most of the enduring species have a great defense mechanism. or, in the words of the poets Poison: every rose has its thorn.

so, it stands to reason that the planet, as a lifeform, has some very sharp thorns. and we’re about to feel them, no?

Robert Reich is right on the money:

All we know is the current economy can’t “recover” because it can’t go back to where it was before the crash. So instead of asking when the recovery will start, we should be asking when and how the new economy will begin.

My employer has taken to calling this crisis a “reset.” I would liken it more to a reboot. With a new operating system. That is still being written.

Rings would make a great form factor for a PDA.

The second half of Radio Lab’s latest, Are We Coins? (18m44s), explores the randomness at the core of our being.

So don’t take Nietzsche’s word for it, listen to your own neurons as they shout: there is no no directionality, only chance; no continuity, only change; an eternity of randomness.

I have been rocked by this morning by this blockbuster passage from Giles Fraser’s introduction to Nietzsche:

Nietzsche’s objection here is that the whole invention of metaphysics, as described by Plato and followed by the Christians, comes about because of Plato’s fear of change. Essentially, metaphysics is fancy intellectual cowardice. Why? Because it is generated precisely because Plato seeks some fantasy release from the challenges of human fragility rather than having the courage to fight for the values that he believes need defending. Instead of standing firm at the barricades of reason against the forces of moral chaos, he elevates the source of human value into the heavens, thus apparently projecting it from change and chance. For Nietzsche, this otherworldliness is simply a reflection of Plato’s failure to face with courage the way things really are.

And it is not just Christianity that gets infected with this moral cowardice. Philosophy itself is thoroughly imbued with precisely the same spirit:

You ask me of the idiosyncrasies of philosophers? … There is their lack of historical sense, their hatred of the idea of becoming, their Egyptianism. They think they are doing a thing a favour when they dehistorisise it, sub specie aeterni – when they make a mummy of it. All philosophers have handled for years have been conceptual mummies; nothing actual has escaped their hand alive. They kill, they stuff when they worship, they’re conceptual idolaters – they become a mortal danger to everything they worship. Death, change, age, as well as procreation and growth, are for them objections – refutations even.

(from The Twilight of the Idols)

The basic point is that western philosophy generally and Christianity in particular has founded its thought upon the idea that change is a bad thing and thus that for human life to be valuable it must be rooted in something fixed and unchanging and eternal – ie God. But what Nietzsche points out is that anything that is not able to change is, by definition, dead. And thus that the Christian/Platonic worldview is essentially a celebration of death dressed up to look like the opposite.

God degenerated into the contradiction of life, instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yes! In God a declaration of hostility towards life, nature, the will to life! …In God nothingness deified, the will to nothingness sanctified.

(from The Antichrist)

The theory of evolution, the Gaia hypothesis from the 1960s, and recent work on emergence all point to an understanding of existence in which change is the constant. Parallel investigations into the history of knowledge – for example, the questions posed by Michel Foucault, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jacques Derrida – suggest that there are breaks and gaps in how we perceive the world. In other words, we create continuity where, in fact, there is none.

Our drive to order is well-documented. Neuroscience suggests that our minds are constantly making things up in order to make sense. From our sense of sight to our memory, the brain tells us little lies so that we may grasp the truth. Such is our frailty.

Related: Explaining the “Magic” of Consciousness, Memory and Forgetting, Anticipating the Future to ‘See’ the Present.

Giles Fraser, blogging for the Guardian, has written the most fun primer on Nietzsche’s philosophy I have read. One gem: it doesn’t matter where or not God exists, what matters is how – or whether – we experience shame. Fraser is a priest.

Siege mentality apparent in company email patterns:

Menezes thinks he and Collingsworth may have identified a characteristic change that occurs as stress builds within a company: employees start talking directly to people they feel comfortable with, and stop sharing information more widely.

The case study was Enron. Previously.

slick. when we praise something as “slick,” we delight in what is slippery, mercurial, tantalizing. we can neither contain nor explain it.

a slick object is magical, a talisman.

Ikea could make a killing if they re-issued some of their 70s designs at a higher price point, in a smaller production run and with more focused distribution. maybe.

now is not a volume economy and clever design is as popular as ever thanks to the web.