Recent Comments
Category Archives: competence
Belief in magical transformations! Or the “X factor is for peasants.”
The obsession with fame is an interesting phenomenon. In a lazy kinda ill-thought-out speculative way I will say that now that the dream of salvation by God or Marx is gone (in Europe, if not everywhere else!), then the only … Continue reading
The whines on the bus go round and round, round and round…
The left “extra-parliamentary left” is utterly hooked on proclaiming their own moral superiority, their victim status, on doling out little pats on the back to each other at miserabilist meetings/rallies. A shopping list of grievances. The grievances are all real … Continue reading
Posted in activism, competence
Tagged movement-building, social capital, social movements
Leave a comment
Foresight, multiple intelligences and generally being #doomed #monitorydemocracy
More from the ever-cheerful Ehrlichs – Can a collapse of global civilisation be avoided? (Proceedings of the Royal Society B 2013, 280 Besides focusing their research on ways to avoid collapse, there is a need for natural scientists to collaborate … Continue reading
Posted in a little self-knowledge, activism, competence, politics
Tagged Monitory Democracy
Leave a comment
Bertie Russell’s 10 commandments (hat-tip to BrainPickings)
What’s Brain Pickings? It’s “the brain child of Maria Popova, an interestingness hunter-gatherer and curious mind at large, who also writes for Wired UK and The Atlantic, among others, and is an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow. She has gotten … Continue reading
Posted in activism, competence
2 Comments
Enlightenment, endarkenment, Private Eye and the end o’ the world
Two quotes- one from Private Eye, one from the Proceedings of the Royal Society B (as you do). Alas, he is a journalist, not a scientists or a philosopher king, and thus takes the journalist’s now standard route to enlightenment, … Continue reading
Posted in a little self-knowledge, apocalypse, competence
Tagged AIDS, Anne Ehrlich, climate change, endarkenment, enlightenment, Malcolm Gladwell, Paul Ehrlich, Private Eye
6 Comments
Juking the Stats: #TheWire for real, yo?
NYPD on Trial: Police Say They Are Forced to Harass Kids in Order to Meet Quotas NYPD whistleblowers say quotas are forcing them to make bogus, racist stops, summonses and arrests. March 27, 2013 | Last week, NYPD whistleblowers Adhyl … Continue reading
Posted in activism, bureaucracy, competence, politics
Tagged juking the stats, NYPD, The Wire
Leave a comment
Cooperation versus Collaboration – hat-tip to Harold Jarche
I run a site called “Intellectual Self-Defence”. Some intermittently interesting stuff (usually other people’s!) Mostly about distinctions between concepts that are regularly conflated, like capitalism and democracy, or progress and growth, or competence and Steering Group. Here’s a link to … Continue reading
Posted in activism, competence
Leave a comment
Knowledge sharing? Cry/Draw me a river…
This is okay, in terms of finding out what skills breadth you have in the room. I think he’s a little optimistic in how easily an organisation will admit the skills in the room. Easier/safer/more usual for the outfit to … Continue reading
Posted in a little self-knowledge, activism, competence
Leave a comment
Won’t get fooled again? Course I will. By myself. Again and again and again. Science notwithstanding…
Saw this recently – “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitching of our intelligence by means of language.” Wittgenstein. which reminded me of that Feynman quote – “Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle … Continue reading
Of futility: allotments, hoses, and leakage
At the allotment yesterday* I got a strong whiff of the futility of it all. This stuff actually happened, pretty much as I recount it below, with merely a soupcon of poetic license. There was a visitor just checking out … Continue reading
Posted in a little self-knowledge, activism, climate, competence, death, fear, narcissism, natural world
Leave a comment
