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May 3rd could be the busiest day on your social calendar…if it weren’t also finals season. So here are at least 3 ongoings around St. Louis we meant to write about (and one more we already have) but haven’t gotten around to during finals.

• Webster University will be hosting a Global Ecology Conference, which looks a lot more interesting than that sounds. Starting at 10am learned people will be giving lecture until 5pm, including visiting professor Kumar who has organized the conference. Or you can skip class and show up for vegetarian dinner with local eats, cocktail, and famous vegan and Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich. The whole day is only $15 for students (free for Webster Students) or $25 for the general public.
• Some enterprising business folk have organized a fiesta on Cherokee Street so that we can celebrate Cinco de Mayo (on the 3rd of May). And a couple other spots around town will be hanging up pinatas and serving cervesa this Saturday.
• Free Comic Book Day is on Saturday. Check the site for the closest participating store near you, but we would suggest running but Star Clipper in the Delmar Loop, who will host live appearances by a pair of superheros. And while you’re there, be sure to check out the display from the 3rd annual Munny Show and pick up your free comic book.
• Kinematifest, Webster University’s first animation and interactive media festival.  Films will be screened almost immediately following that Ecology Conference Dinner

Keep up with local events, even when we don’t have time to write about them - subscribe the 61revised.com events calendar.

Calling all tree-huggers, earth-muffins, granola-munchers and anyone who just thinks this planet of ours is pretty swell!

The 19th annual St. Louis Earth Day Festival will be held this Saturday, April 20th on the grounds of The Muny in Forest Park.

From the St. Louis Earth Day website:

“In Your Own Back Yard,” this year’s festival theme, highlights local initiatives and practical environmental advice that can be implemented in communities throughout our region. The festival will be a channel to connect festival goers with conservation groups, local and regional energy initiatives, native gardening, local food producers, and promote the ideas of healthy, active, low-impact living!

Earth-loving events will include booths from your favorite eco-conscious vendors, hands-on educational activities, an All-Species Parade, a Peace Garden, and various forms of delightful entertainment.  The festival goes from 11:00am to 6:00pm and is free and open to the public, even the “well-behaved and leashed” canine public!

If you feel the earth shaking in St. Louis this Saturday it might not be another aftershock; it might be the walls of racial division crumbling during a moment of silence.  At noon on April 19th there will be a 2-minute moment of silence in St. Louis to honor the memory of MLK and for greater racial and economic justice in this city, as part of a larger fair taking place that day.  St. Louis Dream Keepers is a newly formed coalition of students from several colleges and young professionals dedicated the achieving racial harmony.  You might want to learn more at the fair, which will take place from 11am-5pm on Saturday along Compton Avenue near Laclede around the campus of Harris-Stowe State College.

And if you’re still a little shocked after the quakes, you should take on your fears at the Blood Drive organzied by the Zombie Squad this Saturday April 19th from 11am-4pm.  We’ve detailed Zombie Squad’s proactive approach to disaster awareness before, but even before a natural disaster the supply of blood is already running low in the metro area.  Part of keeping that dream alive is to fight against the undead of course…  We don’t think it’s too much to ask our readers to roll up a sleeve at the St. Louis Police Officers Association building in South Hampton, where we can shake up the status quo for the good this weekend.

This week Playback:STL turns 6 six years old.  They would like you to come to their birthday party, which is on Friday April 11th (starting at 7pm).  

But unlike you little cousin’s birthday party, this will be taking place in The Pageant instead of Showbiz Pizza. And instead of large anamorphic, animatronic robots crooning you with covers of oldies, Playback has brought glam-rock quartet Semi Precious Weapons into town to serenade us.  That band will be augmented with four-courses of fine local fare, including bands The Feed, Bockman, Tell Tale Heart, and Northside’s Sweet Revenge.  So come out to wish them a happy birthday, or at least to  Light the candles with your lighter in the air. And if you’re hesitant to find a last minute birthday present for this, it is still considered acceptable to buy your favorite writers a round of drinks at the bar .

Wait? Who is this? Has Hwy61 been invaded? Is the very fabric of our pleasant little universe unraveling!

No, it’s just a new writer. My name is Zach Haugen, and it’s very nice to meet everyone. I am one of the new writers here on Highway 61. If you’re interested to learn more about me please visit the author’s page, otherwise I just need to say thank you to Matt and the other writers for letting me express what it is that I do.

Wednesday night I got the opportunity to see Ferry Corsten live at Dante’s on Olive Street.The show was a rare 18+ event, and although the club isn’t my normal scene the chance to see Ferry Corsten was too good to pass. I was optimistic going into the event, but coming out of it, well one word sums up my experience seeing Ferry Corsten at Dantes……bass.

