This is a collection of short articles and reflections on topics of current interest. For newer short posts, jump to #200+ (Oct 2019 to present)
Other Shorts
#182 – Revelation, Enlightenment, Inspiritation – the case of Nietzsche
Sun 16th June, 2019
Nietzsche’s life and works are an interesting example of a man with unflinching conviction in his specialism. What I find most interesting is his account of the enlightenment he experienced in autumn 1888 which he describes in his autobiography Ecce Homo:
Nietzsche experienced revelation as he wrote Thus Spake Zarathustra
“Has any one at the end of the nineteenth century any distinct notion of what [should be] understood by the word inspiration? I will describe it. … It [is] hardly possible to set aside completely the idea that one is the mere incarnation, mouthpiece or medium of an almighty power. The idea of revelation in the sense that something becomes suddenly visible and audible with indescribable certainty and accuracy, which profoundly convulses and upsets one—describes simply the matter of fact. One hears—one does not seek; one takes—one does not ask who gives: a thought suddenly flashes up like lightning, it comes with necessity, unhesitatingly—I have never had any choice in the matter. There is an ecstasy such that the immense strain of it is sometimes relaxed by a flood of tears, along with which one’s steps either rush or involuntarily lag, alternately. There is the feeling that one is completely out of hand, with the very distinct consciousness of a endless number of fine thrills and quiverings to the very toes;—there is a depth of happiness in which the painfullest and gloomiest do not operate as antitheses, but as conditioned, as demanded in the sense of necessary shades of colour in such an overflow of light. There is an instinct for … a wide-embracing rhythm, [which] is almost the measure of the force of [the] inspiration, a sort of counterpart to its pressure and tension. Everything happens quite involuntarily, as if in a tempestuous outburst of freedom, of absoluteness, of power and divinity. The involuntariness of the figures and similes is the most remarkable thing; one loses all perception of what constitutes the figure and what constitutes the simile; everything seems to present itself as the readiest, the correctest and the simplest means of expression. This is my experience of inspiration. I do not doubt but that one would have to go back thousands of years in order to find some one who could say to me: It is mine also!—” – Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, Zarathustra, Section 3 (p.101)
I leave it to you to decide if this is authentic. What is clearly evident is the egoism in his last line. There is no reason why he should conclude no such experience happened to anyone else apart from himself since Zarathusthra’s personality to which he seems to be attributing a similar experience.
Friedrich Nietzsche, the experience related in his autobiography Ecce Homo.
#180 20190323 – The tragedy of Brexit in 52 cartoons
#179 20190323 – Leadership is an Amplifier
#178 20190303 – Wadsworth’s constant and verbosity
#162 20180912 – Will Brexit happen?
#151 20180810 – Animals and Emotions
#144 20180625 – Ten Rules for Working (Sister Corita Kent) (mathematics)
#143 20180623 – How to make Big Decisions
#142 20180620 – Digital Privacy – How to Opt-Out
#141 20180520 – The Royal Wedding of Harry and Meghan
#137 20180419 – Teaching High Standards – from Jeff Bezos
Here’s another: 10 ways of working that have made Amazon a powerhouse.
#136 20180413 – Corruption in America – Does the U.S. have a mob boss as President?
- By 2018, Robert Mueller had identified a revealing pattern: Trump operates as a mob boss, and his style is the same as President. This explains a lot.
Two years later, amidst the Coronavirus debacle and in his re-election year, the situation has become grave:
- April 2020 – Trump has been promoter-in-chief of anti-science positions including ingestion of disinfectants (toxic!), sub-cutaneous sources of UV light, refusal to wear face masks, and all manner of hoaxes and conspiracy theories. The surprising part is how much of America’s white population without college education do not find this lunacy (when Howard Stern is flabbergasted, it says something).
- June 2020 – The violence following George Floyd’s death, and Trump’s escalation of police and military response, is sobering reading of the consequences of electing this man.
- Why the “deep state” (CIA, FBA, NSA), created in the U.S. by proponents of militant democracy, are in fact the wrong tools for protecting democracy, open to abuse, eroding trust in government, and ultimately becoming a tool in the arsenal of an elected strongman.
