This 10x lifesize statue of Mao overlooks the main square here in Fuzhou.
Entries from November 2005
That Was Fuzhou
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November 30, 2005 at 11:42pm
by Psybertron
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Minding The Planet
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November 27, 2005 at 5:33pm
by Psybertron
Linked to Nova Spivak’s blog “Minding The Planet” once or twice before, but intrigued to find here that Peter Drucker was his grandfather ?
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Game Over
4
November 27, 2005 at 5:06pm
by Psybertron
Web 2.0 IS Google, says Cringley. 300+ portable and strategically located container-sized data processing centres are the key. [via Euan Semple]
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Panama Compression
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November 23, 2005 at 5:46pm
by Psybertron
Fascinating novelty item [via Rivets] of a week’s worth of activity through locks on the Panama canal compressed into 11 minutes of time-lapse video. Must be something about the sequence of locks and holding pools, but there are long inefficient sequences with all boats going in the same direction, lock’s repeatedly filling with no up-bound [...]
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David Deutsch Awarded Edge Prize
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November 22, 2005 at 5:08pm
by Psybertron
I’ve been raving about Deutsch’s Fabric of Reality world view, and mentioned that he didn’t play as strongly as expected on his quantum information work. I see he was just last week awarded a prize by The Edge for his pioneering work in quantum computing.
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Peter Drucker Dies
1
November 22, 2005 at 4:39pm
by Psybertron
Wow, after just rediscovering how much there was behind management guru Peter Drucker, I hear he died last Friday 18th November 2006, just short of his 96th birthday. Strange on the Wednesday two days before, my boss just used a Drucker quote I’d given him in a management presentation in the conference I was at. [...]
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Reading Rushdie
3
November 21, 2005 at 2:43pm
by Psybertron
Been away from blogging for a week, spending a week at a business development and golf sales conference in Koh Samui, Thailand. Beautiful location, fun time. Flying back, Bangkok to London, I continued to read Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children”. 75% through, it’s a great read. Whacky style, funny, serious period of childish biographical Indian history [...]
Antidote to IDC
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November 9, 2005 at 5:47pm
by Psybertron
Browsing The Edge (see previous post) I see this article by Canadian paleontologist and broadcaster Scott Sampson. He sees cross-discipline eco-focussed education projects as shifting the evolution debate from history on geological timescales to here and now relevance, and creating a better informed population in the process. As a pan-Darwinist, I’d have to agree.[My last [...]
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Turing’s Castle
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November 9, 2005 at 5:31pm
by Psybertron
Freeman Dyson used the title to describe Google on a recent visit, which he wrote about here at The Edge. [A "must read" says Mark Federman] Edge editor John Brockman says Some sincerely believe we are entering a golden age of wonder and Google is leading the way. And I am pleased to add from [...]
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Nice Little Essay on ZMM
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November 9, 2005 at 2:18pm
by Psybertron
A cross hit search link looking for Pirsig and Hofstadter threw up this essay by Ram Samudrala. In fact Ram’s is an interesting personal web-site. I guess being a fan of Harry Potter isn’t yet a capital offence.
Suffer the Little Children
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November 9, 2005 at 11:47am
by Psybertron
Sorry, heard this yesterday, but it has to be commented on. Kansas school board has used gaps in witnessed first-hand evidence “for” Darwinism to say it is “unproven”, unlike divine creationism no doubt (!) When will these guys get their own education in what science is about, before they get to wield this kind of [...]
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Buddhist Motorcycling ?
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November 8, 2005 at 7:01pm
by Psybertron
Did you know that Andrei Bitov wrote and first published “The Wheel” in English in 1974, the same year Robert Pirsig published “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” ? Both using motorcycles as a vehicle for Zen Buddhist inspired philsophical development. The kind of thing you can discover by searching the on-line content of [...]
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That Conscious Illusion
1
November 8, 2005 at 5:50pm
by Psybertron
Whilst being a fan of both Blackmore and Dennett, one of their claims I have trouble with is the idea that consciousness (and free-will) is an illusion. I’m never sure if that’s a claim that it isn’t therefore real, which would clearly be preposterous, or simply that it shares some attributes with illusions, which is [...]
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Exercise in Communication
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November 8, 2005 at 12:14pm
by Psybertron
Can’t tell whether this is serious, a spoof or some kind of thought experiment, but interesting none-the-less. Designing an informative sign that will survive and remain both meaningful and credible for 10,000 years (to mark a nuclear waste disposal site.) Interesting design problem. Seems the result is literally monumental. Figures. Link from Earle Martin’s “downlode” [...]
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Every Decreasing Circles
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November 7, 2005 at 4:06pm
by Psybertron
The great convergence goes on. I picked up this link from a cross-hit; Lectures at the Rafael Escola chair of Ethics. The inaugural 2004 presentation by Jeffrey Pfeffer is straight into the morals of CEO remuneration and immediately picking up on the perverse drive of purely objective, logical measures of company performance (See “why reward [...]
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Current Peyote Reference
25
November 7, 2005 at 10:44am
by Psybertron
Continuing the thread on psychedelics place in the study of consciousness, here is a bang up to date “scientific” study on the use of Peyote – OK so it’s from the media school of “Today US researchers announced …”, but it’s current and credible. [BeliefNet via Scott over at MoQ Discuss.] Damned by faint praise [...]
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Microsoft must actually be worried by Google
1
November 4, 2005 at 12:50pm
by Psybertron
Not content with announcing a new on-line service rather than shrink-wrapped s/w sales strategy, Microsoft are pushing ahead with this Open Content Alliance project to scan out of copyright books. I hope the “content” doesn’t become some pawn in the megalomaniac competitive game. [Most recent Google news here.]
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Another Closet Philosopher
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November 4, 2005 at 12:28pm
by Psybertron
I blogged a month or so ago about re-discovering management guru Peter Drucker, and being interested to discover his Vienna Circle history. I notice in this post from Piers Young at MonkeyMagic, whilst stumbling across Drucker, he lets slip his first degree in Philosophy. Kept that quiet Piers.
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Rise and fall in the news.
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November 4, 2005 at 12:20pm
by Psybertron
Incidentally, being 50 next birthday was not the reason that I followed this link. I too have only recently begun reading Gibbon. No, the reason I followed it was for this Mark Bernstein post next door, on US news priorities. [via Oliver Wrede] Made me smile.
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Google Drops One
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November 4, 2005 at 12:10pm
by Psybertron
Interesting. Posted several times and exchanged comments with Georganna, that Google is truly amazing in indexing seemingly insignificant little blogs like ours, totally in minutes flat, 24, 7, like amazing, however you look at it. Matt Mower seems to have dropped off their radar. I wonder how that happens. Is there a blacklist Conspiracy theorists [...]
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An American’s View
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November 4, 2005 at 11:57am
by Psybertron
I posted “dont you just love ‘em” (Americans) earlier this week. Here is the opposite view from an American travelling in the UK or rather, exactly the same view from the other side. [From Virginia Postrel via Mark Lerner.]
