Psychoactives…the name itself conjures up hundreds of images: hippies at Woodstock, those “well acted” anti-drug PSAs, even Colombian drug cartels. One thing is for sure, human history and psychoactive use are intertwined.

The term psychoactive covers a wide range of compounds…ranging from caffeine & alcohol to heroin & meth. Within that range, there again exists a wide range of use…historical use, cultural use, recreational use, and abuse.

But what do psychoactives reveal about our brain and its neural mechanisms? the connection between our mind & body? our spirituality?

These questions & more will be answered by our panel this month. Dr. David Presti is Professor of Neurobiology at UC Berkeley. Fire & Earth are founders of the member supported site Erowid, delivering access to information about psychoactives. (more…)

With its huge production-ready sound library, advanced KoreSoundВ® Browser, highly flexible Sound Matrix and analog-style controller, KORE 2 offers practically endless creative music making potential. The interactive workshops are aimed at boosting your workflow and deepening your knowledge of the Super Instrument. True to the motto “Find, Play & Tweak”, NI’s knowledgeable experts will be taking you inside KORE 2 and answering your questions on any of its powerful and groundbreaking features.

Topics to be covered:
the KoreSoundВ® Browser, the controller, morphing, effects sound design features advanced browser features KORE in a sequencer: management, host automation KORE as a live host: creating and organizing performances.

Everyone’s seen birds flying, ants foraging, bees working, and fish swimming — all with the apparent purpose and coordination of a single conscious organism. But with no leader, no centralized management, how does each individual participant know what to do and where to go? The collective behavior of such animals — each oblivious to the master plan, but contributing to the group’s goals and success — is what’s known as swarm intelligence. Researchers have found that such self-organizing systems function through constant interactions between individuals, each of which is following simple rules. In 1986, computer graphics researcher Craig Reynolds created a steering program called boids, in which life-like graphical objects follow three basic rules of motion. The result looks awfully familiar. He is now a leader in the field of computer animated crowd simulation, doing research on visual effects for films and video games. Tonight Craig will talk with us about his work and how it relates to biology, society, business, robots, and more!

Apple is offering a FREE 1/2 day seminar on using video production & editing software Final Cut Studio 2 and Final Cut Server (Apple’s new media asset management and workflow automation software). This in-depth seminar features workflows used by some of the industry’s leading film and video production companies. Apple experts will give step-by-step demonstrations that reveal how each of these customers used Final Cut Studio 2 and Final Cut Server to achieve exceptional results. Source: onedigitallife.com (more…)