For anyone in or interested in O.T.O. or Thelema, there is a vitally important conversation beginning to happen. How do we acknowledge, deal with, and move beyond the fact that Aleister Crowley was unapologetically racist and sexist ( Read more... )

This article is focused on building online communities, but I think everything he says applies just as much to real-world communities as well - for everyone and anyone involved in community leadership.

10 Tricks for building a successful community from scratch

(I made the below comment in someone else's LJ, but enough people have expressed similar sentiments that I felt it worth reposting here ( Read more... )

Obama - President-elect Obama - is not the Messiah. As so many others have said, he's just a man ("he's just this guy, you know?"). And yet I have more hope for my country this morning than I have had in a long time - perhaps ever ( Read more... )

Another fascinating article on rumors, why they happen, how they're useful, and how to stop themA few ideas from the article: rumors help build social networks, and are also used to help find facts in the face of uncertainty. Saying "no comment" or ignoring the rumor is actually the worst way to deal with it, as it just preserves the vacuum in ( Read more... )

Another illuminating take on the mortgage mess, and helps explain why so many people in the banking industry failed to see this coming; it boils down to the Usual Error - the idea that people assume that others work the same way they do, and have access to the same knowledge. What is a good idea from an economist's point of view is terrible for an ( Read more... )

So, that New Yorker cover of the Obamas that everyone's up in arms aboutIt's very obvious that none of these people have actually *read* the New Yorker. The very essence of the magazine is a thinly-veiled, faintly amused, oh-look-at-the-little-people-scream style of ironic commentary. As such, a cover parodying the caricature of the Obamas that's ( Read more... )

I did manage to get out in the garden yesterday. Got muddy, but it was worth it. Planted several things and made room to plant lots more ( Read more... )

This seems to be a staggeringly useful concept. Or perhaps more accurately, a fantastic articulation of how I usually operate instinctively, and why I get so damned frustrated when people bitch without proposing an alternative solution ( Read more... )

10027 Photographs that Changed the World: takes a while to go through, but well worth it.

Predictably Irrational: a book along the same lines as The Paradox of Choice and Freakonomics - why and how supposedly rational, intelligent humans make really stupid decisions. I eat this stuff up.

And that reminds me that I don't think I ever posted this: ( Read more... )