We Bought A Zoo (that makes everyone cry)

So I’m on a plane to Seattle. Middle seat, between a business guy (you can always tell who has a corporate card, they’re the only ones who buy food) and a woman in her mid-40’s with incongrously sparkly green nails.

The biggest challenge to urbanism? Happiness.

Much is being made of cities right now and the importance of the urban center as a solution to humanity’s ills: TED gave its prize to The City, people got up in arms about what we spend on rural post offices, and green living is oriented mainly at…

Other People’s Children

Having just spent a week or so with my bright, shiny new nephew (eight weeks and already twice his birth weight), I think that part of what makes relatives magical is that you are allowed to delight in them completely.

Unlikely ways to like someone immediately

I had originally planned to talk about information access and how it is going to change education, but that’s going to have to wait until tomorrow. Just got home from a talk that got me thinking about affinities: the bonds created by some perceived…

Why compete?

(I’ve been reading the Ender’s Game books recently, so I feel like everything I want to write somehow springs from there.)

I think competition, of the sort that is anything more than hedonic, is bad for startups. And that may just be that I’m not a terribly competitive person and…

The happiness challenge to Google’s Project Glass

Imagine the moment when you can wear Google’s Project Glass spectacles. Real-time information, all the time. The ability to take video and audio, and transmit it wirelessly to another storage medium. Which means, in theory, the ability to…