Back from vacation...
Wow. I'm back from vacation and nothing has hit the fan, there have been no slips, no new road blocks, no irresistible forces, in short, we're still on track and making reasonable progress. I'm not sure, but that may be a first for me.
How far down the rabbit hole are you interested in going?
While I was out I finished a few good books. One of them is called Figments of Reality.
If you're looking for an interesting perspective on the interplay of the individual and culture in the evolution of mind, this is a good read. It adopts the view that Mind is an emergent phenomenon.
I also finished a title from the Teaching Company called the Origins of Life. I love the Teaching Company. I finished several of their titles and they've all been good. A lot of their titles can be found on Ebay at substantially reduced prices. I don't commute without it -- really.
The Origins of Life was interesting for several reasons, not least of which was it's view on the role of emergence in the appearance of life.
I'm about half way through book by Philip Ball called Critical Mass: How one thing leads to another.
I suppose the theme here is obvious.
I wish I had more time for it. Now that I'm back to work, it will have to compete with Exploratory Social Network Analysis with Pajek (Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences.
That's not a sacrifice. I'm way into it. In fact, it's what's in here that will allow me to develop the sorts of community assessment metrics that I think are appropriate for the next generation of community solutions the Microsoft.com team is building.
