Enfascination 2011

Do you ever get this funny feeling that you're getting the hang of this world? Well, you're all wrong, its too big, too wonderful, you can't forget, welcome to Enfascination 2011.

Enfascination is for the little fascinations of anyone who would like to share, transmitted from each of you to the others of you. Take some small facet of the sum of human nescience, something that causes you wonder, and get it all across in five minutes.

This year's talks will be: ON: Saturday, May 7th AT: 5pm IN: Woodlawn Hall, off the lobby, Indiana University campus

For a sense of previous events: http://enfascination.com/wiki/Enfascination_2010 http://enfascination.com/wiki/Enfascination_09

If you want to give me a birthday present that I'll treasure, tell me about how much you love something.

And while I'm asking for gifts, I've got this other little thing I'm doing to celebrate the year. I like to hear my friends sing, and I also like all of these songs: http://enfascination.com/bdaycovers/wishlist.txt So I thought I'd ask any of you musician types to record something for a little bday cover album that you are helping me put together for myself. I'll share all the other covers with you ...

Epiphany, Euphony, Both, Thank you! seth.

p.s. Now for a list of past talks and future talks––the burst and the budding: How to cross a glacier Rural desert water distribution systems Hexaflexagons The biophysics of brushing your teeth The world's superstitions about bald people, and hairy people The psychoactive effects of chili peppers Roman Emperor Deaths Three Great Banquets in Italian History Salt How to Sharpen a Chisel The Physiological Limits to Human Perception of Time Geophagy Pond Ecology Superstition Counterintuitive Results in Hydrodynamics The Wolof Conception of Time Two famous gravestones in mathematics history Asyk Arctic String Figures Brief history of the Jim Henson Company Children's nonsense and nursery rhymes from anywhere but Europe and the West. The cultural history of this sentence in the Bible Insider Trading: For Fun and Profit When Worlds Collide! Film of Peter Greenaway Homesteading Cooperative Birth Control The mischief of demons The Wonder of Brain Damage The most important book that never existed The most important book that no one will ever read that ever existed The most important person that never existed William Morris and me The arcology today Insights into the structure of thought How to make THIS out of Nature a lost treasure Your intricate personal system for this thing that no one else recognizes as needing a system The dilettante today How you discovered that you are crazy, and why its OK Tones in Mandarin self-contained, self-consistent, completely incomprehensible worldviews Arcane Cosmogenies The top three things I can do to dramatically reduce my environmental impact. Unschooling and Deschooling How to keep a tree healthy Things that stopped existing once they were named (like authenticity) The hills Chinese Nationalism in Tibet Ondine's Curse The Health Benefits of Squatting Technocracy How to Pick Stocks Like a Pro Interoceptive Agnosia Bengime A poet from a different time and place and understanding that gets through to you. the statistical physics of society Fordlandia things about water: culture, politics, physics, all in between The Bernoulli Principle Folly as Spiritual Practice Jain Forgiveness peeks into the flimsiness of our apparently stable perception of an apparently stable reality Commodifying the uncommodifiable Optimal Playlist Design An involved trade vocabulary Indiana Jones Food Preservation Technique, or Managing Rot The Hollow Earth Literary scientists Human Asexuality A History of the California Central Valley Watershed The importance of apophenia The Maidu Creation what's so great about polyhedra? A plant is a verb The edge of citizen science Russian Emblemology How metal thinks How the wind thinks 1+1=3 The ocean is not homogeneous How wood thinks, either when it grows or when you work it The thyroid, for fun and profit Why you can jump on the bottom of a foot, but not on the top of one. Microclimates The history of a word I thought I knew (or "OED as a lifestyle") A practical demonstration in landscape geomorphology Monastic Christianity in the US The most beautiful thing that has ever burned down Mediterranean climates of the world. A Moment of Triumph How this arcane branch of mathematics informs my everyday life How I see this normal thing as totally weird because of my training Structure and dirt and, uhhh, robots––robots and the Japanese––what's up with that?