Any society must be stable and unchanging to survive—and yet, the society that does not change both dies and kills its more adventurous spirits, a little at a time. Sometimes a door looks like a wall.  Some days an opportunity presents itself as a threat. I’m more of a Judith than a Dian, but I…

I remember an old anthropologist telling me how, in the traditional African villages she and her husband studied, the old women were responsible for tutoring the boys in responsibility. The whimsical attitude of these aged ladies, their ability to prick the overblown pride of young adolescent males into so many collapsing balloons, must have done…

In the aftermath of a global catastrophe, how would the world settle down? Rural life would no doubt return to the fore—people need food before technology, any time.  But given the kinds of machines, and the sorts of minds, we see in the 21stcentury, wouldn’t cities survive?  More feudal in nature, perhaps, trading knowledge and technology…