What, Why & How do we Know ?
Struck by the focus of stats in this news story on the illegal drug use in baseball. Stephen Jay Gould majors on baseball stats in “Life’s Grandeur”, if I remember correctly, to illustrate on the illusion of trends, and the psychological tendency to seek such number trends in explanations.
The tyranny of numbers.
Interesting little snapshot here via Johnnie Moore, originally from Marina’s Bloggariffic on the evolution of blogging. The technology changes like fashions come and go, but the evolution of use, uses that add value to humanity, is comically retarded. The ratio of nuggets to trivia is pretty static ….
90% of X is crap, because 90% of everything is crap
…. someone once said.
I have a theory about memetic evolution – the three generation rule – originally evident in “Kondratiev Waves”. However fast the technology itself, humans have to learn habits, exploit habits and unlearn habits, and we humans as a whole / in general / culturally have physiological limits to the pace of learning, and communicating / applying that learning.
Interestingly, Johnnie has a later post about the optimal load for a brain to take something new on board.
Find myself surfing YouTube one full evening a week or fortnight these days, finding music video of acts I’d long forgotten were important to me (*), often prompted by a link from Rivets, who has his own musical agenda, but the lateral connections are infinite. I blogged about Rory Gallagher some weeks ago, and spent last night absorbing all things Mothersbaugh (Mark, Bob1 and Jim) and Casales (Jerry and Bob2) – after a sneak listen to Rory’s Montreux Jazz version of Shadow Play – more Akron-Spud-madness later … but a few evenings ago I stumbled upon The Thoughts of Chairman Parker. Where to start ?
Graham Parker was responsible for the best gig I ever experienced at London’s Roundhouse in 1978, supported by the then little-known-in-the-UK Blondie and Devo, on the evening of the day of the Anti-Nazi league rally from Trafalgar Square to Victoria Park Hackney – featuring The Clash and Tom Robinson amongst others – what a day. Some weeks / months later we saw GP & The Rumour again on the two opening night(s) of Richard Branson’s Virgin Venue in Victoria, where I took some pics, including my favourite of GP (Passion is no Ordinary Word).
Anyway Chairman Parker was waxing philosophical about the Harris / Dawkins / Hitchens debate – on the atheistic side of it – and drawing some flak in comments from US fans – which is coincidental to my agenda here. What I picked-up on is how active GP has been and still is, in the US since the late 70’s. Official web-site, most of the backlog available CD and MP3 formats … and a link to this 5 hour radio marathon … which I’m about 3.5 hours through. A 9 hour (!) Elvis Costello marathon there too, I’m yet to dip into.
Anyway Devo … all their early “art school” experimentation too … and they’ve been perfoming as recently as last month, Manchester, Vegas … official site.
(*) Important 70’s music that I have on vinyl, but never replaced with CD or Mp3, having gone through the 90’s and 00’s with my experiencing both my sons’ rock tastes. Small world though – Elder son did unplugged arrangements of Whole Lotta Love & Black Dog the week before Led Zep’s re-union gig acclaimed by critics and fans alike at the London O2 Arena. Saw Zep at Earl’s Court in 76 was it ?
Can’t decide whether I need to do a more methodical search, subscription or otherwise re-connect with the old vinyl collection … or continue the random trip of rediscovery.
Just added “Freedom of Science” to the blogroll. Pretty whacky style, but a very similar agenda to mine, in this case aimed at “Newtonism” specifically as the problem rather than “scientific objectivism” more generally in my case. Freeing knowledge from academic categories.
But very similar rationale too, about the easy option associated with the immensely successful “marketing and branding” of Newtonism, or in my case the memetics of the hyper-rational.
No human identity, but “Freedom” responded to Island’s post mentioned in my previous post below.
(Post Note – Dec 19th – I see Domenic has picked-up on Island’s conjecture and is following the logic of where the maths exists to support it …. comment thread ensues … all that is required is one open mind.)
An October 2007 post here from “Island” (Rick Ryals) guesting on “A Quantum Diaries Survivor” (That’s a serious physics blog … so not for the faint-hearted.)
Just collecting the link because, I don’t know why, but I need to understand what Island is on about, even if he’s wrong ;-).
I hit the link on a search cross-hit, but Island also included it in his last thread of comments. See various comment threads involving “Island” (very hard to pin down in a search, thanks to that name) as well as his own site and blog already linked in the side-bar as “Science in Crisis”.
Interesting. I guess the fact that we all post in public (like, Doh ! blogging on the web) means we expect (nay hope) to be picked-up, linked and copied, directly or from feeds, but I hadn’t though of this – people scraping feed content and “passing off” without linking or attribution.
As ever, it’s the “passing off” that is immoral. [via Geo Hancock]
BTW did you pick up on “Kindle” Geo, see previous post.
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 ?
