Category: Uncategorized

Updated my gallery with some photos taken at yesterday’s “Trail of Tears” motorcycle rally, (some 10,000 bikes, up to 200 per minute for almost an hour) which follows part of the route from Ross Landing (in Chattanooga, TN) to Waterloo (beyond Florence, AL), taken in 1838 by Cherokee Indians en route to being deported the other side of the Mississippi. It comemorates a particularly sad piece of history because for some three generations or more they had been living in relative harmony amongst the European settlers, trapping and trading, and even taking on homestead life-styles, before civil wars amongst those indian tribes rejecting the expansion of white-men into their lands, led to congress taking action.

The route to the Mississippi used the Tennessee River, except for the section through what is now Huntsville, beyond the shallows at Muscle Shoals, round which they were marched during time of drought, many to their deaths.

Reading the Lenny Susskind / Lee Smolin anthropic principle debate at The Edge, I noticed Susskind opens with this no-win disclaimer …

The problem is that the easiest ideas to explain, which sound convincing to a general audience, are not always the best ideas.

Nice article linked by Johnnie Moore. A New Yorker article by James Surowiecki, via Rob May (Business Pundit) whose subscription newsletter I really must read more closely and often.

You can see my comment on Johhnie’s post, but this is another cause vs explanation confusion, where attributing cause looks like reason, but is really just culturally evolved short-hand for more contextual, complex (emergent) reality

Not really evaluated what HedWeb has to offer, but looks interesting.
Link via a set of cross-hits.

One down one to go ? Actually a fascinating planning whiteboard from Google, which probably says more about the “playful” working style at Google than any specific plans. [via Robot Wisdom]

Ben Goldacre, over at the Grauniad-based “Bad Science Blog” does a good job exposing pseudo-scientific tosh.

Anyone who cites Deleuze and Guattari as their main references and uses “fascist” as an adjective to describe ” evidence-based [science]” is on a hiding to nothing, though to be fair Dr David Holmes et al (Ottawa and Toronto) opens with “We can already hear the objections …”

Ben rises to that “challenge”. All I hear (in the comments supporting Ben’s put down) is closed minds with blind-faith in “evidence-based” objectivity – hyper-rationalists. If you’re looking for something more down-to-earth and less “PoMo” against a narrow scientific view of “medicine” try Dr James Willis. Fortunately, those practitioners with good bedside manners, recognise that there is far more to medicine than “science”. (Ironically “House” is playing on the TV in the background.)

Nice one from Tim Kreider (16th August) who has been on hiatus since early July. 

Planethood; Nationhood; whatever next ? The historical taxonomic angle appeals to me.

Great to see growing recognition for Matt Bellamy’s band.

[Official][Fans Microcuts][BBC Band Bio][Scotsman Interview]
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The example of the “myxobacter” species of bacteria was used in a presentation I saw a couple of years ago at David Gurteen’s 3rd Knowledge Management Conference, at which David Snowden’s management of complexity was a main theme. [Blogged earlier]. I couldn’t be sure who’s presentation it was and I was unable to track down the original slides, so I did a bit of web research myself. Someone over on MoQ-Discuss wanted a real life example of “emergence” …. this is what I posted a few days ago …

Is it a bacterium, is it a worm, is it a mushroom ?

In an earlier thread when I was trying to explain emergence, I made a passing reference to a particular bacterial lifecycle that produces some very strange emergent effects from many “atomic” individuals, that look very much a higher form of purposeful life. Those bacteria are a group called Myxobacter, and there are several different species that all exhibit variations on this lifecycle.

(1) As bacteria, their normal single-celled life is to sit around in their nutrient medium and multiply individually (vegetatively) by cell division. Drop a few specimens on an agar Petri-dish, and they grow into a spreading slimy mass on the surface. Situation normal.

(2) When they hit limits to nutrients (ie they “sense” starvation) “they” do some funny things collectively.

(3) They start to “collaborate” – they start to “move” in blobs en-mass – sometimes the motion is wavelike – like a flat caterpillar – sometimes sliding like a slimy worm or slug – as if looking to find more nutrients.

(4) If they continue to starve, they (collectively) try a different strategy. They stop travelling and form fruiting bodies and lift them up on stalks – like a mushroom made of zillions of collaborating individuals – they individually start to specialize in their roles in the collective whole. When ready, the fruiting bodies burst and release spore-like individuals into the environment.

(5) Some lucky individuals land somewhere moist and nutritious, and the cycle starts over again from (1)

The question that seems to raise itself is … Clearly the single celled-bacteria are already alive in our biological sense, but as individuals have have no complex structures like brains, nervous systems, or even primitive limbs for locomoton, such as we might find in higher order living things.

Is that purposeful quest for nutrition, and the strategies for moving and dispersing to find it, inherent in each individual, or is it emergent from the complex arrangement and interaction of the collection ?

As one commenter pointed out that behaviour is very close to that of the developing human zygote, rather than that of single-celled individuals.

Times are a’changin’, but there is a generalised perception of Americans as somehow ignorant of of global ecological issues, and politically / geographically insular where their direct energy resource interests are not involved. Generally speaking I’m more interested in the perception than the presumption that it might in fact be true or worse still, some “evil conspiracy”.

I’ve seen a fair bit of the globe in my time, spoiled and unspoiled, and having been resident in the US for 4 months now, we’ve travelled a fair bit of this country too. A thought keeps striking me, as we explore rural backwaters, that might give some sense as to why its citizens could easily be blind-sided (media aside) to the world as one interdependent socio-eco-system.

The place is big, with plenty of space (kinda obvious, but not actually all that big considering the distances that can be travelled easily on freeways in a day … don’t talk to me about air-travel). The point is that space, however big it is, is teeming with (a) life, and (b) diversity, and what’s more despite the manicured beautification of sub-urban living, and disneyfication of park attractions, there seems little “respect” for spoiling it. Even the most remote (but road accessible trail-head) trails host discarded food and drink containers at regular intervals.

The quantity and variety of the natural world here constantly amazes me, grasses, flowers, trees, spiders, butterflies, insects and invertebrates of all sizes, birds, snakes, and countless other reptiles and amphibians, before we even get to the larger mammals, and how could I forget the fish. Man’s presence is evident, but any negative impact on the eco-system is hard to imagine. You could easily imagine the garden of eden lives on.