We’re still calling these random links foobles, right? Right? Cool.

Hi there Sunday readers, and welcome to that thing I do every Sunday, which is shovel whatever links I have kicking around at you in lieu of coherent content.

I call them “foobles” to make the whole thing seem cute.

And speaking of cute, I have recently discovered a webcomic I would love to share with you. It’s called Housepets and I have been going through the whole archive of it lately, and having a great old time.

But confessions first : for the most part, it’s more charming than funny. This is not the strip you go to expecting razor sharp cutting edge pointy comedy. It’s not that kind of comic. It is a different kind.

And try not to hurt your brain trying to figures out how their particular funny animals type universe “works”. Yes, it appears to be a world where humans keep animals as pets even though said animals walk, talk, and use tools just like human beings do. And the human beings can hear them talk too, none of the Garfield dodge. Sure, by rights, that opens a whole universe of awkward questions, but come on, the comic is fun, just roll with it.

Caveats aside, it is just plain wonderful. It has a big cast of adorable, lovable characters with their own personalities and quirks who get into a lot of pretty creative situations and in general, reading the strip is like wandering around a fun, silly universe with a bunch of fuzzy little friends.

Next, some left over science stuff : coming as no surprise to me, researchers find link between creative genius and mental illness.

I could quibble about the methodology of the study, but I won’t. I can dig it. To me, the link between creativity and insanity is intuitively obvious.

After all, to be creative, you have to listen very closely to your own inner voices and be willing to have ideas and solutions burst into your head, seemingly out of nowhere, and then follow those visions wherever they lead.

That already sounds half crazy from word one, doesn’t it?

And honestly, sometimes my own creativity and insight feels a little like insanity. I am always carrying around a non-stop madcap circus-laboratory of incandescent creativity in this here battered old noggin of mine, and while I would not trade it away for the world as it is the wild and chaotic reactor core to the whole merry mad machine that is me. I get a lot of out my untamed intelligence and chaotic creativity, but it takes a lot out of me in the process, and while I would never want to be rid of it, there are times I dearly wish this crazy clunky contraption of mine had an OFF switch.

Part of the problem is that, for both good and bad, creativity lets a person simply see through and hence ignore or bypass the sorts of narrow intellectual constrictions that both keep less creative people from growing or learning, but also keep them sane.

It is cold and lonely outside the box.

Lastly, we have me nattering on about Google Plus.

For those who do not know, Google Plus (or, more properly, Google+) is a new social network service from the fine people at Google.

It is obviously meant to be a Facebook killer, something to give people the same core functionality without all the chaos and noise drowning out the signal over at the FB.

Right now, it is invite-only, and still under testing and adjustment, so being in on it is not exactly a thrillfest quite yet.

Still, I like what I see so far. You make “circles” of contacts and then you can share links, images, videos, and so on with said circles.

It is all very simple and clean and effective, which means it is pretty much like Facebook was back when it started, before things got way too crazy.

Judging by the reports of the network’s explosive growth over the last few days (and that is WITH the limiting factor of being invite-only, it’s going to be a success.

After all, people have been wondering what is the thing that will do to Facebook what Facebook did to Myspace for a long time now. Discontent with Facebook has been growing increasingly stiff and strident lately, and the time seems right to try to launch a successor. And if anyone can do it, Google the Mighty can do it.

If you want an invite or want to connect on Google+, drop me a line.

You are a monkey. And so am I.

And so is everyone else. Every human being, past, present, and future, is a monkey. Your parents are monkeys. Your children are, or will be, monkeys. Abraham Lincoln was a monkey, as was Ghandi, Pol Pot, and the Bay City Rollers.

In fact, if you are reading these words and you live on planet Earth, you are a monkey. ^[1]

Now being very clever monkeys, you and I, we do not like to think about what monkeys we are. After all, we have invented a lot of very impressive things, transforming the planet in the process, and to be fair, it is pretty clear who is running the place.

But being the head monkeys does not in any way free us of our monkey nature. The very drive to explore and create and innovate that has lead us to this heady place in such a relatively short period of time (10,000 years or so) is a fundamentally monkey thing. The difference between a monkey poking a stick into a termite hill to get termites and a human being poking around in a laboratory to get a new fuel additive is a matter of time and scale, not a matter of some transcendent quality that only we humans possess at all.

In fact, the very idea that we somehow think we have stopped being monkeys simply because we have gotten so good at this social and technological evolution is, in many ways, the most simian conceit of them all.

It is like a monkey who climbs to the top of a very tall tree, and looks down at all the other monkeys, and scoffs “Boy, am I glad I am not one of you monkeys any more!”.

A monkey you are, my friend, and a monkey you will always be.

The problem is that evolution is not revolution. It is impossible for evolution to produce something entirely new, except at the unicellular level. Everything else will be based on a previous model, and incorporate everything about that previous model along with the new features that make this year’s model better than the last.

So when we evolved into human beings, we kept being monkeys. A lion is still a cat, after all, and a tuna is still a fish. Specialization in evolution might modify things a little (a flipper becomes a paw, a tail becomes a stump) but all the basics remain the same.

We are special monkeys, with abilities no monkey has ever had before. But it does not stop us from being, basically, very clever monkeys.

And it is only through understanding and accepting our monkey nature that we can hope to ever overcome it and become something more.

For instance, as monkeys, we are inherently hierarchical. Despite all our progress in freedom, democracy, tolerance, and individualism, we are still a socially hierarchical species who is happiest when there is a strong alpha male leading us, assuring us that we will be protected from danger by a fierce and aggressive male who is scarier than all the threats of the world and who projects confidence and control.

We take our cues from our dominant alphas, and mirror their mood, for they are our link to the world outside our little local tribe. Just as a baby animal knows to be quiet when its mother is quiet and to run when its mother runs, so do we, as tribe building monkeys, instinctively adopt the same emotional stance as our leaders, whether they are the head of our office at work or the head of our nation on the news.

Also, as social monkeys, we are greatly influence by all the other monkeys around us. This also flies in the face of modern individualism and the notion of total individual autonomy, but study after study shows this to nevertheless remain true.

So, for example, it is very difficult to resist peer pressure. Our urge to conform to our tribe and blend in is very strong. Usually, the only ones who can do so with complete success are the monkeys on the periphery, who do not really belong to any one tribe.

In these and many other ways, we remain basically the same sort of monkey that we were when we first stumbled out onto the Serengeti.

So own your monkey nature. Be proud to be a simian and a monkey and an animal as well as a human being. Don’t consider it a demotion, think of it as an embracing of the full richness of what it means to be a human being.

We might still be monkeys, but we are special monkeys indeed.