Hit Behaviour

Strange pattern of page hits today. My overall hit-rate is about half (1200/month) what it was a year ago, but today in two separate hours around 4pm and 7pm this evening I had page hits at a rate almost 20 times the average hourly rate.

More than 120 hits an hour all via “StumbleUpon” all on the same (four year old) page, and most of them real hits with dwell times and multi-page visits. I won’t advertise which page, but no obvious topical interest. Weird.

(Post Note : whatever the pattern was, it was a temporary affair – no sign since.)

Natural Inclusion

And of course it occurred to me that the reason I was thinking about evolution in that inclusive sense was probably that Alan Rayner’s “Inclusional Research” web-site and forum had just gone live and I was browsing around it last night.

Alan’s take on evolution from his inclusional perspective he calls “natural inclusion” rather as an antidote to “natural selection”, terminology which implies progress of one always at the expense of another – an either or choice, a selection; whereas there are many co-evolutionary mechanisms that involve cooperation and mutual benefit of replicators.

[Post Note 2008 – Don’t Miss
Alan Rayner’s Natural Communion Anthology
(PDF Book Download).]

Re / Evolution ?

Today’s Thinking Allowed included a debate about whether revolutions were inevitable and necessary to really progressive change. Plenty of discussion as to whether the downside of revolution was forever tainted by the totalitarian aftermath of the Russian communist revolution and whether the other revolutions had really created lasting change that was any different than would have evolved anyway.

In terms of “making progress” my natural style of “activism” is one of evolution with and away from existing reality, excluded middles, win-wins etc, and it got me thinking why revolution was unattractive in itself.

It occurred to me that revolution necessarily involves the power of will conflicting with an established order, whether applied with violence or not, and that there should be no reason to suspect an outcome significantly different from evolution, unless the revolutionaries maintain that enforced will to sustain their aims thereafter. Natural evolution itself involves major crises and catastrophes as well as the accumulation of minor mutations. So revolutions, and violent conflicts of other kinds, no doubt trigger releases of action, lifting the lid on repressed potentials, but no reason why the “aims” of any revolution should, have any bearing on the steady state outcome.

Are we not men ? Devo.

Doggone Cotton Pickin’

Just an excuse to post this economics news story link.

Here in Huntsville, Alabam, the cultivated area outside the ‘burbs is nearly all cotton fields, and even in the year or two we’ve been here, we’ve seen them gradually being ploughed over for housing development. Those who’ve been here ten years or more tell us most of the business areas and  malls around us are built on old cotton fields.

Just this last week the cotton pickin’ machines have been at work in the nearby fields. I meant to take some before-and-after pic’s but it looks like I’ve missed the chance for this year.

With all the national housing gloom and doom, the local area is an anomaly, with, military (Redstone Arsenal), space (Marshall Space Flight Centre) and associated high-tech industrial expansion going on.

Zeitgeist – The Movie

This film came out in June this year, and Alice sent me a link recently.

I normally run a mile at conspiracy theories, preferring coincidence, cock-up and “passive self -interest”, but I have to say this three-part story is very interesting, going through several cycles of contradiction and paradox – which is no bad thing.

The overarching theme of world-government domination by a handful of power-mad bankers for whom fear and war is big business contrasts with the more benign, organic one-world gaia. ie the problem is not the idea of one-world and borderless government, but how it is achieved and who holds the power.

There is a large middle section on the 9/11 conspiracy theories, much detail of which I still don’t buy, even though the “false flag” terror incident was clearly a convenient trigger for those seeking a pretext for war. Again passive self-interest can engineer plenty of useful coincidences – for my own agenda, this is the hypocrisy of accepted decision-making norms.

The first section is about the ubiqity of mythology behind Christianity – quite straight-forward and entirely credible. The final section is about central banking and taxation. The common theme is the one big conspiracy. Some real issues even if it is too glib to point a finger at “them”.

The real message of the film is to promote critical thinking. No bad thing.

(Joe Campbell and Bill Hicks both figure; unfortunately so does the nutcase known as David Icke. Prejudice should not put you off watching the film right through.)

50 Years On The Road

Greg Proops presents a BBC review of Kerouac’s influential 1957 book, with interviews with the survivors. (The 127 foot continuous roll manuscript was real, auctioned recently, but being the product of the single benzedrine trip is apocryphal, apparently – several edits too before publication, already ten years old when first pubished. Interesting that Jack was a misunderstood US patriot despite close association with Ginsberg and Burroughs before the book, and King of the Beats afterwards during the peace, love and revolution of the 60’s. Drove him to drink and death. What’s so funny ’bout …)

Words + Enthusiasm = Erinaceous

Plenty more TEDTalks here.

Including the delicious Erin McKean. Next time someone quotes a dictionary definition at me as part of an argument, I will be pointing them at this one.

And given that I’ve recently reported on reading “Breaking The Spell”, here is a link to Dan Dennett speaking on dangerous memes – ideas to die for. Just a fluke 😉  and on religions as natural phenomena.

And lots more; E.O.Wilson, Steven Pinker – and Eddi Reader sings too.