Psybertron Asks

After finishing and blogging posts about Hilary Lawson’s “Closure” and Jared Diamond’s “Collapse”, I realized I’d read a few other books recently that I hadn’t mentioned yet.

After reading and enjoying the Booker-of-Bookers, Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children” a few years ago, I also tried but struggled with his “Haroun and the Sea of Stories”.  Recently I read “The Enchantress of Florence” and “The Satanic Verses”, both excellent, literally fabulous – the times blurb on the latter says it.

“A novel of metamorphosis, hauntings, memories, hallucinations, revelations, advertising jingles and jokes. Rushdie has the power of description, and we succumb.”

Well I did, and it sure is no accident that it is “blasphemous” when it comes to the revealed word of God. I have a hard-back of Rushdies’s “The Ground Beneath Her Feet” lined-up for holiday reading starting in a week’s time. Can’t wait – one of my earliest blog posts was a quote from that – and I can’t recall why, something to do with being “in the frame” – a la Pirsig ? [Back in 2003]

Also recently read William James “Essays in Radical Empiricism” – very dry, and important parts of which I have read in other collections already, but essential to the subject.

And also just finished the wonderful David Lindley “Uncertainty – Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr and the Struggle for the Soul of Science” – I’ll blog more on this soon.

And finally, as well as Rushdie I have two Terry Eagleton hard-back’s also awaiting holiday reading; “The Meaning of Life” (2007) and “Reason, Faith and Revolution – Reflections of the God Debate” (2009).

One biological, the other physical.

Several Arctic Jellyfish and a Single Nanotubule.

I’ve been evaluating the various social network media recently – to see where they can add “purposeful” value to the blogging & feed paradigm.

Ning is my current favourite – This kinda summarizes my view of the popular flavours. (via Kevin Kelly). Instant / immediate is good, but it isn’t the whole deal. BTW I like KK’s multi-blog and a single consolidated stream. I’m contemplating a categorized / filtered single blog (multi-category) feed into my “LinkedIn” page, whatever I decide to do with Ning.

A bug-bear of mine is football stadia that are too big for football. I’m thinking of “olympic” size stadia used in far-east, European and other world-cup tournaments (or god forbid Ozzie rules games) that have running tracks and semi-circular ends and the like, just too much space between the crowd and the game. Those that do fill up can create some kind of atmosphere, but not one that has anything to do with the game. One of the reasons why Old Trafford, Stamford Bridge and White-Hart Lane remain so good, despite their large seated capacities.

Now, terraces are a whole ‘nother story.

I have to say organizations participating in global conferences worked this out long ago. The best place to hold them is the place with cheap accomodation & catering, and plenty of travel connections – resort locations out of season typically. That said, the worst place on the planet has to be Las Vegas ?

Oddly, this one is very close to home too.

Noticed this somewhere earlier, but here from The Grauniad. (How many roads must a man walk down ? 42 surely.)

Fascinating 1881 map of Europe showing the distribution of Jews before pogroms and the Nazis. Wow.

The very interesting Ptak’s Science Books blog, via Ray Girvan at Segal Books.

Improbable Research – The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists.

Research that makes you LAUGH and then THINK

Hat tip to “Lingvisme“. Pinker and Chalmers in there.

Best (and worst) jokes from the Edinburgh fringe.

This Dilbert made me chuckle, earlier this week. Thanks to Dave Weinberger for reminding me of the taxonomic joke. Relevant to the day job – some classes / categories have more value than others. Miscellaneous / 99 / other categories and context specific groupings (classes of class) have value only in the context of their specific purpose.