Post-scarcity economics

Book review.

Evidence of misreporting on the size of financial firms

I love math.

Ancient Confession: "We Invented Christ"

This is one I hadn't heard...

Research into conservative funding (Kochs and others)

Some pretty nice research networks on Kos.

Christian Dominionists

A little article on Kos.

Tea Party focus group

A fascinating study of Tea Partiers involving focus groups and, you know, asking them what they think about things.

Viral stories vs. journalism

Esquire's Luke O'Neil has a fantastic look at the rise of viral bullshit and why it wins over actual journalism in today's media climate. It makes you wonder how you could take advantage of it while improving it - that, in a nutshell, would be the future of journalism.

Deconstructionism

Here is a mind-blowingly illuminating, pithy description of literary deconstruction for the engineering-minded that is a must-read for .... for anybody, really, who's interested in analysis of the human condition.

Also mentions Baudrillard, who I have suddenly run across in another context. Triangulation of this nature always lets me think maybe I'm onto something.

Story paradigms

Story paradigms like the Hero's Journey are useful for understanding how we perceive events in the world. We put everything in terms of stories, so the specific stories and story structures we know influence the very things we see around us (if it doesn't fit the story, we drop it).

What does that say about ... well, about everything?

Here's a pretty neat look at six different story paradigms in terms of how they're similar to and differ from a seventh one that the author has developed.

I find it useful to think of a story paradigm as sort of a cognitive boilerplate that we use to make sense of events in the world around us. This is doubly interesting when you consider that user stories are now becoming an explicit design tool for software.