MORE EXTRAORDINARY WEBSITES (RIGHT-BRAIN EDITION)

• Earful of Philosophy: Philosophy Radio is a set of over one hundred audio transcripts on a wide variety of areas of philosophy, including Dawkins on memes, Ignatieff on human rights, Greenfield on consciousness, Kingwell on happiness, Safdie on aesthetics, Lakoff on neuroscience’s debunking of classical philosopy, and of course Monty Python’s philosophers’ drinking song. The RealAudio transcripts are culled by editor T.Hancock mostly from programs like BBC’s In Our Time , CBC’s Ideas , and several NPR programs. Public Radio at its best.

• Art and its Influences: The website of international artist (and eloquent blog-commenter) Timothy Stotz (self-portrait reproduced at right), with its rich reproductions of Stotz’ paintings and sketches, contains a statement of the artist’s view of art, which includes this pronouncement:

“Painting needs no historical justification or placement, it only needs to give life to beautiful things, and give life to its viewers. Not joy or despair, mysteries or facts, ideals or realities, but life. The full picture.”

This site also includes a remarkable chart showing the influence of artists on other artists through the ages.

• A Place to Think: Carlos Arribas’ Mysterium is a “journal of poetry, art, ideas, opinion, and the numerous personal obsessions”. An island of calm and articulate reflection in today’s ocean of frenzy and rhetoric.

• Blogosphere Map: Mikel Maron at BrainOff has an awesome Flash-based real-time world map of Blogosphere posts. While I was watching, Kriselda’s Different Strings post on the new Coronex worm flashed up.

• Watch This Space: Today the inimitable Esther Dyson started her own Weblog, Release 4.0 . Should be worth a read once it gets going.

• Ecological Design: The Ecotecture journal has two features that are quite distinctive. First, it’s an “open source” journal. It’s written by its subscribers, and editor Philip Wenz just fills in what’s missing. Secondly, the focus is on design, using human creativity and ingenuity to make huge advances in products, processes and technology by improving their design rather than by invention. It’s a neo-Fullerian approach. Wenz calls it “empowering our readers to solve environmental problems”. It’s far from perfect, and some of the writing is a bit amateurish , but it’s the idea of a collaborative open space focused on finding design solutions to specific problems that’s important. Don’t miss the delightful interview with the Gaia movement’s field marshall, Fritjov Capra .