Out Damned Spam !

Upgraded to WordPress 2.0.5 yesterday and installed Akismet comment-spam-killer today. And it all seems to be working. Long overdue, I was running at 70 odd per day, and it was getting very tiresome to filter by hand before allowing comments through.

One observation on the arrangement, I use WordPress s/w from WordPress.ORG hosted at Dreamhost.COM, but Akismet requires registration with services from WordPress.COM ? Anyway, as I say it seems to be working.

Tennis, Elbow, Foot #3

Following links in no particular order …

I noted Pirsig location links in Chicago at the weekend (Navy Pier etc.) and also noticed the Adler connection – the Adler Planetarium specifically, and wondered at the Robert Maynard Hutchins / Mortimer (Jerome) Adler “great books” and classical philosophy connection behind Pirsig’s nemesis at that Chicago University location, “chairman” Richard McKeon. Anyway, no direct connection between Mortimer and Max (Adler) other than a common name, common amongst Jewish immigrant fathers of their generation.

Anyway given that that was a dead end …. the interesting point was another cross-link to J S Mill – very influential on Adler (Mortimer) – and ahead of his time I suggested recently.

Is EvoPsych Bullshit ?

Couldn’t resist a cross-link to Intellectual Whores. Plenty of irony and humour in the site, but I daren’t stick my neck out and suggest this piece is a spoof. Serious or spoof it highlights the excluded middle.

Evolutionary psychology may explain how all real life (above and beyond theoretical physics and repeatable laboratory experiments) actually works and how it came to be that way, but that does not suggest how any individual or class of human(s) can “exonerate” itself from responsibilities. Understanding how and why those responsibilities evolved can indeed re-inforce why they are important and what makes some more important than others.

This is the usual explanation vs causality confusion IMHO.

This just in … a quote from Steven Pinker “An evolutionary understanding of the human condition, far from being incompatible with a moral sense, can explain why we have one.” … Even if it cannot reliably predict causal outcomes – but who can ? [Quote from John Brockman’s “Intelligent Thought” reviewed in Nature and publicised via his “Edge” site.]