Brain Connections

Spooky experience today …  I was immersed in my new UK rail (north-east), “free” wi-fi, new HP laptop, new iPhone, blogging, facebook, work-email, learning experience, from Darlington en-route to Kings Cross, Heathrow, Terminal 3, SAS to Stavanger business travel, when the seat beside me was occupied at York by someone reading Sacks “Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat“.

I had to say to her – you don’t often see people reading that, one of my favourite books. Anyway, she had almost finished it, and – blow me – two minutes later she starts reading Jill Bolte-Taylor’s “Stroke of Inspiration“.

Oh, by the way, did I mention ? I’m back to being UK-based, and …. self-employed.

[If you do nothing else, follow that link to Jill Bolte-Taylor’s TED presentation … literally inspiring.]

[PS – SAS from LHR Terminal 3 ? – Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently reference gets me every time. A meme of limited circulation]

The Buddha in the Machine

Noticed a few weeks ago that Matthew Crawford’s “Shop Class as Soul Craft” had been published in the UK under the title “The Case for Working with your Hands“.

Noticed yesterday he was on Andrew Marr’s “Start the Week” on BBC Radio 4 with Martin Rees … billed as the philosopher Matthew Crawford. The listen again link (31st May 2010) is live, and looks like it stays up for a while, even if there is no podcast archive. So much motorcycle maintenance without a single mention of Pirsig’s Zen and the Art … who is duly acknowledged in the book itself. (Wendell Berry is mentioned by Marr.)

Interestingly, The Buddha was the subject of the immediate following program “A History of the World“.