Introducing... the Alternative Reality Issue of Shift Control. This week: "Inject it a number of times over a period of several hours and you will experience what psychology textbooks refer to as an "out-of-body experience". This is a recurrent theme in descriptions of the ketamine experience - the mind, spirit or soul leaving the body... Ketamine has similar mental effects on some animals - especially monkeys, who have been observed trying to swot non-existent flies while under its influence." - Alex Bellos on ecstasy's latest rival "Only sleep, books and disk storage mechanisms, with computers becoming our third lobe, allow us to cope with a world of accelerating travel and electronic communication. But these extensions to the human brain capacity will ultimately become inadequate, and so we might consider something new: the prospect of an implanted third lobe." - Peter Cochrane on building alternative human realities through technology "'Bud Hopkins, psychiatrist and expert on alien abductions' - just the man's name got me salivating. My brain whirred with associations. Bud equals Yank, Yank equals alien, alien equals cool... 'Did you see that bit in episode 27 when you could see Scully's cleavage as she e-mailed Mulder?' a voice whispered near to me. It was clear that experts in alien abduction were not to be messed with." - Leo Hickman on the fourth annual UnConvention of paranormal phenomena Also this week: a squeaky clean way to play with yourself in the bath, a chance to write your own film reviews, more memoirs from Freebee the bee, £200 up for grabs in another short story competition, and a chance to win dinner for two at your favourite curry house. Shift Control: altering your perceptions of the net and waiting for you now at http://www.shiftcontrol.com -------------------------------- Shift Control is produced by the Guardian's New Media Lab with help from Boddingtons and Stella Artois Dry. To unsubscribe from this mailing list send e-mail to shiftcontrol-request@nml.guardian.co.uk with the following text in the body of the mail message: unsubscribe