Author: manwithoutqualities

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complexity, cosmos & taxis

Methodological Individualism, Structural Constraints, and Social Complexity

In press: bumper themed issue guest edited by the very excellent Francesco Di Iorio 1. DI IORIO, Francesco: “Introduction: Methodological Individualism, Structural Constraints, and Social Complexity” 2. NADEAU: Robert: “Cultural Evolution, Group Selection, and Methodological Individualism” 3. ANTISERI, Dario: “Social research between the Use and Abuse of Reason” 4. PETITOT, Jean: “Complex Methodological Individualism” 5.…

music

Vinyl Crap

Vinyl Tap is the laziest, smuggest, factually inaccurate, tenuous and gratuitous name dropping of an excuse for a programme around. Not to mention (as others have pointed out), sprinkled with “double-dipping.” Furthermore two (used to be three) heads of the same family are in the publicly funded radio trough. Glad others see through this phoniness — see Aaron…

Baby Huey, bobby womack

California Dreamin’

Here are two very different superb interpretations — the first by Baby Huey; the second by Bobby Womack. These guys so easily and classily rework a classic song squeezing out new nuances. Isaac Hayes and Rod Stewart also had this ability, something that most covers these days fail to do. Both BW and IH reinterpret Bacharach &…

andy capp, reg smythe

Andy Capp

It now takes three (so credited) to come up with something that Reg Smythe on his own would have rejected as feeble. The Mirror should have let it be and just recycled 40 years worth of material. Here is the best article I’ve found on the Smythe/Capp story: Cigarettes and Alcohol: Andy Capp by Paul Slade. “[Smythe], does…

bernard williams, Descartes

René Descartes

Born on this day. The following extract from Bernard Williams’ brilliant (but dense) Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry. René Descartes was born on 31 March 1596 in a small town near Tours, now called la-Haye-Descartes, where the house of his birth can still be seen. His family belonged to the lesser nobility, his father and…

freedom of speech, sad gaad

The Saad Truth

I’ve been singing the praises of Glenn Loury and John McWhorter of Blogging Heads (“Where great minds don’t think alike”) here and here. Another channel that is doing terrific work in the fight against illiberalism and its most conspicuous manifestation, i.e. the suffocation of free speech, is The Saad Truth. He has had some fascinating guests who, as…

walker percy

Walker Percy Wednesday 78

Unlike him I had been unable to escape into the simple complexities of science. All he had to do was solve the mystery of the universe, which may be difficult but is not as difficult as living an ordinary life. ***** Everybody talks about the horrors of drink, which are real enough, but not about…

stigmergic, stigmergic cognition, stigmergy

Stigmergy at the Edge: Adversarial Stigmergy in the War on Drugs

Here’s an extract from the fourth article by Rodrigo Nieto-Gomez from this special Human-Human Stigmergy issue. Pierre-Paul Grassé identified for the first time the importance of indirect (environmental) stimulus-response patterns while studying how termites were capable of creating complex habitats through coordination without central command. The most singular characteristic of this stigmergy, as Grassé called the phenomenon, is that…