Psybertron Asks

I’ve never been a smoker, but I have to agree with Ray Girvan and say I too miss smoking in pubs. Some of the essential character seems lost. As Ray says, they’re going to have to work at their atmosphere. (Ray’s piece is principally about the importance of the sense of smell in cultural memory … baking bread and brewing coffee to make the house you’re trying to sell appear homely, etc.)

Oddly at my sister’s house last week, she had an electric “fire” room heater that involved small pieces of real coal laid on the heating element, to evoke that “real fire” smell in the room, as the volatile tarry hydrocarbons are released when the coal is warmed.

A smell I can instantly recall from the very thought itself … takes me back to a time making coal-gas over the kitchen stove in my youth …. don’t ask. Another meta-meme.

Nick Maxwell’s most recent work “Is Science Neurotic ?”, was published last year, coinciding with his formation of the “Friends of Wisdom“, a campaign to promote the values of wisdom – the wisdom of value – in science generally, from basic education to the highest academic research.

Nick’s message coincides very closely with my own, that “basic empiricism” – the accepted logic that “scientific” knowledge is and should be based entirely on the apparent objectivism of refutation by empirical testing – is a fallacy, and that the preservation of that “faith” in the face of reality is fundamentally a psychological problem, a neurosis. Furthermore that neurosis is such a serious problem “of our time” that the very existence of what we value in the cosmos is threatened unless we wake up and face the facts.

Unusually, rather than my normal one-liners, I was moved to write a fairly lengthy review of Nick’s latest work – here.

Yes that’s an erstwhile battery powered Sinclair C5, fitted with a turbojet. Mad. Via Rivets

Seems the people at Steorn just did a public demo of their anomalous energy machine. Link via Nova Spivak. But they had a technical hitch. Hmmm, oh well.

Nice link here from Ben Goldacre’s “Bad Science”.

Still unread on my list I must confess, but came across his official website promoting his latest work “Spook Country” via Rivets.

The (retiring age) chairman of a previous employer made an impression by naming Gibson’s “Neuromancer” as a must read for anyone participating in the information age. Still catching up.

I remember a couple of months ago being impressed by the pictures of Ian Paisley joking with Martin McGinnis after the agreement to re-open the Irish Assembly, and a few days later joking with Bertie Ahern as he handed over a gift of a musket captured from the “losing side” at the Battle of the Boyne. The sceptic in me thought “he’ll never keep it up”, though I think I missed blogging any comment at the time.

How times have really changed. At Blair’s farewell prime minister’s question time, as Blair’s appointment as Mid-East Peace Envoy was confirmed, the old bugger said “I hope that what happened in Northern Ireland will be repeated and at the end of the day he will be able to look back and say it was well worthwhile.”

They’re real enough. Thanks to Apothecary’s Drawer for the link. Great galleries of Ray’s own photos on his site too – I think I’ve mentioned that before.

Alan Rayner’s “Inclusionality” restated as “Natural Inclusion”.

This piece illustrating an integrative and redistributive selection notion of evolution of extended self, as opposed to an eliminative selection of discrete selves, using a mycelium fungus example migrating its center of operations to food … and beyond.

This piece elliciting a succinct communication of Alan’s inclusional objectives.

And this piece illustrating the integrative rather than divisive dualist take on boundaries of identity – “We are bewitched by bipolar craziness, and if we really want to restore the dance we need some sellotape” – some integrating glue.

All pieces captured by Jack Whitehead and linked by William Pryor on his very new “Unhooked Thinking” blog following this year’s “Unhooked thinking” conference. William Pryor has his own only slightly less recent personal blog too.

The debate trundles on.

Struan Hellier’s father Graham Hellier is a Presbyterian minister and has written this “Christian Response” to Dawkins. I responded with these comments. My position is already pretty clear – Dawkins is as extreme as any religious extremist and unfortunately he cannot separate his (correct) arguments about the memetic success of religious (faith and authority-based) beliefs and reasoning, from his incorrect assertion that “scientific” reasoning can be totally objective and faith-free, or that if it is, it cannot be practically applicable to the whole of life.

Related is this news story about growing concern about the distinction between spiritual “contemplative” activities and religious “faithful” activities, and the worry about the inroads of the latter into US political life. Dawkins unfortunately seems devoid of contemplative spiritual values, so would not see the distinction and be locked in ancient faith vs reason battles – tilting at windmills.