Category: Uncategorized

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.

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.

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.]

Wilson’s Consilience – OK by me ?
Gisrip – starting at Sandy Hook / Navesink Highlands ?
US pop culture locations and the “Hersham Boys” ?
Atlas shrugged apparently – tell me again Platt, why am I reading Ayn Rand ?

I’ve barely blogged or posted anywhere in the last few months, almost none in the last month. Just too busy with the day job, and in a temporary state domestically. We move into a longer term place next weekend.

I have however found some disjointed time to do some reading.

I think the last things I blogged about were;
Arundhati Roy’s “The God of Small Things”, and
Daniel Wegner’s “The Illusion of Conscious Will”

I also found time to finish both;
Robert Magliola’s “Derrida on the Mend”, and
Jay Garfield’s translation and commentary on Nagarjuna’s “Mulamadhyamakakarika – The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way”.
The former refers to the latter at length. Both excellent recommendations from Paul Turner. I made endless mental and marginal notes, but I think I’ve blogged or posted only incidental passing references anywhere so far. I really must collate some more thoughts on these. Magliola’s language, like the Derrida he is reading, is very tough in places, as are the subtley not-quite-repetitive aphorisms from Nagarjuna translated and interpreted by Garfield. That said there are some excellent gems that draw together the totally “aontic” buddhist view of reality and causation as emergence or “dependent arising”, with some worthwhile nuggets from the totally deconstructive “there is nothing beyond the text” of Derrida’s “On Grammatology”.

Waiting for my library to arrive from the UK, and finding it difficult order on-line until we get the longer term address sorted, we wandered into Barnes & Noble on University Drive, Huntsville, and found it amazingly well stocked. So I’ve also been reading …

Henry Frakfurt’s “On Bullshit” – an ironic and very brief treatise on truth and lies. Essentially it’s about rhetorical tricks and the focus is on intent rather than truth values of statements made. Making a false statement knowingly or making a false statement in ignorance being distinct and quite separate from anything said to achieve a higher moral outcome.

Christopher Maurer’s translation and introduction to Baltasar Gracian’s (1647) “Oraculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia” (Pocket Oracle – The Art of Worldy Wisdom”). A series of 300 one paragraph aphorisms on rhetorical and behavioural tricks for getting along in the world successfully. Know your friends but know your enemies better – kind of stuff. Trips up between the cynical Machiavellian (1513) exploitation for personal gain, and the pragmatic game-theoretic scheming towards higher common ends. Highly recommended by both Nietzsche and Shopenhauer.

Meanwhile I received a book re-directed from an order I placed in the UK some months ago …
Michael Talbot’s “The Holographic Universe”. I preferred Talbot to Capra in terms of their earlier (1970’s) independant works linking Taoism / Mysticism to the New Physics, but in this 1991 book Talbot takes the holochoric metaphor into an explicit – the world really is a hologram – territory of Karl Pribram and David Bohm. At some level, maybe I buy the “interconnectedness” – the whole world in a grain of sand concept – but a large proportion of the book uses this premise to explain all things paranormal. Psychokinesis, telepathy, and all varieties of shamanic magic, all backed this up with masses of personal and other documented evidence and anecdotes. Hmmm. I struggled to keep going beyond 2/3 way through with credibility fading fast. I guess the masses of references must have been known to the likes of Sue Blackmore, who actively pursued the paranormal before concluding she could find no repeatable evidence. Another scientist with a similarly open mind, Brian Josephson gets mentioned by Talbot. Must ask Sue and Brian what they make of Talbot.

Anyway, continuing … I read :
Earnest Hemmingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea’ by way of brief intoduction. As advertised, it’s a very simply worded, but powerfully descriptive story of man and boy but mainly man and nature as noble beast. Even more reminiscent of Melville than Pirsig. I’ll definitely try some more Hemmingway. B&N have plenty of the beautifully presented Scribner Classics hardback editions.

