I'm all for vicarious living - experience makes one old!

"the delight of the learned, the solace of the indolent, and the refuge of the uninformed"

A masterpiece is an expressed local maximum

...in favour of pageantry!

You feel tired you sleep right? What happens when fatigue and sleep are physiologically uncoupled?

http://ping.fm/qfyQ2

What would you do if you had access to your every thought at any time?

If emotions are outputs, the results of numerous calculations, how can we plan for future emotional states?

Happiness is a variegated composite. Doing A, achieving B, aspiring to C, cannot by definition produce and maintain happiness.

FB as an interface for social computing; preference is an algorithm

Wishing you all a Happy, Prosperous & Productive New Year!

http://ping.fm/URqqi

What is the impetus to sympathy?

http://ping.fm/yAQNL

Art or Reality? Reality is inconvenient & quite often ugly....

I am glad that Christmas is over & really looking forward to my 3 weeks of sun!

Very Merry Christmas!

Fortune cookie: I just realised that if a personality could be a Möbius strip I would be it; there! Now I am fully explained if explicable :-)

"The book belonged to my father, a scientist, and was a favorite of his; in fact he had a large appetite for fantasy. I have wondered if there isn't some real connection between a certain kind of scientific-mindedness (the explorative, synthesizing kind) and fantasy-mindedness. Perhaps 'science fiction' really isn't such a bad name for our genre after all. Those who dislike fantasy are very often equally bored or repelled by science. They don't like either hobbits, or quasars; they don't feel at home with them; they don't want complexities, remoteness. If there is any such connection, I'll bet that it is basically an aesthetic one."

Le Guin

What constraint continually mires a discussion of the general in particulars?

DULCE ET DECORUM EST(1)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares(2) we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest(3) began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots(4)
Of tired, outstripped(5) Five-Nines(6) that dropped behind.
Gas!(7) Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets(8) just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime(9) . . .
Dim, through the misty panes(10) and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering,(11) choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud(12)
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest(13)
To children ardent(14) for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.(15)

Wilfred Owen
8 October 1917 - March, 1918

Lucid intoxication

Holographic. Monistic. Atomistic.... Confused?

Should the dying be encouraged to die faster?

http://ping.fm/o8seJ

http://ping.fm/EdM4r

http://ping.fm/KRKX8

A plug!
http://ping.fm/KzVLC

"the natural sequence of an unnatural beginning"

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veil'd the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree.

William Blake
Songs of Experience

May you be blessed and abide in a state of Grace;
May The Ineffable preserve your health of body and of mind,
and keep you firmly all the days of your life,
lending you strength in trial and joy otherwise.

Some prose barely misses being poetry; that is an underhanded cruelty....

The first question that has to be asked in an emergency is, "Is there time to think?"

Reality has no versioning

What happens to reality when the map becomes richer than the territory?

Flood. Assimilate. Abstract. Refine. Reiterate.

RP The Future of Medicine

It is not new technologies that we have to fear, but old passions. The ban on human cloning will be lifted at some time with both good and bad consequences most of which are currently unforeseeable.

 

The future is unpredictable and will become more so. New technologies will continue to proliferate and the average standard of living will continue to rise. Life will become materially easier and psychosocially more stressful. We remain constrained by a very slowly evolving biology.

 

Welcome to the Future of Medicine.

RP I am Sorry

I am sorry.

 

I am sorry that you do not have the life that you dreamed of having. I am sorry that you do not have the work you thought you were made for or the partner you believe you deserve. I am sorry that you were mistaken in the options you thought you had.

 

I am sorry.

 

I was late learning that saying those three words is not the same as saying that it is my fault. It is my expression of my feeling for you and not an attribution of blame, an acknowledgement of responsibility. Women seem to learn this at an early age. Men often do not.

 

Most people feel entitled to an apology for numerous unnamed injustices and many walk around with an unacknowledged anger. No-one's life is perfect and no-one cares!

