TED2010 programme includes Jamie Oliver (!) alongside Michael Schermer, Sam Harris, Michael Sandel, Benoit Mandelbrot, James Lovelock, Sheryl Crowe, Kevin Kelly, David Byrne, Dennis Dutton and Bill Gates. The boy done good.
Jamie Oliver in TED Company
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December 30, 2009 at 7:52am
by Psybertron
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Trust at the Top
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December 20, 2009 at 6:08am
by Psybertron
I keep banging on about this picture, so I thought I should share and explain it. Semantic Web Levels (Figure 7 from W3C Kick Off in 2001) No amount of proof, logic or science (not even computer science) can bundle trust within its communications. Trust comes from care, from humans, not systems.
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Computer Says No
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December 20, 2009 at 5:41am
by Psybertron
Another excellent Clive James piece in the BBC Magazine. I keep returning to HAL in 2001 as the archetype and so it seems does Clive. It’s not as if we haven’t seen the man-machine interface problems long enough to recognize them – Turing’s enigma – but we still idolise “efficiency” over “care”. Spot on Clive. [...]
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UK Chart Archives
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December 10, 2009 at 10:10am
by Psybertron
Wonderful – Singles and Albums right back to 1950′s. Thanks to Horse over on FaceBook.
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FaceBook Networked Networks
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December 3, 2009 at 1:54am
by Psybertron
I see FaceBook is going the way of GoogleWave – recognizing that each post / thread has a life that is not fixed by membership of any one network. We are networked networks with access & publishing rights changes at each interconnecting node. Wonder what those new controls will look like ? Really must play [...]
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Technophilia
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December 2, 2009 at 8:38am
by Psybertron
Kevin Kelly talking on “The Technium” as he calls it – the “cosmic force” of technology running right through evolution. I probably wouldn’t use his language, but I do agree – the anthropic angle of the self-organizing drive is just that, our perspective, as “the species that domesticated itself” in order to exploit that (otherwise [...]
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The Four Horsemen
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December 2, 2009 at 4:21am
by Psybertron
Or “Ditchkins” as Eagleton would have them. Came across this (Part 2 of 10) because of the quote about … “separating the numinous from the supernatural” … on this Wikipedia page. I was in fact trying to track down the Greek / Latin split in the etyomology of Numen / Noumena – both clearly about [...]
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Best of the Noughties
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December 2, 2009 at 2:39am
by Psybertron
Endless lists as we approach 2010 – best books, films, of the decade etc. Liked this collection of TV Ads from The Guardian. I’d forgetten about the frog in the Sony Bravia (Colour Balls) ad. Some classics in there. Cadbury’s Gorrilla / Drummer … it’s a spoiler after you’ve seen it once to know he’s [...]
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Modern Mass Media
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December 1, 2009 at 10:21am
by Psybertron
I have an ongoing problem with “too transparent” media publication of anything and everything, just because it is ever easier to do so, and “everybody’s doing it”. Came across this 2006 Bruce Charlton paper – The Paradox of Modern Mass Media. “The paradox of modern mass media is that divisive content is probably intrinsic to maximizing [...]
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Ze Ayala
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December 1, 2009 at 10:07am
by Psybertron
This is just an excuse to post a link to an old post on Evolutionary Intelligence by evolutionary biologist Ze Ayala in which he says … Scientific knowledge, like the description of size, materials, and geometry of Guernica, is satisfying and useful. But once science has had its say, there remains much about reality that [...]
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Medical Hypotheses
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December 1, 2009 at 8:29am
by Psybertron
Medical Hypotheses is a journal edited by Bruce Charlton but with a parallel blog of Bruce’s own papers for the last 2 years. The blog title can be misleading, since although Bruce comes from / operates in the medical / psychiatry / psychology area, and the journal itself covers this ground, his own blogging and editorial scope [...]
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Valuing the Free
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November 30, 2009 at 10:19am
by Psybertron
Excellent post from Kevin Kelly. Lessons of why a fee-based – but free at point of use – model works in valuing the intangibles, and “products” that are perceived as “staples”. Flat or monthly fixed pricing is one way of pricing “as if free.” ….. Subscriptions tend to emphasize and charge for intangible values: regularity, [...]
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White-Collar Politics
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November 28, 2009 at 6:39am
by Psybertron
Interesting series recently on white-collar crime from Laurie Taylor on “Thinking Allowed”. This week’s program was on social software communications in the post-Obama party-political election environment, and it was interesting that Laurie joined up the two subjects, in the intent and honesty of communication in these channels. Bingo. The inventors of the internet didn’t overlook [...]
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32% Beer ?
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November 27, 2009 at 6:27am
by Psybertron
Excellent marketing for “Tactical Nuclear Penguin“, and at £30 a pop, clearly not a contribution to binge-drinking – 20x the price for 5x to 10x the alcohol – so that’s a complete red-herring. Their previous brew “Tokyo” at 18% was apparently genuinely brewed to that level using Champagne yeast, but how do you create 32% alcohol [...]
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Intelligent & Well-Rounded
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November 27, 2009 at 5:06am
by Psybertron
A professional athlete that is. Jessica Ennis interviewed.
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Over My Dead Body
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November 27, 2009 at 4:48am
by Psybertron
Now that is bravery, in living memory of this kind of thing.
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National Geographic Photos
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November 26, 2009 at 7:25am
by Psybertron
Excellent competition collection. Not all equally good – the Jordan image has an impossible depth of field, yet the background is insufficiently blurred – simply distracting – unlike say the image of the child on the highway? Love the shadow of Lombok on the intervening cloud as well as on the landscape behind.
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Sounds Good
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November 26, 2009 at 2:09am
by Psybertron
“What are all these expense claims from the night club ?” “I say. I say, what … ” “Sorry I’m still a bit deaf. They’re all part of our research project, professor.” This actually doesn’t sound like good research … too many other left / right dominance possibilities here, besides the hearing, surely … but this is [...]
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Recent Reading
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November 25, 2009 at 3:28pm
by Psybertron
Recently read Khaled Hosseni, both “The Kite Runner” and “A Thousand Splendid Suns”. Both powerful stories of recent Afghan history, across three family generations, across the Russian occupation and the Taliban (and refuge / emigration in Pakistan and USA). The former already well known as a film (which I’ve not seen). The latter even more [...]
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Screening of On The Road
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November 25, 2009 at 10:55am
by Psybertron
Ant McWatt has a screening of “On The Road with Robert Pirsig” tomorrow at the second day of the Wirral Film Festival on Merseyside, UK. Good luck Ant.
Climate Change Denial ?
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November 24, 2009 at 1:54am
by Psybertron
Talking of healthy debate, the AGW debate is a debate – a debate about what to do for the best hopefully, rather than a debate about whether it’s “science” and whether it’s “proven” – I refer to my previous post – what a waste. George Monbiot has been blogging on the recent backlash, so I’m [...]