The level of bass was so high much that it vibrated the folds on my jeans and punched me in the stomach on every beat. Normally big bass is what attracts crowds to an event like this, but the bass last night was simply over powering. It was so consistently over bearing that it drowned out any melody that Ferry was probably playing. After about an hour all I could hear, besides the bass, was the same techno over and over again. Now I’m very sure that he was playing different songs the entire time, but it all seemed to drown together in a big bass ocean.

Seeing Ferry at Dante’s was still an interesting experience to say the least. The club is a scene I don’t find myself in much, and I met some very fun people while I was there. Still, I paid $20.00 to stand on a dance floor in my Pac-Man munchies tee-shirt having my rib cage throttled the entire night like I was a small child. Needless to say it was an experience I hope to not repeat anytime soon.

Ready to dip your toe into a little local political activism? Do you feel strongly that we should do whatever it takes to provide for a cleaner Missouri? Are you in favor of getting your energy from cleaner, alternative sources? Well here is your chance to really do something about it!

Renew Missouri currently needs volunteers to collect signatures to get a Renewable Electricity Standard for Missouri on the ballot so Missourians can vote on it. To get an initiative on the November 2008 ballot, 130,000 voter signatures are needed statewide.

If you are interested in volunteering, there are two upcoming training events (from an email from Renew Missouri):

Signature Gathering Happy Hour, Friday (TONIGHT!), March 21 at 5:30 p.m. at CooperElla

Meet us in the heart of Maplewood, at CooperElla, on Friday, March 21 at 5:30 p.m. for a signature gathering happy hour. We’ll conduct a short volunteer training, and support this locally owned business. They offer sandwiches, coffee, teas, wine, and Schlafly beer products. We can practice our petitioning best practices around downtown Maplewood after the event.

Cooper Ella is located at 7401 Hazel, Maplewood, MO 63143 Click here for maps and directions.

To RSVP, please Jessica Post at 573-230-9807.

Signature Gathering Training at Wash U, Monday, March 24 at 7:00 p.m.

Join the best students activists in the region for a signature gathering training on the Wash U campus. The training is 7 pm on Monday, March 24 in Friedman Lounge, which is in the Wohl Center on the South Forty (accessible via Shepley Drive).

Nonstudents can park in metered spaces on the Wash U campus, on the left before the Wohl Center. For a campus parking map, or for questions, call Brian DeSmet at 314-727-0600.

Full Disclosure: I drove a hydrocarbon-powered combustion engine automobile without carpooling to the StLouisGreen.com website launch party this last Thursday night.  But considering the long line of cars parked along West Park Avenue, and the relative absence of bikes chained in front of the Tarlton Corp building the party was being hosted in, I don’t think I was alone.  Clearly everyone was eager to embrace public transportation and maybe hug a couple trees.

StLouisGreen.com is a website that knows its limits, so instead of trying to correct our degenerative transportation infrastructure, StLouisGreen used it’s launch party to promote local bicycle businesses as a means of individual transportation.  A quick visit to their website, which 52nd City correctly observes had been up and running already, reveals a blog with some transportation tips and other ways to conserve energy and resources; now I know I should unplug my laptop and other devices with rechargeable batteries since they consume energy unnecessarily after they’re fully juiced. 

And when I say that StLouisGreen.com knows it’s limits, I mean that StLouisGreen doesn’t try to replace the Sierra Club, but instead promotes the local businesses that promote environmental sustainability and conservation.  Their website is a detailed resource that is simple to navigate, and they do all the hard research work so you don’t have to.  Best of all it connects us with some of those “green collar” jobs we keep hearing about on the election trail.  If you’re interested in going green but don’t have a green thumb like me, I would like to give the website a tentative (green) Thumbs Up.

As for that launch party - Because it was a social event in Saint Louis, green drinks of all kinds had to be involved; even AB was there serving recycling friendly aluminium bottle samples.  But instead of acting as a launch party to introduce the site, the night evolved into a well-catered networking event those entrepreneurs trying to make some green keeping the earth green, trading their business cards printed on recycled paper using biodegradable ink.  Also there was bluegrass music, which is it least partly green.  The website itself was projected in a side room, which made it easy to forget you were attending a party to launch the site and made for a surreal merging of the plugged-in and the homegrown.

Extra Credit: Check out the green features of the Tarlton building and see more of the website launch party in our FlickR photoset.