At last I picked-up and started to read :
Edward O. Wilson’s “Consilience”. What a great intelligent read, both content and almost laconic style. So far I’ve read his potted histories of relevant modern thought, leading to his main subject – consilience – the convergence of all “valid” sciences and ologies towards common fundamental threads (The term coined originally by William Whewell in 1840). He proceeds from the Ionian Enchantment, through the Enlightenment and Modernism and all things post-modern including Derrida and Foucault as well as brain physiology, dreams and mind-altering drug (ayahuasca from the Banisteriopsis vine) amongst Ucayali region Indians, and so on. So far he is staunchly defending the mercilessley objective, analytic, reductionist intent of scientific method, whilst extolling the synthetic art of scientific hypothesis and theory – put me in mind of David Deutsch. I’m not sure I agree with him more than 80% yet, and despite defending science in principle, he explicitly says “science is not a belief system”. I think we’re just playing with words – it’s system that doesn’t tell you “what” to believe, just “how” to believe contingently – a meta-belief-system perhaps, but you have to buy it, believe in it, to make any progress all the same. Anyway he draws from across spectra of opposing extremes in my kinda synthetic way, so I’m hooked. Looking forward to continuing with this one. No danger for the excluded middle here.

Finally, at last, lying beside the bed I have waiting a copy of
Niccolo Machiavelli’s (1513) “The Prince”. See above.

Just lost an hour’s worth of blog post, thanks to not saving as draft, and hitting the wrong “links” button that took me away from the blog-writing page. I thought WordPress have autosave now – obviously not – Grrr.

And whilst on the subject of features … I need some better spam filtering. The blog comment spam is running at 80 a day. Just to verify which are or are not spam is a major exercise. Most of the stuff is obviously spam from content words and multi-links – the main risk is missing valid comments. Time to review available features. The “mark as spam” feature doesn’t seem to learn anything useful. Never enough time for housekeeping, but I’ve barely had time for blogging or posting anywhere the past couple of months. I could do without this.

I came across this link before, but didn’t capture it [Oh yes I did, in the last collection of rivets’s links]. John Suler at Rider University (Lawrenceburg, Trenton, NJ).

Some interesting stories, more than koans. Zen philosophy meets narrative method. Worth following the links to John’s other psychoanalysis, and eastern philosophy of mind pages.

Just a thought that occurred to me in a number of e-mail discussions.

We all probably notice the value of humour (irony or otherwise) in communications, and we’ve probably all seen the pitfalls of misplaced / misunderstood humour in electronic communications, even with emoticons.

I can’t see any equivalent of negative irony. No concept of a statement that literally means less than it literally says. Deeper meaning that means a net reduction in literal meaning.

Misunderstanding is easier to spread than enhanced understanding. Memes must tend to reverse quality of knowledge unless they are able to spread important forms of tacit and hidden meaning as well as literal content. Lowest common denominators of “media” in mediated communications.

A statement of the obvious I guess.

It’s fascinating what video clips you can find on-line, somehow much more interesting than the music download thing. Rivets keeps linking to eclectic, downright bizarre and genuinely interesting examples. A great collection of piano players here at White Man Stew.

And whilst we’re linking from Rivets …

Da Vinci turning in his grave ? One of Leonardo’s more far-sighted inventions, from the Nonist.

Will Get Fooled Again, and again, and again … ? Charles Pierce of the Boston Globe, writing in The American Prospect

De Bono’s new Religion of Humour ?

Zen Stories – Long before there was television, movies, radio, and even books, storytelling was as important to prehistoric cave-dwellers eating antelope around a fire as it is to corporate executives doing lunch. Apart from “caveman” phrasing spookily close to my essay on the effect of technology on society – this is Douglas Adams – interactive story-telling, not just the power of narrative, which TV can do well too.

And Rivets Hmmmm link on 4th June. Funny, but you didn’t get the link from me, OK 😉 Not to mention the Essence of Rabbit, and many, many more … Rivets is more fun than an evening in front of the telly.

More RFID Tags paranoia at Live Science [via Rivets]. Nutters says Rivets, but turn the idea on its head and ….

…. being RFID tagged seems a great idea to me – you could assume someone without an RFID tag might be an illegal alien, rather than wasting time stopping and checking normal people going about their business. Technology is what you make of it.