A few things:

This article (via drinkme) reminds me of how little we still know about our own social dynamics. I wonder if we will ever be able to separate our instincts from our own volition or if we have even phrased the question properly.
I'd always thought that to be truly "human" was to recognize and overcome petty instincts, to look beyond that and try to overcome the stereotypes of your own background, to look forward and realize that each of us embodies a place and a large list of subscribed precepts. But if you go too far in the other direction and try somehow to transcend it all then you may be leaving behind too much.
Aren't concepts of beauty and passion and good and triumph based fundamentally on our own ability to weave something complex out of something simpler, to intellectualize our instincts?

I am co-hosting a bbq on saturday. It should be fun. I am not generally the party-host type but my co-host is more of one so i am drawing on some of her social energy. Its also a good chance to use the garden and a good excuse to clean the house.

I am flying to europe next week. I am taking the infamous san francisco-frankfurt direct flight on United. Its a 12-hour flight but made more bearable by the fact that I'll be flying business class (put more simply, all the liquor i can drink.) I'll be in Heidelberg, Hamburg, Berlin and maybe Amsterdam. I'm tempted to cut out Amsterdam since I've already been there twice in the past couple years.