My ruination at the hands of Nora Ephron began in 1978, when as a high school senior in Oakland I was able to take classes at UC Berkeley. This was a tremendous boon not just educationally but recreationally, as there were security guards constantly patrolling our high school parking lot, looking out for rebellious teens such as myself who might try to cut class and leave school early. Now, thanks to my special UCB privilege, I could leave anytime I wanted and they just waved me on. That was a huge improvement in my life thus far, and not anything Ms. Ephron should be faulted for. Read on…

I was explaining to my teenage daughter yesterday what a tough year 2010 was for most people, by way of an example from our own life. Here we were, driving on the freeway in my old Honda, heading down to San Francisco. On the back window of my car was a big white “11″ on a pink piece of paper, a temporary registration tag from the DMV. Consequently, the entire way down I was being extra good on the road and keeping an eye out for the CHP, who could reasonably pull me over at any time asking why my registration was out of date.

“You remember that fender-bender you had in my car last January, Jojo?” I asked her. Yes, she replied sheepishly. “Remember how I thought I’d taken care of all the paperwork and repairs and spending a new fortune on your insurance, by the end of May?” Yes, she remembered that too. “And then how in August I found out they were not letting me re-register my car until I had all kinds of other inspections done? And then I paid for all those and sent them their paperwork in September, but here it is the end of December and I am still waiting for the actual registration tags?” Oh yes, she knew all too well about the incredible tide of incompetence that her accident had unleashed. Read on…

Ever since I began blogging in 2005, I have had conversations with my writer colleagues about the feasibility of being an online journalist. For those of us who were not yet being paid to write, would great blogging eventually result in a paying gig?

As time wore on and more print media outlets failed, our chances of being offered a paid writing job plummeted. Some bloggers tried to parlay their expertise into consulting work and book deals, while others turned to site monetization schemes such as ads, affiliate links, and syndication to create an income stream from their writing. These strategies have worked for some, but for most writers the holy grail has always been simply to make money writing about what we know. Read on…

I had the opportunity recently to take Dream Talk Radio to Silicon Valley, for a very interesting conversation and multi-media event about e-government. E-government is the idea that advances in technology and information processing can be applied to help local, state, and national agencies be more efficient, responsive, and effective in the process of governing. It is an idea championed by attorney Bill Fenwick, of Fenwick & West, and is being addressed by Bill and others through the group Program for the Future. Read on…

I want to highlight some of my more recent guests on Dream Talk Radio, because rather than focusing on the dreams of individuals, we have been exploring, sometimes in great depth, how individuals’ dreams shape the culture. That is, how our waking perceptions about nature, science, government, progress, and civil society inform our actions, and how those actions are changing society. Read on…

The movie “Inception” shines a light on a persistent human fear: that of being deceived while we are in a vulnerable, dreaming state. This is not a new story. As far back as Ancient Greece, people have worried about being misled by “false dreams.” In fact, that very thing showed up 2,500 years ago in Homer’s Iliad, where the god Zeus appears in Agamemnon’s dream and falsely promises victory if Agamemnon attacks Troy.

If the ancient Greeks worried that dreams can be deceptive, what does it mean that all this time later we still have the same fear? Has anything changed in our relationship to dreams in all this time? And is there anything new we can learn about dreams and symbols from “Inception”? Read on…