Losing my mind and coming to my senses. — Gestalt psychology can certainly be linked to climate change transformation, at least according to Vikram Kolmannskog’s fictional case of a Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya. ¹¹ Through the lens of a population facing displacement and the aftermath of a natural disaster, he traces the similarities in transformation theory in both…

Saving lives with smoke, you say? A closer look at this crazy resuscitation technology. The tobacco smoke enema: a resuscitation practice that could bring the drowned and almost dead back to life. The earliest use of the leaves of the plant genus Nicotiana, an herb generally known as tobacco, can…

One last psychedelic caravan East along the Marrakesh Express please. You would think that Oriental Sunshine’s Mother Nature was a Hindustani hymn with its instrumental opening of a sitar, guitar, and bansuri until vocalist Nina Johansen and harmonizer Rune Walle begin singing about the sage advice of an old man…

Unpacking the world of crowdsourcing from my tiny desk. — My hopes of becoming an Amazon Mechanical Turk worker were crushed after I had filled out my account application and received an email shortly afterwards that stated that I was not ‘eligible’. I was not provided a reason for my rejection. In the email, Mechanical Turk simply said, “Customer Support…

The best of both worlds. — I was hiking up Mount Tammany with a few friends last summer. We reach this beautiful overlook. We decide to take a break to observe the view. Suddenly, a buzzing sound catches my attention. …