What, Why & How do we Know ?
Well, actually, they already have …
After the “Poetics” (in The Name of the Rose) you had the “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili” (in The Rule of Four, Princeton), now read the “Oxyrhynchus Papyri” (in real-life, Oxford University) – new technology allows reading of long lost classics – Sophocles, Euripides to name a few … [Independent Online] [via Robot Wisdom]
Neat idea from ZipCar (Can you tell I’ve been catching up reading the BBC site this morning ?)
It’s just car-hire with technology used to increase time and space slicing efficiency – “public” (subscription) transport in on-demand packets – I’m sure we’ve all had the idea. The really neat part is the idea that “For every ZipCar on the road, 20 private cars become redundant”.
Will the motor industry lobby ever let this work ? Go ZipCar.
Japanese official denial of Nanking as a significant tragedy, continues to justify anti-Japanese sentiment (and action) in (Mainland, People’s Republic of) China. I’ve just come back from a trip through Chiang Kai-Shek airport in (Taiwan, island Republic of) China.
Can’t help thinking it is significant that the occupants of Nanking, Chiang Kai-Shek’s “nationalist” army and Kuomintang governement, were then engaged in a civil war power struggle with the Communist Chinese before fleeing Nanking to Taiwan. Dare I suggest that Japan’s (normaly honorable) attitude to their enemy in Nanking might have been colluded, encouraged, at least tolerated by the communists at the time.
For example, I find it odd that the strong anti-Japanese sentinment is “on the winning side” in PRC, whereas the concern with this period of history remains strong in ROC. Does the PRC sentiment over Nanking, really reflect a popular PRC sympathy for the ROC, despite ongoing official cold relations – reaching sabre-rattling invasion threats as recently as only a couple of weeks ago ? Had me nervous about the trip to Taipei CKS in fact.
Does the suggestion of PRC official tolerance of the popular PRC protests suggest the PRC government is itself emotionally ready to resolve this triangle of guilt, or at least exposing that it sees itself on the horns of a dilemma ?
(Must look out for official and unofficial ROC attitudes to this PRC / Japan situation.)
Sadly ironic to note in the story [via BBC] of the recently-convicted-for-life Algerian Al-Qaeda police-murderer and ricin-terrorist that, on the one hand, the police chief is playing down religion (99.99% of moslems are law abiding, etc), whilst the bereaved family is playing up it’s christian faith.
Football that is. Yeovil fan just walked up to me here in Changi, keen to check the Southend result from last night – they lost to Orient.
That means if Yeovil beat Kiddy today, they’re in champions spot apparently. Interestingly Reading were interested in the defeat of Blades by Derby last night – now we only need Millwall to beat Hammers for our play off place to be entirely in our own hands.
The connection ? Johnny Mullins of Reading is on loan at Kiddy and being influential according to manager Watkiss, who wants to extend the loan. (Though he’s an injury doubt for this particular game.)
Football outside the premiership really is interesting these days – so many outcomes dependent on so many results with just a few games to go yet again this season.
… or maybe France … Gibberish, computer generated “scientific” paper is accepted for conference in Orlando [via BBC]. To be fair, it was passed unreviewed by default due to missing reviewing milestones. So no-one was actually conned by its content, unilke the French existentialist quantum genetics (?) example earlier, but Oh Dear.
Perversely, I’ve just been corresponding with Chris over at Enlightened Caveman about the difficulties of getting serious, thoughtful but amateur material published or even read in academic channels.
And … His Essence ? … did I get that right – CNN in the background again – Hand lotion and wax candles infused with “His” essence from some holy spring – who buys this stuff ? Who thinks it up ?
File under conspiracy – see below.
Finished reading Caldwell and Thomason’s “Rule of Four” in transit here at Changi.
As I predicted in the previous post the theme becomes “Love Conquers All” – with the reminder of the double edged meaning in that aphorism – “mis-directed love destroys anything” is not a recipe for happy endings – though this book does indeed have a predictable one – just like the eponymous US version of Brazil.
Anyway whoever described The Rule of Four as The Name Of The Rose in the style of Donna Tartt’s Secret History was spot on. So many plot components are straight from Eco – not least the conflagration destroying the evidence (or does it ? type suspense), the labrynthine passages and stairs, the whodunnit murders, the dead-languages intellectual and philosophical references, and the poisoned paper trick. Had they never read Eco ? Did they not have an editor who had ? Either way I might be embarrassed.
The main theme is the same – western / christian church suppression of renaissance knowledge originating with the mediterranean, middle and eastern ancients. In The Rule of Four, the evil side is simply academic competitiveness personal jealousies and loves – no suggestion of a Da Vinci Code style institutional conspiracy of secrecy over the ages. The quote from St Paul’s Gospel neatly sums it up “I [god] am going to destroy the wisdom of the wise and bring to nothing the understanding of any who understand”. Compare that with David Deutsch’s understanding or Sue Blackmore’s open mind if you dare. (A certain irony in the TV news headlines playing in the background beside me here – “The world waits for the announcement of the next pope …”)
It’s a conspiracy allright, A metaphorical conspiracy of memes.
But it’s no secret, it’s on CNN, that’s how memes work.
Actually I’m being unfair, Rule of Four is not a bad read in its own right, but I’d recommend the others mentioned here ahead of it. Except of course unlike the Da Vinci Code the fictional / mythical aspect of the source material content – The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili – is acknowledged, even though the mysterious book itself is real.
Some annoying cliches throughout – constant references for the hard of thinking, to the significance of changing pronouns in dialogue – and the obligatory “love-interest”, but the style and phrasing makes an entertaining read – Echoes of Raymond Chandler in the character descriptions early on, and some creative quotable phrases throughout.
“[She] can be heard muttering in dead languages to the books around her; A taxidermist whispering to her pets.”
“[He] speaks in shades of the obvious; Some stopgap between his mouth and mind gone missing”
Also a nice variation on the existing …
“Some things have to be believed to be seen“,
“Belief creates“, or
“Belief has to be-lived”
… Caldwell and Thomason have …
“Only a man who sees giants can ever stand upon their shoulders”.
I liked that.
Almost blogged this BBC news story about Hitachi’s new technology to shift disk storage up an order of magnitude a few days ago. But I needed to see (and hear) this from the Toronto McLuhan Message blog before I actually did it. Neat.
Browsing Gimbo, which has changed since I last looked (he’s got married ?) the issues being blogged seem higher level. Several good posts – the UK Government ID Card story, The TinyURL (risks) story, and the women in sport (world full of idiots) link.
I was taken by the “risks” link simply because the link was catless.ncl.ac.uk which I recognised as the domain of Rivets (@ncl.ac naturally). Anyway the catalogue of risks (of IT mis-use in devices) makes interesting reading.
Matt at DoubleLoop has a new post on a survey of link collectors / organisers. As he says the common feature is Tags, Tags, Tags, Tags, but for me what is key is the semantics of Why, Why, Why, Why ?
The thing I liked about del.ici.ous was that the links were to categories, and since you could create the categories themselves, you could categorise the categories too, though I see no evidence of inheritance in the linking. I wonder if any of the others stretches that far. (Must look at both del.ici.ous and CiteULike again more closely.)
It’s like this …
If I have a category of “People” with 10 “Members”
And I have another category of “Animals” with 10 “Members”, one of which is “People”
Does my click on “Animals” return 10 or 19 hits ?
64,000 dollar question.
If that’s possible – then I make my categories aspectual – ie in terms of why the interest / intent / reason in the link, rather than simply “what is at the end of it”, then Robert is your father’s brother – Semantic Web – I think you’ll find.
You may have read it here first.