Reason interviews Barlow, former Wyoming rancher, Grateful Dead lyricist and Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder. Barlow talks about his upcoming stint as the star of a reality TV show, his new recommendations for ‘bohemian libertarians’, digital freedom, and his recent apprehension at San Francisco Airport as a threat to national security.

The review of this fanciful book edited by “Dr. Jeff VanderMeer & Dr. Mark Roberts”, with a remarkable density of luminaries contributing, hooked me, as a physician who has written and lectured myself on unusual and controversial syndromes.

Boing boing linked to this orthopedic warning about the effects of backpacks on back health. For those of us getting school supplies ready for our children’s September return to the classroom, it is a timely advisory that deserves to be distributed widely. Although adult backs are either stronger or already ruined, it is probably not bad advice for us grown-ups either; I routinely haul around too much stuff, mostly reading material I don’t want to be stranded without. Commonsense advice often ignored: if one has a smaller pack, one’s ability to load it up is helpfully constrained. (I learned that a long time ago with respect to my mountaineering backpacks, but it has not translated effectively to my daily urban carry.)

I am glad boing boing‘s piece addended the reader’s comment on the competing hazards of shoulder bags, which may do a different sort of damage to the back by imbalancing the bearer laterally. I first got to thinking about this imbalance issue after Carlos Castaneda described a lecture his brujo don Juan supposedly gave him in A Yaqui Way of Knowledge several decades ago. This, however, emphasized the spiritual hazards of such an ‘uncentered’ way of moving through life (also criticizing Western ‘imbalanced’ sports such as tennis in the process, if I recall).

Someone’s been having a bunch of Photoshop fun.