What, Why & How do we Know ?
I’ve been following e-Paper / e-Ink developments, but this mainstream event almost passed me by. I see Amazon sold out their entire “Kindle” production in five days in late November. A few days later Wikipedia already records the “November 2007” event as history.
I’m interested, particularly if the subscriptions can be extended beyond the US and to the web via a browser rather than just the registered publications. Watch the video demo half-way down this official Amazon page.
Last night a colleague recalled the scene from “The Simpsons – The Movie” where Homer questions “Aawww, why do I have to go to church on Sundays. Why can’t I just pray like hell in the final minutes of my life, like everbody else does.” – being scarily close to the truth for some significant proportion of the populace down here in the bible belt.
Unlike Sam, I wouldn’t like to bet against too high odds that these people are from a real church community, who see this as valid comment, albeit in some level of humorous parody (or god forbid, maybe not).
Things are rarely what they seem, which after several cycles of paradoxical irony, may be not, not … not what they appear to be. Now that is the sign of our times … (too) many a true word.
In the good old days the jester wore the silly outfit, so you could tell spoof from reality even if, in fact precisely because, many a true word could be spoken. The loss of innocence arrived “while the king was looking down, the jester stole his thorny crown”. The difference between irony / humour and hypocrisy / lies is in the intent, not in the words or ideas expressed. The memes have us mere mortals over a barrel.
The problem of brutal language, (from 1897).
“Unmailable” – Via Language Hat, so I kinda trust its authenticity … worth reading the thread … authentic language from the time, but probably a contemporary spoof – to make the point. ‘Twas ever thus.
Compare and contrast with Sam’s “Youth of Today” post.
Is, paradoxically, its endurance. Political systems come and go … so the values of faith (any faith) are those that can be preserved through culture. Johnathan Sacks (UK Chief Rabbi, BBC R4 Today, “Thought for The Day”) echoing Parmjit Dhanda (Sikh, UK Ministerial speech) on the need to celebrate the UK’s Christian heritage. Interesting angle.
Effectively the same pragmatic debate I’m having with Sam as to whether any secular institution can ever match that. I guess my position is that the religious who see enlightened promotion and preservation of values as the point of their “faith” would get very little argument from a “humanist” or other secularist if the faithful didn’t bring their literal (or misleadingly reified metaphorical) theistic baggage with them into inappropriate walks of life. Sam ?
Bubble Bubble Toil and Trouble (Not to be missed … no, really, do take a peek. God is a fan of JakobAndJulia.com apparently, which is by the by. Hmmm, now there is a subliminal meme – blink and you might not miss it.)
Standing invitation to visit Lindsay Marshall’s Bifurcated Rivets. Never a dull moment. (Dave Snowden also picked-up on the Bubble Burst Vid.)
Interesting angle from Dave Pollard, debunking the idea of KM2.0 as a return to the basics by dubbing it KM0.0
Basics in Dave’s terms are “context and connectivity” as opposed to content and collection, where connectivity is interpersonal peer-to-peer.
I’d agree.
Part of my own “manifesto” (in the header) but interested to find the same sentiment expressed by Chris Chatham at Developing Intelligence.
In a debate ostensiby about theistic religion vs atheistic humanism over on the Rev Sam’s Elizaphanian blog, the subject has come back round to the pragmatic issues of “values” and the institutions needed for their maintenance in society generally. [Here] [Here] & [Here].
Debates on both MoQ-Discuss and Friends of Wisdom have ended up precisely here before too. Seems inescapable.
Been involved in a number of conversations recently about radiation safety …. nuclear power is on an upswing throughout the world. Fact is at low medical-and-industrial-radiology / nuclear-power-industry public exposure levels very little is really known (proven or even provable) about the risks, so standard health and safety practices are generally recognised as being conservative. Real high-level risks have been simply extrapolated down to lower levels.
Often permitted levels are below commonly occurring background radiation levels, eg in areas with massive granite geologies, and in some such areas of high natural levels, pockets of reduced health risks / better health have been reasonably well demonstrated (example, Iran reference ?). Of course there are different types (different spectra & particles) of radiation as well as energy levels, and there are other high “natural” exposure risks, like flying at commercial cruising altitudes, and so on.
The general received wisdom is that relatively low levels of radiation can still risk causing genetic mutations, and that comes with a “risk” of cancerous mutations. Risk upon risk and we’re into a matter of probabilities. Interesting to hear Steve Jones talking on “In Our Time” yesterday on genetics, as a very young science, and the fact that many common chemical exposures are far more prone to cause more / harmful mutations than common radiation risks. And in either case whatever the cause of mutations, the fault-tolerance / self-repairing properties of DNA / RNA means that “lower” levels of mutation may be either totally insignificant or even beneficial.
The irony is today’s story about a nuclear reactor in Canada, one of whose products is producing radioactive sources and tags for medical procedures. With the reactor down, the source of these positive medical supplies is cut.
Never mind carbon offsets. what about radiation offsets ?
Indeed a strange skewed must-read list for such high status from The Grauniad. [via Sam]
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Bible
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
1984 by George Orwell
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
All Quiet on the Western Front by E M Remarque
His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
Tess of the D’urbevilles by Thomas Hardy
Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn
Compiled by “British Librarians”. Where to start with disagreeing ?
