It’s easier to be ordinary. But in truth, none of us are. Every one of us is different, more different than perhaps we even know. So much of living in an organized society pushes us to conform, to comply, to disappear. Read more about Bearing the Truth …
When we encounter a death, we are apt to spend time thinking about the qualities of the deceased, often in ways that we did not during their lives. Perhaps this has to do with our search for meaning – our need to associate purpose and significance with important events. By engaging in this process of holding and celebrating the lives of those who have died, we honor them, and place them and ourselves in a circle of caring and connection. In the absence of this engagement, we are more easily able to ignore their personhood, separate ourselves from them, and miss the opportunity to connect.
Today is the 15th of March – the Ides of March. It’s a Roman day of religious observances, but perhaps best known as the day of Julius Caesar’s assassination, in 44 BC. It’s important to me for another reason – my mother’s birthday. She is far from my home in California, living in the south of England,Read more about The Ides of March[…]
Glen Small and Bjarke Ingels: vive la difference. Architect Glen Small writes about Bjarke Ingels in this article. The comparison is interesting: Both are full of energy and ideas. Their architectural strategies have a number of things in common. But they could not be more different from a business perspective. The Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) hasRead more about BIG and Small[…]
While we were living in England, my younger son and I were talking about writing. I think he was about seven at the time. Together we developed the idea for a story about a boy and his toy dragon. Starting with a mind-map, and moving on to a full-blown outline, we talked the story through.Read more about Ollie’s New Beginning[…]
I just returned from three interesting days in Tempe, Arizona, at the Frost and Sullivan Sales and Marketing MindXchange. This is a highly interactive event – workshops, facilitated discussions, and a lot of networking. I was somewhat skeptical at first, but it turned out to be a good thing for several reasons: The quality ofRead more about Sales and Marketing MindXchange[…]
Ray Kurtzweil is not only a respected technologist and innovator, he is also known as something of a futurist. His latest book, The Singularity is Near, argues that technology will radically change our experience of living, and will fix a lot of the things that eventually kill us. There’s a summary of some of theRead more about Technology will let us live forever[…]
The world is changing fast, and it’s tough to keep up. www.netvibes.com is one of the great tools I’ve found recently. They let you create a custom home page on the web that contains lots of feeds from the sites that interest you, of course along with the ubiquitous and de rigeur Google search bar.Read more about Keeping up to date with NetVibes[…]
This controversial piece was written to try to counteract the black-and-white, good and evil, freedom versus terrorist rhetoric that abounded following the 9/11 attacks. Now several years on, I think it still has merit. We see the US and other governments spending enormous resources on war, creating enormous pain and division, while there are many humanitarian causes that would not only have benefited directly from those funds, but that would go some way to building bridges between East and West, Christian and Moslem. It is deeply disappointing that fear and anger continue to prevail, where in truth compassion – and compassionate action – seems much more likely to create sustainable progress.
Attending Aurora Theater’s marvelous “Saint Joan” last week in Berkeley, I was struck by the parallels between the life of this fifteenth century warrior and our current nemesis in Afghanistan. Joan of Arc was a religious extremist who believed that God gave her precise instructions, independent of the advice of the established church or civil government. She also spoke of “France” and “England” in a day when both land masses were ruled in haphazard fashion by feudal lords. Read more about Saint Osama? …
This was written for a US publication called “Spinsheet” that serves the yachting community. Following the attacks on New York and Washington, the paper asked readers to contribute their thoughts. With September 11th approaching again, I thought it was worth reprinting. Here’s what I wrote.
Sailing connects me with the planet, and with all the peoples of the world. It is easy to forget in these difficult times that the US is not the center of the universe, and that we are not the only people to have suffered a terrorist attack or to have lost innocent citizens in recent years. Yet every time we climb into a boat, and head away from the dock, we are physically connected, through the seas that surround the globe, to our fellow-travelers across the world. Read more about A Sailor’s View …
This quotation seems eerily consistent with the current British and US approach to communicaton with the electorate: “Of course the people don’t want war… That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s aRead more about An unsettling similarity[…]
I was in Brittany last week at a wedding (a wonderful experience in itself!), and I met a person who leads a foundation focussing on teaching and promoting peace with children. The website is http://www.graines-de-paix.org, and it’s a multi-lingual site. Read more about A Foundation for Peace …
We came in from San Francisco without event. The security here was a little tougher than we’d seen at Heathrow – our carry on bags were briefly searched at the gate right before we climbed on the plane.
We travelled to the US a few days after the height of the crisis – they had just allowed one small carry-on bag.In fact to my surprise the security process was no more onerous than usual – we were never searched, and the only change was the additional question (and restriction) related to liquids.We madeRead more about Travel restrictions not as severe as the media portrays[…]
The government response to the Moslem leaders’ letter is remarkable for its defensiveness. The letter suggests that Britain’s foreign policy is not working, and asks for change. As evidence it points to the failure of our policies to create a solution in either Iraq or the Middle East, and to the rise in terrorists targetingRead more about It’s sad to see the government so defensive[…]