Some may think it strange to have a chapter on beads and women. For many people (I suspect mostly men) beads have always been very minor objects. As such, they were not worthy of consideration at all because they were only "women's trifles." So, if you are going to have a site about trifles, why diminish it more by discussing "women's trifles"?

This, of course, scores a double nonsense. Women need no defense from me. As for trifles, little things are often far more important than their size suggest. We live in a complex world. There are those (certain politicians and commentators immediately come to mind) who would have the world a simple, happy place. Only a few new laws would make everything all right.

But complex systems are all around us. Consider the weather. What a wonder that with our ability to communicate instantly around the globe even to other planets the weather reporter is still so often wrong. (I originally wrote this on 12 May 1996 and it was snowing -- again!) Why? Because the global pattern is so complex that we have no computers that can forecast it accurately very far into the future.

It is said, and it may be true, that the flight of a butterfly in China could cause droughts in the Midwest, floods in Europe and a transformation in the El Niño effect.

Trifles, indeed. There are no trifles.

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