"…What Lind leaves out is that each of his time periods ends with a great upheaval in the nation that forces social changes. For instance, version 1.0 ends with the Civil War. Sometimes, the result is a more responsible capitalist model, as with version 4.0, which came after the Great Depression, and, according to Lind, was, for all intents and purposes, a time of responsible capitalism. Then, post-1960s and 1970s rights movements and the Vietnam War, the increasing drive towards globalization saw an abandonment of regulation, starting with President Carter, and a greed virus released on the financial markets that has led us to our current endtimes. Lind concludes, "Capitalism 6.0 will be just as American as its predecessors, but it will be better than what we have today. It could not possibly be worse."

"Ecological communities exhibit pervasive patterns and inter-relationships between size, abundance, and the availability of resources. We use scaling ideas to develop a unified, model-independent framework for understanding the distribution of tree sizes, their energy use and spatial distribution in tropical forests. We demonstrate that the scaling of the tree crown at the individual level drives the forest structure when resources are fully used. Our predictions match perfectly with the scaling behaviour of an exactly solvable self-similar model of a forest and are in good accord with empirical data. The range, over which pure power law behaviour is observed, depends on the available amount of resources. The scaling framework can be used for assessing the effects of natural and anthropogenic disturbances on ecosystem structure and functionality."

"For me, being a part of the Ruby community feels like getting a sneak peek at where software development is going six months to two years from now. That’s not to say it’s all rainbows and daisies…the constantly changing landscape requires a real passionate dedication to keep up or you’ll quickly fall behind, and not all technologies are meant to immediately be deployed to massive-scale production environments (restraint is a skill a good Rubyist must learn and exercise on a regular basis). But I love Ruby because I feel confident that I will be made aware of trends in software development long before I would otherwise be expected to understand them."

"If you use WordPress for your website or blog, there are lots of ways you can connect it to social media, and connect social media to your site via those nifty plugins. The right plugins can make social content management easier and reduce friction when it comes to reader sharing.

Whether you’re looking to easily share your content on social networks, make it easier for others to share your content, or simply make your own site more engaging, here are 7 great plugins that will make your WordPress site more social."

It's still fun when I hear important people saying stuff I said years ago, and having people listen to them ad think it's so cool and insightful. Really.