Today started reasonably well. Woke up at 0630 and made first cup of coffee. A quick check online revealed no difficult emails and the good news that a Randinista had been banned for 24 hours for disruptive activity on the WIkipedia; It will just make him worse, but then bans escalate for repeat behaviour. clear overnight email, check Twitter and RSS feed while dawn breaks. The back garden looked wonderful; snow, frost and sun. Sign cheque for son's Geography field trip and settle into bath to finish Mortimer's excellent biography of Edward III (the best place in the world to read is the bath) along with its appendix on the proof that Edward II did not as a result of a red hot poker inserted from the rear in Berkley Castle, but instead lived on in Northern Italy and died naturally. While dressing promise wife that I will go and buy new kitchen lights and fit them this afternoon before I vanish to the US for three weeks at the weekend. Thence to Study, Mahler's 7th Symphony and get on with finishing the new course brochures (of which more tomorrow). From that point on it starts to go badly wrong.

Continue reading "I hate Mondays" »

I found this list of beliefs pretty scary, and spotted at least three major contradictions (well three things that are contradictions with one claim), one significant disappointment and one piece of dangerous self- delusion.

Continue reading "Disturbing" »

A rather delightful satire on the way in which the proponents of pseudo-science claim scientific objectivity. The context here by the way is the WIkipedia page on NLP.

Continue reading "No serious study of whether the earth is flat since 1493" »

At our Christmas party in Singapore a few weeks ago, Angelina put together a slide set about the various events over the last year here in Cognitive Edge. We've now published a revised version of it as an annual report and it makes for good reading. It gives some idea of the growth in our network and the increasing number of projects as SenseMaker™ matures as a product. You can also see the smiling (or less so in my case) faces of the team. We are gradually expanding the About us section of the web site to provide more material to support the network, and there are more white papers available. Let us know what you think, and if you need more. We are a small team with a lot of work on at the moment but we will do our best!

Answer to yesterday's trivia question is here

OK, a trivia question for you: how many people have been capped by Wales at both Rugby and Baseball? Just to help you out the first was Henry Vivian Pugh Huzzey born in 1876 and the most recent Mark Ring, first baseball cap in 1984. For those who don't know Cardiff and Newport in Wales along with Liverpool in England are the main centres for baseball in the UK. There are differences however, a point being scored for every base making a a British home run four and teams (like cricket) are eleven in number and there are two innings. As you would expect the main international match of the year is between England and Wales and was won in 2008 by Wales (the last English win was 1995)

This has been hanging around in my RSS feed with a must blog tag attached to it for several months now. It's Margaret Atwood talking about debt, not just in the context of financial crisis, but its whole relationship to slavery, social equity and our relationship with the planet out of which we eke an increasingly precarious existence. I was also reading elsewhere of the increasing interest show in Islamic Banking, the proven success of the Grameen Bank and other forms of Micro-lending. In 325 the clergy were forbidden usury in the First Council of Nicaea. Thomas Acquinas taught that living of interest alone was a sin, while sharing the risk of an investment was not. Dante placed ursers on the inner ring of the seventh circle of hell, a barren plain of sand ignited by flakes of fire. There is a pattern here, and it may be time to reread the parable of the talents for a new world which if it is not brave at least needs to less gung ho.

Very very clever. Hat tip to Doc Searls

Memory of Christmas excess having faded its time to use up the left-over turkey (I hate to freeze it). One of the best ways is Turkey Tetrazzini which will go into production later on this afternoon; the aim being to eat in front of the BBC's new and apparently more authentic production of The Thirty Nine Steps. Its amusing to think that complaints are anticipating for not including the Big Ben scene created by Hitchcock's film. For many people these days the film is more authentic than the book on which is based. That aside, back to the cooking and that Turkey. A few days I ago I packed up a pound of cold turkey with a hands off on pain of mutilation notice. Shortly I will cook half a pound of spaghetti and then make a sauce of almonds, lemon juice, hot cream, stock (made from the original turkey's bones) and some brandy. That will be poured over layers of turkey and spaghetti along with some mushrooms, covered with Parmesan and then baked in the Aga for twenty minutes.

That will be followed with Anzac Christmas Pudding. I have no idea if comes from down under or not but its great to eat in front of the log fire. A 1lt bombe dish is coated inside with butter and shortbread and then a mixture of cream, brandy and mincemeat follows. After twenty minutes in the freeze this is hollowed out and the space filled with organic vanilla ice cream, almonds, pistachios and cherries. The whole is then frozen. 45 minutes before serving, remove from the freezer, dip the mould into hot water and turn it out onto a serving dish decorated with holly and cherries. After all of that, plan a very long walk for Monday.

Radio 4 is one of the greatest institutions ever created by a Broadcasting Company. It has over the years created a stream of high quality documentaries, magazine programmes and entertainment that communicate to broad audiences without compromising intellectual integrity. It ranges between the thoughtful consideration of everything from science to history and literature provided by Melvyn Bragg, to satirical humour and that cultural icon of the British, namely The Archers. ABC in Australia (not the US company of the same name) , inheriting from a common base has achieved something similar with probably the best range of podcasts I know; on philosophy, the mind and science as well as the omnipresence exemplar of humanism Phil Adams. If I have one criticism of Radio 4 (and the BBC in general) is that their policy on podcasts represents protectionism in comparison with their Australian sibling.

