Then when I started my higher education I started analysing. I study sociology; and it wasnt that things becamse simpler as I got deeper into the subjects, rather the opposite, but the tools for compartmentalising social behavior, alowed me to see the sometimes simple mechanisms and structures underlying spaces.

Since I’ve tried to take pictures that teach this simplicity, or density of complexity to others. The truth was tied to simplicity, and I found that as I started doing this, the images also became more beautiful. They spoke of an idea, rather than a messy frame.

As an atheist this connection between the perceived true nature of things, and beauty is maybe the most abstract belief I can identify in my self. But that relationship is nothing less than that between theory and reality.

Are you a fan? Which is your favorite Brancusi?

My god, you overestimate me. The last time I read these dialogues systematically was in college. Now I let my attention go wherever it roams.

I always liked the Symposium. The topic is love–all forms of it–and you will find some of the opinions expressed quite, shall we say, modern, even in a Bay Area way. But it’s a real party conversation, so the dialogue rambles and in the process tells you a lot about their time.

There is also a great moment when it’s Aristophanes’ (you just read him) turn to speak and he can’t because he has …. hiccups.

Incidentally, I do have an email form on my About Me page…

This question has little to do with this post, but since you have no e-mail contact on this blog, I will ask my question here. Here better than Wu-Wei.

I am reading Plato, again. Which Dialogue, in your view, is the most relevant today? I finished Phaedrus. Plato’s observations about rhetoric vs. writing make me think.

I am on to another dialogue.

(enjoyed The Clouds!)

John Maeda is great. I interviewed him for that Special Report (then called “Survey”) I linked to in my post above. He has the opening quote in the first chapter. I should catch up with his latest.

Thanks for checking in!

I share your frustration about our subscriber wall. I have been in a tug-of-war for years with our business side to drop it. I succeeded partially when they took it down for the first year of any particular article’s life, and I hope that it will go altogether. It is unenlightened nowadays. (I could talk forever about it.)

Steve, thanks for that explanation. I’ve always been confused about Occam’s Razor, but now it makes perfect sense. In fact, you made me visit the Wikipedia page, which has some great stuff, including simplicity quotes by Leonardo da Vinci, at the bottom…

It is axiomatic that windbaggery (or prolixity) is the stock-in-trade of academics. Thus, students who write term papers must write them in academese to get a passing grade.

I read somewhere recently that the owner of one of the large (Chicago?) newspapers, in the interests of efficiency, will pay his paper’s journalists by the word. This should make for great reading.

I clicked on the link to your Economist article on simplicity, and was disconcerted to learn that to read your piece, I must pay money.

Since I felt this was just not cricket, I declined.