(View entire post here)

This year I attended my eighth straight Burning Man festival in the Black Rock desert of Nevada. It was an awesome event, featuring a lunar eclipse, an early act of arson perpetrated on the festival's iconic stick figure, a more-than-double rainbow, and some of the greatest works of art I have ever seen, touched, jumped on, and danced around. I stayed at Entheon Village, one of the largest camps on the Playa, bringing together 400 people from around the US and the world. Entheon featured several domes and stages, a nightly environmental film program, a cardboard zendo for meditation, a goddess temple, and a full kitchen serving delicious Vegan food to the entire camp. Entheon brought together and synergized different groups that I have known and camped with before, including 'tribes' from Salt Lake City (rabble-rousing former Mormons turned shaman-artists), North Carolina, and the North West (visionary vibesters responsible for a giant 'art car' in the form of a fire-breathing, copper-skinned dragon), scientists from MIT (my friend Ryan Wartena's nanotechnology projects have been featured on the cover of science magazines ­ his website is growingarchitecture.com), and Djs, jam bands, visual artists, and performing artists from the Bay Area.

(View entire post here)

Penguin Group (USA) Wins Four 2007 Quill Awards

The 2007 Quill Awards winners were announced on NBC's "Today Show" this morning and Penguin Group (USA) won four Quill Awards, in the following categories:

Romance
Angels Fall
Written by Nora Roberts (who also won the 2006 Quill Award in this category for Blue Smoke)
Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons

History/Current Events/Politics

The Assault on Reason
Written by Al Gore
Published by The Penguin Press

Sports
The Kings of New York: A Year Among the Geeks, Oddballs, and Geniuses Who Make Up America's Top High School Chess Team
Written by Michael Weinreb
Published by Gotham Books