Roundup, January-April 2013

Busy week so I thought I'd do a roundup and let you guys catch up a bit with a roundup. The year has had a rocky but solid (heh!) start, with some pretty strange posts. Not counting a couple of meta posts, we have had 15 posts in the first third of the year, 9 by me, and 6 by residents.

1. The Economics of Social Status (Kevin)
2. So I Shall be Written, So I Shall be Performed (Mike)
3. A Beginner’s Guide to Immortality
4. The Locust Economy
5. The Wave of Unknowing (Drew)
6. Social Dark Matter: On Seeing and Being Seen
7. The Dead-Curious Cat and the Joyless Immortal
8. Honesty and the Human Body (Kevin)
9. Binoculars versus Cameras
10. Solidarity and Recursion (Mike)
11. Adventures in Amateur Talking-Headery
12. Machine Cities and Ghost Cities (Drew)
13. Stone-Soup for the Capitalist’s Soul
14. Eternal Hypochondria of the Expanding Mind
15. Schumpeter’s Demon

The call for sponsorships a couple of weeks ago has so far brought in $1850 this year from 17 sponsors, which I think beats the total for the same time last year. Thank you, and feel free to chip in to support the site as and when you're able. The popular hit of the lot was probably the Locust Economy piece. So in this first third of 2013, the Iron Blogger was not beaten by resident challengers. I seem to be on a weird sort of immortality/eternity kick (three posts with one of those words right in the title) mixed with some experimentation with story-telling in parable form.  Every time I think I am settling down to develop some meaty theme, something distracts me and I go down a new bunny trail. It's going to be a year of weirdness. Here's the complete 2012 roundup, from where you can backtrack to ribbonfarm prehistory and posts in cuneiform if you are so inclined.