Ants
Read about ants today, and how they communincate via pheromones and how a collective consciousness forms among them, this consciousness designed to support the inadaquecies of the individual ants.
It was cool, and not altogether new to me, but I hadn’t read about it in a long while, and not since reading some of the Julian Jaynes attempts at defining human consciousness as something of a meta phenomenon. The description of ants’ collective consciousness evoked Jaynes, whose influence (I’m told) is surprisingly marginal.
So then I ventured out onto that big old Internet and found a video of some scientists who poured cement down the top of a giant anthill. 10 tons of cement to fill the colony’s network of tunnels and chambers. They let the cement solidify and then they excavated the structure. The resulting cement sculpture was a masterpiece, better seen than described.
….
Today my project waas to find quiet, tourist-free, secluded places in midtown Manhattan where one could read or work or do whatever. I found 2 such spots, one right on Broadway and another nearby. I read about the ants at the place on Broadway.
