Category: Uncategorized

A week late blogging this but some things are worth capturing even if late.

Sylvia and I went to Nashville last weekend – 4th July, Independence day on the Friday. We booked into a cheap motel 8 miles, a cab ride, out of town off I40, so as not to have to worry about drink and/or driving or driving back in the small hours to Huntsville.

So Friday evening we got a cab into the east side of Nashville, just in time to watch the fireworks from the grassed area alongside LP Stadium, across the water from Riverside Park, “behind” but very close to the main display, with the Nashville skyline as a backdrop. Excellent spectacle in four main parts – almost too much going on at once to take it all in at times – from the ground and from the air. Find those starbursts that put out the shaped coloured patterns – cubes, smileys, U’s, S’s & A’s quite surreal amongst the chaotic blitz of light, colour and noise. Breath-taking, and visceral.

We walked with the dispersing thousands through East Nashville to “The 5 Spot” – the reason we’d come to Nashville this particular evening – to see “Wess Floyd and the Daisycutters” – for the third time in my case, the first in Sylvia’s. Blogged before that I’d liked them on first encounter, but didn’t blog about the second time, which turned out to be a wash-out with only 3 of the band and precious few more punters at the gig. What that did mean was that I’d spent half an hour talking to Wess, Andy and Nathan at the bar, and bought a couple of their CD’s, before they agreed with the management to call the whole thing off, after having attempting a partial first set. Sad, but different.

To be fair with three bands on at The 5 Spot gig, complete with hangers-on, it wasn’t a big crowd this night in Nashville either. But with a cover to get in everyone was there to experience the performances – quality beats quantity. With The Daisycutters, of course you can’t get enough guitars, 4 plus the bass is their line-up.

They were as good as I’d remembered, even better with enough fans there to participate physically and enough who knew their songs to sing along, quite unlike the first encounter. And Sylvia loved them too. They were very friendly before and after and engaging during their set, all too brief since they were second on the bill. Amongst the fans was Heath Haynes, who also got up to Jam on their closing number.

The opening act had been excellent too. “Johnny Nobody” from Buffalo, NY. Simple well executed 3 piece with strong rhythms bags of energy and a little attitude, just enough not to alienate an audience. Sylvia and I both liked them, like the Vines she suggested. Bought their CD “What it Feels Like Broke” – we’ve been playing it to death in the car and in the home too.

Headlining were “Harrison Hudson”, another original three piece. More stylised image, a little too clever material for their ability to pull it off – three-pieces have to be really good or really simple to work, in my experience, not much margin for error. Not quite to our taste anyway.

So, why full circle ? Well the reason we came across the Daisycutters in the first place was through the their gigging with the Victrolas, and their connection to the Nashville-based Tommy Womack. With Heath Haynes having been in the Daisycutters’ crowd, we went across to Lower Broadway after the gig and finished the night in The Full Moon with Josh Hedley (Heath Hayne’s fiddle player) performing with The Travis Mann Band. Anyway after such a good Friday night we decided to stay up for the Saturday too – to see Heath Haynes at Layla’s. So glad we did. All of the Daisycutters in the crowd, and another great set from HH – all covers, as always on Lower Broad, but what a range of blues from country to rock – Roy Orbison to The Ramones. You just have to get up and dance.  Last time we went to see HH at Layla’s, with Robbie, HH was absent and Josh was fronting. No Rich Gilbert or Aaron Oliva this time either, but the coolest bassist we’ve seen in a while standing in for Aaron. Visceral quality.

Just read Saul Bellow’s “Dangling Man” his first book, written in 1944 – he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976. Picked-up on Bellow for the Chicago Uni connections, but otherwise no strong connection to my agenda in Dangling Man – references and allusions to Goethe and Dostoevsky abound.

Joeseph, is the man dangling in limbo after having signed-up for Army service, awaiting his call to duty, with freedom to think, write, do anything in fact limited by his domestic situation and resources, and the indeterminate window of time. After much reflection on life, freedom is cancelled by notice of his call-up.

This is my last civillian day. Iva has packed my things. It is plain that she would like me to show a little more giref at leaving. For her sake, I would like to. And I am sorry to leave her, but I am not at all sorry to part with the rest of it. I am no longer to be held accountable for myself; I am grateful for that. I am in other hands, relieved of self-determination, freedom cancelled.

Hurray for regular hours ! And for supervision of the spirit ! Long live regimentation !

Saul Bellow, “Dangling Man” (1944)

I also have Bellow’s 1982 “The Dean’s December” and I guess I should also read his 1964 “Herzog”.

