More on Exploiting Evolved Human Instincts and Cognitive Patterns

A post by Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing titled “Neuroeconomics: sub-prime mortgages exploit a bug in our brains” reminded me of my own musings about how killer apps (and products) exploit basic evolved drives and factors in human psychology.
At The Frontal Cortex science blog, a fascinating explanation of the neurology of subprime mortgages. FMRI research shows [...]

On Derrick Jensen

Note: I wrote this a while back. For a while, I was quite impressed with Jensen’s thoughts — and in terms of education, I still am. But on his endless vilification of “civilization” and “the culture,” I have lost my patience. To take the man seriously is to see the holes in his arguments. He’s [...]

Why Diamonds? Evolution, Instinctual Niches, Advertising, and the Killer App…

Some people might be thinking all I ever post about is my writing process. It’s true, I’ve been posting about that a lot recently, since I’ve had my head down and been pushing hard on that front.
But I do have other thoughts bouncing around in my head.
One of Mark’s posts on Scribes & Scoundrels got [...]

Things For Looking

Via the flea king, a funky video on the inner lives of cells. (Though I’d love to see an annotated version.)
And via Ellen Datlow, very cool book art. (I like it, anyway. Lime’s not impressed.)

“Junk” not junk

My friend and Clarion West classmate David emailed me a link to this article. How amusing, that the story titled “Junk” that I sold only a couple of weeks ago, to Nature, had an eerily familiar proposition, at bottom. Do I get to claim I “got one right,” even if it’s published after the news [...]

Facebook/Nonstandard

It seems to me that Facebook is a rather amazing little bit of social software. It allows one to find one’s links to others across all kinds of boundaries — having lost touch, having dropped out of contact, having moved to a new place.
However, the biggest limitation for a piece of software like this is [...]

Doctors to the Dead

You know, I just wrote a story eerily lime like this… but with zombification, instead of proper rescusciation:
Docs Change the Way They Think About Death
Via Fragment of the Day

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