Productivity improvements effectively represent compounded time returns

What shape a coevally annotated life?

"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence."

William Blake

Oh! Glory! Glory! Glory! [Me :-)]

Amazon as Big Brother
http://ping.fm/Nz9xv

http://ping.fm/ypW1p

"Consciousness is not a complex phenomenon; it is what consciousness is about that is complex."

Passive capture - Recall - Recombination

Systems collapse / fail without feedback. Nuance is multiple length inhibitory feedback loops.

What is a self-referent string of infinite length?

http://ping.fm/Wzl4Q

(in existentialist philosophy) Relating to or denoting an emotionally appropriate, significant, purposive, and responsible mode of human life

Authenticity is not a property of opacity.

It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.

—Albert Einstein,

This language; this language: part breath, part sound, part gesture, part intimation, part desire, part theft , part gift, part ineffable; this is the Word - encompassing CGAT, all its strings, my embryo, my corpse, my ashes, my living - the articulation, shape, movement, thought, feeling, intention and ends - this is the Word defining, describing, delimiting me-I-we-me-us-I... Me

In the beginning was the Word and the Word....

Reminded of the utility of ambiguity

"By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property."
Voltaire

Purpose. Meaning. Significance.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd ...

http://ping.fm/chb3y

Minimum wage data...
Spare me a prayer?

http://ping.fm/BpEFe

RP Dispensing with doctors? [Letter to the SAMJ 2003]

To the Editor: South Africans have been fortunate beyond belief in their access to doctors, widespread poverty notwithstanding. They are unaware of their good fortune, taking it for granted, but all good things must come to an end.

Other health care professionals cannot replace doctors at a lower cost. True, the work done by doctors can be divided up among several classes of professionals, but doing so increases the costs of care severalfold - the British and American experiences serve as proof of this.

The South African public does not think of a visit to a doctor as one for information or a diagnosis, but rather as one for treatment. This mistaken belief has meant that many attend doctors inappropriately, but it has also meant that the public has not paid for the true cost of care.

South Africans are about to discover that they cannot afford doctors, and their doctors are about to discover the same. Already highly sought after by developed economies, circumstances will force their flight, however regretfully. South Africa will find itself in the same situation as other sub-Saharan countries with regard to the numbers of doctors in relation to the population. The ratio will be woefully inadequate.

Less than 3% of any age cohort in this country is capable of studying medicine. This group must produce our accountants, lawyers, statisticians, actuaries and engineers, among others. It cannot do so completely, and of all the career options, medicine probably falls at the bottom of the scale. We already produce fewer doctors per year than we did in the past, and that number will only get smaller.

It now takes 22 years of study to produce a doctor in South Africa. Which intelligent person is going to make such a commitment in order to be paid as much as a secretary - and to have his or her place of work and residence decided on by the government? I thought the constitution outlawed slavery? And I thought that the USSR proved conclusively that a central command economy does not work? Even the Chinese

acknowledge this. 

The government is changing doctors' scope of practice while calling it something else. This can only end badly for all concerned if the government fails to listen to an important constituency, viz. doctors in South Africa. Pearl Harbour was not a bolt from the blue, nor was 9/11: in both cases those in authority failed to pay attention to the necessary information until it was too late.

Hegel may have been right that history teaches only that we learn nothing from the past.

E Hassen

Ambiguity as grace....

How does one fit a full living into just one life?

PEAK (Passion, Experience, Access, and Knowledge)

solo living is highly entropic

"the evolution of meaning" - meaning is an adapted construction

Ambrose Bierce was right about the future....

I was just reminded that in this world more important than doing is proof of doing.

Ecology

The only thing better than to have been born then would be to have been born today to my current self....

http://ping.fm/aXilK

"Measure is unceasing"

The parade of my emotions is more interesting for its order than its raiment

& just so are my resolutions obviated....

The present is a prism that continually refracts the past

Happiness has no resolve

Light and shadow; line and curve.... #sixwords

http://ping.fm/PypwA
Astonishing!

http://ping.fm/5Ee3l
Is your doctor's religion relevant?

http://ping.fm/tGOUM
The miracle spray-on glass that stops the bugs

Dancing double helix sings my song #sixwords

Soft soothing solace in silent shadows... #sixwords

Got some calories! Got some serotonin! #sixwords

Six words to a trending topic :-) #sixwords

Starve and everything becomes brain food #sixwords

http://ping.fm/8xkfV

What is the wisdom of hunger?