Still need to finish Chris Wilson’s “Healing the Unhappy Caveman” – blogged my incomplete review earlier with a long comment thread with the author. A job for this weekend, but first I need to review another important read. Next post.

Interested in this news story from our position here in Huntsville, AL. The NASA Space Shuttle timetable formally announced now up to the final mission on 31st May 2010.

Follow the links to the NASA Constellation / Ares / Orion project which will provide subsequent manned NASA missions.

The Huntsville connection ? Wernher-vonBraun / Operation-Paperclip / Redstone-Arsenal / Marshall-Space-Flight-Centre / Apollo / Saturn I & V and now the J2X engine to power Ares V.

Interesting on the MSFC home page; the biographical sketch of Ernst Stuhlinger, vonBraun’s No.2, who died recently 25th May 2008 aged 94. This lively old boy made an impression on Sylvia when she met him last year, amongst another things waxing philosophical about the ironic sign o’the times changing for the better as he considered that … in the German army from 1940 to 1943, “I was marching toward the steppes of the Ukraine when an order reached me in early 1943 to come and join the Pennemuende (V1/V2 Rocket) group” … the doctor working to prolong his life in the 21st century … was Jewish. (Actually interesting to read the biographical notes and earlier quotes – major engineering projects really about working cooperatively with people, for the future of the planet.)

Interesting also to see also the SpaceX / Falcon / Dragon project may run privately-funded space-station missions in the meantime – hadn’t noticed that before.

We were discussing at an extended family meal week before last how the Godfather trilogy was quality drama – perhaps Godfather II being the weakest. Sylvia and I recalled and discussed it further for some reason over the weekend and noticed we had only a VHS recording of the trilogy, and no longer any video player – so we resolved to obtain a DVD set of the trilogy.

Night before last Godfather III was showing late, 2 hrs 45 mins ending about 01:20 on a commercial-free, free channel – so I watched it … out of sequence as it were. I guess it must have been some sort of director’s cut, becuase there were extended and additional scenes not quite how I recall them. It was and still is excellent.

That silent scream in the penultimate scene – haunting – more haunting than its immediate cause, the death of daughter Mary. Michael really had gone straight – as legit as a capitalist with a history can be anyway – in the whole Part III plot. Every cross with the dark side was his being dragged back in by those still involved with the family history, and his involvement based on balancing duties.

The touch points with real contemporary history add to the drama – God’s Banker and the election and death of Pope John Paul I and so on – like the Batista overthrow in Godfather II, but now I digress. The “weak” aspect of III is surely the loose-end tie-up of the final scene with Michael dying of old age,  visually mirroring his father “the” Godfather’s own death, except that Michael is alone, without heirs to continue his business – padded with nostalgic flashbacks. (Already inevitable without that unnecessary explicit final scene, but magnificent aside from that.)

[Post Note : We did get the trilogy set on DVD, and after III above, watched I, II & III again over three nights. In fact an annual trilogy re-watch has become a family tradition, usually between Christmas and New Year.

Would still say II is the weakest overall. III has some flaws but is excellent, and I remains the original that works standalone. The weakness of II is the complexity and scale – which makes for a grueling exercise in concentration as a single film, both prequel and sequel over a massive sweep of four generations – yet content essential to the reality of the trilogy plot, its historical and political complexity. Who can we trust?

As I say, the whole trilogy is a magnificent morality play, worth some study methinks. Intriguing also to see the characters and actors playing them that survive the 90 year history across all three films, and those that don’t. Apparently the bonus DVD has bio’s and timelines of both characters and players.]

I’ve blogged several times, and get 100’s of hits on the subject of removing road traffic signs increasing actual road safety – since I mentioned the Netherlands experiment of some years ago and a UK study of that experience.

[Background] Last year the German city of Bohmte scrapped its road traffic signs in a similar experiment, and I hear reported today that it has indeed proven a success. Not a single RTA since. [Google]

[Remember this is traffic flow instructions / preventions road-signs – do this, do that, no this, no that – we are talking about, not informative directions / locations etc ….]

A “chain-letter” post from Sam at Elizaphanian (he calls ’em memes – yuk!)

Q1. How would you define “atheism”?
Rev Sam – The denial of theism.
Psybertron – Theism cannot be denied, it’s a fact of life. Atheism is a label use by theists for those who don’t share the same theistic basis of belief. People labelled “atheists” don’t believe in lots of things, so would never specifically choose atheism as a label, but they do care what peoples’ bases of beliefs are so neither are they agnostic. [Ref Sam Harris earlier]. The basis of belief is the core aspect at issue. Non-theistic is my best choice if forced to choose a label.

