Links Update

I’ve captured several more important links, originally embedded in the blog, now in the sidebar. Sasha’s is completely new to me and quite inspiring. These are rich links, though not necessarily all frequently updated blogs.

(Still need to sort out old archives and link to new pages, so much search engine traffic is hitting the archives from the old weblog pages, and those people will not find any link to the new.)

Ten Little Niggers – Another Radio 4 Gem – A spokesman for the UK Campaign for Racial Equality was being interviewed yesterday about an experienced, competent, respected nursing manager who had resigned under pressure after jokingly making a “ten little niggers” remark about late arrivals at a committee meeting. Counter intuitively, the CRE spokesman (with an “ethnic” accent) was insisting that the resignation was inappropriate and was “political correctness gone barmy” and also that “we all needed to re-learn the place of humour” in communication. Refreshing stuff. Many a true word.

The Wunderkind has no Clothes

The Wunderkind has no Clothes. (Via Jorn again). Quote from Heinz Pagels in a Wired review by Steven Levy of Stephen Wolfram’s meisterwerk “A New Kind of Science“.
“Most scientists will find it difficult to believe that there’s a better way to do science.” OTT, unscientific, but intriguing thesis based on complexity underlying all phenomena, and the simple quantum effects and algorithms underlying all knowledge and computation. Hits so many of my threads that this looks like a must read. My conclusion is in here somewhere already – “scientific method” – objective inductive rational logic – is effectively useless for any real life processes beyond simple controlled experiments – life is just too complicated (or in Wolfram’s words – just complex enough.) “Anything can be done on three or four lines of code !” Too radical to ignore. (Interesting angle on humour too.)

Litigious Society

BBC Radio 4 Today this morning, interviewing a head teacher and a local authority administrator about boring “safe” school playgrounds with no chance of injury – hit all key points. Individually all three in the studio arrived at same “some level of risk is a good thing” conclusion and noticed they’d agreed, but all said such a decision would not get made by any committee with coroporate responsibility for kids at school – “fear” of litigation, rather than litigation is the rationale, but this is identical to thread (2) Rationalisation based on cultural pressure in “organised” decision making. John Humphries, bless him, even suggested sueing a local authority for providing playground facilities for a child NOT getting exposure to risk, and therefore not learning / preparing for life adequately. Spot on. (Also tied in with the general issue of “people” in general not comfortable with the idea of “acceptable risk” – in fact it illustrates precisely the opposite, specifically that thoughtful individuals are comfortable – it’s organised decision making that’s not.)