Welcome back to the final Burning Man blog installation in the beruby Burning Man Series.

Due to the love and respect I have for the Burning Man festival, I dedicated this entire week to exposing some of the unique characteristics of the celebration that takes place in Black Rock, Nevada during the week before Labor Day every year.  My Burning Man expose would not be complete however without giving you readers a glimpse into the spectacular mutant vehicles that serve as mammoth creations of art and sculpture as well as transportation.

Although Burning Man is a foot- and bike-friendly event, in 1997, the Department of Mutant Vehicles was created to address the challenges of non-human powered driving at Burning Man.

Mutant Vehicles are unique, motorized creations that are radical and stunning in concept. Often time entire vehicles are made from scratch using items such as furniture, boat or train parts, and just about anything under the sun. Don’t think for a second however that you can just strip down the old jalopy in the garage and call it a mutant vehicle.  It may appear mutated but it just wont cut it out on the playa.  In essence, a Mutant Vehicle is car of art specifically designed for cruising around Black Rock City.

Bicycles are another big part of the festival.  If you can’t afford to build a vehicle or camp with someone who can, then it’s pretty crucial to bring a bike.  You will probably want one anyway because it is the only way you are going to be able to see half of the spectacular sights running amuck in the desert.  DO NOT bring a “good” bicycle unless you want to watch it decompose in the desert.  The playa is notoriously corrosive on unprotected metal.

Just like Mutant Vehicles, bicycles should be decorated and adorned and turned into a movable work of art but just remember to lock them up! Many a people have wandered off with a two-wheeler that did not belong to them.  Throughout Black Rock City however, can come across green cruiser community bikes with “YELLOW BIKE” painted on them. These bikes are meant to be shared, but not kept for personal use.  And finally, if you decide to bring a bike, then remember to take it with you when you leave. Every year it seems hundreds of bicycles are left behind. Leave No Trace means Leave No Bike.

Thats right berubiers, you just got paid today!

However, if you are headed out to Black Rock, Nevada for Burning Man,
then you wont need to spend a dime of it!

Welcome to part three of the Burning Man series on beruby!

While burners (the attendees) have to pay an entrance fee (the cost of the ticket), organizers of the Burning Man event prohibit vending, any form of advertising and have rejected all offers of sponsorship. The ticket cost (currently between $210-320 for the 7 day event) is established to cover the large administrative expenses and fees charged by the Federal Bureau of Land Management. With no emphasis on buying or selling, Burners are required to rely on themselves and others for help of any kind.

So how do people survive?

At Burning Man, goods and services are swapped without any agreement for immediate or future reciprocality. Ideally, the concept of gift giving serves to circulate and redistribute resources within the community.

Gifts economies, have existed for thousands of years and in some cases still are a fundamental part of life in many indigenous areas. The gifting economy found at Burning Man is no different. Gifting is a way to rediscover the most basic of values such as sharing and bonding within a society. Gifting strengthens the relationship between people and generates goodwill among people; it creates and strengthens friendships and community, as well as other social networks.

Burning Man is like a little anarchist city where you can find just about everything from bars to restaurants, a post office, and that is not even the half of it. While exploring the playa you will be met by a variety of colorful people and strangers who will happily give you gifts such as homemade jewelry, a homemade seven course meal, drinks, and snow cones to stave of heat. Other strangers will pass out lip balm and socks to protect you from the desert climate. At times you will be adorned with trinkets, and a bounty of other useless items, you will find yourself being amused by someone elses entertainment and take a ride in someone’s uniquely crafted transportation, etc. When you receive a gift from a stranger you become automatically bound to that person. It is contagious and will generate a spirit that can transform your life.

Whether you are attending a future Burning Man Festival or not,
its never to late to start giving gifts!

A gift well given opens a heart. — Larry Harvey, Founder of the Burning Man Festival

Welcome to Part Two of the Burning Man Series on beruby.

Nothing is more unique to the Burning Man Festival than the people who attend and the art creations that are employed. It is a festival that fuses together a combination of art, and radical self- expression, technology, desert, noise, fire and anarchy. Burning Man art is seen all across the desert at Black Rock Nevada in art installations, in the camps, at ceremonies, in the vehicles and the people themselves.

Burning Man art takes on various forms, ranging from ingenious and inventive sculpture and gigantic installations, to performance art and spontaneous theater, homemade banners announcing various themed camps, art cars, personal creative statements and costumes all which can be found within the playa. The playa is so enormous however, that it is impossible to see everything. There are never any signs directing you to the different areas, no maps, etc. The art is only there for you to stumble upon.

Burning Man art is spectacular for a number of reasons, primarily because it is situated in the most natural of places, the open desert. The art is created anonymously; it is environmentally designed and placed using the vastness and emptiness of the desert to their advantage. The official Burning Man mantra was “No Spectators,” allowing the audience to become artists and vice versa. Many of the creations are intense and have taken months of preparation, some created by well known artists… whose is who’s, is anyone’s guess!

