Like the Elizabethan Merchants of Light, my work is to track down, contexualize and share unusual cultural, scientific, technological wares (even occasional genius) & tools from many varied worlds, for your pleasure and profitable use.

I speak, research, tinker, teach on evolving systems.
Learn more, by heading to 'Who?'

Let's build a *#!!% Starship already!

Let’s build a *#!!% Starship already!

Cranking the limits is The 100 Year Starship, a jointly funded project of DARPA (the good folks who birthed the Internet) and NASA. It's a call to our collective ingenuity and utterly bonkers audacity: interstellar flight!
Make life a good counter-offer

Make life a good counter-offer

be very clear about HOW you want people to behave, specifically. (to buy, subscribe, surrender, eat broccoli ..you get the idea) be very clear (for yourself) about WHY you actually want that behaviour. make it EASY for them to take the action! offer motivation (start with feeling, then give an intellectual reason to...
Latest entries
On Taking Breakthrough Intellectual Risks

On Taking Breakthrough Intellectual Risks

Break out your polymath tendencies. This is the kind of many worlds theory that might well save our collective asses. Nothing refreshes creativity like spending time in a discipline other than the one you feel at home in, even if it's awkward at first. We urgently need more intelligent people who can travel between multiple worlds...
Unboxed: find the reluctant geniuses in your midst

Unboxed: find the reluctant geniuses in your midst

“People who believe in the power of talent tend not to fulfill their potential because they’re so concerned with looking smart and not making mistakes. But people who believe that talent can be developed are the ones who really push, stretch, confront their own mistakes and learn from them.” – Carol Dweck (Stanford Psychology professor, whose...
Ideas are copyrightable. Right? Uh oh

Ideas are copyrightable. Right? Uh oh

Have you been feeling a bit sketchy about what you can do with other people’s work online, how to protect your own intellectual property, and how to make creative-wares using other artists’ works to enhance your own, without skidding into potentially dangerous infringement/piracy hazards, or shelling out $$$ in clearing the licenses to use them?...
A (non-beginners) guide to starting something

A (non-beginners) guide to starting something

5 POLICIES for those who dare to BEGIN THINGS (when you aren't a beginner anymore). “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.." There is virtue in overturning the rulings of your head, and...
3 Hacks for 21st century Women Leaders

3 Hacks for 21st century Women Leaders

Learn to love your data! I can't emphasize enough how powerful and practical your decision-making can become with this layer of clarity applied to your business, health, life. Women battle the bias of being labelled as making more emotional/irrational decisions. One of the greatest gifts that computing has offered us is overlooked as something...