Read this on O’Reilly Radar: Andy Oram getting to the Personal Democracy Forum in NYC: I hooked my friends through the idea of an irreversible political shift. Not a regulatory regime that could be dismantled like the agencies responsible for civil rights, or a mandate that could be defunded like federal housing initiatives–no, in this [...]
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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 [...]
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Principles are intellectual landmarks for orienting our actions and decisions as well as our opinions of others. Principles aren’t to be upheld at all costs; principles are provisional, to be upheld until they don’t work anymore — then broken and reformed… In fact, what we believe are our principles may not be (or probably aren’t) the [...]
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Education and architecture may be my two favourite fields to trespass into (after philosophy, economics, journalism, management…) and right now there are a couple of interesting pieces from Metropolis Magazine that combine them. The short one is “IDEO’s Ten Tips for Creating a 21st Century Classroom Experience.” Anyone familiar with John Dewey’s progressive theories will recognize most of the [...]
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Concerning blogging, I was just thinking about the importance of establishing certain expectations and meeting them consistently… In the last day or two I’m having trouble getting up stamina for the big, synoptic, sustained posts I tend to write when I’m on a roll, and which I’m developing a kind of discipline for. I’m just going to jam a little and [...]
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Part of an ongoing series on belief. David Brooks generated a lot of discussion with his column in May on “The Neural Buddhists“: Scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that transcendent experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain (people experience a [...]
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I’m going to go through this a lot quicker than the subject maybe deserves; it won’t be as comprehensive or straightforward as the title suggests. Anyways, this post is part of an ongoing series… It’s that… the whole point is this isn’t something to be settled on, but something that continuously unfolds or emerges through life [...]
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A follow-up to Identifying with Non-Belief. If skepticism is the act of being skeptical, I’m ok with it, but if we go to a lot of trouble to define and systematize “Skepticism,” then we run the risk of falling into the same absolutist traps in which we don’t recognize the truest shape of reality because it’s [...]
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I’m guessing this must seem pretty weird to a lot of people: I just love making up mottos, lists of “core values,” etc. I’ve done it since I was a kid. I can’t friggin help it. I used to do logos a lot too but as I got older I’ve tended to grow more at home in [...]
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I didn’t start out thinking this intellectual stuff is necessary, it just feels necessary. It’s just the way I am. Classifying and defining is just something I automatically do — always. It isn’t a basic need on the same level as food, sex & shelter. It’s even more basic – on the level of breathing, or maybe sleep is [...]
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