Year: 2010

The Case For God

I picked up once before on Karen Armstrong as a TED speaker; a breath of fresh air in the God vs Science fundamentalist debates. I bough a copy of her “The Case For God” yesterday and just started reading.

Yep, she’s good. She lumps Ditchkins (Dawkins / Hitchens) and Harris together but Dennett is listed separately. Thank god for people with imagination, says this atheist.

Well I didn’t know …

…. that neither CBGB’s nor The Marquee Club currently exist.

(Interesting this scrapbook page from Clemen Pull, has lots of gig adverts that also include Scarecrow, at The Marquee, The Lord Nelson, The Windsor Castle, Upstairs at Ronnies, and more … Pretty sure I saw Scarecrow only once at The Marquee, but I see they were there three times in 1976, according to The Marquee commemorative site.)

Philly First

My first time in Philadelphia, PA. Arrived Saturday afternoon at a Midtown hotel right in the middle of the Midtown Village Fall Festival. A little of Oktoberfest about it, but mostly just all the bars and restaurants within one block of the hotel doing their thing on the streets. Reminded me again why I’m missing the enormous variety of US beers; several local pale-ales and Dead Guy on draft.

Odd transatlantic flight experience; on the left side didn’t see land until we flew over Martha’s Vinyard with Nantucket Island’s unmistakable outline fully visible (and all the boats whizzing between them). I guess there must have been a great view of Long Island, NYC and the Jersey coast from the other side of the plane, but didn’t see land again on the left side until we banked inland just north of Atlantic City on approach to Philly.

Walked the length of Walnut and Chestnut this morning, through the medical and historical districts and spent some time on Penn’s Landing on the Delaware. Interesting place.

Too Much Information, Professor

Neuroscientist Sebastian Seung talks about his feelings in the TED Talk “I am my Connectome”. The sum total and pattern of synaptic connections between our neurons (of course this ignores other non-neuronal mental activity) is a huge and complex graph. (Billions of neurons with thousands of connections each … he mentions some stats.)

At the 7:45 mark an excellent illustration of one tiny component of the overall complexity.

And he uses the well used stream (river) metaphor for upward and downward causation. You (your mind / your brain) are your connectome; it both supports mental activity and it is shaped by it. Nothing really new here, but so well delivered. Just the opposite of the reduced science of the post before last.

Talks with feeling, but ends on testable science. Integration is the third-culture.

[PS love the English language feature that “you” is ambiguous singular or plural individual. You “are” whilst your mind or your brain “is”. Actually, just racking my brains, that’s true in many languages I know.]

Modular Power Packs ?

Saw a Tesla the other day (in Oslo) and instantly recognized its Lotus / VX heritage in an electric powered sports. I’ve been driving VX/GM sports for the last 8 or 9 years, so my initial reaction was I’d like one of those. But it’s 3 or 4 times the cost of a petrol-powered equivalent – silly money. But that’s not even the main problem.

Surely too, the recharge problem must be solved. The thing about fluid/liquid fuel is its portability at high power density. Surely electric cars need recharge stations where you pit stop, slot in a pre-charged power pack and leave the dead one behind on charge ?

[Post Note : Are Hydrogen Fuel Cell / Electric drives the answer ? Is the hydrogen mass distribution and tankage practical – answers from California please ? If we use methanol, how do the carbon emissions compare ? What is the eco-balance of hydrogen-production / battery-production and electricity generation ?]

Science Reduced

Marilynne Robinson on (the same edition of) Thinking Allowed.

The Dawkinsian approach reduces science itself she says. Hooray. (It’s a pity that sound minds like Harris, Dennett and Hitchens got hitched to the nutter Dawkins by the “four horsemen” meme I say, but para-science is an interesting idea).

In a nutshell. Positivism pervades patterns of thought and behaviour in science even though discredited as a metaphysics, and leads to hypocrisies such as even entertaining untestable ideas like multiverses, in a science that dismisses the metaphysical. Maxwell’s scientific neurosis. Wake up, science.

Must add “Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self.” to the Christmas list.