Within a world of wind and dust these works of art come alive.

Every year, right before Labor Day ever since I can remember, all of my friends would pack up all of their industrial tool sets, camping gear, crazy long-haired fuzzy jackets (a.k.a. playa coats), crazy costumes, glow sticks, and an assortment of various art supplies and stuff it all into their car, RV or backpacks and start their journey off to Black Rock Nevada for the Burning Man Festival.

Burning Man always starts the Monday (today, August 29) before the Labor Day weekend, and ends on the holiday itself (September 4).   The festival has gained in popularity throughout the years, gaining its reputation as an experiment in community, radical self-expression and self-reliance.

Back in 1986, during the summer solstice, Larry Harvey, Jerry James and a few friends went to Baker Beach, San Francisco and burned a 9-foot wooden man and dog as a spontaneous act of radical self-expression.  Over the next ten years, in Black Rock, Nevada the Burning Man camp emerged via word of mouth.  It was symbolized by the burning effigy of a man and no rules, other than “Don’t interfere with anyone else’s immediate experience” and “no guns in the central camp”.

Although the Burning Man event has evolved over the years, it still doesn’t have a primary focus, but rather is governed by a set of principles:

• Radical inclusion – If you can purchase a ticket you are welcome to Burning Man however, all participants are expected to provide their own basic needs and follow the rules of the event.
• Gifting – Burning Man is about self-reliance, however it also operates on a gift economy.  Instead of using cash, burners (people attending the event) rely on a gift economy and giving away unconditional creative gifts related to Burning Man such as glow bracelets, tubes of henna, blinkie toys, etc.  This does not mean however, you are automatically entitled to other peoples food, water, and glitter toys. You shouldn’t arrive to the festival without bringing sufficient water, thinking that somebody will “gift” it to you if you run out.
• Decommodification – There are NO cash transactions. Cash can only be used for charity, fuel and sanitation vendors.
• Radical self-reliance - YOU are expected to be responsible for your own subsistence. You must come prepared and bring your own supplies.  The only supplies typically found on the site are beverages sold only by the Center Camp Café, Ice, fuel and a dump/disposal service. Everything else is up to you to have.
• Radical self-expression – Burners at the event express themselves in a number of ways through various art forms and projects. The event is clothing-optional. You can be naked; it’s not a problem. 
• Communal effort – If you attend the Burning Man Festival, you are expected to also work and help the others around you, whenever possible.
• Civic responsibility – Just like anyone else, burners are a part of a civil society and not exempt from federal, state and local laws.  Similar to the outside world you are accustomed to, these laws are to be followed.
• “Leave No Trace” – Leave No Trace is both a set of principles designed to prevent and minimize environmental impacts.  This means you must plan ahead and prepare, travel and camp on Durable Surfaces, dispose of your waste properly, leave what you find, minimize campfire impacts, respect wildlife, be considerate of others and leave the area around you in better condition than when you arrived so you are not leaving a long-term impact on the environment.
• Participation – Participate!  Participate! Participate! AND HAVE FUN!
• Immediacy – BECOME a part of the event. EXPERIENCE the event and who and what is around you. EXPLORE your inner self and your relation to the event.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s blog about the Art of Burning Man!

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When I think of London the first things that come to mind are the black and yellow cabs, double decker buses, the Guards at Buckingham Palace, the “bobbies,” and the rows of red telephone boxes.

The phone box, designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year and has been added into the Design Museum of London.

The first standard public telephone kiosk introduced in the United Kingdom was produced in concrete in 1920 and had a series of upgrades, six altogether before arriving at K6, otherwise known as the “Jubilee Kiosk,” introduced to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of King George V’s coronation in 1936 and  painted red for visibility as well as the post boxes.

Between 1936 and 1968, 70,000 red telephone boxes were installed around the UK.  Today, approximately 14,000 examples of K6 remain on London’s streets.

K6 was the first red telephone kiosk to be used outside of London.  Although it was not welcomed immediately the rex phone booth has since become a British icon.  Since becoming a popular locally identifiable icon, several of these telephone boxes have been installed in the United States on the  campus of the University of Oklahoma, Illinois, Washington DC, and can also be found in Malta, Bermuda and Gibraltar.

Phone kiosks might have lost their place on the street but we are using the telephone more than ever.
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Job Market Access Center

Lumosity

UseNeXT

eMusic

Chocolate Tasting Club

Job-hunting… an activity that is never fun, always stressful and in today’s economy, exceptionally competitive! Finding a job can take weeks, months, or even longer, and in today’s struggling economy, there seems to be a shortage of jobs everywhere.  In today’s market one needs to be creative, willing to work hard and get the right training to make them as valuable as possible for the right job.

