Category: Uncategorized

How not to get behind in the 21st century. Interesting summary from Leonid Ototsky of Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (via Danny’s Blog) of technical directions in e-style information integration. Not surprisingly Leonid makes reference to his adopting the EPISTLE information model, as well as numerous references to his recently deceased inspiration – Stafford Beer. More interesting in this context are his references to Norbert Wiener?s ?Cybernetics and Society” and to Principia Cybernetica (See sidebar).

Interestingly too, is the machine translation of Leonid’s “IT Strategy for a New Century” paper, hosted by the SUO (Standard Upper Ontology) project. This group organised uder IEEE, is already linked on my resources page, where I had previously seen them as thrashing around from first principles somewhat – worth a second look.

What a tangled web we weave. [Must communicate with Leonid / SUO.]

10 Reasons the Internet is a “Happy Accident”. By Dan Gillmor out of SiliconValley via Cape Science WebLog.
[Must add Cape Science to the permanent links in the side-bar. – Already done !]

Struggled with the penultimate chapter of Foucault – He name drops every philosopher since 18C that I’ve heard of (except Wittgenstein), but I don’t get what this chapter is about – the concept of Man. Fortunately the final chapter on Human Sciences is much clearer – the balance between science and anthropology / behaviour / subjectivity. I keep finding evocations of Pirsig / Lila.

Everything Is Obsolete Except Ideas. (Forbes via Ron Lusk) [Quote] Standing in line can’t be improved upon is because it is all idea. There is literally no material to improve. [Unquote]
Also Technology Past Its Prime

The Quotations Page (via Adam Curry)
Quote
You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
Unquote, Plato

From NYT via Adam Curry. The 10 most elegant experimental demonstrations as voted by physicists. Chronologically …

Eratosthenes’ measurement of the Earth’s circumference. (7th)
Galileo’s objects falling with constant gravitational acceleration. (2nd)
Galileo’s balls rolling down inclined planes also under gravity. (8th)
Newton’s decomposition of sunlight with a prism. (4th)
Cavendish’s weighing the Earth / measuring gravitational constant. (6th)
Young’s interference experiment showing light as waves. (5th)
Foucault’s pendulum demonstrating Earths rotation. (10th)
Millikan’s oil-drop measurement of electron charge. (3rd)
Rutherford’s discovery of the nucleus by alpha bombardment. (9th)
Jönsson‘s diffraction of electrons behaving as waves. (1st)

Actually, this is just an excuse to post a mention of Jean-Bernard Léon Foucault as distinct from Michel Foucault in response to people constantly asking me “Is that Foucault as in Foucault’s Pendulum ?” Well now we know.

That and the fact that Claus Jönsson remains an obscure individual despite executing what is considered to be the most elegant experimental scientific proof ever, predicted with some certainty by so many more famous theoretical physicists than himself, Einstein included.

A message in that ? Stick to the theory perhaps.

Lies and Statistics. (From National Post via The Bottom of the Barrell). Frightening stats about rising “murder” rates being disguised by rising assault victim recovery rates in casualty / emergency rooms / paramedic services etc.

Bumped into Michael in the Pick – my first night there in weeks, probably his last in months, and when I mentioned I’d been to the Athabasca Tar Sands in Alberta the week before last, he revealed that his father had developed and exploited a radio / radar based probe for surveying tar sand deposits in Alberta in the 70’s.

Michael also revealed that he’d experienced the Kobe earthquake, been physically knocked about personally and seen quite harrowing scenes of destruction, human as well as property, as fires burned for days whilst he was effectively trapped. Unsurprisingly then, the 4.8 Richter scale earthquake we’d experienced in the UK on Sunday night held more than passing interest for him. In fact Michael had been awoken / disturbed by the quake in the night and, recalling the fear and horror of the previous event, had suffered a traumatic Monday.

Michael also indicated distaste for the Foucault I was reading, and the French Post-Modernists in general. I know what he means about the de-constructionist analytical froth, with little attempt to re-construct anything substantial, but I have to say I think he’s wrong about Foucault. In fact one of the main threads of my thesis is that apparently tangible facts of life are constructed from much less tangible interactions on many levels.

It was Michael who first drew my attention to Jung / Synchronicity / I Ching, the evening we met, when I was reading Melville’s Moby Dick, moments after he’d been recommending to one of his students, standing on the pavement outside the Pick, that he really should read something other than Jane Austen, like Melville for instance ! On another occasion, finding me reading Pirsig (Lila, as opposed to ZAMM), the person he was with that night had been teaching Pirsig to students at Berkley. On the face of it Michael and I now have no evident plans to be in the same place at the same time in future, but synchronicity (or some less mystical quantum non-locality) will no doubt prevail in our decision making once again. Good luck with the move Michael, including re-housing the second largest personal library in Cambridge (after Pepys apparently) – housed in Magdelen, just across the road from ….. the Pick, where else ?