Why this eulogy? Well one of the best examples of Radio 4 is the daily magazine Women's Hour the title of which is a misnomer as it has a large male following (including yours truly). Its lead presenter is Jenni Murray who also wrote an excellent article in today's Observer on the general folly of allowing the worlds financial institutions to be run on the testosterone drive needs of bonuses and growth at all costs. Now there is a danger of sexual stereotyping going into reverse here; nurture wins out over nature and (says he with tongue firmly in check but with a hint of seriousness), who brought up the current generation of macho financial leaders? That danger aside this article is worth reading and a visit to some of the podcasts referenced above is recommended.

OK now this is scary. Hat tip to Sentient Developments.

I got back from the Blues Boxing day defeat of the Dragons at around 1800 today. It was a good match with anexciting final ten minutes; the good guys won but it was cold, oh so cold. After checking the latest Randinista edits on the WIkipedia I checked my email to see one from Pascal Venier pointing me to this delightful paper entitled Rugby (the religion of Wales) and its influence on the Catholic church: should Pope Benedict XVI be worried? Its from the BMJ in case you doubt its authority. Aside from the fact it contains valuable data it is a wonderful satire on the confusion of correlation with causation.

I had been meaning to write on Spiral Dynamics for some time, but this does it much better. The reply is also revealing. Ha tip to Peter Stanbridge for finding another good blog for my RSS feed. Apologies by the way for lack of productivity in the space. Too many projects, too little time and a general weariness for a year of travel. I should be back on track post Christmas.

For those who followed my earlier posts I am pleased to say that, at least for the moment, right did win out and Peter Damian is restored as an editor. Nice to see him back at work this morning removing some of the POV material on the NLP article. I have long seen NLP as a manipulative pseudo-science and making sure that the article is question is factual rather than promotional is important. After that we can move onto Spiral Dynamics....

I'm planning to be in DC 15-16th January to follow up on various contacts and some possible DARPA work. At the moment there will be some free slots, if interested email me.

We are repeating a prior experiment and opening up the guest blog for anyone who wants to contribute. Details of how to do so in the header.

I finally lost patience with another listserv. In this case value networks. Pity really, some good discussions from time to time but its no longer worth the effort. That leaves me with ACT which I will keep, otherwise social media has largely replaced any utility provided. In this particular case there is only so much polemic one can take before it gets tedious. At least in the wikipedia there are community rules requiring proper citation, NPOV and WP:NPA

I think I may need to rethink my online ordering of books etc. given this report

Brian reminded me some time ago that today is the 40th Anniversary of the publication in Science of The Tragedy of the Commons . The article explains how a group of herders sharing a common grazing area can destroy it by acting in their personal self interest. The more cattle you put on the commons the better off you are, but you bring on the destruction of the resource. Now that is a crude summary of a power argument, but the lesson obtains today in terms of the current financial crisis, not to mention global warming. The latter point being made strongly in Hardin's original essay. The title of this posting is a quote from Hegel/Engels used in the article.

Now to some controversy. My argument when I read the article several decades ago in a different time and place, was that the human response to the commons historically has been enclosure and feudalism. I see no reason to change that judgement; in a world of increasing resource restriction it is the most likely model that will emerge. I would also argue that you already see its early modern form in multi-nationals. CEOs have the absolute power of medieval monarchs, Vice Presidents mange their estates and occasional unite to overthrow the King. Serfs (contractors) and Freemen (tenured employees) all have their role and there are even incidents of droit du seigneur. Countries and international bodies have a similar role to that the Papacy.

Our former guest blogger Ron Donaldson is being interviewed over on Kathy Hansen's blog. The latest instalment is here. The next stage after guru is either sage or grumpy old man so I plan to buy Ron a drink on Monday up in Liverpool to check his intentions!

Early this morning I was watching the History Channel while catching up on email, wikiwars etc. over the first coffee of the day. The series on 20th Century Battlefield was dealing with the Tet Offensive in 1968. Personally that was the year where I became politically active going on demonstrations/marches for civil rights in Derry, and against the Vietnam War in Grosvenor Square London. I should add, that at the age of 14 I really shouldn't have been there but it was the sixties and my parents were not aware until after the events in question.

Continue reading "Reflections on transparancy" »

Still not feeling 100% and the blog is suffering a bit in consequence. I intend to return to my Think anew, Act anew series as soon as I get a bit of peace and quiet. In the meantime I had one of those nightmare journeys yesterday driving north to Yorkshire tired and having to stop at every service station to walk around the car a couple of times to wake up. It was worth it for a good meeting, then a mad dash down south to see my 17 year old (well he will be tomorrow) play rugby for the school. Now there were two major frustrations/irritations in that process.

Continue reading "Rubber necks & moral turpitude" »

Part recovered from flu and at home for a few weeks I was able to recommence, after a too long absence, one of my main hobbies, namely cooking. Saturday I decamped to Sumbler Borthers in London Road Marlborough. John Sumbler is one of those old fashioned butchers who knows all his customers by name, uses locally killed meat and is a specialist in game. Conversation is a part of purchase and I left after half an hour with three brace of pheasant, partridge, venison sausage, lambs liver, green bacon, venison, two shanks of lamb and a shoulder of lamb from a rare breed, not to mention some of the best black pudding you can find in the south. Thence to the Greengrocer and home to start a mass batch cook.

Continue reading "An interlude with the Aga" »