Footprints in grey snow / flickering shadows absent / deny I am here #haiku

Clarity. Consistency. Comity. Consideration. Concentration. Completion. #sixwords

Soup. Too early, too late: mistimed. #sixwords

"as if paranoia were a way of life, not merely a set of reasonable precautions but a religion"

http://ping.fm/X5Wbq

Book of odds
www.bookofodds.com

One is more than twice as likely to die from a vending machine accident than a shark attack :-)

"For sale. Baby Shoes. Never worn." Hemingway. #sixwords

http://ping.fm/UA0Ox
Authors@Google: Clay Shirky

"Publishing is for acting"

Competence: "the habitual and judicious use of communication, knowledge, technical skills, clinical reasoning, emotions, values, and reflection in daily practice for the benefit of the individuals and communities being served."

#sixword Don't tell, show. Telling is showing.

http://ping.fm/41QSS
Why Change Is So Hard: Self-Control Is Exhaustible

"Self-control is exhaustible" Amen.

Interesting!
http://ping.fm/ePz3k
Water Footprints by Country

Cognitive surplus, deflation, architecting capability

http://ping.fm/U8ieY

"What do you think it is?"
I am arrested in fatigue; it seems self-evident: parsing, what else could it be? Ok. That I can answer = something fairly innocuous and so inconsequential.
I am to be educated? Fatigue is a thick glutinous barrier....

RP Logic vis a vis necessity

Barring Adam and Eve – and perhaps her 13 daughters – Genghis Khan is the biologically most successful individual in recorded history: 1 out of every 200 people alive today is a descendant. I read too, that he was illiterate and uncultured and that his empire was born of rage and no grand vision.

 

He altered the course of human events.

 

This is human life: accident, luck, chance.

 

We do not think statistically. We are not rational; we are people. If 10% of all the people who had ever lived are alive today and that proportion will increase as time passes it means that we have been and are a successful species. Logic then is not necessary to survival.

 

It seems survival only needs experimentation.

 

RP Commitments

The irregularity with which I update this blog implies that either this blog is not important or I have difficulty meeting my commitments.

 

Like life, the truth is neither as stark nor as simple: this blog is important but it is not my first priority and I do have difficulty meeting my commitments to myself but not to others. This blog is written for others, but the readers are an undefined mass. I feel no personal responsibility towards them because I have assured no individual that I will update this blog daily.

 

I do not know how many have read this blog or have done so more than once. I have been dropping stones into the abyss waiting to hear them hit bottom.

 

Futile actions have utility on more than one dimension and so are not necessarily futile. It all depends on your point of view.

 

"Maturation forms the spine to creativity."

In celebration of becoming: a paean to aspiration

http://ping.fm/hf3TO

Prayer as medicine: how much have we learned?

RP Resolutions

Image via CrunchBase

I have no new resolutions to offer. Old ones will have to suffice: balance, good habits and small wins.

Two recommendations I'd like to offer: Human Knowledge 2000 by Brian Holtz and the Wikipedia. They are both memes and may they propagate far and wide.

I've suddenly realised that Michael Porter's teaching on strategy is essentially an argument favouring commitment: to commit to one thing is to say "No" to everything else. This is like evolution being about relationship.

The brain operates on massive parallel processing; so does society. We just need freer, more open real-time communication.

This story does not have a beginning, a middle and an end….

Ramadhan Mubarak!

There is a point at which fatigue becomes hallucinogenic; neurochemistry is given to fickle breakdowns....

...effacing, I am captured, captivated by the ephemeral gossamer....

Failure resilient

To observe the letter & abuse the spirit is an appalling shade of hypocrisy....

http://ping.fm/PdjNJ

An Ode to Joy
http://ping.fm/7vkGK
Again... - I think....

In celebration of emotional continence!

http://ping.fm/vVEC5
Department of Health. Abolition of the four-hour waiting standard in Accident and Emergency. Letter from the Secretary of State to the President of the College of Emergency Medicine. 23 June 2010

Delimit

129,864,880

Calibration

Sentiment or feeling? What? No distinction?...

"For those who reflect on their responses to me I am useful and for those who do not, I find them useful."

moral licensing

http://ping.fm/iRhEp

Could one reasonably go about with a sc infusion of dextrose as a matter of convenience?

So why would hyponatremia be 6x more common in women than men?

http://ping.fm/yx6Yy

Bandwidth

Immersion

Attention is a prime - indivisible...

Neutropenia is the psychosociopathic villian of today's tale....

Toward an information uncertainty principle....

How much living in a life?

Interesting reading: GP Earnings

http://ping.fm/ZESEp

To ends; or to means; the righteous are shrouded in means.... Righteous?

"...if you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth..."

The essential problem with exercise is that it is boring

http://ping.fm/CYKEY

"limits to the diversity of purpose"