Greg Bear

Nance Confer and I are playing with a new learning-is-the-universe type blog we've dubbed "Cocking a Snook!" for reasons you can discern and snicker at if you like, when you visit. Here's the kind of thing starting to show up there; comments and eyeballs welcome, especially from Kitchen regulars. (Waving to Liza, sea, Lorraine and the guys --)

If culture changes like the Internet can actually change individual brains, those changes will in turn change institutions, or obsolesce the ones it can't --this morning I heard NPR guests discussing the extreme need for institutional change by Congress, the Supreme Court, etc. see if you can check it out on a podcast!) As our population hits 300 million this month, each Senator represents 3 million of us. How well represented does that make you feel as an individual?

No WONDER government institutions are foundering and as individuals, we'lre mad as hell, not gonna take it any more. Mucho maladaptations that won't be helped just by changing the color scheme of the decor from red to blue, or back again . . .

And when I say institutional change, I mean overhaul if not revolution.