place.)

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  • A long review of works related to Timothy Leary and Philip K. Dick at 3 Quarks Daily is worth a look even if you don’t care much for–or have never heard of–either one. Dick, it seems, “recently served as a model for a highly-detailed robotic head, a showcase for the work of Hanson Robotics Inc, complete with an ‘artificial-intelligence-driven personality’. The construct was designed to simulate a conversation with the dead author, but alas, David Hanson, the builder, misplaced the head on an airplane in December of last year and it has yet to reappear.” A few months ago I came across some TSA-confiscated nail files on sale in a little store downstate; which small town do you suppose is now being enlivened by Philip K. Dick’s robotic head?