"Oh, craigslist? You can find everything on craigslist. Everything."

The second half of the 20th century was the era of "mass broadcasting" -- a few anchors spoke, and the rest of us listing. The first half of the 21st century is about "mass listening" -- more of us participating in public conversation, using new tools to discover those conversations, catalyze opinion-forming and political action.

"Mass listening tools can provide a richer perspective than polling, which captures answers to loaded, pre-defined questions."

In many human endeavors, we create infrastructure to support our lives which we then rely upon for a long period of time. We have always built shelter. Throughout most of recorded history, building or buying a home was a major starting step to growing up. This building would be maintained and used after that, often for the remainder of the builder's life span and in many instances beyond. Components would be replaced as they wore out, and the design often took the wear and tear of normal living into account. As needs changed, the house might be modified. In general, though, you thought of a house as having changes measured in decades.

Likewise, human societies also create infrastructure that are built once, then used and trusted for a long period of time. Such infrastructure includes roads, bridges, water and power distribution systems, sewers, seaports and airports, and public recreational areas. These also would be used and maintained without major modifications after they were built, often for many decades or even centuries.

By contrast, software has historically been built assuming that it will be replaced in the near future (remember the Y2K problem). Most developers observe the constant upgrading and replacement of software written before them and follow in those footsteps with their creations.

So while this quick paragraph reduced my blogging anxiety for a fleeting moment due to the fact that for the past few months the majority of my active posts have happened while I have frolicked somewhere around this grand planet, the fact is I feel that like a newspaper, magazine or newsletter the key word is "periodical". Now define this as you wish but for me a blog is a published piece. And as such it should be updated on a regular and recurring interval. Hence, the result of my anxiety when I have a lapse of week (let alone a day) or two where the pressure (on myself) to blog mounts until I finally grapple with some material I feel to be of value and interest to readers of the Digital Tavern.

The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution is only one of a dozen different think tanks that have attacked Open Source. Why are all these think tanks so down on Open Source? Well, the Small Business Survival Committee is concerned that using open source will expose small business to the risk of lawsuits. Citizens Against Government Waste is concerned that the government might waste money on Open Source. Defenders of Property Rights is concerned that Open Source might be a threat to intellectual property rights. However, I was able to detect a common theme to all their criticism. They all seem to be funded by Microsoft."

60% of all international trade is between subsidiaries of the same company.

We start with a simplified version of the triune brain model, one without any controversial transpersonal elements, yet which is adequate for working with a number of spiritual emergence categories. A very neglected breakthrough in understanding brain biology forms the basis for this model. In the 1960’s Dr. Paul MacLean at the National Institute for Mental Health, expanding on the work of James Papez, described a three part concentric layering structure to the human brain. The outermost layer is the neomammilian brain, the neocortex which is the seat of thought and most voluntary movement. The next layer inward is the paleomamalian brain, composed of the limbic system, the seat of our emotions and autonomic nervous system. In the innermost portion is found the reptilian brain, composed of the the brain stem, midbrain, basal ganglia and other structures. Each brain serves different functions with some overlap, but what Dr. MacLean postulates is that the integration, or coordination between the brains is inadequate, a genetic problem in our species. For more information, see Evolutions End by Joseph Pierce, Three Faces of the Mind by Elaine De Beauport, and for summary information see Maps of the Mind by Charles Hampden-Turner. For a complete biological description see Dr. MacLean’s The Triune Brain in Evolution: Role in Paleocerebral Functions.

How does the triune structure of the brain apply to our inner experience? In everyday terms, we know these brains as the ‘mind’, ‘heart’, and ‘body’. Each brain has different biological functions and abilities. The ‘mind’, or neocortex, is the part of ourselves we most often think of as who we are. It perceives itself in the head, and it is the part of ourselves that forms judgments, handles short term memory, and does abstractions like mathematics. The ‘heart’ is the limbic system in the brain, yet perceives itself in the chest, probably because this is the area of it’s primary biological responsibility and sensory awareness. It allows us to feel emotions, and be either positively or negatively emotionally aware of the presence of others. Finally, the ‘body’ consciousness (or ‘hara’ in Japanese) is composed of the tissues at the base of our skulls, and probably other distributed systems in our body. It experiences itself in the lower belly, it’s area of major biological function. This brain gives us a sense of time and our ability to feel sexuality. We communicate with this brain when we do dowsing or muscle testing.

