Everybody knows that “No” means “Yes”.

Van Morrison (59 yesterday) apparently wrote …
Too complicated, too complicated
You know this crazy scene
Too complicated, too complicated
No one says what they mean
Are you telling me that everything’s fine
When I can’t even tie my shoes
Better get into a new frame of mind
When I don’t have to think about the business no more
`Cause I just wanna blow my horn.
[wood s lot][via Language Hat]
Somehow fit’s this week’s mood, and kinda put me in mind of Divine Comedy’s (Neil Hannon’s) Becoming More Like Alfie – “Everybody knows that no means yes, just like glasses come free on the NHS. The more I look through them, the more I see …. “

(Clue – glasses = spectacles, NHS = UK National Health Service)

Tonight (in the Kingston) is spooky night, obviously. Language Hat (above) is one of those blogs I love to browse, for no obvious constructive reason than the pleasure in the words. Some excellent links in the same vein too – cannylinguist for example made me smile, and I didn’t even follow the link – but tonight just after writing the lines above I followed the link to “Long Story; Short Pier” (first time ever, honest) and find the motto at the top of he site is “The Gin in the Gin Soaked Boy” – a little more Neil Hannon. Weird.

And finally, having strolled along that pier, the paradoxical moral of this little post is “The at-once depressing and uplifting moral to take from all of this is simply to realize: voting is terribly important. It’s absolutely vital. It’s also the least important thing we can do, politically.”

Blogs can be harmful ?

Hmm. More information does not equal better basis for a decision – is clear enough, but not sure why blogging deserves singling out ?

The thing where blogging does add value is in the volume and “quality” of linking. It’s the motivation in the linking between the parts that adds the value, not the sum of its parts. This is a complex system, not arithmetic.
[Michael Feldstein at eLearning Magazine][via Soul Soup]

Amor Vincit Omnia

Love conquers all (not) says Donna Tartt in her Secret History, which is spooky, because in the review of the Rule of Four below, it was described as The Name of the Rose in the style of Donna Tartt, and I made the suggestion that the plot of the Hypnerotomachia (subject of The Rule of Four) sounded like Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, which, when released in the US, actually had the title “Love Conquers All”.

Tortuous I know, but spooky none-the-less.

Send it off in a letter to yourself.

It’s occurred to me before that that is exactly what blogging is to a large extent. We all rely on the interaction and feedback to add (mutual) value, but first and foremost a blog post is “don’t lose that thought” a journal of thoughts that seemed important at that point, to be able to come back and consider later.

The technology may have changed since Steeley Dan gave that advice in Rikki Don’t Lose That Number back in the 70’s, but the message is the same.[via Steve Yastrow on Tom Peters’ Blog]

Talking of Tom Peters, how the hyped-up in-your-face guru has mellowed. Always did like Tom despite the hype (born of passion), but he’s gone all – well – Zen, at 61. I think that says something.

Strong Opinions, Lightly Held

The motto of Paul Saffo, Director for the Institute for the Future. [via Evelyn Rodrigues][via Johnnie Moore]

This is actually the same argument I had with myself about active versus passive flexibility back in the 80’s and the paradox of “the unreasonable man”. No point being so open minded that you believe anything in an ephemeral way, blowing with the wind, so to speak. You should hold opinions, preconceptions you understand, not just cultural schemata, but should actively be prepared to test them against any other view and modify the view held or not, accordingly. Without this there is no coherence, and no evolution or progress either.

I like Johnnie’s blog – looks interesting. His punchline is “I think the best thing to do is show and say more of what you really think, with whatever true vehemence seems fitting to you at the time!” ie Clarifying your opinions is important, how hard you defend them (or not) depends on circumstances. I see Johnnie bought the Cluetrain Manifesto too. Man after my own heart.

Also like Evelyn’s punchline “Agreement is not necessary, thinking for oneself is.”

13th Century Mingers

A 13thC Italian poem by Cecco Angiolieri [via qB at Frizzy, with modern English translation].

Nothing new under the sun, I may have said once or twice before.

Led me to this Italian philosophy site. Intrigued to find Nietzsche and Plato as their only 3-star contributors in a very long list of references to the great and the good.

Quantum Genetics Information Model

It’s a few months since I looked at what’s going on in this space, and was prompted today by a cross hit on “non-locality. The BCS-Cybernetics site has this astonishing paper which is actually 4 years old …
[QUOTE]
[Levels of] chromosome quantum nonlocality as genetic information …

The 1st level is that the organism as a whole ….
The 2nd level is the cellular level ….
The 3rd level is the cellular-nuclear level ….
The 4th level is the molecular level ….
[So far so good ?]

The 5th level is the chromosome-holographic: at this level, a gene has a holographic memory, which is typically distributed, associative, and nonlocal, where the holograms “are read” by electromagnetic and/or acoustic fields … the nonlocality takes on its dualistic material-wave role, as may also be true for the holographic memory of the cerebral cortex.

The 6th level concerns the genome’s quantum nonlocality … Billions of an organism’s cells can [therefore] “know” about each other instantaneously, allowing such a cell set to regulate and coordinate its metabolism and its own functions.
[UNQUOTE]

What can I say ? Bear in mind that these people are would-be pragmatists, looking for exploitable Information Technology, not philosophers engaged in academic debate of mind-body dualism at the boundaries of the known world.

Blueberry Brain

Stumbled across this little lot on a cross-search hit on “Maslow’s Holistic Training Template“, which sounded like a 1970’s rock-band for a moment. (Just remembered what it triggered – Roger Ruskin-Spear’s Kinetic Wardrobe, though I actually remember it as Neil Innes, supporting Curved-Air and/or Mott The Hoople, Middlesbrough Town Hall, 1972-ish. Perhaps Dumpy’s Rusty Nuts is closer, or more obviously Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. None of which explains why my head is filled with Roy Wood singing “Goodbye Blackberry Rain”. Nurse, quick, fetch the straight-jacket.)

Anyway, Chaophilosophy or Chaosophy sounds awfully mystical; Dawkins wouldn’t approve, all emergence and convergence. No time to get a feel for the quality of the arguments yet, but some fascinating papers by Frederick Abraham, with all the right ingredients. Some wonderful titles in this collection of papers on Chaos Theory in Psychology. (Karl Pribram in there.)

Chaos is seductive, because it is seductive, and a good story is often “better” than objective truth. Seems to be the theme of my last dozen posts.