Evolutionary theorist Susan Blackmore argues in the New York Times (and elsewhere Buy Prozac Online Without Prescription, ) that a new form of evolution is emerging, based on the replication of digital information. This would be the third mode of evolution that we humans are aware of, where can i order...

The debate over vaccination is raging (c.f. Wired article) and it smacks of one of those conundrums that is unlikely to get resolved by scientific inquiry.  I offer the following hypothesis and a way out of the dilemma. Hypothesis: Vaccination is something that is good at the societal level but bad at the...

One of the hidden themes of The Feast this past week has been how to scale successful social ventures.  This has been on my mind a lot recently as I have been working informally with both Self Enhancement, Inc. (SEI) and Decision Education Foundation (DEF) on this puzzle.  SEI is extremely successful...

In listening to this account of Hemant Lakhani, convicted in 2005 of illegal arms dealing, I was reminded of another This American Life episode about Brandon Darby.  Underlying both stories are accounts of seemingly incompetent, misguided, would-be bad guys who were actualized on a path of evildoing by...

This is a very complex topic, as the following talk suggests: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeXtGHSt-5o&feature=related [/youtube] The main takeaways from this that I got are: Cancers for which sunlight deficit is a risk factor are orders of magnitude more prevalent than the few for...

We all know the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  TED Prize Wish winner, Karen Armstrong, even laudably proposed that a Charter for Compassion based on the observation that all three Abrahamic traditions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam) have the Golden Rule at their core. I...

Rafe Furst and I were discussing my predisposition for staying in the cheapest hotel within walking distance of the hotel I actually play poker in despite having the resources to pay for the more expensive properties. The money I save just stays in a fungible heap of other money and isn't really earmarked...

Rafe, you are not the last person on Facebook to do 25 Random Things.  After your post, Jane browbeat me into finally putting my list together. 1) I can force my eyes into a disconjugate gaze--looking in slightly different directions. 2) My wife can also force her eyes into a disconjugate gaze.  This...

1) I might be the last person on Facebook to do 25 Random Things, but I promised some people I would, and I take my promises seriously. 2) The more I learn, the less I feel that I know. But I am okay with that. Still it's unsettling because I don't think I'll ever stop learning. 3) I care more about what...

For those of who understand the power of self-fulfilling prophecy, there's some good news on the foreign policy front.  The Obama administration (thanks to Hillary Clinton) will not be using the phrase "war on terror" anymore, as it is widely deemed to be "overly militaristic and perhaps...

In Chasing the Dragon, I wondered aloud whether we could dampen boom-bust cycles in the financial system with an economic equivalent of a controlled burn.  Kevin suggested that "generic countercyclical policies" might work.  Underlying both mine and Kevin's thinking is the idea that you can possibly do...

Kevin just posted about a great article by Felix Salmon in Wired.  I underlined three quotes in my reading of it: "Correlation trading has spread through the psyche of the financial markets like a highly infectious thought virus." (Tavakoli) "...the real danger was created not because any given trader...

@ Yahoo!...

Thanks to Daniel Horowitz for alerting me to third-hand smoke.  I guess then if you pass on epigentic mutations to your children from third-hand smoke exposure it's called fourth-hand...

We've talked about obesity as a virus and violence as a virus, both well-supported by the research.  Now there's happiness as a virus.  Hardly a surprise, but I guess for new paradigms to become the accepted basis for organizing scientific thinking, they first have to become banal.  So let's bring it on,...

One of the most poignant moments of this year's Pop!Tech for me -- which, BTW had many -- was Gary Slutkin's talk on the idea of violence being a virus.  You may have heard about his work in stopping violence in Chicago in a NY Times Magazine cover article earlier this year.  The premise is simple: if you...

I'd like to thank everyone that stuck with me for Part I and Part II. Now we get to the punch line, which is very simple: because of the Ascetic Meme, we cannot trust our instincts when it comes to environmental policy. Note that I am not saying anything about your personal consumption and conservations...

For anyone interested in learning about the complexity of cancer, I'd like to invite you to check out a forum I started a while ago (but only recently made public) called Cancer Complexity. One of the main themes (but not the only one) in Cancer Complexity is the notion that cancer is an evolutionary...

Memes and "temes" Apropos of Kevin's post yesterday on the "Singularity", we need to be taking more seriously cultural agency (which includes technological and socio-technological agency): [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ_9-Qx5Hz4] Click here for Discussion...