After reading Michael Pollan’s Omnivores Dilemma, I’ve become increasingly interested in learning how to forage for mushrooms. It turns out there’s a Connecticut Mycology association named COMA (apparently the irony of naming a mushroom hunting society after a state of “profound unconsciousness” was lost upon the members of this group) and they recommended someone named Steve “Wildman” Brill for walks in Manhattan.

After booking a walk with Steve earlier this week, Thessaly and I showed up only 2 minutes late this morning at 72nd St. and Central Park West.

We didn’t find any edible mushrooms, but we did find lots of other tasty wild edibles. The mushroom we did find turned out to be very poisonous. It was a “Little Brown Mushroom” (which is pretty close to its scientific designation since there are so many different types) that Steve told us would deposit poisons in our blood that would slowly destroy our kidneys over time. Steve made a very concerted effort to indicate just how deadly most things are out there. His philosophy of eating wild edibles is similar to the differences between white list and black list web filtering. Instead of giving general rules about what you can’t eat (black lists which will always be insufficient), he gives very specific rules about what you can eat (white lists) and assumes everything else will kill you slowly and painfully.

He was able to identify that the mushroom was of the type Cortinarius, because it had a little spider web-like veil remnant.

Here are the rest of the things that I picked up:

From left to right, that’s Common Spice Bush, Heritage Apples of Unknown Heritage (they were red on the inside and a little sour), Burdock Root, Something similar to New Garlic, Epazote, Sheep Sorrel, Sassafras, and California Bay Leaf (I think).

Check out Steve’s 2008 calendar to book a walk.

It could have just as well of been a bull, but the police chased it down and it later died of exhaustion. If there was a more symbolic story representing the death of a bull market, I haven’t heard it.

In other news, the population of bears have been growing in New York state, and the government has recently extended the boundaries for hunting them.

but I hadn’t seen it until right now.

You must watch this, perhaps every year during this week.

I ran into this poster walking around with Thessaly on Sunday. I took a photo and sent it to Flickr. I added a caption disclaiming it as being probably a hoax (I actually said it was probably a lame marketing ploy).

Then Gothamist blogged about the posters the next day using my photo.

Thankfully, today I received a message from Gondry’s office saying that no, he was not in fact missing:

Hi. I would like to make it perfectly clear that Michel Gondry has absolutely nothing to do with this at all. It is not a marketing campaign. These postings are the independent act of someone not associated with Michel Gondry or any of his work or projects. We would prefer that these signs be removed whenever possible. Thank you. -Office of Michel Gondry.

Does this mean I get to be in the next Michel Gondry music video?

I was Googling around the other day looking for some vintage Silicon Alley article and came across a wonderful Wired article about Pseudo.com. Pseudo blew through millions of VC funds at the end of the 20th century on lavish SoHo parties, technology, and all kinds of behavior that no self-respecting startup kid would attempt in 2008. There are some uncanny things coming out of the mouths of this older startup set:

“When TV first came out, it had an impact like a social atomic bomb,” [Josh Harris] says. “But the mode of intimacy that I’m presenting, which we’ll experience via the Net, is going to be bigger.”

What’s so heartbreaking about it all is that Harris was right, really. Just at the wrong time. Broadband saturation wasn’t anywhere near where it needed to be. No one had Flash (or any other capable video codec) installed on their browser, and no one really understood the notion of viral media. People sent links and an occasionally MP3. I had a collection of .wmv files that I’d DCC to friends over IRC, but that was basically as far as it got.

Harris is convinced that when broadband Net access becomes ubiquitous, millions of consumers will end up doing exactly what he’s about to do. “Of course they’re going to be watching each other,” he says. “It’s inevitable. Everything I’m doing will be considered commonplace, just 10 years from now. It’ll be no more unusual than listening to a stereo or watching TV.”

What Harris really had wrong, however, was the death of privacy, which is a generational fight which will take much longer to settle. I’m still generally unconvinced that humans can live totally publicly, though things like Twitter, Facebook, and Google in general are contributing to an erosion towards attitudes about privacy erosion that we have very little control over. Harris is obviously an exhibitionist who understood the power of the ‘net, and perhaps predicted phenoms like Tila Tequila and Justin.tv, but couldn’t speak for all of us.

According to Jayson Blair (?!) Pseudo liquidated their assets in 2001 after the bust and their inability to find more cash.

But where are they now?

Josh Harris’ name is virtually ungoogleable, and Wikipedia doesn’t offer any help.

His girlfriend at-the-time, Tanya Corrin, however, wrote about her experience in the New York Observer:

Josh liked to tease me that he’d be the most popular. Getting press is one of the things Josh does best. Since living in public was his idea, he positioned himself as the “visionary” and me as “the hot girlfriend.” I would have preferred to be presented as more of a partner. But it was Josh’s project and money, and he was starting to freak out about the latter, so I let it go.

But what about the artist, Nico Haupt? He seems to be running with a 9/11 conspiracy crew and selling a shirt that simply says “TV Fakery” here, as part of his Haupt Couture brand.