Sorry folks. The site has started running very slowly – 4 seconds to load? Something to do with memory cacheing and the database size (growing over 12 years). I have a dedicated VPS with 800Meg allocated RAM running this baby, though it barely ever reaches 0.5 CPU capacity. Guess I need to optimise the cacheing somewhere?
Entries from January 2013
Site Slow
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January 31, 2013 at 12:08pm
by Psybertron
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Hope, where the person comes first.
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January 31, 2013 at 11:57am
by Psybertron
Where there’s ALF & Hope (Akpan) there’s a way. Fair bit of rhetoric (standard memes) about skills, spirit, youth, experience & character too, but it’s telling that Brian says “We sign the person first.” And I think he means it, judging by the other relationships in the club. Some mad results for Reading FC recently. [...]
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None of the above @BHAHumanists
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January 31, 2013 at 11:22am
by Psybertron
BHA have an “Are you a humanist” quiz doing the rounds at the moment. I scored 80% incidentally but I had to be playfully creative with the actual responses to get through it since there were too many questions (including the first one) where my answer was none-of-the-above. I’ve been a humanist since before the [...]
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Songs That Changed The World
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January 31, 2013 at 9:44am
by Psybertron
Worth keeping a link to this collection. Interesting. I agree with several of them; I’d probably add Big Yellow Taxi.
Rhetoric is the Message @georgegalloway
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January 31, 2013 at 9:19am
by Psybertron
I’m a big fan of George, not least because a party called Respect names the right virtue for a complicated life, and politics is as complicated as it gets. And, being a small independent, you can be fairly sure George is genuinely true to his expressed principles. Trust and respect – a great combination. Much [...]
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Skilled Cheese Wits
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January 28, 2013 at 2:38pm
by Psybertron
One for the “creative writing” pile. (Hat tip to Hugh McLeod)
Aaaggghhh!!! – Brian Cox
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January 28, 2013 at 1:58pm
by Psybertron
I am to Brian Cox as Stephen Hawking is to Schrödinger’s cat: “When I hear of Schrödinger’s cat, I reach for my gun” The worst possible face of popular science imaginable. (Closely followed by – I am to popular news items about the Higg’s Boson as Hawking is …. but that’s last years “news”.)
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A Sense of Responsibility
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January 28, 2013 at 1:47pm
by Psybertron
Amazingly candid and positive comments from Dave Kitson, talking about the pain of relegation with Reading FC: “You are responsible for people losing their jobs and you are coming into training in your nice car and you see people carrying boxes of their possessions out. You just think, ‘I did that, that’s my fault’. It has [...]
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Motivation 3.0 – The Pink Way
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January 28, 2013 at 12:24pm
by Psybertron
Dan Pink’s “Drive” caught on as a best seller in the last couple of years in promoting the concept of “Motivation 3.0″. Of course, the terminology catches the fashion of the internet generation, and good luck if the brief readable book, with its “Toolkit” of ideas does lead to more management catching on in more [...]
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Morality Play #ballboy @charliem0rgan
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January 24, 2013 at 2:03pm
by Psybertron
OK, so since I tend to use the sins of Chelski as moral parables, I should restore the balance with this one. Chelski’s Hazard did NOT kick the Swansea ball boy. He tried to get the ball from him and eventually kicked it out from under him. He shouldn’t have done that, he should no [...]
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Creation (of) Myth
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January 24, 2013 at 9:34am
by Psybertron
Interesting “In Our Time” this morning. Subject is Romulus and Remus, but already majoring on the recurring myths aspect. Interesting in itself. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01q02t7 Most interesting the argument about the original “creation” of the myth. I agree with those arguing against Peter Wiseman; there is no actual point when a particular story is created or first told. Evolution [...]
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Scientology in London @BHAHumanists
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January 22, 2013 at 10:51am
by Psybertron
Just to capture this image of the London Undeground Ad: Obvious irony in the idea of joining a “church” in order to think for yourself. Reminds me of Pirsig‘s problem with the “church of reason”. [Post Note : Corruption story in HuffPo.] [And another : Article in Free Thinker.]
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Eating Herring
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January 22, 2013 at 8:51am
by Psybertron
How long before Herring are the next “eat only occasionally” protected species ? I eat a lot of Herring; pickled, a habit picked-up in Norway, and kippers, a habit rekindled by returning to home not far from Whitby. Mackerel have certainly dwindled in both size and abundance in my own experience. Back in the 60′s [...]
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Being European
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January 22, 2013 at 8:29am
by Psybertron
Good to remember why the EU came about, when politicians of all colours use the rhetoric “yes, but always with UK national interest paramount”. I beg to differ – human interest paramount, with UK and Europe as useful constituencies to organize ourselves towards that end, and with the planet and the cosmos as wider constituencies [...]
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Bliss
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January 21, 2013 at 3:01pm
by Psybertron
An underused word (like the word “grace”). Nice piece from Hugh McLeod at Gaping Void (hat tip to tweet from Dave Gurteen). Message to the next generation to notice the difference between a life’s work and a career in a day job. In this case, based on the advertising business, but good for bringing in [...]
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Culture
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January 4, 2013 at 11:58am
by Psybertron
Last episode of Melvyn Bragg’s “The Value of Culture” today. Hooray for Tiffany Jenkins – no matter how wide you include all human activity in your culture / Culture definitions and how those activities are distributed “tribally” in your definition, we must not dodge the question of quality – there is a hierarchy of value [...]
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Communication
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January 4, 2013 at 11:18am
by Psybertron
Interesting these days, that a £250m airport gets precedent over a £10m internet cable connection? Mind you, if they’re getting £20m per year anyway, surely they could use their own discretion to prioritise £10m over a year or two ? [Post Note : Just an observation; quite a few programmes on railways these days - [...]
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@BHAHumanists #Spiritualbutnotreligious
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January 3, 2013 at 2:25pm
by Psybertron
“Spiritual but not religious” is a meme of a joke these days, because (as this BBC Magazine piece shows) the term spiritual can cover a multitude of new-agey sins. Interestingly the list of “spiritual” books includes Pirsig’s 5m-selling ZMM, but none of the books are actually mentioned in the piece. Instead we get interview quotes [...]
