The Connectivist

I’ve been interacting with Jaap van Till for the last year or two, mainly on Twitter. His blog is The Connectivist. He recently made a reference to, and separately blogged about, Ann-Marie Slaughter’s “The Chess Board and the Web“ in a comment to me. And my response was to liken the sound of her “Chessboard” … Continue reading “The Connectivist”

MML – Me & My Languages

I’ve had actual language lessons in maybe four non-English foreign languages at various times, studied a couple more as a precursor to needing to learn them and looked-up some basic vocabulary in a couple more for travel reasons. More generally, I’ve taken longer term interest in etymology, particularly from Proto-Indo-European roots and sometimes Sanskrit sources as well … Continue reading “MML – Me & My Languages”

#Pirsig as a Post-Post-Modernist – ahead of his time.

Many tweets and memorial pieces coming in, still every 20 seconds or so via social media – most “so long and thanks for all the …. fish” one-liner memories, linking to some already published mainstream obituary. Some like SeymourBlogger @AbbeysBooks (followed by Jim Landis) have their own very specific “learnings”. Re-reading ZMM (Part 1) Re-reading … Continue reading “#Pirsig as a Post-Post-Modernist – ahead of his time.”

Spinoza survives the PoMo’s

Entertaining review from Eugene Wolters at Critical Theory, of  Francois Dosse “Intersecting Lives” of the philosophical odd-couple  Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. (Hat tip to Judith Stout @judystout1) Apart from the madness and chaotic activism from pre-1968 Paris, the lives intersect with the name-dropping list of all those you’d expect from Lacan, Foucault, Baudrillard, Derrida and more. … Continue reading “Spinoza survives the PoMo’s”

Atomisation of Markets & Labour @paulmasonnews

Reading Paul Mason’s “Postcapitalism — A Guide to the Future” after earlier mentioning the previews and as is my wont recording some notes around the mid-way point. That is, I don’t really know his conclusions for future action yet, but as previewed it is indeed full of material I already identify with, indeed have been … Continue reading “Atomisation of Markets & Labour @paulmasonnews”

It’s Evolutionary Psychology Stupid

(Editorial Note : This paper was originally prepared for the 2005 Liverpool Conference on Robert Pirsig and his Metaphysics of Quality (MoQ). It is a personal non-technical view of the MoQ, and indeed the first part of paper is an entirely subjective and naive account of the author’s “thought journey” that led to reading Pirsig … Continue reading “It’s Evolutionary Psychology Stupid”

Reading Quickie

Reading Jonathan Haidt’s “The Righteous Mind” after enjoying his “Happiness Hypothesis“. (Also just finished Umberto Eco’s “The Prague Cemetery“) Given the current high profile of the #Breivik case, Haidt’s work is a very important piece on the rationalist delusion, being 100% rational is absolutely not sane for a human – in fact it’s a good … Continue reading “Reading Quickie”

Project Management Memetics

Leon sent me a link to this paper a couple of years ago, to which I responded “interesting” – he knows I’m interested in memes. I didn’t actually read beyond the title until today. The essence of memes is that there is something “self-serving” about patterns of information (*1) which is independent of any rationally … Continue reading “Project Management Memetics”

Laurie Taylor interviews Eagleton

Thanks to Sam for this link to this Terry Eagleton interview by Laurie Taylor in the New Humanist. Pretty sure I have this original link to Eagleton’s review of The God Delusion, but just in case. Great interview anyway. Several points to pick-up on … the inevitability of progress Eagleton referring to Dawkins beliefs. The … Continue reading “Laurie Taylor interviews Eagleton”