Q2. Was your upbringing religious? If so, what tradition?
Rev Sam – Church of England.
Psybertron – Me too, but not very. My mother continues the family tradition, but it was never an “issue”. The family drew its own conclusions.

Q3. How would you describe “Intelligent Design”, using only one word?
Rev Sam – Atheistic.
Psybertron – Useless.
(ID & IDC have metaphorical value for both theists and non-theists, but are a total red-herring when it comes to the core issue of “the basis of belief”, and are a lost cause as far as any valuable debate is concerned since being hijacked by extremists and whacko’s on all sides.)

Q4. What scientific endeavor really excites you?
Rev Sam – Lots. I’m particularly interested in neuro-psychology at the moment.
Psybertron – Lots also. Not sure neuro-psychology is science entirely, but it is a very interesting non-metaphysical interface, where scientific rubber hits the road of philosophy of meaning. “Evolutionary Psychology” is of course Psybertron’s primary agenda – if it has to be reduced to a single label – so very important to me, along with its relationship to the bio-evolved neural systems. Most intriguing scientific domain remains theoretical physics – getting perilously close to metaphysics (after Max Born) – current research in “Quantum Information” takes my vote, with (understanding) “Anthropic Principles” a close second.

Q5. If you could change one thing about the “atheist community”, what would it be and why?
Rev Sam – Give them a better sense of intellectual history, especially Christian intellectual history.
Psybertron – Hear, hear ! History = evolution of ideas.
(Ditto the theist communities, naturally. Education, education, education.)

Q6. If your child came up to you and said “I’m joining the clergy”, what would be your first response?
Rev Sam – You can’t do it unless you’re called, and if you’re called you can’t do anything else.
Psybertron – That is probably true of many callings in life. As a “parent” I would still ask testing questions about “Why?” – in order to understand the “child’s” understanding of that calling – so as to be in a position to advise and encourage.

Q7. What’s your favorite theistic argument, and how do you usually refute it?
Rev Sam – I don’t have any favourite theistic arguments.
Psybertron – Favourite arguments ? Refutation ? What overrated concepts. Why would anyone favour refutation ? Much more constructive things to do in life – like extending understanding and finding something worth believing in and acting on.

Q8. What’s your most “controversial” (as far as general attitudes amongst other atheists goes) viewpoint?
Rev Sam –  er… bearing in mind where I’m coming at this from, probably that God=meaning.
Psybertron – So close. That is not in the least controversial to me as a non-theist.
[The label we give to the ineffable metaphysical core of everything] God = “significant information” [at the core of everything from sub-quantum physics to cosmology and everything in between, including genetics, biology, evolution, nuero-psychology, neuro-philosophy and evolutionary-psychology.]

Q9. Of the “Four Horsemen” (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris) who is your favourite, and why?
Rev Sam – I’ve never read Harris so can’t comment; Hitchens is a journalist with attitude but not much more; Dawkins is a gifted writer with a good understanding of biology but not much more; which leaves Dennett as the best of the bunch. He at least has some greater breadth.
Psybertron – Dennett easily – read most things he’s written – though Harris is coming up close on the rails; Still more of him to read, but he is much more subtle in his philosophy (epistemology) than the sensational headlines he generates. Hitchens I haven’t taken seriously – for the same reasons Sam suggests. Dawkins is the non-theists biggest handicap in life – he just doesn’t get it – and needs to be countered if we are to make progress.

Q10. If you could convince just one theistic person to abandon their beliefs, who would it be?
Rev Sam –  Oo. Lots to choose from, but it’d be a toss up between Osama bin Laden and Peter Akinola.
Psybertron – I really don’t think I’d want anyone to abandon their theistic beliefs. [Oh, how could I forget – Tony Blair gets my vote]. I would want theists (and atheists) to abandon misguided rationalisation of some of their actions and motivations, but concerning their theistic beliefs, I’d say never stop questioning and increasing your understanding of them – after Socrates – the unexamined life ain’t worth it. Abandon blind faith as a basis of belief. Put your faith in a process of meaning, you can even call it God if you like.

I made a reference to this book by Chris Wilson earlier and started a more thorough review … below.

Chris responded before I had published … so appended below is our initial exchange to my incomplete review. We can use the comments below to continue the public dialogue.

Psybertron asked “What am I missing ?”

