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I’ve been thinking of civilization (the technium) as a life form, as a self-replicating structure. I began to wonder what is the smallest seed into which you could reduce the "genes" of civilization, and have it unfold again, sufficient that it could also make another seed again. That is, what is the smallest seed of…
In the Dark Ages, the religious orders of monasteries were the bearers of our culture. Much of this knowledge was contained in books, and the monks took care of them and read them as part of their discipline. Sadly, science is no longer a calling where scientists are the guardians of knowledge, but rather has become a…
Let's turn again to the golden boy. As you meet his haughty gaze, let me read you some of the things Roger Ebert has written about video games and art. "I believe art is created by an artist. If you change it, you become the artist." "Art seeks to lead you to an inevitable conclusion, not a smorgasbord of choices."…
As a member or supporter of the Coffee Party, I pledge to conduct myself in a way that is civil, honest, and respectful toward people with whom I disagree. I value people from different cultures, I value people with different ideas, and I value and cherish the democratic process.
These germs of disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things–taken toll of our prehuman ancestors since life began here. But by virtue of this natural selection of our kind we have developed resisting power; to no germs do we succumb without a struggle, and to many–those that cause putrefaction in…
"My boy is having his problems being a serious student," I told Eddie. "Well, your studying is very important," Eddie said, while the boy sat smiling a smile that said: an old person his about to hand out some Wisdom. Could this please be over fast? "You know, a jet plane burns its greatest energy taking off; but once…
But sometimes I think much of what we get on the Internet is empty calories. It’s sugar — short videos, pokes from friends, blog posts, Twitter posts (even blogs seem longwinded now), pop-ups and visualizations…Sugar is so much easier to digest, so enticing…and ultimately, it leaves us hungrier than before. Worse than…
Recent research shows that babies begin to imitate facial expressions and gestures from an early age whether they are rewarded or not. Babies are able to mimic facial expressions they see and sounds they hear when they are too young to have learned by practice or by looking in mirrors (Meltzoff 1990). Successfully…
A seriously maladaptive example is the practice of cannibalism in the funeral rites of a New Guinea highland tribe called the Fore. As part of complex rituals honouring their dead the Fore ate parts of the human bodies. In fact, they preferred eating pork to human flesh and so the men tended to get more of this prized…
While he was at Key West, Eisenhower had been told by [his doctor] that he would have to cut down from four packs of cigarettes per day to one. After a few days of limiting his smoking, Eisenhower decided that counting cigarettes was worse than not smoking at all, and he quit. He never had another cigarette in his…
I have a friend who's an artist and he's sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say, "Look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree, I think. And he says--"you see, I as an artist can see how beautiful this is, but you as a scientist, oh, take this all apart and it becomes a…
My father dealth a little bit with energy and used the term after I got a little bit of the idea about it. What he would have done I know, because he did in fact essentially the same thing--though not the same example of the toy dog. He would say, "It moves because the sun is shining," if he wanted to give the same…
If you forget this rule, the visibility you will have on the Net is likely to remind you. (Too often, people get into ridiculous flame wars that are embarrasing to all who watch.) In general, it is easier to walk away from conflicts on the Net than it may be in real life. You can refuse to read someone's mail and…
Time-stamping is of interest because the temporal element of context is essential for understanding a text (to take an obvious example, when reading a paper on global geopolitics in 2006 it is essential to know whether it was written before or after 11th September, 2001). Furthermore, some information has a 'sell-by…
Finally elaborated, this definition remains the Oulipo's rule. In his conversations with Charbonnier, Queneau returns to it nearly word for word: The word "potential" concerns the very nature of literature; that is, fundamentally it's less a question of literature strictly speaking than of supplying forms for the good…
Turns out that a lot of the things that have happened in the lest than two years of this administration are the biggest or first or most important in generations. On the occasion of the Wall Street Reform announcement today, Tagan Godard at CQ politics wrote "Not since FDR has a president done so much to transform…
Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to…
the very idea of artificial intelligence gives us the cover to avoid accountability by pretending that machines can take on more and more human responsibility. This holds for things that we don
For the globe as a whole, the ocean is the great regulator, the great stabilizer of temperatures. It has been described as 'a savings bank for solar energy, receiving deposits in seasons of excessive insolation and paying them back in seasons of want.' Without the ocean, our world would be visited by unthinkably harsh…
In a curious way, the colors of marine animals tend to be related to the zone in which they live. Fishes of the surface waters, like the mackerel and herring often are blue or green; so are the floats of the Portuguese men-of-war and the azure-tinted wings of teh swimming snales. Down below the diatom meadows and…