What, Why & How do we Know ?
A story about political forecasting [via qB at Frizzy]. Not rocket science, as the piece says, the odds tend to be with the obvious. What is interesting is the range of metaphors qB brings into it.
Knowledge as context. Context [etymologically] as weaving together.
Not a million miles away from Lisa Jardine’s point in the previous post. Scott Kaufmann reports a bizarre “sexual harrassment” story, that almost got out of hand when formal responses to official channels were actually moving in completely opposite directions. A funny read anyway.
[Original Report] [ Final Update] [via Gimbo]
This is the key quote
“From there our attempts to aid each other according to the policies which bind us both were doomed to fail.”
Lisa Jardine’s contribution to the BBC’s annual poll is pretty well my own agenda.
She says Health and Safety controls life today. Rules rule – it’s kinda obvious. Her objection was to those people entrusted with applying the rules in every walk of life. Rules like HS&E get authority from their rationlality. You’d be hard pushed to argue they weren’t good rules if preserving health and safety were your prime objective. The problem is how to apply them when your prime aim is creativity. One of my oft quoted adages is “Rules are for the guidance of wise men, not the enslavement of fools.” (Jeff Turnell, quoting Douglas Bader I believe)
The value of a human biological life is very high, but it’s not all-important.
It doesn’t automatically over-ride every other consideration.
(Couldn’t help thinking that a dozen times during the ongoing fuel depot blaze fiasco.)
What’s the management buzzword ? “paramount”.
The rules of codes and standards can only be applied in stable, pre-planned situations, where their rationale fits. Any situation more dynamic needs wisdom and judgement, not rules. The kind of knowledge that makes up that wisdom and judgement is the point of this blog.
Just to test out PlayTagger
Hamsters – I Don’t Live Today (Live, Hendrix)
Hamsters – Love or Confusion (Live, Hendrix)
[Play tagger from del.ici.ous also via Robot Wisdom]
As Jorn says, priceless. Free too.
[And … post note …. now defunct. Oh well.]
Pinter pulls no punches in pretty extreme anti-American stuff from Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech. [via Robot Wisdom]
The heavy morality of international politics you can read for yourself, but I was struck by this opening quote of something Pinter wrote in 1958.
There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.
They (and the biting cold wind) keep the red flags flying
in Tiananmen Square
It’s that man again, overlooking those entering the Forbidden City
No stealing the photons now,
Red is not the only colour,
Does the guard on the bridge know he’s 6 inches off centre ?
Yes, that’s a submarine on the HuangPo.
This 10x lifesize statue of Mao overlooks the main square here in Fuzhou.
Linked to Nova Spivak’s blog “Minding The Planet” once or twice before, but intrigued to find here that Peter Drucker was his grandfather ?
