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September 2009

Six Degrees of Separation from Reality

When you are standing on the edge of a cliff, a step forward is not progress. — Anonymous Juliet Eilperin’s 9/25/09 Washington Post article “New Analysis Brings Dire Forecast of 6.3-Degree Temperature Increase” http://bit.ly/6degreesWarmer descri…

Can Science be “Humanized”?

Howard Silverman of Ecotrust referred me to an article “Can Science be ‘Humanized’?” from Columbia Journalism Review http://bit.ly/KH8kf which is concerned with the struggle between science and the humanities in education and political life. The c…

Globalization and Collective Intelligence

A sociology student in France wrote to me, saying I’m interested in the concept of “collective intelligence”. When I referred to Wikipedia, it was explained like this: “the anti-globalization movement relies heavily on e-mail, cell phones, pagers,…

A Movement of Social Evolutionaries?

I believe there is an emerging movement increasingly focused on the conscious evolution of social systems. It hasn’t landed on a broadly agreeable name or identity, but I see a number of trends converging toward a common ground from fields as dive…

Citizens Juries and Deliberative Polls

A friend wrote me “What is the distinction for a general reader between a Citizen Jury and Deliberative Poll?” Here’s my answer: A Citizens Jury is very analogous to a regular jury, but it is considering a public issue instead of the responsibilit…