Shameless Selfpromotion

This is how they used to do it.





This is how I do it now.



The results are ready to be listened to online here.

Thanks to JF Sebastian for granting me some space to put my music.

Both links can also be found on the right of the posts, as can some others.

What's new, Cheshirepuss?

You are probably reading this because you're bored. That's the internet for you. A way to fill the time you save by using new technologies like the internet. So if I can assume your boredom hasn't disappeared after reading this small text, here is something else to occupy your mind with:
Reddit.

(A social bookmarking website where users can post links to content on the web. Other users may then vote the posted links up or down, causing them to appear more or less prominently on the reddit home page.)

Its supposably very Web 2.0, and therefore at least liked by the community making up Web 2.0 phenomena. I like it because its pretty fresh every time I check it.

Zah-mah-ki-bo

"I'm suing a cigarette company because on the package they promised to kill me, and yet here I am." - Kurt Vonnegut

Or rather there he was. He was one of the few people who wore a moustache and got away with it. And he wrote some nice books.

He will be missed. (Though not by me, I never even met him)

Game Theory

Adam Curtis has made a new documentary: The Trap.

1. F**k You Buddy


2. The Lonely Robot


3. We Will Force You To Be Free

Please try this at home

Here is an example of laziness. With this you don't even need to invite your friends over to watch a terrible movie and make comments about it. It's all included. It's Mystery Science Theater 3000.
This show really sucks. It's not funny. The premise is intentionally lame, and they seem to think lame equals funny. The films they show are mostly funny because they are bad, but watching the show in any other setting then the theater is mindbogglingly annoying. If they had just gone with the idea and presented it as something by itself, instead of tacking on these characters, it would have been fine. But then again, they seem to know they are lame. If only that would help.
But enjoy pieces of classic sci-fi or other vintage footage, while sitting in a theater with loud and obnoxious beings who think they are funny (and sometimes are).









There is a lot more where this came from.

To Err Is You, Man

Mistakes will be made. There are reasons for this. Only perfect knowledge will rid you of being imperfect. And I think then still Gödel and Heisenberg would object. Just take a look at this list of cognititve biases, which clearly shows that our conscience is not made to perceive reality, but to make a depiction of it that seems best for us. Thats not bad, its actually very nice I can imagine. But it does create a problem for handling a valid scientific method. What you think is not what is there. It's an approximation finetuned by evolution. And though science seems something scientists do, its actually a very commonplace thing. Most people expect the world to behave according to science, even though they wont check in detail. But there is a difference between what science tells us and what we perceive (and not analyse to deeply). This means we have to put effort in our perception in order to do what we think is best, and even to know what best might be.
Maybe not at all a new point, but a nice way to try to releave myself of the burden of being afraid to make a mistake. It does seem that there is literally no escape from them, because my genes hid my perceptional flaws from my mind. I gotta be kidding right?

Here is a site with all kinds of video lectures, where you can follow complete university courses. If you happen to have the time.

Here is one of my heroes mr. Dennett in an interview, where he also adresses subjects which relate to what I was blabbering about. Maybe it gets you interested to view those university courses. For a while.

Sociobiology

It's EO Wilson-time!!!!
This guy has filled in some more of the links between what we think and why we think it, namely through sociobiology. Basically its about the pressure of social behaviour on evolution, or how life adapts to dealing with groups. It's something which is really present everywhere (except in solitary species), and which has massive implications on how to view and describe humans and human behaviour.






Wilson says he never got out of his bug-period and likes ants. And so do I, what a surprise. They are really fascinating. For some.

Industrial fruit

The secret life of machines is a series of shows, which explain how things used to work in what seem the seventies but are actually the late eighties. Of course now we fly our hovercars and use the internet. But stroll through an antiqueshop, and you will find some of the appliances explained here, like the video recorder, fax machine and telephone, and even some your grandparents used to gain status in their neighbourhood like the vacuum cleaner, and the refrigerator. Its an old show is what i'm saying. But nonetheless both entertaining and informative. Like all good things in life.

Here are some more episodes.

And if you dont like sitting through those stupid videos here is the cartoonversion of the same thing.

And if you are now really turned on about wanting to know how stuff works, there's How Stuff Works.

Links

James Burke made a fascinating documentary series called Connections. All in all it spans 40 episodes of near an hour, and its all about how things change, and the serendipity that's involved in this. Here is the first episode,with the first series here.

PSATIW

People suck and this is why:









Yes you suck. You. Suck.

(Apologies to any non-human intelligence interpreting the previous words)