Ned Danison, unedited

[Installments 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.] I have to keep using the word throng because it connotes people crowding, jostling, pressing against one another. An American is never really aware of his personal space needs until he finds himself constantly and involuntarily pressed-upon, feeling the breath and body heat of others. With the throng, I [...]

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[Installments 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.] Having lost my moorings, having lost the battle against incongruity and arbitrariness, I surrendered, I embraced the absurdity. Before you can understand this, you have to know and love the song “Dancing Queen” by ABBA. Then you have to be completely engulfed in it, with the bass pumping the [...]

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The single most influential idea I have encountered is Friedrich August Von Hayek’s theory of spontaneous order. In short: The state of human affairs in the world at any given time is the sum total of years and generations of countless interactions. Thus social order is not “made” but rather “grown” through time. In this [...]

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I’ve been reading “Fooled by Randomness” by N.N. Taleb this weekend. Here’s a link to an article (in reference to his more recent book, “The Black Swan”) that pretty well sums up his message. His website is here. I am enormously entertained and enlightened by the book, and I am sure Taleb’s ideas will rattle [...]

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Dame Dr. Jane Resture, native of Kiribati, is the genetic issue of that fascinating period in history romantically chronicled in Robert Louis Stevenson’s South Sea tales; she is a descendant and champion of the peoples puzzled over by Mead and Malinowski. Dr. Resture has created an extensive — make that huge, sprawling — website devoted [...]

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Justina Danison creates objects of beauty and utility with paper, a.k.a. origami. She is also my wife. Here is her website, to which I command you to go immediately: www.justbeautifulorigami.com.

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