Interesting effect of raising fees / make costs visible to “the customer” is greater concern for the quality of the goods. Tricky of course with education to value the intangible “goods” in advance.
Entries from September 2011
Flight to Quality
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September 30, 2011 at 1:59am
by Psybertron
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Autistically Bad
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September 28, 2011 at 3:55am
by Psybertron
A sequence of two items on this morning’s BBC R4 Today programme had me shaking my head. A study on autism as a grey continuum of characteristics, followed by a debate on the definition of good & bad businesses in terms of yesterday’s Milliband speech. I ask you, who is autistic – the BBC subjecting [...]
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Old News – Muscle Shoals
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September 23, 2011 at 10:56am
by Psybertron
Stumbled across news from 8 to 24 months ago, thanks to a hit on this page. Tickled to come across Noel Webster refurbishing the famous Muscle Shoals Sound Studios (3614 Jackson Highway) back when we were living nearby in Alabama. He was in the process of protecting the heritage of the name and the studios [...]
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Songs of Love & Loss
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September 21, 2011 at 7:04am
by Psybertron
Great to see Roy Harper on Jools Holland’s Tuesday preview of his Friday “Later” show last night – seems odd to have a 30 minute preview of what is only a one hour show anyway – wonder if this is going to become the norm. Roy Harper finally returns to the BBC in his 70th [...]
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Intuition is Anthropocentric
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September 21, 2011 at 4:59am
by Psybertron
Some important threads on giving serious consideration to anthropocentric views of physics, rather than simply being dismissive of  ”fine tuning” arguments and the like. [Previous posts, Goldilocks, Island links ... etc.] Saw these quotes in the preface to Thomas Metzinger’s “The Ego Tunnel – The Science of Mind and the Myth of the Self” “Any [...]
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BP Macondo Report Final Update
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September 21, 2011 at 4:22am
by Psybertron
I kept close watch on the earlier reports, so here adding the link to the final report from 16th September 2011. Herewith [almost] the entire summary: The Events At approximately 9:50 p.m. on the evening of April 20, 2010, while the crew of the Deepwater Horizon rig was finishing work after drilling the Macondo exploratory [...]
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2010 Surely?
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September 16, 2011 at 4:53am
by Psybertron
Surely the creation of a double star in the solar system is the climax of Arthur C Clark’s 2010, long before Star Wars.
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Woolly Dolphins
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September 15, 2011 at 8:28am
by Psybertron
Captured this BBC news story link because it says: Formal delineation of dolphin species is notoriously tricky. Whenever people complain about the poor parallels between genes and memes, this is something I often point out, that despite appearances, even species (of anything) are not nearly as well defined as our more obvious daily experience suggests. [...]
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Heroic Evil
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September 14, 2011 at 3:39am
by Psybertron
Men cause evil by wanting to heroically triumph over it. Ernest Becker, 1975 Simple statement of the problem(*). Taken from Roger Griffin’s 2007 “Modernism and Fascism“. Reading this slowly, because it is intellectually / technically wordy, but also because several other recent reads referred to it (including McGilchrist IIRC, though I’d bought it before I’d [...]
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It Was Ten Years Ago
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September 13, 2011 at 4:40am
by Psybertron
Thanks to Marsha on MD for reminding me that I started this blog exactly 10 years ago, two days after 9/11 – not quite coincidentally – see the footnote to every page. There’s something solid forming in the air, And the wall of death is lowered in Times Square. No-one seems to care, They carry [...]
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Uncle Tungsten
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September 1, 2011 at 4:52am
by Psybertron
This sad news story reminded me I had recently read Oliver Sacks childhood memoir Uncle Tungsten – Memories of a Chemical Boyhood Reminded me of myself, even the Nitrogen Iodide trick, though I never went so far as to get a fume-cupboard installed in the home. This book underlies everything else Dr Sacks has written, [...]
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Single Brains
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September 1, 2011 at 2:56am
by Psybertron
A couple of links via David Gurteen. An interesting take from Robert Paterson on the usual science / evolution / religion debate generalising about Americans, which took me to his post on the (lack of) Wisdom of Crowds. I am noting an emerging new dogma … : “The best ideas emerge on their own from [...]
