SAND, SNOW, AND MUD SLIDES

What very strange lives we online people live nowadays. Our world is so much smaller than that of our parents and of our offline friends and acquaintances. We are closer to each other online than I would, in my youth, have believed possible.

Our external neural networks cover huge territories - intellectual, cultural, and geographical - that we have begun to take for granted our breadth. Last night as we sheltered indoors, friends on Mellaflusia were discussing the white out that they were experiencing - we were huddling away from a massive dust storm with winds of 68 miles per hour. When we rose this morning and before we had ventured too far to discover and repair the damage done we were looking at photos from our northern correspondent Finn McEskimo of a snow covered Finland taken only yesterday. As the temperature rose to 18ºç here I was chatting to a HiPhi in Brighton where fine flakes of snow were falling gently. Here the sun was blue and the sky was a sulphurous yellow.

And as we chattered and before I ventured out to cut back broken olives Muddybanks came into the discussion from the Philippines where the president had just declared a state of emergency! And this only a week after the disastrous mudslide that entirely buried a village.

Our broader perspective allows us to be more sanguine than would previously have been the case.