Psybertron Asks

Or if you prefer; the “Three Body Language”. Something that has cropped-up several times in recent quite separate correspondences are analogies to the Newtonian “Three-Body-Problem” and I realised these linked to some earlier things I’d blogged about. The three-body-problem is insoluble analytically – take three or more bodies (physical objects) apply Newtons laws of motion [...]

Made references to the thoughful words of Dr Rowan Williams before, and this is no exception. A link provided by Sam. Only scanned it so far, and capturing the link for now - but some interesting stuff I’m going to have to come back to. As usual, I find myself agreeing with both sides, Bono and Rowan [...]

Research shows …. etc …. people think better when they’re not working under a low office ceiling, so as Chris Chatham at Developing Intelligence says … work under the sky. (You should see the office I work in ….)

Often referred to Charle’s Handy’s “boiled frog” metaphor – tell me I don’t have to explain it – and referred to it as hard-boiled already at the time I did my MBA dissertation in 1991. Well Matt at WordPress picked-up this link that “debunks” it. So what ? I say - metaphors don’t have to be true, just [...]

I&I saw The Wailers in Huntsville last night, at Crossroads – which is a great venue by the way, once it has drawn a big enough crowd to at least 1/3 fill its large yet intimate layout, which The Wailers more than did. Aston “Family Man” Barrett is the sole survivor of the original Pete [...]

I’ve been a WordPress blogger for almost three years, after orginally being satisfied with (Google owned) Blogger for almost five years. It was a tough decision to switch from the successful simplicity of Blogger to the sophistication of WordPress. My overt reason was that Blogger were not supporting “categories” anytime soon, and look as though they still [...]

Listened to the Blackmore / McGrath debate on Belief in God as a Dangerous Delusion. (Mentioned earlier.) Some observations. He talks about things being “unprovable” and of course that’s true of so many things, not just matters of religious faith, something science is very poor at recognising in its arguments in the space beyond repeatable experiments [...]

News story today about an eruption of Nevado de Huila 240km SW of Bogota, causing concerns in Colombia. And this is why. Lahars – rivers of broken rock and meltwater, like concrete flowing at 10′s of m/s (!) - were still up to 5 m deep 100km away (!) from the 1985 eruption of Nevado del Ruiz – sweeping 23,000 [...]

I’ll say. This news story is about male hormone levels in financial market traders, but it is just one symptom of the problematic win/lose meme. The gender angle is real too, a balanced feminine-side significant, but it would be overly simplistic to see this in terms of men vs women … though the physiological / hormone [...]

Wonderful quote from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”, uttered by Razumikhin in a drunken but intense rant in defense of his friend Raskolnikov, who may be going mad – talking nonsense – with the guilty complications of living with the double murder he has committed. “Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind posesses over the [...]

Reciprocal linkage. Single post so far on this “All in the Name of Science” blog by Kas, but some interesting linkage already. (She also has another more general blog) Not quite ready to add to side-bar yet …

Checking out Sue’s web site, I see this contribution passed me by. Article on Comment is Free (UK Guardian) Podcast of debate with Alister McGrath, author of ‘The Dawkins Delusion’. (Bristol Uni & RichardDawkins.net) I have to say the text of the piece posted before the debate seems to have it pretty well right, so I’m going [...]

I see Sue Blackmore coined the idea of a third level of replicator above genes and memes, termed (so far) “temes” in her recent presentation to TED2008. Not entirely convinced yet that this form of technology enabled memes are fundamentally different to memes. As she says herself, in discussing whether “artificial-meme” might be a better [...]

Social Justice Blog. One of several blogs at IdentityTheory.Com. Here’s a sample. “AIDS has now been around for a quarter of a century, and the U.N. is holding a three-day conference on the virus. A group of 14 nations, led by France, is going to implement an airline tax to help pay for AIDS drugs. [...]

Two observations … The last 2 or 3 months …. been getting repeated bursts of direct hits from “Limelight Networks” in Tempe, AZ. No idea why – are they testing out some content crawler at Uni of Az ? Last couple of years …. I get constant search hits from people all over the world [...]

A 3 year old post from Dave Pollard, that I spotted on a cross-hit, probably due to the fact that he self-referenced in a more recent post. Entitled “The End of Philosophy” and inlcuding a reading list with a lot of common ground here. The particular post concerns a review of a book called “Straw [...]

There’s something about the image in this news story of the Mars Orbiter encountering Phobos – “Stunning” – the caption says it. The “real” thing, in all its simplicity – not one of those ubiquitous computer simulated graphics. You just get the sense that it is exactly what it is – a lump of rock [...]

Couldn’t help smiling and thinking of the “Loggin’s Spoof” on MoQ when I saw this news story.  It’s mainly about the physical exercise aspects of the activity, rather than the involvement in the task itself, but who nows ? Many a true word.

Noticed this “news” story about MoND – “Modified Newtonian Dynamics” the same week as “In Our Time” had Newtons Laws of Motion as its subject matter – no idea if there is any connection – I’ve not listened to the edition yet, but I’ve noticed several different plugs for it on different philosophical discussion fora. [Post [...]

Tickled me that this “Wisdom Research Network” initiative, associated with the Wisdom Research programme at Chicago University, is now in 2008 called the “Arete Initiative”. Chicago >> Arete >> Pirsig >> Quality >> Values >> Maxwell >> Wisdom >> Rayner >> Inclusionality >> Fluid >> Dynamic Quality … … is it just my mind that works this [...]