We don’t have a hundred biases, we have the wrong model
Behavioral economics has identified dozens of cognitive biases that stop us from acting ‘rationally’. But instead of building up a messier and messier picture of human behavior, we need a new model.
Read more >
Words by Jason Collins.
Words by Stewart Brand
The world’s first round-the-world solo yacht race was a thrilling and, for some, deadly contest. Its contestants’ efforts can teach us about the art of maintenance.
Click here to add your own text
Click here to add your own text
Click here to add your own text
Click here to add your own text
Click here to add your own text
Read sample poems and listen to audio recordings (*) of Sean Haldane reading.
Something Like Love Lake Monroe, Indiana
The grass is worn and beaten down By snow just gone, Each tree in the wood alone.
We sit, us two, On a fallen log above a view Of ice sheets fraying into water.
Gulls shriek And crows cry out in desperation. A pair of cardinals flit in a naked oak. A blue jay picks at the ground, A party of scuttling killdeers call their names, A dove goes ‘tink tink’ like a muted bell. A long ago hell Comes to mind, a Spring without promise. Now there is nothing to miss. Is this perfection? Expectation, the ice melting. Is our long time of despair really over?
We make Something like love before we fall asleep And as we awake.
Will this hush Of nothing happening before the Spring Tempt these New World birds to sing?
Buds will burst and shoots like arrows leap. Melting will push Volumes of sap up through the waiting bush.
We shall make Something like love again by the shimmering lake.
From Chair to Chair * I sit in your chair and I look at my chair and despair At the lack of a view of us both, as above in the air A vee of geese honking veers down to the park and its lake And I don’t know if ever I’ll love you without a mistake. You know what I am but whatever I am is not clear. All I know in your chair is I wish me in mine and you here. Chair is flesh in your language ma Chère, I am able To envision my body, to see me from you across the table. But this is taboo to my mind. I would usually think It schizoid in a void to see me through your eyes, in a blink. (What pain will he cause the next time he moves off and comes back?) When I look at my chair opposite its pressed back is a rack Where my body is stretched – seen from you – or (another view) I am back in my own self there in that chair and see you Bleeding slowly for me – as I bleed for you now: face to face, I don’t know which way the directions of time or of space. As I look at you in my mind are you looking at me? In a warp of the universe not here or there we Are two knobs – a tube in between – a dumb-bell Tumbling over and over it seems between heaven and hell. Your email: I love you very much. But here in your chair With nobody there in my chair my existence is bare As if I’m alone in a pew in a dusty old church, Ready to pray you won’t stay far off and leave me in the lurch. Where is our azimuth? When can we stop The tumbling? – and still stay connected and drop As one down to earth and just be you and me Each in our chair sitting here with the locust tree And the usual Constable clouds to look at, and we Both North both South, each an alternating pole Of a vast rolling world we don’t need to control.
Rogues and Whores Where on earth is Hand Trough Creek? Where are Cuckold’s Haven, Clap’s Gate Lane and Gallions Reach? Names on a map of Dockland, To you, a rogue, they promise heaven. Outside St Paul’s, gaze At this puddle in the lap Of a black marble woman Reclining. The water glistens. Let John Donne speak: Not a minute left to do it (Repent, he means, not love – The Dean is not a poet). Not a minute’s sand. (An hour glass on his pulpit). His shrouded death-mask listens. The hour glass Is just a frozen shape In a quantum landscape: Time doesn’t pass. The sermon doesn’t teach, But endures like the walls Of old St Paul’s And blitzed houses ablaze. All that moves is mind. Here, rogue, stand By the black woman, Share her daze, Frozen in the East wind From Cannon Street. Out at Cuckold’s Haven Wives spread their legs To take on the dregs Of Gallions Reach And pass on the clap. Spend all the coins From a pocket without holes, Lie in their loins And on their breasts blubber In convulsive emotion: In the life of dove-tailing souls, A quiver if not of matter Of, yes, love. That can prove White and black, rogues and whores move.
Mumm’s Champagne When you cracked open the Mumm’s champagne To celebrate our first whole night – In the new sheets you had bought, striped blue and white – You didn’t know how much pain Would follow from being together. But our love has not turned vinegar, Though it’s no longer bubbly – a blood red wine Pressed from the last grapes of two ageing vines Whose limbs would have to be snapped To get them apart. We have grown around each other, and here Are the same sheets, the stripes faded and worn, And a bottle of something more modest than Mumm’s. The champagne spurts And though we forget nothing, nothing hurts.