Religion & Science Don’t Mix Well

At small scales.

Sustainable Links ?

No, not blog-link-rot this time, but two great links from Sam on global sustainability issues.

Energy Myths and the Svalbard Seed Bank.

Pirsig Memorabilia

Being sold on e-Bay, Nancy Pirsig’s motorcycle jacket.

This leather jacket belongs to the ex-wife of author Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance), whose married name was Nancy Pirsig. She is selling it because she doesn’t need it, since she now lives in a warm climate and no longer rides a motorcycle.

It was purchased around the late sixties or early seventies, and worn on many motorcycle trips ” day or weekend trips in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

In the photo, taken in the Pirsigs’ St. Paul driveway in the early seventies, you can see Bob Pirsig in the background.

Proceeds from this sale will go into a college fund for Nancy and Bob’s grandson.

The e-Bay seller on Nancy’s behalf is Ted Pirsig, son of Bob & Nancy, father of said grandson.

Up and Coming ?

List from the Beeb. White Lies sound like the pick of the bunch, but Little Boots and Empire of the Sun (feat Luke Steele, ex Perth WA) err … interesting.

Saw local bands Kill Your Darlings and Hallucinations the other night at Cafe Kaos. Both different but good, though incredibly short sets. Hallucinations technically accomplished amplified-acoustic bluesy-folk-rock guitars and vocals with a locomotive rhythm section driving em on, and virtuoso harmonica thrown in. Kill Your Darlings with intro loops and grungey heavy guitar, maximum effect for minimum technique, decent vocals, inventive beats and a really entertaining drummer.

Add Don Cupitt to Reading List ?

Just a holding link, prompted by a post from Sam.

The Power of the Microphone

These two stories tickled me.

Flexo-piezo-devices being self-powered, even by ambient sound.

And the telephone hoax that wasn’t.

A Problem I Recognize

Having moved twice in recent years, with a growing library of books, I recognize a lot of these issues / traits. I do have a few “unread” and a few “incompletely read” but I doubt that’s more than 2%. So many different ways to organize the reasons for keeping different selections of books, though in my case a large proportion are all relatively recent acquisitions, but I would never dump a book because I didn’t approve of it … it seems I need to own any book I have an opinion about … an opinion based on having read it that is 🙂

The hardest category are those that seemed important to know, but ended-up partly read after leaving me cold, no real opinion either way … kept just in case I will see them differently in some future context.

[Post Note Dec 7th : Had to add this link to a piece by Clive James, touching on very similar material about his disorganized writing space, but also bringing in Clausewitz and the chaos of entropy (the fog of war) from which order often emerges. Also had to add it because his previous week’s magazine piece … on the recently released film of the Bader-Meinhof story … was equally witty, but a little too pontificatory for many of his readers.]

A Man With Two Balls

Beat that Ronaldo ?

Global Brain

A while since I linked to Oliver Wrede’s Global Brain (in the blogroll). Two current / recent stories one on the “petaflop barrier”, the other on the “zeitgeist addendum”. Must come back to both.

Quadrivium

Just capturing this modern version of the Quadrivium from Wendy Ellyat … (in Inclusional correspondence) …

Arithmetic – numbers in themselves
Geometry – numbers in space
Music – numbers in time
Cosmology – numbers in space and time

Maybe (after Kline) the last two are both in space & time but one is natural the other is applied, but Wendy’s statement is better ?