30/9
Eatonweb started my evening off beautifully by pointing me to A List Apart: Indie Media, which is just the psyche-booster my bloginess needed.
"You don't get paid to do it. No one is going to hand
you a golden statuette. You won't make any money
from it. There's no IPO for doing good in the world." |
With a stellar sense of humor underlying a brilliant intelligence, Max Tegmark is a cosmologist whose interests include the cosmic microwave background radiation, galaxy redshift surveys, early galaxy formation, gamma-ray bursts, quantum decoherence and a self-described 'bananas' theory of everything.
| "The only postulate in this theory is that all structures that exist mathematically exist also physically, by which we mean that in those complex enough to contain self-aware substructures (SASs), these SASs will subjectively perceive themselves as existing in a physically "real'' world." |
29/9
Peter Lamborn Wilson begins our journey with a lexical deconstruction of 'home' and then leads gently into the forest of utopian architecture. Through the looking glass and here we are in the world of RV and VR; Virtual Enclosures - Doors of Perception.
| "The true American home is built for Society of Divorce, in which the isolation and oedipal misery of the family produces 'inner separation', so to speak, or alienation." |
While we're dealing with dealing with our familial alienation over the coming holiday seasons, p'raps we could relatively entertain with Paperfold - An Exercise in Exponential Growth.
| "But no exponential growth process can continue forever. A
system that is dominated by reinforcing loops will quickly
encounter one or more limits. These limits will eventually cause
some balancing loop to become dominant, a process known as
shifting dominance." |
Beyond The Limits To Growth, penned in collaboration with Donella H. Meadows and Jørgen Randers, is an update to Dennis L. Meadows' seminal book.
"How good a society does human nature permit?"
"How good a human nature does society permit?"
Abraham Maslow |
28/9
Robert Anton Wilson can clearly see that Reality Ain't What It Used to Be in this refutation of the "New Agers" appropriation of Bell's Theorum.
| "Dr. John Archibald Wheeler and Dr. Jack Sarfatti
have offered even more radical offshoots of this
notion. Dr. Wheeler has proposed that every
atomic or sub-atomic experiment we perform
changes every particle in the universe
everywhichway in time, all the way back to the
Big Bang." |
Alfred Jarry gives us the opportunity we've all been waiting for but really didn't have to wait for since when it is built, it will be as if it had already been built; so we can
stop waiting.
How to Construct a Time Machine.
| "A Time Machine, that is, a device for exploring Time, is no more difficult to conceive of than a Space Machine, whether you consider Time as the fourth dimension of Space or as a locus essentially different because of its contents." |
Two short essays by Janet Biehl and Murray Bookchin show that When "Realism" Becomes
Capitulation, violence has been the usual way to shake it out. Their lyric dance makes it clear that each of us must recognize a transmemetic understanding.
| "One of the most dangerous aspects of the present cultural and social
counterrevolution is the widespread belief that capitalism is here to stay,
that it is a "natural" social order, and that attempts to change its basic
structure are futile and irrelevant at best and pernicious at worst." |
Mario Vaneechoutte clarifies whether the replicator meme should be replicated. The replicator: a misnomer. Conceptual
implications for genetics and memetics
| "However, current
genes are not (self-)replicators and, as I will argue below, in contradiction to the current paradigm of the RNA-replicator world hypothesis, they have never been." |
All meme, all the time, you are tuned to ViralMedia.con; 101.10 on your neuro-dial. Meme-Based Models of Mind and the Possibility for Consciousness in
Alternate Media
| "Memes have worked from the beginning to improve the interface with this
electronic medium so they may move more easily between the technological
and the biological realms." |
27/9
We are expecting snow(!) tonight, so the thought of Stuart Hameroff and Alwyn Scott enjoying
A Sonoran Afternoon is a good one; though what dazzles is the clarity of thought in this unedited transcript of their discussion.
| "We both feel uncomfortable with the notion that the mind is nothing more than the switchings off and on of the brain's neurons, and we are both looking for something more. But we're looking in different places." |
The Global Studies Program appears to be the purview of those who would grok the really big picture and make sense of the Gaian ideosphere's macro-fractal-(dis)order. Changes in Global Society is a proposal put together by the triune of Minnesota-Stanford-Wisconsin, and may indicate a change in approach to interdisciplinary studies.