When you’re performing music in front of a crowd and you’re not sure which chord to play next you can’t press the reset button and start again from the beginning. But that’s exactly what local favorites The Helium Tapes and The 75s will assist in the process of during the Lo-Fi Saint Louis Reset Party. 

Considering the relative mystery surrounding last moth’s announcement of LoFi’s indefinite hiatus, which neatly coincided with their being a featured podcast on iTunes, everyone was asking what Saint Louis’ favorite son (albeit in terms of video podcasting) was going to do next.  All questions will be answered on Saturday March 8th at 8pm when Bill Streeter and friends show off their new look in the Mad Art Gallery.

Here’s how Bill Streeter put it in an e-mail he sent:

…As you may or may not know I took a little time off at the beginning of this year to revamp and rethink some of the things I’ve been doing with LO-FI. I also wanted to make some time to do some other projects, and generally just recharge my creative batteries. So I’m getting anxious to get things rolling again. And to promote the fact that I’m back with LO-FI (on March 1st) I wanted to throw a party. So you are invited to attend the RESET PARTY on March 8th (Saturday) at 8pm at the Mad Art Gallery. I’ve booked some great bands to play and there will also be some video and other entertainment. All the details can be found here. So I really hope to see you there!

Highway 61 (revised) also has some good news to celebrate, so we hope to celebrate with our friends as well at that party.  And don’t forget to RSVP with your favorite source, be it Myspace, Upcoming, or the Facebook, because there are no do-overs for reservations in spite of the party’s name.

It was the kind of event where individuals crawl out of the woodwork from all around, only to look at each other in amazement that so many other people could share the same interests.  This last Wednesday night, the Revision3 podcast Diggnation came to tape an episode in front a a live audience at the Moulin in Saint Louis, Missouri.  That audience, which I can only estimate as around 3000+ (or according to Digg probably everyone who voted for Ron Paul), gathered to celebrate the value of shared links that have evolved into a social culture.  Watch for yourself as Saint Louis’ most devoted Digg enthusiasts (and curious folk like myself) devolve into a sort of nerdcore fraternity chanting “Diggnation, Diggnation” following their deafening cheers (nearly 1 minute long by my measure):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFdvbhpEr3w]

My favorite moment is around 1:40 into the video when fans cheer alternately for Kevin as he raises his Apple laptop and then for Alex as he raises his PC laptop.  This live taping, sponsored and most likely arranged by local favorites Anheuser-Busch (who reminded our hosts to “drink responsibly”), was frequently interrupted by attending fans as exemplified in the above video clip.  Fortunately such taping in front of a live audience will be subject to lots of editing, and although the show will last only around 30 minutes the taping lasted nearly three times that long, so I thought it might be interesting to show some of the impromptu moments that will probably become outtakes.

Here the hosts lead the crowd to cheer for later editing into the episode: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw5GjxvHWlI] 

Some fans procured some free cans of AB’s newest beverage, an energy drink, upon the invitation of the hosts. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfdDEjCZcRo]

Our hosts wrap up their show, finally sucumbing to the crowd’s demands to chug their beers in defiance of AB’s wishes to “drink responsibly” at the 21+ only event: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtMgAC6b3Uc]

Not that this was a production was anything less than professional; the techs made a point to show two LCD projected screens on either side of the stage showing live footage being captured and the material that will be edited in later using the same software the show is likely edited in.  There was a palpable sense of validation carrying the spirit of the crowd, their vocal enthusiasm merely some expression that their otherwise solitary activities has met some social acceptability in the presence of others, devolving into the a throng of cheers.  So yes, it was fun.  I can Digg.

Philosophy students have a bad rap, in part because they ask all the right questions that go under the skin of all the right people which in turn rubs them the wrong way. Among all the things philosophy majors have been accused of the most searing would probably be that they are lazy people, especially as compared to a university’s business students. But it’s especially difficult to make such accusations considering the serious academic effort these students exemplify, in part because Socrates himself suggested that Philosophic souls should be interested in learning for others sake rather than their own self-interests.

Altruism aside, some undergraduate students are being given a chance to prove their merit at Webster University’s 3rd Annual Undergraduate Philosophy Conference on Friday February 29th. Some enterprising students from a myriad of schools attending will even be presenting their own philosophical work through lecture, and preferably in the Socratic method. This conference includes a Keynote Speech by Richard Shusterman PhD of visiting Florida Atlantic University. It is being funded by the Student Government Association who will host the event from 10am until 6pm in the Emerson Library. You’ll be asking yourself “why?” if you miss this chance to listen and learn.