Monthly Archives: April 2011

Doctor Who and the Tautologies of Doom

Posted on April 30, 2011 by dwighttowers

Attention Conservation Notice: Review of ‘classic’ (1976) Doctor Who story dealing with political corruption, assassination and a computational hallucinatory reality called The Matrix… Sat down recently and (re)watched a bunch of Matt Smith Doctor Who episodes with my wife’s half-brother … Continue reading →

Posted in film review | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Hamlet Mash-up!

Posted on April 29, 2011 by dwighttowers

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal versus Shakespeare. No contest…

Posted in humour | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Pollard’s Law

Posted on April 28, 2011 by dwighttowers

Dave Pollard wrote a post back in 2006 (hat tip to Jay D) that is a must-read if you’re interested in change. In it he extols the virtues of experiments (well, to be accurate, he points out that to get … Continue reading →

Posted in activism, competence | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Woman forced to ‘admit’ rape allegation false

Posted on April 27, 2011 by dwighttowers

[Trigger warning for sexual violence, rape culture narratives.] This report from Alternet surprises me, because I am naive about how women are treated by the State. In summary – a couple of years ago a woman was raped in Washington … Continue reading →

Posted in competence, fear | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Men with guns – mafia & military

Posted on April 27, 2011 by dwighttowers

My wife was reading the following – Donna Leon Uniform Justice – and laughed out loud at the following: Little that Brunetti had observed during his own undistinguished term of military service or in the decades since that persuaded him … Continue reading →

Posted in book review, fear, humour | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Abba and the agentic deadlock

Posted on April 26, 2011 by dwighttowers

Abba needs no introduction. Agentic deadlock, well, see here and here‘s a youtube video (another, hopefully better one, to follow) I’ve been reading a couple of books on the changes that are needed and the difficulty of making them. The … Continue reading →

Posted in activism, apocalypse, bureaucracy, competence | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

From 60 to 85, lucky to be alive…

Posted on April 25, 2011 by dwighttowers

I came into awareness in the late 70s, at the time the second cold war started to kick in. For a good five years (80 to 85, tailing off after that) it seemed entirely possible that a nuclear war would … Continue reading →

Posted in apocalypse, fear | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Then and Now: Australia and multiculturalism

Posted on April 24, 2011 by dwighttowers

In the 80s I remember hearing that while Greek/Italian etc immigration had been okay, these Asians (Cambodian, Vietnamese) were different. They didn’t speak the language, they didn’t want to integrate, they didn’t pay their taxes, they didn’t understand Western values … Continue reading →

Posted in fear | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Feynman on successful technology – reality must take precedence

Posted on April 23, 2011 by dwighttowers

Richard Feynman after the Challenger disaster “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.” As in, people who try to tell the truth will have to do it after the Event…

Posted in competence, economics, politics, science, technoscience | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The resilience according to Wildavsky

Posted on April 22, 2011 by dwighttowers

A strategy of resilience [as opposed to anticipation] requires reliance on experience with adverse consequences once they occur in order to develop a capacity to learn from the harm and bounce back. Resilience, therefore, requires the accumulation of large amounts … Continue reading →

Posted in activism, apocalypse, climate, competence, politics | Tagged , | 1 Comment