Evelyn Underhill’s classic freely available along with many others courtesy of the terrific resource that is the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (H/T to the ever eclectic Paul Raymont of Philosophy, lit.)
BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB
Rewatched the Ry Cooder — Wim Wenders collaboration. Superb — both show insight and restraint — in accordance with their usual subtle judgement. There are few places on my travel bucket list but Cuba is one of them — I’d better get there sooner, rather than later. For me, it’s the music, cigars, the cars and also the ballet.
Brain Networks and Cognitive Architectures
New article from Petersen and Sporns in Neuron.
Leisure, the Basis of Culture
Leisure lives on affirmation. It is not the same as the absence of activity … or even as an inner quiet. It is rather like the stillness in the conversation of lovers, which is fed by their oneness.
A VERY Oakeshottian (and Aristotleian) outlook. H/T to Troy Camplin for this. The reissue, introduced by none other than Roger Scruton.
Paul Prudhomme (1940-2015)
A New Orleans gastronomic titan (and by definition, one of the world’s greatest chefs) has died. He put New Orleans food on the map for me via Keith Floyd, a gastronomic love affair that has continued unabated for almost 30 years. This gentle man was kind enough to sign a table cloth for me from a meal at K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen with a lovely inscription that I have framed and that hangs in my bedroom — something to the effect of good loving’ and good food — if ever there were a quailic connection, it’s that.
George Rodrigue’s portrait of Paul
Human-Human Stigmergy
Coming soon in Cognitive Systems Research
1. Francis Heylighen
Stigmergy as a Universal Coordination Mechanism I: Definition and Components
2. Francesco Bolici, James Howison and Kevin Crowston
Stigmergic Coordination in FLOSS Development Teams: Integrating Explicit and Implicit Mechanisms
3. Ted G. Lewis and Richard Begin
Imitation and Novelty in Product Development
4. Rodrigo Nieto-Gomez
Stigmergy at the Edge: Adversarial Stigmergy in the War on Drugs
5. Tarja Susi
Social Cognition, Artefacts, and Stigmergy revisited: Concepts of coordination
6. Francis Heylighen
Stigmergy as a Universal Coordination Mechanism II: Varieties and Evolution
Robot swarms: will they bomb us or save us?
This in The Guardian featuring an occasional correspondent of mine, the very excellent Simon Garnier.
Smokey Johnson (1936-2015)
Smokey Johnson, longtime Fats Domino drummer, has died. Jon Cleary, superb N.O. pianist writes: “Smokey playing a simple 12/8 New Orleans groove, check the way he hits the back beat. I’ve played that groove with so many great New Orleans drummers but none of them could make it as mean and tough as Smokey.”
WALKER PERCY WEDNESDAY 53
My wife and I lived a good life. We used to get up in the morning in a beautiful house, sit down to breakfast in our “enclosed patio,” watch Barbara Walters talk about sexual intercourse on the Today show. Nevertheless, I fell prey to morning terror, shook like a leaf at the breakfast table, and began to drink vodka with my grits. At the same time that I developed liberal anxiety, I also contracted conservative rage and large-bowel complaints.
But—and here is the point—the period of my decline was also a period of lying fallow and of the germination of some strange quirky ideas. Toynbee, I believe, speaks of the Return, of the man who fails and goes away, is exiled, takes counsel with himself, hits on something, sees daylight—and returns to triumph.
. . .
Was it not John Locke who said that the mark of genius is the ability to discern not this thing or that thing but rather the connection between the two?
. . .
My idea was simply that: if the encephalograph works, why not devise a gadget without wires that will measure the electrical activity of the separate centers of the brain? Hardly a radical idea. But here was the problem: given such a machine, given such readings, could the readings then be correlated with the manifold woes of the Western world, its terrors and rages and murderous impulses? And if so, could the latter be treated by treating the former?
Broken Dream Stout
The finest stout I’ve had in many years and I don’t seem to be alone in this assessment (looking forward to trying their full range — quite an achievement for a brewery that’s only three years old):
