Psybertron Asks

Of no great significance … but last weekend we had a Class of 72 reunion of Guisborough Grammar School, and next weekend “we are flying down to Rio” for a conference and a few days R&R. Yesterday that “Rio” meme led me to dig out and play Roxy Music’s Virginia Plain. Today I see Bryan Ferry interviewed about his latest album Olympia, which of course mentions that original hit and ends with a photo of Ferry performing Virginia Plain, in the summer of ’72.

[Post Note: piling on the coincidences … Steve Brooks someone I’ve not seen in almost 40 years until the reunion two weeks ago, mentioned above, turns up at a Hamsters gig in Normanby last night. Turns out he’s not only a long term Hamsterhead, he’s also the owner of a left-hand drive US sports car; an AC Cobra in his case. Great performance by  Sza Sza’s 17 year-old nephew Matt Billups on drums standing in for Rev Otis, whose heart-op looks like it was successful yesterday. Only caught half the set, due to flying in from my Oslo trip, but they were on form. Last time I saw them – other than the Mad, Bad & Dangerous gigs with Wilko – was at The Brook in Southampton, and they seemed stale and tired, so it was great to hear Slim on form.]

A couple of years old, this New Scientist article on how brain activity is on “the edge of chaos”, in a state of “self-organized-criticality”. Neatly joins up two adages, of life being just complicated enough and the sweet spot being at the edge of chaos.

Hat tip to Johnnie Moore for his link via this Transversalinflections blog, which picks up on the analogue (in the original article) to the firing of neurones being akin to the periodic avalanches on a progressively growing sand-pile. Designing to meta-stability being an art. A question of scalable efficiency in massively granular & connected systems …. maximum effect for the smallest input …. a whole world in a grain of sand. (The tennis player returning the unreturnably fast service, the mis-timed leg-breaker in football, the control systems of unstable aircraft, etc …)

Research on psychedelics as part of the neuroscience of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy is not new, but activity seems to be growing in this space again. Four blog links here from a couple of months ago, that bring a number of threads into one place.

Neurocritic, Neuroskeptic, Minds-Hacks,
and a potted summary from Neurophilosophy.
Plus the Shulgin (Erowid) PiKHaL and TiKHaL references.

Interesting reading whatever your perspective.

Excellent edition of Start The Week this morning guided by Andrew Marr, in stark contrast to John Humphrys’ incompetence interviewing his victims on the Today programme immediately before. Let’s hope we can forget Humphrys and talk about the balanced Religion vs Politics discussion between Stanley Hauerwas, Mary Warnock, Ray Tallis and John Gummer.

Note Start The Week is not podcast, so you’ll need to catch the repeat this evening.

Too much to summarize effectively beyond The Golden Rule / Stewardship / Human Nature being the fundamentals, but given the dangers of “dichotomising a continuum” and the apparent breadth of positions across these four, a very successful debate with much balance and agreement (and jokes from Hauerwas). Despite focussing initially on life and death (assisted termination – both start and end of life cases) it managed to get itself onto transcendent moral principles. Even Gummer, one in a long and intriguing line of Catholic converts, had the main point that the real problem was any one of them believing they had a monopoly on sense when it comes to the fundamentals. In fact the real debate is how to fit agreement on fundamentals into world governance without the slippery slope away from “the sanctity of life” and “the way of truth” being a part of it – checks and balances. (Theocracy clearly isn’t it, thank god. religion has no place in politics.)

“When Bush came to power I concluded he was sincere about his Christian faith. I also concluded it showed how little sincerity had to do with Christianity.” Hauerwas.

The only view missing from the debate was a PoPoMo like Zizek or Eagleton maybe. Agreement is quite straighforward when people stop demanding straighforward answers to simplistic questions – you listening Humphrys – in all these debates on fairness and priorities ? (Example – why is cybercrime significant ? System complexity that’s why. Ranking four political priorities in a list – Terorrism, Cybercrime, Natural Disaster and Foreign War – is a childish exercise if the list doesn’t recognize the holistic moral system they are all a part of.)

Now I think I understand what the Higgs particle is, and why it’s interesting. Lie groups will take a little more work. E8 has beautiful symmetry though.

Everyone takes pictures with phones these days, but these are pictures of people with phones. Particularly love the adjacent images 13 (Beatles) & 14 (Katharine Hepburn).

A Hard Day’s Night meets The Long Day’s Journey Into Night.

Hat tip to The Slate. Talking of which, I love the “scientific” treatment of this taboo subject, and this “commercial” treatment of used books.

Chaos from Schelmish. Hat tip to Marsha.