While there are never any guarantees when looking for jobs or trying to start a career, there are plenty of things that can be done to increase the chances of being hired.

• Be assertive and stay focused! Job-hunting is a job unto itself. You have to devote yourself to it.  Be persistent. Search job banks, classified ads and contact employment agencies.   Employment agencies already have established relationships with local employers.  Often times these agencies offer temporary positions to tide you over while looking for something permanent.  If you are lucky the temporary job may offer benefits or possibly turn into something long lasting.
• Follow up on your leads! When the economy is in a slump, companies tend to downsize.  This means competition in the job market intensifies.  If you are not persistent, someone else will beat you to the interview.  Make sure you are not too hasty in your actions — you do not want to send a cover letter or resume full of grammar mistakes.
• Update your resume and tailor your cover letters! Don’t use the same cover letter when you apply for jobs.  Customize the cover letter so that it explains how your individual skills are applicable to the job opening.  Apply for jobs that reflect your abilities.  Although you may not be able to afford to be picky, it is always good to look for jobs that suit your abilities, even if that means while accepting a job opportunity that is lower in pay and not in your field in the meantime.
• Network, Network, Network! It is true what they say; it’s all about whom you know! Network with friends, family and past colleagues. When looking for work, let your friends, family and past colleagues know that you are in the market for a job.  You never know when someone might know someone who knows of something, somewhere that has your name written all over it!
• Learn something new! To be competitive in today’s job market you need to be on top of your game. Luckily, there are thousands of programs available through community colleges and centers, online courses, and books that offer free or low cost training for skills important in today’s world.  Take the extra time you have when you are not looking for jobs to fine tune your skills or learn new ones, which will help to increase your chances in finding future work.

Last week we posted a blog about the usefulness of using tablets and smartphones and all of the exciting, educational and perhaps not-so educational things that you could add to arsenal of applications. As much as I advocate putting down technology, sometimes it’s a hard morale to live by when there are some great opportunities and novelties at your disposal. Although I spend numerous amounts of hours outdoors and in nature, I spend just as much time surfing the Internet, “Skypeing” my friends all over the world and on occasion teasing my brain with online games.

Hence, to add to the never-ending list of fun games and applications you can use on your smartphone, tablet or computer, are the newest of android apps, being launched by PC Gaming pioneers, WildTangent.com, who are known for their plethora of web-based video games.

The new gaming service, which will initially be launched with T-Mobile, allows users to discover and play games without any commitment to buy them. A user can check out a game and “test-drive” it to see if it’s something of interest or worth buying. You will be able to choose from a variety of favorites such as Collapse, Cake Mania and Tiki Towers.

To rent or purchase the games, WildTangent.com developed their own virtual currency called WildCoins that can be used to either purchase or rent video games of their choice. A 24-hour rental for a game is one coin, about 25 cents. When the game rental expires, you can choose to keep playing by using another coin. If you decide you want to buy the game, the rental fees are applied to the purchase.

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When you were a child and one of your teeth fell out, happened to them? Did you stick your precious mandible under your pillow in hopes that when you awoke in the morning that someone or something would have left a token of their appreciation, preferably in the form of a monetary denomination for your pearly white?

Did you ever wonder how this common practice evolved? Well as in many things as we do in life the losing and gaining of teeth are considered a rite of passage, from infancy into proper childhood. Children normally have twenty baby teeth and begin to lose them around age 5 or 6.

The Tooth Fairy was contrived in the European folklore of House Elves or Brownies who would often perform tasks or exchange treasures for common things us humans perceived as useless, such as teeth. Additionally in Europe, as an act of protection, parents would bury their children’s teeth in gardens and fields close to their home, throw the teeth to the sun or feed them to a nearby animal to ward off evil spirits and withes spells. In Ireland and Great Britain, it is still customary to find people burying their children’s teeth. When their sixth tooth falls out however, the tooth fairy steps in and leaves a gift under the child’s pillow as a reward for growing strong.

Other cultures believed that if an animal ate a baby tooth, the new teeth that came in on the child would resemble the animal that ate the original. For example, letting the tooth be eaten by mice or rats will ensure that the child grows strong, sharp teeth.

In the 17^th century a French fairy tale, La Bonne Petite Souris was written by by Madame d’Aulnoy. The fairy tale, which is actually quite brutal, introduces a fairy who changes into a mouse to help the good queen defeat a very nasty, evil king. The mouse hides under a pillow and taunts the king, eventually punishing him by knocking his teeth out.

