I read several books on authenticity last autumn. Below is from Andrew Potter’s The Authenticity Hoax: How We Get Lost Finding Ourselves, which is representative of the book as a whole—thought provoking stuff with the occasional reactionary junk: [Lionel] Trilling suggests that the way authenticity “has become part of the moral slang of our day [...]
In conversation with a friend, he mentioned his dream for a “No Website” Movement: content should be freed for consumption in whatever format its consumer desires. This is not a website; it’s a scrapbook, a swipe file and a memory hole. There is no separation between content and design, form or function: all is one. [...]
Viktor Shlovsky on art, via Art Spiegelman’s “Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@?*! ” in The Best American Comics, 2009: The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar,’ to make forms [...]
Wikipedia on satisficing: Satisficing (a portmanteau of satisfy and suffice) is a decision-making strategy that attempts to meet criteria for adequacy, rather than to identify an optimal solution. A satisficing strategy may often be (near) optimal if the costs of the decision-making process itself, such as the cost of obtaining complete information, are considered in the [...]
From the Organizational Development Network: Definition of OD Organization Development is a dynamic values-based approach to systems change in organizations and communities; it strives to build the capacity to achieve and sustain a new desired state that benefits the organization or community and the world around them. Principles of Practice The practice of OD is grounded [...]
I rediscovered this wonderful paper by Siân Bayne of the University of Edinburgh entitled “Temptation, Trash and Trust: the authorship and authority of digital texts”. In his influential essay ‘What is an Author?’ (Foucault, 1977), Foucault explores the notion of the author – conventionally taken for granted as a knowable entity existing in a stable [...]
From David Barringer’s “Myths of the Self-Taught Designer” in his book of essays and more, There’s Nothing Funny about Design (and available online in parts 1, 2 and 3). Designed as a dialogue, this piece is, as Barringer says, “a hybrid mess of a literary shenanigan, inspired by the dialogues of the philosopher Denis Diderot (1713–1784). [...]
Gift Hub (Blogging Philanthropy from A Dumpster) is a favorite blog of mine. On “Foundation Trustees as Stewards of the Public Interest” I left this comment: Personally, I’d like to see society make a point of separating out Charity (giving to those of equal social standing) and Mercy (giving to those of lesser standing). Imagine [...]
Douglas Rushkoff thoroughly investigates the self-indulgent role of individualism and choice as it is used to justify consumption and corporate control. Karen Armstrong in A History of God, explores the emergence of this through the eyes of religion. The following is about Sir Mohammed Iqbl (1877–1938) “who became for the Muslims of India what Ghandhi [...]
I love posting from The Tree of Knowledge. This is what they have to say about tubes (emphasis mine): Our discussion has led us to conclude that, biologically, there is no “transmitted information” in communication. Communication takes place each time there is behaivioral coupling in a realm of structural coupling. This conclusion is surprising only [...]
The Tree of Knowledge is a goldmine of concepts and ideas. The most interesting parts are at the end—in discussions of society, communications and language. What biology shows us is that the uniqueness of being human lies exclusively in a social structural coupling that occurs through languaging, generating (a) the regularities proper to the human [...]
In September 1963 [George] McGovern became the only senator who opposed U.S. involvement in Vietnam during the Kennedy administration. He came by his horror of war honorably in 35 B-23 missions over Germany, where half the B-24 crews did not survive—they suffered a higher rate of fatalities than did Marines storming Pacific islands. McGovern was [...]
…there are some guys who can return good for evil. Every brave man will think so. He will not want to live by passing on the wrath. A hit B? B hit C?—we have not enough alphabet to cover the condition. A brave man will try to make the evil stop with him. He shall keep [...]
[Bakhtin explores] the idea that language is indeed ambiguous, but whereas deconstruction would highlight this ambiguity as the inability of words to convey precise meaning, Bakhtin welcomes this vagueness of language as a means by which to create meaning dialogically. Indeed, in describing the nature of the polyphonic novel, Bakhtin sees the entire scope of [...]
I’m taking Mathematical Models in Biology and we had an interesting problem in our last class. We were broken up into groups and asked to create a model around malaria infection. We received some information on mosquito behavior and lifecycles, infection rates and patterns, and effects. That was it. The primary tenet of mathematical modeling is [...]
