Psybertron Asks

Following recent recovery from my 10 days of blog downtime, I’ve been browsing a few dozen blogs I’ve ignored recently – The Armadillo spoof of the spoof Amarillo. [via Johnny Moore]. As Johnny says “the joy of sharing” – what a heart warming story.

Johnny also picks up on this “Tie Down All Loose Objects Before Looping the Loop” – a genuine surprise moment if you’ve not seen it. [Via Adam Curry]

OK 9:35 pm hopefully ?

Hopefully this will post at 9.32pm WA time.

The Modern World. [via Gimbo]

A recurring thought, in connection with driving speed limits initially, but nicely illustrated by The Pain. [Thanks to Robert for the original Pain link.]

Searching for Sue Blackmore’s piece in the UK Daily Telegraph Saturday Review, I stumbled across this A(australian)BC The Descent of Man programme on “modern” evolution. Sue was a contributing voice apparently, along with Dawkins, Pinker, and more.

Modern mind in a prehistoric brain, would no doubt appeal to Enlightened Caveman.

The more I read the more I see “evolutionary psychology” as the key topic for understanding reality. And the more of that I read the more I realise Bronowski was right to substitute ascent (per ardua ad astra) for descent (from the trees).

I wonder if legalising all drugs would solve more problems than it caused ? BBC NEWS reporting on Afghan president Karzai being pressed on opium & heroin controls.

monthly fee looks a bit steep, but it can only be a matter of time. [via BBC].

Vonage to Vonage will need a critical mass, but unlike Skype the phoning in and out of the network must be implicitly included, if you are using your standard phone ?

Apparently here in Oz, the equivalent is Engin.

… here in Perth … I only mention the weather, ‘cos we’ve had a lot of it recently.

Since last Sunday we’ve had stormy weather (ripping up trees and washing away railway ballast kinda stormy weather) and about one quarter of the local annual rainfall, which means we’ve had about half of it since that 43C day at the end of March.

Yesterday evening we had a most spectacular storm – I first noticed the dark ominous clouds moving in opposite directions about 4pm – circulating around the eye of an impending storm. By sunset, out over the Indian Ocean, it was thoroughly formed with lightning and rain sheeting down 5 or so miles out over the ocean around Rottnest island. Dozens, hundreds (?) of people standing watching along the city-beach and Cottesloe – taking advantage of the photogenic storm-with-waterspout-at-sunset opportunity.

By 6:30 it was clear this was just one of several drifting in from the west and the torrential rain was set in for hours … but today … glorious.

I expect I’ll get to go sit and read on the beach later (Quixote), once the chores are out of the way. (Oops spoke to soon – here comes the rain again – closing in again this evening, from inland this time.)

Sue Blackmore’s latest and briefest “Introduction to Consciousness”, in the “Very Short” series reviewed positively here in the Grauniad. The Full “Introduction” was a great book. [here], [here], [here] and [here]. Not read this abridgement myself, yet. Glad to see the reviewer finds the idea of “I” as a temporary fiction as disconcerting as … well … “I” do.