- Dissecting authoritarianism, anti-liberalism, and populism — and explaining clearly why fascism is a term that should not be used responsibly (it is a term deployed to incite, on both sides)
- Analysis of how the US got there, the evisceration of responsible U.S. Government officials, the role of the Republican Party, and motivations of the people who voted for him
- The systematic destruction of liberal democracy and responsible government is not solely a U.S. phenomenon. The UK has been on a parallel journey for the past 10 years.
- July 26th – The influence of social media on public sentiment is now indisputable, making it a critical instrument in the propaganda wars of post-modern campaigns. It is no longer about truth, but about sound bites, about appealing to a base, about generating a storyline. Today’s campaigns in America look more like WWF set pieces. And the importance of Facebook is not lost on either Trump or Zuckerberg. Article
- July 2nd – Has America lost its ability to do great things? The current penchant for “independence” (don’t tell me what to do) is perhaps a symptom of the unwillingness to even do easy things, amidst a polarization in society that is tribalism on a national scale. article in the Independent
- As in Rome, the road to dictatorship/imperialism is the collusion of a strongman, a corrupt Senate, and the baying of the people.
- The stacking of the Supreme Court, protected by the Senate
- Escaping impeachment, with the consent of the Senate
- Sep 2020 – Noam Chomsky: The Most Dangerous Game
- Sep 2020 – The report from the US Senate Intelligence Committee into the Trump-Russia file was far more scathing than Robert Mueller’s report, unrestricted as they were. But the corruption in US Government has gone deep, and the impeachment did nothing. What next.
- Sep 2020 – Barack Obama’s indictment of Trump and the Trump vision for America, at the Democratic National Convention
- A look at the Republican National Convention and the rolling out of the Trump Family — this is the Party of Trump.
- Violent Nationalism connecting modern America with the America of the 1930s
- Oct 2020 – A full-scale assault on the neutrality of the US civil service – Trump’s scorched earth moves two weeks before election day.
#129 20180312 – Influencing ideology
#128 20180309 – Real Equality in the home means sharing the Mental Load
#127 20171106 – Homelessness and Indifference
#124 20171019 – From Low Pay, to Living Pay and Beyond
#123 20171019 – Culture Matters – a look inside the Brexit negotiation dynamics – British and European culture
#122 20171009 – Sleep Hygiene No LED light in the bedroom
#120 20171004 – Theresa May’s spectacle
#119 20170924 – The Mind once stretched never returns to its former shape – the Top 20 blogs I’ve read
#117 20170921 – Raising Successful Children – the impact on children of witnessing perseverence
#116 20170905 – How healthy is your heart?
#113 20170806 – Tribute to Usain Bolt – 100m stats
#97 20160723 – Goal-achievement – Tips from Michael Uslan – Grit, Perseverance, Belief will get you far
#89 20160121 – The (Re)Rise of the Blowhard Culture in American Politics
Four years later (29th May, 2020): The COVID-19 pandemic has pulled the curtain off the real impact of the blowhard culture — and it ain’t pretty. This article sums it up: Trumpism and the GOP have bet all-in on uneducated white males, the only demographic where Trump & the GOP are net positive by more than 20 percentage points. In all other demographics, Trump loses by wide margins.
#87 20160107 – In memoriam El-Azhar (4 Jan 1946 – 6 Jan 2016)
#86 20151229 – With 2016 in sight, a useful tip – achieving Deep Focus using the Nothing alternative.
#78 20150718 – The Stream has changed The Web
#72 20150427 – President Obama delivering stand-up comedy
#65 20141207 – Donating to Wikipedia: Time & Knowledge also needs your support
#56 20141003 – Troubleshooting: Android Phone – Auto Sync is Off
#55 20140927 – Getting Older – “It will happen to all of us”
#52 20140906 – The Making of a Scientist – the Impact of Richard Feynman’s father on the paths he took as an adult
#51 20140830 – Focusing on Data – Big Data isn’t about Big
#50 20140822 – Atmospherics and Surface Topography – Rainfall and Desertification
What happens first? Cutting down all the trees, grazing away all the grass, and then no rainfall? Or the other way around? Either way, this time-lapse sequence (GIF) from NASA, of atmospheric data overlaid on surface topogrpahy, is striking.
The interesting thing is the striking correlation between atmospherics & surface topography. Notice the conspicuous absence of cloud cover over the deserts of North Africa & the Middle East, while beneath the clouds over Europe & Central Africa one sees an ocean of greenery. So, which came first, desertification or atmospheric change? Did human induced desertification set off corresponding shifts in atmosphere that then further accelerated the changes? Or were there other causes of atmospheric change that made eventual desertification inevitable?
