Books
Chris Anderson’s Free is Gee Whiz economics
Chris Anderson’s follow up to his revolutionary The Long Tail (2006, Hyperion) has me reminded of Thomas Friedman for geeks. Stuff that people younger than 25 get naturally but that CEOs and VCs can read and say, “wow, that internets is so amazing!”
Free (2009, Hyperion) sets out to cover new ground in describing [...]
the Shock Doctrine
Just discovered that Naomi Klein has turned the concept of her book The Shock Doctrine (2008, Picador). This the most important 6 and a half minutes you can use today because it covers the entire concept behind the formation of our modern “free market” system,
entering the Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight
As of September 2008 we’ve officially entered the end of the oil age. Our economic system based on infinite growth has run into the limits of the physical world. Now that our social systems must rapidly adapt to a new reality of energy scarcity, we must pay special attention to the humans within those [...]
the vanishing of a species?
While I’ve read many books on the problems facing humanity, Geologist Dr. Peter Greetner’s The Vanishing of a Species? was a unique experience. Published posthumously by his son Nick, The Vanishing of a Species? is a look at the problems of the mid to late 1970s that ironically we still face almost forty years later. [...]
models for transformation
Self-transformation is the most important challenge we face as humans. The growing complexity of modern crises require a new breed of human thinking that few are willing to embrace. Because of these challenges, I was intrigued by the idea of Dr. Robin Robertson’s Indra’s Net, combining the mathematics of chaos theory and the mythological language [...]
realms of the human unconscious
Maybe we have to be born with an interest in the origin of consciousness, where it resides and how it operates, I’m one of those people. No explanation garnered by science, religion, mystics, or from indigenous wisdom has ever fully approximated what I’ve seen in the world. Transpersonal psychologist Stanislov Grof’s first book, Realms of [...]
the legacy of Percy Fawcett
As my parents read aloud the story of Arctic explorer Ernest Shackelton on his disastrous journey to the Antarctic during my childhood, I was forever biased towards the world of adventure. A vivid imagination in my little head recreated the peril those men faced in the cold and hopeless situations and that peril became the [...]
the antidote for determinism
Like the current era, the United States of the mid-70’s and early 80’s were tinged with a new batch of thinkers making strong cases for the reorganization of society. Interestingly, this period corresponds to the time when the United States peaked in domestic oil production. Economic growth slowed to a crawl and people were considering [...]
Dark Lore Volume 1
I’ve always been the sort of person that sought out the books on Bigfoot, UFOs or Terrence McKenna before reading through The Kite Runner or various Grisham novels (you know… the mainstream stuff). Something about the weird and strange, no matter how implausible, has always appealed to me. Partially this interest has developed from personal [...]
surveying illuminated politics
“The larger the mass in movement, the stronger the effect of irrational impulses, the more powerfully the soul’s innermost currents begin to roar… the instinctive forces are reinforced under the influence of comrades striving for the the same good.” – Rudolf Bode
The occult and its societies have dropped away from accepted scientific method and [...]
