happy chaos freedom machine

 Over at Mutating Pictures, Philipp Lensman started wit a pool of 1000 randomly created images, and is asking people to rate how much each image looks like a face. He put the site up yesterday, and look how far it’s come. There’s also a forum at Google Blogoscoped, where technical details and the implementation  are [...]

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I’ve been thinking that the enterprise was a wrong-headed notion for years, but my new friend Sig has not only been thinking that, he’s been doing something about. I love his metaphors for what’s wrong with how we manage the enterprise and do business, but I think I love his software even more. Written in [...]

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Still thinking about the supposed obsolescence of Science Fiction. At the risk of getting high-falutin’ I suppose the history of our species can be seen as a odds-making at the way our whole story will turn out. Will it be the ultimate tragedy, a Malthusian nightmare that makes all the dystopian sci-fi look like a [...]

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Been lots and lots of noise about the new obsolescence of Science Fiction. Why is the genre now deemed irrelevant? Sci-fi seeks to capture how our own hopes & fears about the future reflect back into our present reality. Over the decades the gleaming jump-suited plastic visions of tomorrowland gave way to the gritty encrypted [...]

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When asked if we believe we possess attributes that are above or below the average, the majority of us will answer that we are above. More than a mathematical impossibility, this is an insight into the insatiable desire to be unique and superior to the crowd that fuels so much of human society. Lottery tickets, [...]

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Whipped up this little chart after a fleeting thought I had while driving. It occurred to me that everyone I know has a unique tradeoff between chaos and order. Some strive for perfect order, cleaning messes as they occur, crafting perfect filing systems, trying to keep their email inbox empty. Others simply forge ahead, valuing [...]

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What I like best about 37Signals, poster child of the Web 2.0 “movement” because in an odd, tangential way, it captures the essence of the Internet-flavored gung-ho attitude that is fueling the trend. As a complete aside, check out the etymology of phrase gung-ho. Who knew that the most reproduced GI Joe figure was named [...]

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I am the product of two extremes – my father’s family only gets together once a decade, at most, and if they are in contact with one another in between those instances it is an occasion for maximum awkwardness, guilt and discomfort. My mother’s family has organized weekly teleconferences in order to plan for an [...]

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(With apologies to every other person who’s used this clever turn of phrase) This is the short essay I wrote based on the thoughts that brought the title phrase to mind the other day in the garden. I confess I’m a little hesitant about posting it – the thoughts are more personal than I would [...]

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