What, Why & How do we Know ?
Excellent piece by Clive James on Belle de Jour. (Nov 15, 2009 is the relevant post.)
[A man of the world like CJ claims never to have even met a sex worker? He should get out more. BTW re-read Clive’s piece a couple of times … it really is excellent material.]
Hey, if Blackburn’s Givet transferred to Liverpool, the latter would have the partnership of Givet Ngog.
(HT to Sylvia)
Latest Edge has an interesting piece on “36 Arguments for the Existence of God” .. interesting because it is clearly about debunking those arguments, but seems to recognize the ills of the extreme scientific fundamentalist front of “the new atheists”. Naturally, I like the idea that Harris and Dennett are acknowledged ahead of the current baying crowd … also named.
Published in January. Seems like the kind of writing I would do (if I could) not least for the “Joining Dots” motif – already in my header links. More to the point, it’s a fiction – and the extract published at the Edge link above reads OK – but the 36 key arguments are listed and systematically structured in a separate appendix, so that the fictional text, can simply refer to them – by number (!). An alternative trick to putting the chautauqua’s of convoluted arguments into the characters’ or narrator’s mouths directly.
I wonder if the readability can be sustained ? And, I wonder if the net message is indeed more subtle than the fundamentalists ? One to order.
Interesting piece on the success or otherwise of Second Life. Not least because of the comment thread; read a few.
I wasn’t going to comment on this – but Thierry Henry ? – Robbo’s right.
Weird game for Henry all round – the Irish really were the better side all night – but unfairly booked for diving (it wasn’t a penalty either) and he’d handled twice earlier in the game too.
All UK Nurses to be graduate entry only ! WTF ?
Public project structures are important, like cathedrals used to be – and I like this idea – the funding architecture as well as the physical architecture.
I might be considered a bit of a luddite when it comes to automated sensors and navigational aids on private cars – I can never see the point of taking the human out of the loop – don’t believe the dumbing down can be net positive.
But this road-train idea I like. Totally guided – hands-off / brain-off freedom as in a train when linked to the lead vehicle, but private motoring when it’s the motoring flexibility and freedom you want. Can see the efficiency working if the cars themselves are hybrids – with performance when you want it.
Guess there must be a few failure modes to work out before this can go live ?
OK, so for all sorts of prejudiced social reasons, I don’t like Chelsea, but despite my view of the two significant refereeing decisions, I do believe they deserved to beat Man U yesterday, who despite Rooney’s hard work just didn’t have the strike power. And I don’t have any time for Sir Alex’s rantings about fouls awarded or not – the cases in point were debatable, matters of the referee’s perspective.
Booking Drogba ? 100% right. OK so he was fouled and he didn’t feign injury, and yes Fletch deserved a card more than once yesterday, but Drogba feigned imminent death in full view of referee and the rest of the world. A bookable offence. Referee correct.
Terry’s goal ? 100% wrong. Drogba was clearly interfering with play right in front of the keeper – in full view of the referee’s assistant. Van der Saar didn’t even dive till Drogba had failed to kick it, he was covering Drogba’s strike. 100% offside, no goal. Referee’s assistant wrong, referee correct.
The referee did nothing wrong.
[Note : Psybertron is primarily about right and wrong in action. Chelsea FC are just an interesting source of contentious decisions – a high-profile case-study of individual, social and authority based ethics. But, yes, I do care about football too.]
A page discussing Pirsig at Reddit which I picked up from the del.ici.ous tag on Pirsig which grows all the time – must use del.ici.ous more myself.