Category: Facebook

Wound or Heal ?

Interesting to contrast yesterday’s UK parliamentary knock-about between Milliband and Campbell with Obama’s call for healing in the rhetorical wars between US partizan politicians and commentators.

Blaming opponents for “all that ails the world” was unhelpful, he said.

Cameron and Milliband were downright personal in trading insults of each other and their colleagues – despite the thin veil of humour. Ridicule is not funny. OK in moderation, but not the basis of free and democratic progress. Politicians should focus on governance, not auditioning as court-jesters for Have I Got News For You.

[Post Note :

I was thinking how to contrast Palin’s response to Obama’s and found this on Sam’s Elizaphanian blog.

What Palin has in common with Wittgenstein ?

Excellent. Rob Minto’s tutor was Hacker no less. Really taken with Bennett and Hacker’s “Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience” on a second reading last year, and now reading Bennett, Hacker, Dennett and Searle’s “Neoroscience and Philosophy”. Hacker meets my personal hero Dennett. Small world.]

Who Gets to Keep Secrets ?

Special edition of The Edge. Question from Danny Hillis with responses from the great and the good at The Edge.

“Perhaps better would be that we might need separation of ideas/memes/cultures long enough to test them — and then recombine the parts we like best.” George Church

Reinforces the issue of the speed of communication …. no gap between too soon to know and too late to do anything about it, again. And this memetic view is directly analogous to genetic evolution. It can’t be all tooth and claw, there needs to be separation from threats and competition, and nurturing too.