| "The Consortium is an educational
experiment that is fostering more adequate understanding of the complexities of change in
contemporary global society." |
Let me first say that despite my distaste for labels, I will adopt that of heterosexual; if only so that I can broadcast my need of a femate. (dear lady of understanding , my muse awaits your music) That vertiginous aside aside, Engaged Tenderness, The gay and lesbian Handbook on Homosexuality and Living Together in a same-sex partnership is a guide with some kinky lapses in the translation; appropriate for all sexual beings.
| "Therein parents and parents-similar reference persons take an outstanding
workstation." |
Robert Parry had the story killed by Newsweek editors. Will this sordid tale get buried yet deeper by the erection of a cocksure cretin? George H.W. Bush, the CIA & a Case of State Terrorism
| "With CIA headquarters now officially named the George
Bush Center for Intelligence and with veterans of the
Reagan-Bush years still dominating the CIA's hierarchy,
the spy agency might be hoping that the election of
Texas Gov. George W. Bush will free it from demands to
open up records to the American people." |
26/9
David E. Nichols, Ph.D. is a researcher who maintains what one of his students called "an oasis in the midwest".
A Scientist Reflects on the Discovery and future of LSD is a heartfelt thanks to Albert Hoffman, and a look at where and how further research could be carried out. ...yeah, it's an oldie but a goodie...
| "Many influential people have made public pronouncements about the dangers and lack of value of
research with LSD and related drugs. These individuals will eventually retire from public life and
relinquish their power and we must hope that more enlightened and progressive persons will take
their place. We also desperately need a greater number of individuals to pursue Ph.D. and M.D.
degrees who believe that this research is worthwhile, and who are willing to devote some portion of
their effort to bringing about change." |
Ladislav Kovác has written an opus whose melody is molecular and harmony humane. Fundamental Principles of Cognitive Biology gives a precise grounding in the field's epistemic thrust.
| "An unceasing expansion of molecular biology, which has begun in the early 1960s, is both exciting and appalling. It is providing ever deeper insight into the mechanisms of functioning of the living cell. This enables, in turn, ever more powerful interventions into those mechanisms, with consequences which may be already transcending human capacity to foresee, evaluate and control." |
Yehouda Harpaz has clarity of reasoning on his mind. The Irrefutability of nonsense-arguments,
and (the) implications aims to help us recognize, diagnose and treat the gimcrackery that often passes for insightful polemic.
| "It should be noted that if you think that you have spotted a nonsense-argument, it is not not necessarily because the other person used a nonsense-argument." |
At the birth of a sexually concieved and urethral-orifice-born homo noeticus, the mother often needs a snatch snip; but I don't think that is what the authors of Artificial life needs a real epistemology are getting at. sorry...
| "If artificial life is to inform philosophy, physics, and biology it must address the implementation of epistemic cuts." |
25/9
Physics and Cognition: A Remnant from the Cat? takes a highly charged subject and reveals the object to be us. Replete with linked references and sagacious commentary, Dimiter G. Chaka brings (us) layfolk through a smooth transition to reflective amazement.
| "Suppose, just for the sake of the argument, that all unsolved mysteries are
linked into one coherent structure, such that all pieces fit perfectly and
none of them is unneeded nor redundant. Perhaps the physics of the brain
could tell us more about other, seemingly unrelated, blank spots in
present-day science. Perhaps we may need to know how the brain works in
order to develop a complete theory of quantum gravity, and vice versa." |
Herbert FJ Muller makes a start on spanning quality and quantity with tensile threads of ideational silk; and then we find ourselves beautifully clothed. How Do Physicists Build Reality?
| "The contributions of Raman and Abraham suggest, if I understand them correctly, that consciousness can be defined as a very complex system, including a 'chaos' factor. But
will descriptions of hypercomplex objective systems be able to access consciousness in
its full meaning ? I think the answer has to be no: because such an account would need
to include the aspect of subjective experience, and this cannot be done objectively." |
In aid of those who may be inclined to directly experience the acuity, Sputnik could have The Foolproof.....Culture Technique as a pre-orbital booster manual.
