7 Minute Read
The empty-glass story behind the latest outbreak of machine intelligence is not of the explosion of information AI can bring to us but of the implosion of what we knew to begin with.
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Drafts for Comment
Indirections I Have Lived By is an open blog. You'll find here working drafts and ideas on the cusp. Please feel free to weigh in.
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Moonquake [Working Draft]
The empty-glass story behind the latest outbreak of machine intelligence is not of the explosion of information AI can bring to us but of the implosion of what we knew to begin with. (more…)
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The Woman Who Wore Her Mind Like a Hat [WORKING DRAFT]
Why We Parallel Process, and How to Do It More Often An attempt to suggest that while specialization is critical to deep knowledge, variety is not only the spice of life but the key to imagining the implicate wholeness of things, without which depth is a dead letter. (more…)
Memorable Posts
Vintage Assays Ranked by Popularity
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If on a Summer’s Eve a Writer
[For Mark] From a child, I would, on rare occasions, look at a thing and sense from it a timeless, ineffable outreach. "Look at me. Notice me. Remember me. You'll wish you had." (more…)
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Performing ‘on Broadway’
Or How I Inadvertently—and Then Intentionally—Impersonated a Secret Service Agent at a Special Preview of The Phantom of the Opera. (more…)
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The Kindness of Strangers
In which I commit to becoming the stranger I wish to meet in the world. (more…)
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Something To Write About
I'll gladly give you a career tomorrow for a job today. (more…)
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Say the Change
10 Minute Read
In which I begin a weekly newsletter by asking the question: What’s Yours?
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If Memory Serves
9 Minute Read
Or How the Brain Makes Room for the Mind Like a Seurat painting, incremental change appears on the scene point by point. Trusting the big picture to take care of itself once our entire canvas has been thoughtfully dotted, we free our minds to focus on adding new colors.
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Without a Whisper
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(Remembering Maui)
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Breakfast Prayer with Daddy
12 Minute Read
Or the Problem of Ethics in the Dark I learned the story of Cain and Abel around the time my younger brother and I were expected to share our first bin of Legos. After my five-year-old brain worked out how I could possess his half of my inheritance without getting caught, I conceived a plan to eliminate both “Abel” and the all-seeing God who would surely question “Cain” after the deed was done.
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The Woman Who Wore Her Mind Like a Hat [WORKING DRAFT]
3 Minute Read
Why We Parallel Process, and How to Do It More Often An attempt to suggest that while specialization is critical to deep knowledge, variety is not only the spice of life but the key to imagining the implicate wholeness of things, without which depth is a dead letter.
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Indirections I Have Lived By Is Now An Open Blog
2 Minute Read
Because I write my blog posts in the same editor from which they are published, it’s not even a hop, skip, or jump to let posts out of the bag before their time, as anyone who has written to me about nonsense and typos they find can attest. I’ve decided to make this irritating flaw a feature.
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Outbroken
14 Minute Read
[For Karl] When the knell tolls, like a scatter of pebbles across this archipelago of human being, its resonant frequency finds its way into not just my heart but yours beating but a stone’s throw away.
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Bone on Bone
11 Minute Read
Thomas Aquinas argues for deliberate will. René Descartes thinks and therefore is. Celine Dion belts My Heart Will Go On. But sometimes, the body just does stuff.
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If on a Summer’s Eve a Writer
8 Minute Read
[For Mark] From a child, I would, on rare occasions, look at a thing and sense from it a timeless, ineffable outreach. “Look at me. Notice me. Remember me. You’ll wish you had.”
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Leapin’ Leopards!
8 Minute Read
Want to change your spots? Not until we see the past for the feral creature it is and, with trepidation, let it into our house, train it not to bite our guests, and give it its own dish will we reduce the odds its jaws will one day spring back upon our necks.
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Restoration
11 Minute Read
When I dug into the recursive transformation of one of my dad’s revisionist paintings, it occurred to me that when we care for it the way a painter revisits an old canvas, the past is liberated to leap forward into its own future.
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The Laughing Man Who Fell Off His Chair and Other Indirections
9 Minute Read
Or How Orson Scott Card Taught Me to Understand Shakespeare Without Uttering a Word
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No If And Or But
13 Minute Read
A longer-than-average post about shorter-than-average words and the subliminal messages they breathe into our mind’s ear.
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His 50-Year Goals
4 Minute Read
In Timor-Leste, I meet a man who foretold the future.
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Orson Ball’s a Friend of Mine
2 Minute Read
In which I declare a sixty-year-old event, diagnose it thirty years later, and foretell its future thirty years later still.
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Irrational Will
18 Minute Read
The proper aim of life, even at its least creative, is handwritten on a secret card placed face down on the table before we draw our first breath. Our mothers, by some undiscoverable trick of love and light, seem always to know each word on the underside of not just their own card but of ours as well.
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Five for a Dollar
8 Minute Read
Your love is such a thrill. But your love won’t pay my bills. —Janie Bradford & Berry Gordy, Money