I suspect that in a closely coupled system like earth-atmosphere, the right question is which effect dominates when both are present.
NASA’s quote: Of all the planets we’ve explored, none have matched the dynamic complexity of our own. Earth is constantly changing, and we’re working constantly to explore and understand the planet on scales from local to global.
#49 20140819 – Presenting Data: Less terrible tables
#48 Tech Idealists
18th August, 2014
If you’re looking for inspiration in technology, there are a few I’d recommend:
Joel Spolsky – famous for Joel on Software (read the Top 10), FogBugz, and Stack Exchange sites
Greg Linden – manifesto for tech idealism, an early employee at Amazon
Paul Graham – Entrepreneur, Y-combinator
#47 20140817 – Mathematics Prize Awards – the 2014 International Mathematics Union awards and their recipients
#46 20140814 – Image Manipulation fuses 3D library
A method has been developed to allow hyper-realistic 3D edits of objects in photographs to create “perfect fakes”.
The technology is outstanding; the ethical concerns are obvious.
[new] 2016 – Adobe announced VoCo the ability to create fake speech using 20 minutes of sampling of a voice. Due to ethics concerns the project was not developed for commercial release.
[new] 2018 – Resemble AI (current website) project debuts software to voice-clone. Technologically detectable markers are embedded in the fake voice to allow it to be distinguished from the real one, but the ethics concerns remain.
#43 20140803 – Quantum Propulsion Engine, the EmDrive, and other Next Generation Space Technologies
#41 20140721 – Mathemati-stan – a map (mathematics)
#40 20140709 – Playing the long game – Football coaching
#38 Learnings from a Startup Culture – 10 Takeaways
30th June, 2014
Nate Kontny’s article: 10 things I learned from Paul Graham at Y-Combinator in the Observer is worth reading.
What is the Trough of Sorrow?, Medium, Oct 6th, 2015
What is the Job of a Startup CEO, Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3?
The Startup Curve
Paul Graham’s Startup Curve
#36 20140627 – “The Map is Not the Territory”
#35 20140627 – The Pitchforks are Coming — how the economic order will fall
#33 20140624 – Who, really, is a Data Scientist?
#32 Transparency and Openness as key leadership values – Scrutiny and Criticism as the antidote to Secrecy and Corruption
22nd June, 2014
Transparency and Openness are key values driving greatness. They apply equally in engineering, science, corporate leadership, and politics. At root is a culture that embraces the accountability that comes from challenges and acknowledging the responsibility to provide adequate explanation.
To be sure, autocracy is more efficient, but openness and transparency are more robust, attract better talent, are more inspiring, and create longer-lasting environments in which innovation can thrive. Our hypothesis is that in the long run, groups that adopt these values will out-perform those that do not.
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”.
– J. Robert Oppenheimer, Chief Scientist of the Manhatten Project in the 1940s, spoken on 6 Mar 1950 in an address “The Encouragement of Science” given at the Science Talent Institute, Washington D.C.
#30 20140607 – Towards Human settlement of Mars: The Mars One Program, and other relevant advancements
(Note: for full listing of all space related articles covered, see #289
As momentum builds towards human settlement on Mars, worth keeping an eye on the Mars One Program. What’s interesting is that both technology and mission timelines are roughly tracking developments woven into the ground-breaking Mars Trilogy of Kim Stanley Robinson. Mars Trilogy Timeline
Mars One – 2011-2021 – The Story of the Mars Media company that promoted one-way settlement and ran out of funds in 2016.
Artist conception of a human settlement on Mars “in the early years”.
Light from the Sun reaches Earth in 8:20 minutes and Mars in 12:30 minutes. With our conventional chemical fueled rockets, it takes approx. 9 months to from Earth to Mars when they are at their closest points in their mutual orbits of the sun.
Jump to 2019 for a review of where we are in making Mars settlement happen.
#28 20140523 – Resolving controversies in a duel: the mathematics of dueling with pistols
#17 20140425 – Math-curious – the algorithms behind the way we board airplanes make no sense (mathematics)
#16 Larry Wall (Perl creator) on Java: “it’s like chewing shoe leather”
April 25th, 2014
"Java is sort of the Cobol of the 21st century … It's kind of heavyweight, verbose, and everyone loves to hate it …
But managers like it because it looks like you're getting a lot done. If 100 lines of Java code accomplish a task, then it looks like you've written 100 lines, even though in a different language, it might only take 5 lines.
