(source: United Nations)

We hit that expected marker this past weekend. Our species now numbers 7 billion human souls. For more “up-to-the-second” metrics, visit worldometers.

Rørøs, Norway

I was honored last week to be invited to give a talk at EDIT 2011 : DIG “Norway’s biggest design conference” in the historic copper-mining town of Røros (where the 3,640 or so modern-day inhabitants still work and live in the characteristic 17th and 18th century buildings, which have led to the town’s designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site).

EDIT 2011 : DIG is organized by Grafill, the Norwegian Organisation for Visual Communication. Although I could only stay for the first day of the event, I was very impressed with the quality of organization and the friendliness of the good people I met…

Photos of the event can be viewed here. Conference participants who wish to receive a downloadable link to a PDF of my presentation can contact me here.

—G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

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…for some new glasses and a Movember moustache…

—Henrik Ibsen, (1828-1906)

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There seems to be little doubt that the “golden era” of predatory lending, usury, market manipulations, and unimpeded profiteering by hedge fund managers, private equity chiefs, financiers, and opportunistic robber-baron-corporations is rapidly drawing to a close… what will be interesting to observe is just how the fall will manifest itself. The times they are a’changin indeed…

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.

—Bob Dylan

New York… and spreading.

It’s great to see young women at the forefront of the “occupy” movement—this gives me hope for meaningful outcomes…

The “Wall Street GREED is stealing our future” t-shirt is by friend Mirko Ilić.

—Tenzin Gyatsu, the 14th Dalai Lama

—Mark Twain (aka Samual Langhorne Clemens), 1835-1910

(See more posts re: Mark Twain on this blog here).

(spreading, around the globe)

Keetra Dean Dixon is a vivacious, talented, young artist/designer working from an often-frazzled NYC-based workshop. The Anonymous Hugging Wall began as a 2008 installation in her native Alaska—it’s since been replicated far and wide… attesting to the popularity of her premise that the world really could use more hugs.

(I was privileged to have dinner with Keetra last night :-)