| "Because the vision that is received through P. cubensis appears to be so
consistent across multiple people, I am inclined to believe that it is an
actual, useful view of the way the universe is organized." |
Our moral prowess had best catch up with our physical ability, and grey goo is hardly a psychedelic phantasy. Advances in the Philosophy of Technology brings us to a better understanding of Ethics and the Systemic Character of Modern Technology
| "Can and may people resign from their individual responsibility and leave guidance and control to an integrated system?" |
23/9
Rebecca Blood writes a masterful overview of the medium's media; to which I would add this utterly-out-of-context quote as a personal reminder to remain seditious. Weblogs: A History and Perspective
"Highly technical philosophical arguments of the sort many philosophers favor are absent here. That is because I have a prior problem to deal with. I have learned that arguments, no matter how watertight, often fall on deaf ears. I am myself the author of arguments that I consider rigorous and unanswerable but that are often not such much rebutted or even dismissed as simply ignored. I am not complaining about injustice-- we all must ignore arguments, and no doubt we all ignore arguments that history will tell us we should have taken seriously. Rather, I want to play a more direct role in changing what is ignorable by whom.
Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea" |
In reply to his most vaunted critic, Murray Bookchin delivers a stunning blow to those who would co-opt our re-evolutionary insights for their own pejorative purposes. Comments on the International Social Ecology
Network Gathering and the "Deep Social
Ecology" of John Clark
| "We are facing a real crisis in this truly counterrevolutionary time--not only in
society's relationship with the natural world but in human consciousness itself. By
designating himself as a "social deep ecologist or a deep social ecologist," Clark
has obfuscated earnest attempts to demarcate the differences between a
deadening mystical, often religious, politically inert, and potentially reactionary
tendency in the ecology movement, and one that is trying to emphasize the need
for fundamental social change and fight uncompromisingly the 'present state of
political culture.'" |
In search of material on George Spenser Brown, and more particularly a book he wrote under the pseudonym James Keys, Only Two Can Play This Game, I came across The Obsever. This is an internetorical gem from '93 that has a very good discussion on GSB's Laws of Form among much else pertaining to Autopoiesis & Enactive Cognitive Science. I'm still looking for Only Two..., both in the carnesphere at used bookshops and in any kind of online form.
| "Everything said is said by an observer" |
So anyway... kindly directed me to assay my religious leanings within the hallowed javascript of the SpeakOut.com Religion Selector. How did it know that I'm a neo-pagan mahayana buddhist cult leader?? oops, now the coyote runs free...
22/9
While not in any way qualified to audit the Grand Unified Theory MU27 by Alex Muvrin, I feel the effects of sheer genius rattling my brain. An amazing Spime Table adds up to a clear view of the (w)hole.
| "Through art and music man wonders about his interaction and his place within the universe; through intuitive and cognitive processes he experiences the simple yet profound and mysterious recognition of reality where truth, beauty and justice within our universe are experienced as a dynamic-interactive, fundamentally integrated and intrinsically meaningful unity." |
Hidden Data Transmission by Controlling
Electromagnetic Emanations of Computers. There are important consequences for computer security. User programs or maybe even Java
applets can broadcast data that can be undetectably received. Say no more...
| "Thus, with the aid of trojan horses or viruses, it would be possible to steal data from
otherwise well-isolated sites. This can be done with receiving equipment as simple and widely available as a standard AM or FM tuner." |
All psyched-out with nowhere to go, a rather more restrained Forbes eases the tension somewhat in it's report; The Tempest Surrounding Tempest
As a fundamental given, we wouldn't want to break any laws (uh huh, real ones that is). Brig Klyce fills us up and then adds vigor to The Second Law of Thermodynamics. How has meaningful information emerged in the universe?
| "As for the origin of information, the fountainhead, this must lie
somewhere in the territory close to the big bang" |
21/9
Forced into re-hashing for a day. Our connection with the south, and the internet, was severed by a mis-dug hole near Grand Prairie, Alberta; proving that the backhoe is mightier than the byte. The usual serendipity resumes tomorrow.
cool freeware, CryptEdit, small, fast, perfect...
