Just a couple things

I was hoping I'd spend less time around my computer this week while my primary online contact is out of the country, but so far that's failed completely. This might have something to do with all the online applications I'm working on, but hey.

In any case, here's a link to Abby (the) Librarian's blog, which recently posted a giveaway of Catching Fire. It's the second part of the Hunger Games trilogy, the premise of which sounds a little silly, but apparently is completely riveting. I figure it's worth a try.

Then, I read an article that introduced me to the concept of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s Nöosphere. I think I had heard the word before, but not known the meaning. It's basically a "sphere of human thought", that represents humanity's development into a highly cognitive species. It's also the next step after the biosphere and geosphere concepts. The Noosphere could also be comparable to the blogosphere, the idea that everyone is connected by these ideas and ways of thinking, by the internet, for example. At Princeton, the Noosphere is being studied as a literal global consciousness that has the power to alter elements (specifically random number generation). The data seem show that if enough people are thinking about the same thing, the numbers change slightly, are less random, and deviate from the prediction.
De Chardin envisioned all this coming to resolution at the "omega point", when human thought will reach its pinnacle... and that's pretty much the end of history. What's up with Omega though? Maybe it's just me and Star Trek Voyager, where the Borg hailed Omega particles as the ultimate symbol of perfection, but I know I've seen it elsewhere and am interested in the root meanings that lead to this stuff.

Well, that should be it for now. Not a terribly coherent post, but ah well. More next time, hopefully on eco-guilt and the economy and whatever else is on my mind/reader.