Category: Uncategorized

Classical-Rational Decision Making. Got an interesting search hit on the site which threw up these items.

Impact of the evidence-based health care “movement” on health service strategic planning, 1995-1998. by Dr Jane Farmer Department of Management Studies, University of Aberdeen. Note the scare quotes in the title, not quite daring to accept evidence-based-management approach. Good sign.

Anonymous presentation on Decision Support Systems. Ultimately obvious motherhood stuff, but an intersting “triangulation” view of taking two perspectives (contexts) for viewing a single item of information along the way.

Organisational Memetics – Paper by I. Price. Very reminiscent of my own dissertation in much of it’s content, though moving the decision making model on into evolutionary paradigm, which I never did at that time. Also has an extensive bibliography.

That “Wardrobe Malfunction” Moment. Tee Hee.

Been worrying about this since Northrop’s references to Aryan, and the 20th century “PC” difficulty of attributing the language to an Aryan “race”.

[PIE 2012/3 Update.] [PIE 2018 Update h/t Alice Roberts]

Since Sir William “Indiana” Jones proposed a common Aryan or Indo-European language in 1786, with linguistic similarities having been noted by European travellers as early as the 1500’s, the idea of a common “proto-indo-european” language (PIE) seems well established amongst linguists and historians. What is less clear is any agreement on the precise tree or hiearchy of which languages evolved from which, nor even whether repeat and reverse migrations and cultural influences, may have involved a more complex web rather than a simple tree.

Hindus may claim Sanskrit (refined, pollished, perfect – language of the gods) as the root. Europeans may claim Aryan (ie Iranian), Armenians may claim Aryan-Armenian, but most would agree a common PIE. What is clear is that there was a fluid Indo-European exchange of populations and culture, with common linguistic threads, that pre-dates greek, latin, and all the later romance and germanic european languages. Obviously the reason agreement is difficult is because much of this evolution pre-dates written history, and it seems (?) that the oldest written texts were the Sanskrit “Vedic” texts.

I guess the term Indo-European just avoids complicating the issue, where all that is inferred is their shared origins, in cases where precise historical sequence before the written texts is not relevant to the subject. Using Aryan (like using Sanskrit) confuses the issue with a paricular claim of aboriginality with a particular people at a particular time. Seems the proto-language and its migration east and west is generally accepted as arising 4000 BC in Anatolia / Armenia / Upper Tigris-Euphrates-Mesopotamia terrirory. Sanskrit’s claim to originality can only go back as far as 1500 BC and only as far as 100 to 200 BC in written form.

Sources: [SanskritOrigins] [ArmenianHighland] [Encyclopedia.com] [1911Brittanica]

Murdoch’s News. Check out the Fox News story about BBC and the Hutton report [via bloggerhead]. Check out the pejorative language and 100% anti-BBC tone, emphatic repetition of “lied”. Balanced reporting – I think not – scary.

Anyway, so it really is Murdoch behind all this.

To Oppose Thumbs is Human. But to communicate is creative. Rory Blyth [neopoleon.com] via Leon.

Knowledge is Human. Well no prizes for that, but in fact this IBM research paper by Dueck, relates Human “views” of knowledge with their personality types a la Myers-Briggs. The conclusion is easy too – KM is about managing humans – but this paper leaves some nagging doubts that the “rational” way to manage knowledge the way you like it is to select humans with the knowledge view you like – the yes men. Myers-Briggs is really about seeking a balance of mixed types in any organisation. To do otherwise is to presume some absolute knowledge outside humans.

Myers-Briggs ? Briggs-Myers ? I’m guessing daughter Isabel of mother Elizabeth Myers after taking married name Briggs and then working with mother (and husband Peter ?) as “Myers & Briggs” adopted the moniker Briggs-Myers, so working idependantly she carries the “trade-mark” with her. Only guessing. Must check biogs.

Unversal Church of the Interactive Network. John Ireland, blogger and supplier of “bloggerheads” services to several British MP’s has this whacky sideline – can’t see any catches, and definitely no references to gods, false or otherwise. Magic stuff, couldn’t resist linking when I saw that Saint Douglas of the Whooshing Deadline was regarded as the top saint in this church.

[Quote] The average bible has 2000 pages. The web has over 2 billion. We win.[Unquote]

Think I was already a 100% member in spirit. Possibly my first act may be to campaign to sanctify Saint Robert of Zen, though possibly he may be excluded on the grounds of being alive and well unlike St Douglas and St Alan of the Enigma.

I dropped the inklings line of research a couple of months ago when I noted the JRR Tolkien / CS Lewis / GK Chesterton angle leading off down a strongly theistic / catholic path, despite the interesting connection with Owen Barfield, and the Cambridge connections of Lewis / Barfield and (non-inkling) McLuhan.

In response to a question in the Pickerell last night I checked this out. No doubt Tolkien would have visited CS Lewis in the latter’s time at Cambridge (Magdelene), and conceivably visited the Pickerell haunt of Lewis, but the Tolkien Society’s biography includes not a single mention of Cambridge at all. Oxford all the way.