What, Why & How do we Know ?
New Yorker article on the confusion of “technical innovation” with “technology” – technology being the useful stuff, the stuff we use, independent of how old it is. [via Rivets again]
Reminds me of an essay I wrote some time ago about the myth of technology de-skilling the workplace, where I used the example of a cave-dweller shaping a flint with which to hunt. (Need to check if I have an electronic copy ?)
You know it makes sense. Brilliant. Love all the disclaimers at the end … lends that air of autheticity. [via Rivets]
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”.
I’ve been sitting on some overdue additions to my Pirsig timeline since the Guardian interview in November 2006 had Pirsig freely discussing much new information in public. However I was alerted by Mark Richardson to a significant error – the subject of an inconsistency I had originally queried with Pirsig – concerning the dates of the moves to teaching in Bozeman (1959) and then to the University of Chicago (1961), where his breakdown became total. Perhaps not surprising that the man’s own recollections of this period were inexact. Anyway, timeline now corrected.
More interesting and important news for Pirsig fans, is that Mark Richardson has a book of his own in the pipeline, worked around his own experience of the ZMM route by motorcycle, in which he has also gathered much more new journalistically-researched biographical detail well beyond the scope of my simple timeline.
Good luck with the publication Mark.
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.