BLOG We're Social Creatures, For Better and For Worse Image of homelessness from the now-defunct Italian blog Moving & Learning. F or a million years, the desire for social interaction with other humans has been coded into our DNA, because social human groups survive better than lone wolves. Not...

Where Perhaps I'm Meant to Live - II B ack from a week-long vacation in Oregon. Tree took me to see an old-growth forest and the Oregon coast, both of which are spectacular. I decided it was a good time to review my list of the places I am thinking of 'walking away to', based on comments from reader...

BLOG Links of the Week -- February 21, 2009 Good Magazine charts fuel efficiency (gallons of fuel per passenger to travel 350 miles) under different capacity situations for different means of travel. Thanks to Craig De Ruisseau for the link. Northern Voice '09: I've been at Northern Voice this weeke...

BLOG 25 Things That I'm Not "25 things about me" collage; thanks to Pete McGregor for #25; all other photos except #8, #10, #16 by the author O n Saturday I mentioned the '25 Things About Me' meme, and suggested there probably aren't 25 things about me of any significance that I haven't already disc...

BLOG Links for the Week -- February 14, 2009 "25 things about me" collage; thanks to Pete McGregor for #25; all other photos except #8, #10, #16 by the author Mindmap as Course/Conference Curriculum: My friend Geoff has done something important, world-changing: He has used a mindmap (a tool cal...

BLOG Links of the Week -- Saturday February 7, 2009 A tag cloud/Wordle of the bios of those following me on twitter, via twittersheep. Thanks to Dave Snowden for the link. " Love " (in blue at the bottom) is way too small. Compare it to Patti Digh's followers. Hmmm. Wrapping up loose ends, but this ...

BLOG Finding Balance: Jung's Quaternity I 'm reading Emotional Genius by Karla McLaren, an out-of-print book that has two parts. The first section presents a model for the human identity based on Jung's quaternity, and argues that our modern psychological and social problems stem largely from imbala...

BLOG Starting Over I've always tried to be honest in this blog, but for the past year I've been deliberately vague about some of the details of my life, for personal reasons*. It's reached the point where a certain cognitive dissonance has crept into my writing, and left a lot of readers puzzled. I ...

BLOG Links for the Week -- Saturday January 31, 2009 T his world is fucked. Maybe it's the endless brutal winter getting to me. Maybe it's my resultant lack of exercise. Maybe it's the total absurdity of the belief that Obama or anyone else can possibly hope to prevent the ghastly slide into truly h...

BLOG A Short History of Earth There is greater difference between the genetic code of the cholera bacterium and the tuberculosis bacterium than there is between the genetic code of the human being and the potato.           -- Report of researchers who have recently sequenced...