Here's an interesting essay from the author of a book titled Voluntary Simplicity -- a label that also symbolizes a steadily growing sub-culture/social movement found in many post-industrial nations around the world. In the essay he briefly discusses the history of 'simplicity' as a lifestyle choice, and then goes on to detail several forms which that choice for simplicity tends to take in the United States. Though these 'diverse expressions' of simplicity are probably best read as arguments for simplicity... compelling reasons to choose a simpler lifestyle... since the distinctions that are made seem quite unclear, at times. The possible overlap of supposedly distinct expressions of simplicity, which the author concedes may occur, is really totally inevitable. Even for the simplest folks, it's impossible to do just one thing... and any one of these 10 approaches to simplicity would undoubtedly include or impact aspects of all the other 10 approaches. I guess that what I'm saying is that the essay seems unnecessarily complicated (ironic, I know), but it's still worth reading if you have the time.

read -- The Garden of Simplicity (continued...)

Apologies to everyone -- to all of the faithful followers of the Retrolithic revolution -- I'm well aware of the difficulties that some of you are having when viewing this site with Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser and I'm also sincerely sorry that there hasn't been any new content for some time.

The content should be coming shortly... but don't hold your breath for the CSS hack that would make the site look pretty in Internet Explorer. So, the best thing to do would be for that 30%+ of you to just switch to Firefox.

Thanks... and sorry.

What happens when a culture and its myths begin to crumble? New ones seem to arrive before the old have even disappeared. New ones in the shell of the old, from the crumbs of the old... they merge and blend and fade into one another. This can already be seen occurring in places where the system is faltering, like among the children who are splitting their time between the homeless shelters and the streets of the United States. What can be learned from such phenomena? Is this innate creative potential a threat or a source of hope for our future?
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"Captured on South Beach, Satan later escaped. His demons and the horrible Bloody Mary are now killing people. God has fled. Avenging angels hide out in the Everglades. And other tales from children in Dade's homeless shelters." (continued...)

"Science transcends mere politics. As recent history demonstrates, scientists are as willing to work for a Tojo, a Hitler, or a Stalin as for the free nations of the West." - Ed Abbey

Quite a few web sources that I browse had decided to republish the results of a small, but interesting, psychological research project that was conducted recently. The basic premise of the whole project was that accompanying a verbal request with a light touch on the arm will produce a greater number of 'positive' responses to the request than if it were unaccompanied by the tactile element. Their results confirmed the hypothesis when statistically significant margins showed that a light touch on the arm was effective at producing a 'yes' in situations that would most likely have otherwise produced a 'no'. (continued...)

        "The past is never dead. It's not even past." -- William Faulkner

This week the world learned that the Cold War didn't really 'end', per se, and that the Neolithic revolution isn't quite complete. (continued...)