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Tag Archives: nature
Of crowds – their madness, wisdom and amplifying feedback effects; Dirk Helbing #brainiac #complexity #crowddisasters
Ach, Gustave. And the more recent guy, with better politics. Now, this from the awesome journal Nature which, (along with the Financial Times and Viz) makes me significantly less stupid than I otherwise would be. In the 2nd May 2013 … Continue reading
Posted in activism, competence, natural world, science
Tagged complexity, Dirk Helbing, nature
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“It is better to know nothing than to keep in mind fixed ideas…”
“based on theories whose confirmation we continually seek.” So said Claude “homeostasis” Bernard, in his “An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine” (1865) Seems about right to me… This from “Treat obesity as physiology, not physics”, an opinion piece … Continue reading
Posted in a little self-knowledge
Tagged Claude Bernard, Cognitive Humility, confirmation bias, Gary Taubes, homeostasis, nature
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Wild about waiting
This is from a wonderful book published by Verso, called “I’m with the bears: short stories from a damaged planet.” from the story Zoogoing by Lydia Millet “In the wild, he thought, there would be almost no waiting. Waiting was … Continue reading
Reflexive modernisation and the resentment that climate change exists
This SHOULDN’T Be Happening To Us. We beat Nature. She’s licked. All our problems are of our own societies’ making now. That’s the whole point of having entered reflexive modernisation… The idea of reflexive modernisation describes, at its simplest, the notion … Continue reading
Nature docos – “Bugs shagging to Mozart”
The result of Reagan’s intent, as interpreted by the board, was to cast a new chill on current-affairs broadcasting and place PBS more in the hands of corporate sponsorship than it had been before. Corporate underwriters on the whole refused … Continue reading
Posted in media, natural world
Tagged bugs fucking to Mozart, Julian Rathbone, nature, nulture, PBS, Robert Hughes
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The “Nature” of the “Beast”
“In imperial Vietnam, tiger/elephant fights were staged for the emperor. But the tiger’s teeth were blunted and its claws cut short: the elephant was the symbol of the emperor, and so of course it always had to win. In one … Continue reading
Nature “or” nurture takes another dive…
As this 1982 article from Nature tells it, alligators don’t do the whole (human) “x or y chromosomes determines your dangly bits” – they’re genetically identical, with the temperature at which the eggs incubate determining whether they turn into boys … Continue reading
“Nature” will be inside our ooda loop.
Long-time readers of Dwighttowers in ‘cyber-space’, or victims of meat-space rants, will know about an unhealthy liking for the notion of “ooda loops“, as devised by John Boyd. Observe, Orient, Decide, Act, Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. Meanwhile, the ‘other guy’ … Continue reading
Nature article on ursine defecation patterns…
The prestigious journal Nature will not be publishing this article in a forthcoming issue.The persistence of ursine defecation patterns in arboreal and sylvan eco-systems: rhetorical artefact or empirically proven? Marc Hudson, Matthew Bright & Cassidy Irving ABSTRACT: The question of … Continue reading
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