Bruce Sterling, in Seed: After 1989 we enjoyed a strange interregnum where "history ended." Everyone ran up a credit-card bill at the global supermarket. The adventure ended badly, in crisis. Still, let us be of good heart. In cold fact, a financial crisis is one of the kindest and mildest sorts of crisis a civilization can have. Compared to typical Italian catastrophes like wars, epidemics, earthquakes, volcanoes, endemic political collapse — a financial crisis is a problem for schoolchildren.
From the archive: He was overwhelmed by what he saw at a Houston supermarket, by the kaleidoscopic variety of meats and vegetables available to ordinary Americans.
From 2008: Those that died of kuru were highly regarded as sources of food, because they had layers of fat which resembled pork. It was primarily the Fore women who took part in this ritual. Often they would feed morsels of brain to young children and elderly relatives.
From 2004: If the children are being instructed in the pink plane, can we teach them to think in the blue plane and live in a pink-plane society? What is to become of those of us past schooling, who are aware of these planes? Are we to dredge on with pink shades over our blue eyes?
The True 21st Century Begins | 