It's like, you can eat a 1-pound steak or you can eat, 100 pounds of shoe leather and [though] you feel a greater sense of accomplishment after the shoe leather, maybe there's some downsides…
Read the transcript, or hear him speak — the chuckler is about a minute in.
#13 20140424 – Probability is the heart of simulation (Mathematics)
#12 20140422 – The Stagnation of Educational Attainment in the U.S. in the past 30 years
Arguments over prosperity have always depended heavily on which statistics were being ignored. This article makes clear that there’s a graver concern: “educational attainment over the last 30 years has risen far more slowly in the U.S. than in much of the industrialised world… [Whilst] Americans between the ages of 55 and 65 have literacy, numeracy and technology skills that are above average … Younger Americans, those between 16 and 24, are not keeping pace, [and] rank near the bottom amongst rich countries, well behind their counterparts in Canada, Australia, Japan, Scandinavia…”
This points to a much more serious condition that is difficult, if not impossible, to reverse.
In the U.S., the organization, the 74 Million.org is a non-profit looking at issues that keep over 50% of America’s under-18 youth below the age appropriate educational attainment levels.
Article: The American Middle Class is no longer the world’s richest, New York Times, 23rd April, 2014
#11 Parenting and Prioritization: Phones – New reasons to worry about an old problem
21st April, 2014
This article from NPR offers anecdotal evidence of parents prioritising their phone over their children. Wake-up call for the introspective.
For the children’s sake, put down that smartphone, Patti Neighmond, April 21st, 2014, NPR (National Public Radio) US
#9 Engineering Design: “Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.” Alan Perlis
14th April, 2014
It is worth re-reading Alan Perlis’ Epigrams on Programming. Tonight’s reminder reinforces why prototyping is key to success in new ventures: you’re exploring the hard bits early, bottom-up, while the overall design is still fluid.
#8 North Korea gives new meaning to the term “Highly Deocrated Officer”
North Korea: Highly Decorated Officer
Source: Strobe Talbott, Twitter
#7 20140410 – Would Euler and Gauss have been ‘coders’ or ‘provers’
April 10, 2014
Yuri Manin offers this gem: “The importance of computers for the mathematical community is that a group of people took to mathematics who had an algorithmic sort of mind, better for writing computer programs than for proving theorems. In the last century they probably would have proved theorems but nowadays they do not.
He continues:
“I have a great suspicion that for example Euler today would spend much more of his time on writing software … And I believe that Gauss as well would spend much more time sitting in front of the [computer] screen.” (from An Interview with Yuri Manin, Berlin Intelligencer, 1998, pp.16-19)
“Good proofs are proofs that make us wiser.” – Yuri Manin (PDF of interview by Martin Aigner, 1998)
The biography of Yuri Manin and a video interview with mathematician David Eisenbud (2012).
Mikhail Gelfand interviews Yuri Manin (PDF): “We do not choose our profession, it chooses us.”
#6 An audio tour of British Isles accents
April 4th, 2014
A beautifully crafted audio tour — listen to the diversity in British accents. There’s no regression to the mean going on here!
And here’s an illustration of the 8 major American dialects from a 1957 lecture on linguistics
Source: Dialect coach Andrew Jack
A video coaching British English “received pronounciation”.
#3 20140319 – Prime Number Theory – the remarkable story of Yitang Zhang and his breakthrough in Number Theory (Mathematics)
#2 The long view of history shows how fluid borders (& nation states) are
March 17th, 2014
Watch as 1000 years of European borders change (2:50). (Would be good to see the corresponding rise and fall of populations – i.e., how many died and/or migrated along with the border changes.)
Source: Historical Atlas – Centennia Software. License to own the interactive software £90.
This was posted in 2014 in view of Russia annexing Crimea from Ukraine. It is equally relevant in 2023, when after over 500 days of war between Russia and Ukraine.
#1 How does our humanity stack up when faced with an unexpected challenge?
February 20th, 2014
How do strangers react to a shivering boy with no coat?
A study in 2015 looked at food gifting in canines (dogs/wolves): Dogs confer benefits to familiar dogs over unfamiliar ones, Dec 2015