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But some problems we still jealously guard as the province of individual beautiful minds: writing a novel, choosing a spouse, creating a new mathematical theorem. The Polymath experiment suggests this prejudice may need to be rethought. In the near future, we might talk not only about the wisdom of crowds but also of their genius.

In his book "The Medea Hypothesis," named after the Greek mother who slaughtered her own children, Ward argues that for billions of years the biosphere has been its own worst enemy. "Life seems to be actively pursuing its own demise," he wrote recently in New Scientist, "moving earth ever closer to the inevitable day when it returns to its original state: sterile."

The Tree of Life features prominently in Celtic lore.Our Humanity Tree of Life Pin/Pendant takes this ancient icon a step futher by incorporating two people in the very center of the trunk, arms outstreched and bleding together, representing Humanity balanced and interconnected.

The biomorphic forms that go to make up the work ‘Fractal Alchemy’ (2009) fair better in this regard, the various size bull dog clips offering nonrepresentational patterns that resemble living organisms and genetic structures in shape and appearance. At their best these elemental shapes start to transcend form and function to become something else: an instinctive and intuitive connection to the inherent fold in the universe, like the embedded pattern, the DNA template in a blank piece of paper before the folding of the origami model. Unfortunately the wonder of this piece is short-lived. Unlike the ever magical repetition of fractal geometry with its inherent iteration of forms that constantly a/maze here the shapes are not stretched far enough, the exposition not grounded in broken or fractured forms that invite alchemical awareness in the viewer.

by Rob Barnett

In an article in Network Computing, Nick Gall, a program director with the META Group's Open Computing & Server Strategies claims that (somewhat ironically) the mechanisms for cataloging data are "woefully inadequate" throughout the information technology (IT) sector. Gall compares the situation to an office containing stacks of papers: information can be searched for but not in any consistent, systematic, and reliable manner. According to Gall, "... the lack of adequate catalog services is the No. 1 impediment to interoperable distributed systems. The information is at our fingertips; we simply lack the ability to get it when and where we need it."