 

Csikszentmihalyi has an agreeable prescription: forget happiness as a goal, it is a by-product: seek challenge. Goethe offers encouragement too, "Whatever you believe you can do, or dream you can…."

 

RP Risk Neutral

"If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;"

                                         

Rudyard Kipling

 

I cannot do that.

 

I am unusually rational and by that I mean that I tend not to make decisions on the basis of my feelings. I try to be risk neutral which is not always easy and even so, I know I cannot do that: risk everything and bear the loss in silence.

 

Life is about risking loss. We love despite the risk. We marry and have children despite the risks. We may be blind to the risks; we still take them.

 

I cannot do that, but I do consider it an ideal to strive for.

Zemanta helped me add links & pictures to this email. It can do it for you too.

“Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.”

Henry David Thoreau

A basic emotion (e.g., interest, joy, sadness, and anger) is a set ofneural, bodily/expressive, and feeling/motivational componentsgenerated rapidly, automatically, and nonconsciously when anecologically meaningful stimulus is sensed or perceived (Izard,2007).

http://ping.fm/XU7eX

Queueing theory, stochastic limerence, imaginary numbers and a girl called Cindy...

"It is discomfiting to accept that health care in the emergency department (ED) is basically dangerous, kept from disaster only by the continuous interventions and adjustments of the people working in it."

http://ping.fm/PhRg5

"comiogenic error"

http://ping.fm/b2MQl

AMA & Social media

"The chief result of all this more modern view is the gradually growing conviction that mental life is primarily teleological; that is to say, that our various ways of feeling and thinking have grown to be what they are because of their utility in shaping our reactions on the outer world"

http://ping.fm/5cAmc

"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now".

"No! Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try."

Yoda

Hospital based multi-specialty practice as federated. What are the rules of engagement?

"In times of peace, we should learn ourselves, and teach others, that which, in troublous times, both they and we must practise"

We are arrested in conviction; deafened with acclaim and facile with facade. Torment knows no preparation and Ecstacy burns it all away.

Good night! Good morn! Good day! Scripted so; and such! Welcome! [Got any LSD?]

The Proper Study of Mankind
From Alexander Pope. An Essay on Man. As reproduced in Poetical Works, ed. H. F. Cary (London: Routledge, 1870), 225-226.
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest,
In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;
In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer,
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus'd;
Still by himself abus'd, or disabus'd;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of Truth, in endless error hurl'd:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

The evidence is conclusive: homo sapiens sapiens is not designed for thinking; reason is grafted and we named ourselves more in hope than description

Fickle fortune, inconstant Hynos, remitting Morpheus!

Are you not glad there is no monopoly on idiocy? I am.

Why does an assessment of the utility of knowledge exclude superordinate changes of perspective? There are no immutable facts; theories (sic) are just that; opinions are really statements of preference. Wisdom is superordinate.

Here's to the celebration of apparently useless knowledge: may the worlds we live in intersect....

"Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women."

Charles Johnson

Reality is fickle. Ask anyone's perception.

Average a large number of faces and you end up with stunningly gorgeous. Do the same with voices and you end up with something similar.

Subitizing, coined in 1949 by E.L. Kaufman et al.[1] refers to the rapid, accurate, and confident judgments of number performed for small numbers of items. The term is derived from the Latin adjective subitus (meaning "sudden") and captures a feeling of immediately knowing how many items lie within the visual scene, when the number of items present falls within the subitizing range

http://ping.fm/vOofv

So what to do with that supercomputer?

http://ping.fm/amTwe

An endorsement. Definitely in favour of information depth....

Simplicity, authenticity, NOW! Desire. Yes! ...Alive? #sixwords

Wisdom is not the apex of the data pyramid: data is fractal, information 2-dimensional, knowledge conceivably 3-dimensional....

Relationship: discrete, distinguishable, equal and excepted. #sixwords

Obtuse abstruse excuse refuse recuse use.... #sixwords

Come home to me winsome palindrome! #sixwords

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