From the French story, emerged The Tooth Fairy, a three-act children’s play written by Esther Watkins Arnold in 1927 and the first printed version of “The Tooth Fairy” in English was written by Lee Rogow in 1949, which tells the story of when a child loses a baby tooth, and it’s put under the pillow at night, the tooth fairy will exchange it for a gift. Parents were amused with the concept, and soon the tooth fairy became part of the tooth shedding experience in the US. Within the last thirty years, the Tooth Fairy has become a household name complete with merchandise such as special pillows, dolls, banks, etc.

Rosemary Wells, regarded as the world’s foremost authority on tooth fairy business, has stated that the tooth fairy is only known to exist in the United States and in countries with a similar ethnic background however, there are still many adaptations across the globe associated with the rite of passage.

Around the world

• In several Spanish and South American cultures, a mouse (Ratón Pérez, El Ratón Miguelito and El Ratoncito ) replaces the tooth fairy. Children will put their teeth in a glass of water and during the night a little mouse will drink the water, take the tooth, and then leave either coins or candy in the empty glass. The same occurs in Italy however the mouse is known as Fatina; in France and Belgium the character is called La Petite Souris.
• In some Asian countries, such as India, Korea and Vietnam, when a child loses a bottom tooth, the usual custom is that he or she should throws it onto the roof; if it was an upper tooth, then the tooth is thrown into a space beneath the floor, while requesting the tooth to be replaced with the tooth of a mouse.
• In Japan upper teeth are thrown into the ground and lower teeth straight into the sky in hopes that the incoming teeth will grow in straight.
• The tradition of throwing a baby tooth up into the sky to the sun or to Allah and asking for a better tooth to replace it is common in Middle Eastern countries, hoping that it will give them back a tooth to make their smile brighter!
• Although the tooth fairy is less common in African cultures, children in Nigeria have an interesting tradition. If you’re a boy, you hold your tooth and eight stones in your fist. Girls hold six stones and their tooth in their fist. The child then closes their eyes, states their name, and counts to the number in the fist. They then say, “Oh, I want my tooth back!” Next, they throw everything in their fist up in the air and run away as fast as they can.
• The parents of children in Turkey believe that their child’s lost tooth holds within it their future. If they want their child to become a great soccer player, they will bury the tooth in a soccer field. If they wanted their child to go to dental school then they would bury the child’s tooth around a dental school.

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So many of us start the year out with the best of intentions, creating resolutions and setting personal goals that will help to make us better people in the long run, whether it be taking a vow to quit smoking, losing weight, taking a new class, etc. But by the time spring rolls around, most of us have already forgotten all about the commitment we made to ourselves; we decide giving up smoking it too difficult, so we buy another pack of cigarettes; we eat another delicious, yet over sized piece of chocolate cake, and stop going to the photography course we signed up for because there just isn’t enough time in the day to do everything. Sound familiar?

There are so many excuses as to why we don’t follow through — I don’t have enough money, I don’t have enough time, I don’t have the talent, I’m tired, and the list goes on, and on… at dittit.com, the newest social network, they refuse to put up with your excuses. You either produce the results or pay up!

Think of dittit as your own virtual coach. When you become a member of dittit.com, you put your desired goals on blast. Once you have taken the step to publicly state your goals, get ready to have them reinforced by a combination of financial rewards and social peer pressure. If you find yourself track however; you become lazy or unmotivated then, be prepared to suffer the consequences!

Here is an example of how dittit.com can work for you:

Imagine that you have wanted to lose weight by starting a running program, but you are frustrated and fed because you can never seem to find the time; your work, kids, spouse, friends, etc. are always getting in the way…

Here is where dittit can work for you —

• Sign up for a FREE account at dittit.com and either join or create a group that aligns with your goals.
• Publically proclaim your commitment (i.e. to run 4 times a week) via twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc.
• Commit to a designated amount of money that will be donated to charity every time that you fail to run.
• After each run you use the mobile app to post a proof that you ran.
• Your social networks get notified of your success and progress, you dittit!
• BUT — If you don’t run and meet your goal, then your designated amount of money will be donated to charity and all of your social networks will be informed that you didn’t do it.

Examples of the goals set on dittit include:

Member Danny G — used dittit to write his Masters Thesis. His commitment was to write five pages a day. For every page he didn’t write he had to pay five euros. Needless to say, Danny did not want to fork over that kind of money. Danny wound up writing his thesis in two weeks and never had to pay one cent, he dittit!

Steve S. — Has used dittit to achieve his goal of running 300 Km over the last two months.

Culture Club: The purpose of this club is to get people out of the office and exploring their city’s diverse culture. Each week, each club member is required to check out a museum, monument, historic landmark, etc. in their city/town and post a photo of it with themselves in the picture.

What are you waiting for? Let dittit.com give you that extra push to become a better person and gain a sense of self-satisfaction, accomplishment and pride!

Visit dittit.com, join a group and set your personal goal today! There is no better time to make yourself and the world a better place. When all is said and done, you will officially be able to say… “YOU DITTIT!”