The most difficult conceptual jump in Dr. MacLean’s work is to realize that each of the brains is intelligently, independently self aware. Because we tend to assume thinking requires words, it’s difficult for us to realize that each brain actually thinks. In fact, unlike the mind, the heart thinks in sequences of feelings, and the body thinks in gestalt sequences of body sensations (described as the ‘felt sense’ in Eugene Gendlin’s Focusing). By this, I don’t mean that it’s as if there were three people inside of us. Instead, since each brain is so different, we might compare this situation to that of a living stereo system. Imagine if the speakers (mind), tape deck (heart), and receiver (body) were each self aware, each trying to run the show and puzzled because the other parts won’t do what they want them to. It would be hard to imagine how a stereo like this would ever manage to play music! And unfortunately, this is fairly close to the mark. Even though sharing much sensory data and awareness of each other’s actions, each brain tends to be in denial about the existence of the others. In fact, the brains often come into conflict, even to the point of overtly or unconsciously attempting to manipulate and control each other. A simple example to illustrate this occurs when you’re sexually attracted (the body consciousness) to someone you don’t even like (the emotional consciousness).

Fuselier and Ochberg say that if you want to understand "the killers," quit asking what drove them. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were radically different individuals, with vastly different motives and opposite mental conditions. Klebold is easier to comprehend, a more familiar type. He was hotheaded, but depressive and suicidal. He blamed himself for his problems.

Harris is the challenge. He was sweet-faced and well-spoken. Adults, and even some other kids, described him as "nice." But Harris was cold, calculating, and homicidal. "Klebold was hurting inside while Harris wanted to hurt people," Fuselier says. Harris was not merely a troubled kid, the psychiatrists say, he was a psychopath.

In popular usage, almost any crazy killer is a "psychopath." But in psychiatry, it's a very specific mental condition that rarely involves killing, or even psychosis. "Psychopaths are not disoriented or out of touch with reality, nor do they experience the delusions, hallucinations, or intense subjective distress that characterize most other mental disorders," writes Dr. Robert Hare, in Without Conscience, the seminal book on the condition. (Hare is also one of the psychologists consulted by the FBI about Columbine and by Slate for this story*.) "Unlike psychotic individuals, psychopaths are rational and aware of what they are doing and why. Their behavior is the result of choice, freely exercised." Diagnosing Harris as a psychopath represents neither a legal defense, nor a moral excuse. But it illuminates a great deal about the thought process that drove him to mass murder.

It begins to explain Harris' unbelievably callous behavior: his ability to shoot his classmates, then stop to taunt them while they writhed in pain, then finish them off. Because psychopaths are guided by such a different thought process than non-psychopathic humans, we tend to find their behavior inexplicable. But they're actually much easier to predict than the rest of us once you understand them. Psychopaths follow much stricter behavior patterns than the rest of us because they are unfettered by conscience, living solely for their own aggrandizement. (The difference is so striking that Fuselier trains hostage negotiators to identify psychopaths during a standoff, and immediately reverse tactics if they think they're facing one. It's like flipping a switch between two alternate brain-mechanisms.)

None of his victims means anything to the psychopath. He recognizes other people only as means to obtain what he desires. Not only does he feel no guilt for destroying their lives, he doesn't grasp what they feel. The truly hard-core psychopath doesn't quite comprehend emotions like love or hate or fear, because he has never experienced them directly.

"Because of their inability to appreciate the feelings of others, some psychopaths are capable of behavior that normal people find not only horrific but baffling," Hare writes. "For example, they can torture and mutilate their victims with about the same sense of concern that we feel when we carve a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner."

Felix Oberholzer of the Harvard Business School and Koleman Strumpf of UNC Chapel Hill just completed an extensive empirical analysis of p2p sharing which concludes that

Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero.

Now that's interesting. Is the battle for IP protection based on false assumptions? Could it be after all about maintaining a status quo, so that intermediates who used to provide a valuable service before P2P technology existed can still make money even though the value of the service they provide has reduced dramatically?

A business executive, with whom you have been trying to arrange a meeting, is available for a condensed pitch from you on a one minute elevator ride.

It is your goal to convince this attentive business leader — who has heard about weblogs — to sponsor and resource a critical mass of weblogs in his/her organization so that their benefits can be demonstrated in a meaningful way.

Pop star George Michael is abandoning the music business to release his songs online for free instead. The multi-millionaire singer said he will never make another album for sale in record shops because he does not need the cash and does not enjoy fame. Fans will be given the option to make donations online in exchange for downloading the tracks, and the proceeds will be given to charity. He is promoting his latest album, Patience, which he said is his last. The 40-year-old star made his announcement during an interview with Jo Whiley on BBC Radio 1. Speaking about his decision, he said: "I'm sure it's unprecedented, it's definitely unprecedented for someone who still sells records. "I've been very well remunerated for my talents over the years so I really don't need the public's money." He added that he hoped people downloading his music would donate to his favourite charities. Explaining his decision, the former Wham! frontman said: "It does two things - it takes the pressure off to have a collection of songs every so many years, which is what nearly killed me. "I'm not pretending I won't be famous any more, but in the modern world if you take yourself out of the financial aspect of things, you're not making anybody any money, you're not losing anybody any money. Believe me, I'll be of very little interest to the press in a certain number of years. I'll hopefully be a happier man, giving my music and also doing something really positive with my music if people are generous enough to donate to the site. I'll remove myself from all that negativity."