I mentioned briefly earlier that I had started to read Chris Wilson’s “Healing The Unhappy Caveman”. Chris (the Enlightened Caveman) is someone I’ve communicated and corresponded with before, so I know we have a lot of common ground, but we are approaching our agendas from opposite ends.

Chris here is writing a self-help book for people who need enlightening that human brains evolved long before our cerebral minds, and that reasonable thought requires mental effort if we are to avoid being slaves to our genetically programmed emotions. Assuming people need that advice, Chris’ main thesis is that such effort is worth it, and the reward is a more reasonable outlook on achievable happiness, than the conflict and frustration we might achieve if we allowed primitive animal competition alone to drive our lives. Can’t argue with that.

Writing for the layman in a brief book Chris describes much mental and behavioural evolution involving collaborative economic models, as well as critical rationalism. Presented simply, no doubt this might appeal to his target audience. As a reviewer, the problem for me is continually having to discount my own starting position – namely that most decision-makers in the current world are too rationally sure of their own rationality – I’m approaching the problem from the hyper-rational end, not the absence-of-reason end.

Socrates had long since told us that the unexamined life is not worth living, but there are plenty of clues that Chris is on the right agenda. The idea that rationality requires evidence, the need to understand what is evidential, and that actively “embracing” life is crucial to gathering such evidence. That reasoning requires “discernment” of what actually matters, and the fact that there is a kind of economics at work in deciding when the effort is worth it and when to take a holiday. Chris uses an “ages of man” device in the life story of a maturing individual called Hank to illustrate his points. Lots of good stuff simply presented.

But now, an admission – I’ve only read half the book; the whole of the first half, plus the final chapter “Bringing It All Together”. I found quite a few sentences to baulk at in his deliberately simple presentation of human mental evolution, but I was stopped in my tracks by this “[In criminal trials] prosecutors present concrete evidence, defense lawyers present  extenuating circumstances, and voila, sympathy takes over in the minds of jurors, rendering them helpless to see the truth.”

Surely we have more respect for the average juror than that ?
In my agenda truth is far more than “concrete” evidence.

So I skipped to the summary chapter to see where we were headed with this.
And my disagreerment seems to remain … we have some problem around the concepts of Happiness / Reasonable / Good. As a simple self-help starter the book succeeds … but are some of the messages so simplified as to ultimately wrong or am I missing something ?

The Enlightened Caveman responded

Hey – finally some legitimate criticism!!  Whoopee!  Here goes…

To your most pressing issue, I can only say that I am using the emotionally-swayed juror as an example – one that we’re all familiar with, if only anecdotally – of a situation in which someone pressed the right stimulus button and the amygdala and its ancient processes blocked the cognitive mind out of the decision-making loop almost entirely.  It certainly wasn’t meant to be a generalization of all jurors.  It also wasn’t meant to imply that no emotion should ever come into play in a court room, so if others also take those ideas away from it, I’ll mark that as a MISS in the effective communication category.

In general, I think your sense that you may be somewhat distinct from the target audience may be correct.  The vast majority of examples of how evolutionarily evolved emotions might manifest themselves – both in hunter/gatherer groups and in modern groups – are deliberately simplistic, almost cartoonish, if you will.  My only real alternative there was to go down the usual path of science writers, which would have meant describing a bunch of experiments and results and then tying them to modern characteristics and behavior.  I actually sort of tried that at first.  It made the narrative seriously tedious and took the focus off the bigger point – that our specific emotions evolved to solve social problems and those emotions often render our more modern cognition mute.  So I opted for over-simplification in the hopes that readers might seek out the references to gain more detail.  (The references are the next level down in detail – the pop-science writers, who themselves cite actual papers and actual researchers.)

To your concern about having to discount your hyper-rational position, I’m not sure why you have to.  I share the exact same belief, but mine is based upon the notion that most of us go through life thinking we know who we are and why think and feel the way we do – thus, that we are rational agents for our own ends.  The central argument of my book is that our evolutionary baggage says different. More, a big source of the frustration and unhappiness that many feel is directly attributed to that misunderstanding.  This means we really do need to understand more about where our minds came from and how they react to our modern world in order to be the rational beings we think we are, which ultimately leads to happiness or at least a reduction in unhappiness.

I guess I need a specific example or two of how my descriptions of evolution challenge your views of human economic interaction.  The core of my discussion has to do with hominids who worked together in groups succeeding while others who did not dying out.  The effects of kin selection, reciprocal altruism, and status-seeking on that are pretty well established – at least in the evolutionary psychology field.  So are you disturbed by the assertions or simply my communication of them? 