If the weight of the body of evidence is sufficient perhaps the scales of justice will break, to be replaced by the magnanimous garb of tolerance. Prohibition: The So-Called War on Drugs, from the Serendipity site, has a cornucopeia of links fit to cause any table of legislation to groan.
| "In order for the evil of the Drug War to triumph it is sufficient that basically decent
people do nothing to oppose it. By doing nothing, they allow those who profit from the
Drug War to get away with destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent
people and destroying the civil liberties of whole nations, a crime of such enormity as
has not been seen since jack-booted thugs in official positions ruled Germany." | To keep abreast of the latest developments in this culturally pubescent auto-hostility, Drug Sense Weekly provides a precis.
| "According to a Webtrends.net comparison, the DrugSense/MAP Websites are
more popular then those of the Drug Czar's Office, Partnership for a Drug-Free
America, CASA and DARE combined." | Summoning Blake and deep personal wisdom , Jonathan Ott writes in the epilogue to Ayahuasca Analogues, that The Entheogenic Reformation is our best hope for healing . A Panacea for Pangaea?
| "Most of us really don't believe in the gods any more; few among us have much faith in our governments, nor in science and technology . . . but we do believe in the magic of drugs!" |
20/9
Tap, tap, tap; taap, taap, taap; tap, tap, tap. Are treatments such as Thought Field Therapy the distress calls of a social ship that has struck the iceburg of glacial genetic evolution. Our souls cry out for the flow of cognitive revolution to stop, if only long enough to grok our location; but there is no time.
Now, if there is any doubt we can refer to William Seager's The Reality of Now.
Pt = t < _
and by extension:
Nt = St_ or (~(t < _) & ~(_ < t))
Ft = _ < t.
No vicious regress or logical incompatibilities emerge. |
To be, then, is the question; and th'answer 'rapped therein. The Mystic Rider conjures The Alan Watts Story, which illuminates his extraordinary ability to bring us to the point, to later realize that the closer we come to that the more impenetrable the veils of this.
| "When you are told from childhood that you are expected and commanded to
behave in a way that will be acceptable only if you do it voluntarily, you remain
permanently mixed up. That, if anything, is permanent brain damage." |
Still later by our re-cognition, though earlier as the prankster would have it, A.W. related grace in inimitable fashion with a lecture titled The World As Emptiness, (or, How the Dharma Bum Spent His Easter Vacation).
| "The difficulty of Zen is the almost overwhelming
problem of getting anyone to see that life-and-death is not a problem. The Zen
master tackles this by asking the student to find out for whom the world is a
problem, for whom is pleasure desirable and pain undesirable, thus turning
consciousness back upon itself to discover the ego. But of course it turns out that
this mythical "I" that seems to confront experience or to be trapped in the world is
nowhere to be found." |
Charles Tart gives a more prosaic yet also highly speculative exclamation to the point of my day. As Above, So Below: Five Basic Principles
Underlying Physics and Psychology
19/9
I here link to the antithetical nemesis of sane dialogue...jeez, glad I talked myself out of that one! In it's place, please put your hands together for Launching a Counteroffensive in Cyberspace, wherein the plot thickens as Eric Thomas hacks into Jason Arnold's computer with a few
simple keystrokes, sniffing Arnold's password, hijacking his online session and stealing
all the data on his screen.
A Compendium of hurl-worthy comments and experiences from the readers of Heartless Bitches International. I'm in troubled surfing territory tonight; oh no.
| "Men who find out I am a scientist and then want to get into some sort of
intellectual pissing match. I don't really care who is smarter, to tell you the truth.
