We have to make a choice: divert more & more energy to avoid & repair leak after leak or come to terms with an open world. # This is the big ethical and practical choice we need to confront. Every time we choose to keep even the smallest secrets we sow seeds that’ll grow into [...]
general
A recent tweet reminded me of Clay Shirky’s excellent observation: Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution. Kevin Kelly called it The Shirky Principle, using the example of unions to illustrate: Unions were a brilliant solution to the problem of capital management which tended to exploit uncapitalized workers. But [...]
Just like last year I’ll be away from blogging for the first part of August. I’ll still be using email and Facebook… I think I might actually use Facebook more than I have before. My brother is getting married on Saturday so this is a perfect time to focus on the more ‘real’ and fundamental, interpersonal [...]
When a person orders four books at once from Chapters.Indigo.ca — all of which were “in stock” — why did they ship one of them a day before the other three… which, because of the weekend, resulted in all four arriving via the same delivery anyways… with the result that the latter three were in [...]
Partially inspired by this post at Rockinon, I’m going to go opinion-free for the rest of July. I was working on a follow-up to the Gladwell post, and after several versions I really didn’t like what I was writing, nor did I like myself very much for writing it. And what would blogging be without [...]
… is where I’ll be Saturday night for my brother’s (and his fiancé’s) – – Dana & Dan’s Stag & Doe If you find yourself in Komoka (after the Poplar Hill Picnic?), I can tell you there’s no place you’d rather be than the Community Centre (map) for Late Lunch and a cold beverage served by [...]
I tend to go through new mottos every few months. Background on some of the old ones are here, here, here and here. “Learning is personal, knowledge is social, truth is an adventure” came to me while staring at a blank description field in the settings of thinkingalive.com, a new WordPress-powered site I set up for [...]
This is just sort of a half-assed update. Expect changes (or maybe a slow gradual change) as my employer has seen fit to cut off almost all internet access (down to only a half-dozen sites I know of) and my information diet is affected — ie reduced to a fraction of what it was. (I [...]
Buridan’s ass is a figurative description of a man of indecision. It refers to a paradoxical situation wherein an ass, placed exactly in the middle between two stacks of hay of equal size and quality, will starve to death since it cannot make any rational decision to start eating one rather than the other. The paradox is named after [...]
Disappointed but not surprised by the report that came out yesterday (summary, via). I had a bit invested in this since I wrote about the expected proposals back in January. At first glance I would seem to be proven wrong because I suggested that London risks being marginalized if we don’t assume more responsibility for our [...]