And then…if we have disagreements about happiness/reasonable/good, upon what grounds?  I’m building on the likes of Bertrand Russel, Immanuel Kant, and Karl Popper, so did I get something wrong, or do you disagree with them?

Not to make this more work than its worth for you, but more info will help me better clarify my work.  I remain convinced that the content in the book is valuable to the layman (or anyone, for that matter).  I am not, however, even remotely sure of whether I’ve succeeded in getting the content across effectively.  By the state of your review – and reading – it’s probably fair to say I haven’t, at least in your case.  That’s ok – everyone tells me the first book is the hardest to write and is often the worst;-)  The second is already brewing…

I do want you to know that I greatly appreciate your willingness to share even this with me.  You’re the first to come back with anything I could actually respond to.

Psybertron continued with this suggestion

Simplest first response Chris …. If you don’t feel my starting point is too negative … is it OK is we do this debate in public – it might add more value. I post my “initial review” on the blog and I paste in your initial response – and we use the comments to develop it …. ?
 
As you describe it our central view is still remarkably similar – my perspective / drivers are a little different, and I am making more distinction between bio/genetic evolution and mental/memetic evolution than you seem to want to …
 
I can see your readings of Russell, Kant and Popper all too clearly … I’m saying those guys arguments fail – good in parts, clearly, but not good enough.

Russell remained emprisoned in logic (Wittgenstein showed him the way out of the fly-bottle, but Russell never got it – oh how we laughed.)

Kant also remained too sure of goodness and happiness (morals) being logically tractable – very Germanic 😉 (Godel shows us that is an impossible dream.)

Popper got it in fact, but most readings ignore his better / important (ethics) stuff (Nick Maxwell picked-up where Popper left off – a philosopher of science who was a student of Poppers)
 
More coherent stuff later. This is worthwhile for me too.

And the Enlightened Caveman agreed to continue in public

Sure – I’d welcome a public discussion.  I’m intrigued to learn how the failings of the three philosophers relate to my arguments.

So what next ? I guess the ball is in my court having questioned the value of the philosophers that Chris cites. Continued in the comment thread below …

Tickled by this.

One of my agenda items is that so much low quality memetic confusion reigns because communication (with copying & referencing) at the speed of light propagates what is said / symbolized infinitely faster that what is truly meant valuable. But this form of mediation is maybe a bit extreme ?

I’m only a recent convert to Kurt Vonnegut having not read him until after his death last year, when I picked-up and enjoyed “Cat’s Cradle“.

I’ve Just finished reading “Slaugherhouse Five”, his biographical account of lives, inlcuding his own, that intersected in the Dresden bombings. Wonderful writing – pointing out that more civilians were deliberately killed in Dresden than Hiroshima or Nagasaki put together – but taking in time-travel, sci-fi, Christianity, Dostoevsky and a great deal of humour along the way.

Struck by this Tralfamadorian quote about Darwin ” – who taught that those who die are meant to die, that corpses are improvements.” Yes but, no but, … poignant whether it comes with odd or even levels of irony.

Mentioned before what a great venue Huntsville’s Crossroads was even when it’s only 20/30% full, thanks to the multi-space layout, but on Friday we saw what it looks like when even fewer turn up. The bands struggled to generate any atmosphere with the sparse audience on a rainy night in Huntsville.

Nashville band The Victrolas headlined on the night – the reason I went, since Tommy Womack has some co-production interest with them, and as you know I’m a fan of Tommy’s work. As advertised they were “country rock”, and I have to say they didn’t really do it for me. Competent with presence, but not enough original spark, and the limp atmosphere surely didn’t help.

Despite that atmosphere, Wess Floyd and the Daisycutters also from Nashville, were a different kettle of fish. Four guitars, including the eponymous frontman, different anyway. Full on, manic stage presence at all times, some catchy tunes and choruses, and variety in the guitar styles with one doubling up on the tinyiest but effective keyboard I’ve ever seen used for a stage performance. With the front three bouncing off each other, I have to say the back line, the excellent bassist in particular, really held it together; I guess that’s the plus of being a six piece. A band I’d definitely travel to see.

Talking of back lines, I don’t think I mentioned Katie Herron ? Surely the tinyiest waif of a drummer you could imagine, but so strong standing in with Electric Voodoo in Humphrey’s earlier in the week. Her regular band is Trial By Jury. Must look out for an opportunity to see them. By coincidence Katie was in Klatschie’s, when Rob Aldridge (another one for the future) got up to jam the other night too – mentioned him before too I think.