On the other hand I am not going to "play dumb" to satisfy their egos and
guess what? That makes me a castrating bitch!" |
Having filled up with enough negativity to fuel the black light for a while, what do I do but find more. In a highly critical review of Fashionable Nonsense - Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science, Eric Lott deepens my angst; am I really Old Left?
| "Like Richard Rorty, the bland old man of this
camp, Sokal and Bricmont lament that
"remnants of the left have collaborated in
driving the last nail in the coffin of the ideals of
justice and progress," which, translated,
means the new social movements make us
exNew Left white guys feel unimportant." |
Winging it on a higher plane, Anthony Giddens administers fine anti-venom in a lecture that identifies the three big changes simply running through most of our lives, for
most people, living across the face of the world. Globalisation, scientific innovation and technological change coupled with custom and tradition in retreat, all point toward a need for Third Way politics. I like the feeling that the words "fuzzy sovereignty" give as they memetically worm their way toward the rot of (inner)nationalism.
| "Whatever happens in the near future, just
as market philosophies of a crude kind really dominated the last
20 or so years, the debate around Third Way politics, the debate
around civil society, the debate around third sector and voluntary
groups will be the centre point of political debate, discussions
and political structures for the next 20 years." |
18/9
Compare the statement: Ninety percent of the world's births and 77 percent of its deaths will take place in LDCs (less developed countries) in 1998., and this one: It takes 2,500 gallons of water, 12 pounds of grain, 35 pounds of topsoil and the energy equivalent of one gallon of gasoline to produce one pound of feedlot beef...... Sustainability,
Carrying Capacity,
and Overconsumption. Note the list on the right side that shows energy consumption by country; I am one em-bare-assed Canuck.
I have a case of gastro-ethical neuroburn from my double-burger and cheese, but Spider Robinson to the rescue with a look back from the future; When we will be like the gods.
| "Right around your day," she explains, "worldwide
population reached the point at which half the
geniuses that ever lived were alive -- and all had
access to excellent tools and resources. The
Singularity was inevitable." |
Brad DeLong and his Thoughts of the Week passed into my consciousness from a source I don't remember; but Deep Thanks whoever you are. Two Views of the Sources of Global Divergence: Jared
Diamond and Jeffrey Sachs
| "It was at the end of America's Constitutional Convention
that Benjamin Franklin stood, and said that for the entire
Convention he had been looking at the picture on the wall
and wondering whether it was of a sunrise or a sunset. But,
Franklin said, now that the Convention had finished its work
and he had digested the plan proposed, he knew the answer:
that it was a rising, and not a setting sun." |
Species of Mind - The Philosophy and Biology of Cognitive Ethology by Colin Allen and Marc Bekoff is available in, albeit critical, part. The Preface, chapter 1, and chapter 9, linked here separately as there is no hyper-relationality, clearly illustrate the author's aim to explore how evolutionary accounts of mental phenomena can inform and be informed by philosophical accounts.
| "Cognitive ethology need not model itself on other fields of science, such as physics or neurobiology, in order to gain credibility. Envy of the "hard" sciences is what led to the neglect of animal and human minds in the early part of the twentieth century." |
16/9
Not to be let off on a technicality like it being the weekend, Media Temporalities in the Internet: Philosophy of Time and Media with Derrida and Rorty is an assignment that will reap rewards come Monday meeting time.
| "The current situation is characterized by a plurality of heterogenous time concepts." |
David Porush assembled a bevy of brain-stretching documents as background for Converging on Opportunity. A prediction that rings true: By 2006 we will have shitloads of transmission protocols for the home user which gives them hundreds and thousands and millions of kilobytes of bandwith in, but still at like 30k going out. Why? Because the average user is a lame web surfer, still.
"When the instant speed of information movement begins...there is a collapse of delegated authority and a dissolution of the pyramid and management structures made familiar in the organizational chart. The separation of functions and the division of spaces, stages, and tasks ...tend to dissolve through the organic interrelations of electricity."
Marshall McLuhan, 1964 |
Conspicuously altruistic, and obviously a fine human, the very san(m)e David Porush would like to send you a free copy of his book The Soft Machine: Cybernetic Fiction (London: Methuen, 1985), with the proviso that you donate a second copy (which he will also kindly enclose) to your local academic library.
| "It also explains the origins and philosophy of cybernetics in Norbert Wiener's work and suggests how culture and cybernetics interact to resist and co-create each other." |
Now it's time to play, so lets go downstairs and try Bending Spacetime in the Basement. No, this is not an entheogenic phantasy.
|
