Article: For the Long Journey, Learn from Terns
Artic Tern, Sterna paradisaea. Photo: Carsten Egevang/ARC-PIC.COM
Article: Not All Flocking is Good
My friends and collaborators have been exposed to my interest in emergent behavior in systems so much, they roll their eyes whenever I say words like "collective intelligence" and "flocking". I've ever gone so far to develop some management ideas based on some common rules of collective behavior in groups. It's no surprise, then, that I was fascinated by Princeton evolutionary biologist Iain...
Article: More Than Pruning
You can't keep an orchard if your only skill is pruning. If all you know is how to snip off what you don't like, you will soon have deformed and stunted trees. If you can't help but snip, you'll soon have nothing but stumps. Growing a healthy orchard takes skill and hard work. The wise person knows to nurture the whole tree: bud, leaf, and branch. And she pays special attention to nourishing the root. A tree well nourished needs little pruning. It grows full and round and produces just as much fruit as it's branches could possibly hold. Of course, I'm not really speaking of trees at all. Rather, I'm taking...