They all have this certain look, these tribal elder hippie-guru charac — Burning Man

"Burning Man is an annual experiment in temporary community dedicated to radical self-expression and radical self-reliance."

"Burning Man is an art gig by tradition. Over the longer term its evolved into something else; maybe something like a physical version of the Internet. The art here is like fan art. Its very throwaway, very appropriative, very cut-and-paste. The camp is like a giant swap meet where no one sells stuff, but people trade postures, clip art, and attitude. People come here in clumps: performance people, drumming enthusiasts, site-specific sculptors, sailplane people, ravers, journalists, cops. Im a journalist and a newbie, but even I can tell the pros from my fellow newbies. The veterans have brought their own pennants, bicycles, flashlights, and tiki torches, plus enough water for anything."

"Had a few words with the justly legendary Larry Harvey today. Ten years ago, Larry went out and set fire to a big wooden statue on a beach. Kind of a private act of purgation and cleansing, by all accounts, but his idea caught on big time. Larry is a heavy hipster dude. Hes beyond mere trendiness. Guys of his ilk can create social trends at will, out of straw, hot air, and attitude."

"Burning Man is a standard hippie tribal thing, except for the highly nonstandard fact that it is not kitschy 60s nostalgia. This event is very 90s, very big, and very much alive. Its a Tim Leary, Wavy Gravy, Deadhead caravan, grab-the-mike-at-Woodstock kind of event. Feels lovely and enormously persuasive. Nonbureaucratic, participative, solidarity-driven, noncommercial, arty. With all those manifest virtues, you have to wonder why a setup like this cant seem to last any longer than a Labor Day weekend."

"Theres another thing really different and novel about Burning Man. Its a hippie gig, but its swarming with cops. The Nevada cops have been in from the get-go. There are plenty of concert-security type Danger Rangers, too. Security people are all over the place, and they could give two pins that people are running around naked, setting fires, and blowing things up. I think this proves that Temporary Autonomous Zones really can work in real life — as long as the cops help create them."

"Fiends in human guise greeted the dawn by wailing for half an hour on didgeridoos. This should be a capital offense."

"The wound is the place where the Light enters you."

"Be the change that you wish to see in the world."

"In philosophy equally as in poetry it is the highest and most useful prerogative of genius to produce the strongest impressions of novelty, while it rescues admitted truths from the neglect caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission."

"An [hypertext] encyclopaedia will be an overall attempt by the knowledgeable, the learned societies or anyone else, to represent the state-of-the-art in their field. An encyclopaedia will be a living document, as up to date as it can be, instantly accessible at any time. It will contain carefully authored explanations and summaries of the subject, as well as computer-generated indexes of literature. A reference to a paper from the encyclopaedia conveys authority and acceptance by academic society. A measure of a paper’s standing may be conveyed by the number of links it is away from an encyclopaedia."

"The British intellectual tradition is empirical and liberal, the French is rationalist and aristocratic, and the German is idealist and conservative. ...In the great ontological debate between mind and matter, German philosophy comes down solidly on the side of mind. Its emphasis is intuition as opposed to reason, ideas as opposed to facts."

"To know the mighty works of God, to comprehend His wisdom and majesty and power; to appreciate, in degree, the wonderful workings of His laws, surely all this must be a pleasing and acceptable mode of worship to the Most High, to whom ignorance cannot be more grateful than knowledge."