Cultural changes drive human evolution

Am busy ahead of deadlines today, but I did want to share this story: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=culture-speeds-up-human-evolution
 There are other articles on the internets about this covering various angles (including reactions to potentials for racism from this study), though I chose one that I thought treated it comprehensively and fairly. I am unsure what to offer in the [...]

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Why does one write?

I haven’t fared quite so well as I had hoped. The difficulty of writing for a living on someone else’s schedule (i.e. commercially) is always in finding time and energy to write on one’s own schedule afterward. Likewise transitioning from reporting the news to critiquing art and literature is a challenge of shifting mindsets, though it oughtn’t [...]

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The Romantic Ideal

To my view, there have been at least three major epochs of Western Civilisation that have celebrated the ideal of heroism for its own sake: the Ancients of the Near East and Mediterranean, popularised by the Homeric Epic; the Early Middle Ages of Northern Europe, with its own form of epic or Saga; and the Age of [...]

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Into the breach

A beginning is a difficult thing. Sallying forth into the Outer Chaos of the Internet with naught but a computer and my own will to guide me, I stand little chance of success in the oath I have sworn–to fight the good, yet hopeless fight against the dark forces of deconstruction. But I shall meet [...]

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