It is terrible not to know all that I want to know, a terribleness only counterbalanced by the pleasure of soaking up what others know.
This is as good a precis for this series as any:
If men have always been concerned with only one task—how to create a society fit to live in—the forces which inspired our distant ancestors are also present in us. Nothing is settled; everything can still be altered. What was done but turned out wrong, can be done again. The Golden Age, which blind superstition had placed behind [or ahead of] us, is in us.
—Claude Levi-Strauss, from Triste Tropiques
Yes, I know Levi-Strauss, but no, I haven’t read him, don’t know if I’ll ever make the time to read him.
But this bit, this bit was worth the time.
h/t John Nichols’s obit for Alexander Cockburn, The Nation
AbsurdBeats 
maybe the coming cyberlords can fill in the gaps…
http://edge.org/conversation/a-new-kind-of-social-inspired-technology
did I already point to this?
http://thebrooklyninstitute.com/