Tag Archives: Inventor

Cultural Wind Jammer

I have the impression that some ways must be left behind, some mental habits must be abandoned, if we are not to clip the wings of progress. Even to science we must sometimes repeat Charon’s cry: By another way, by other ports, not here, you will find passage across the shore. In my role as teacher I hope to be able to show you other ways, if not other ports. — Giuseppe Vitali

“Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second.” — William James

Bill Thomas has been described as a Cultural Jammer: trying to change the American attitudes towards aging.

In 1991, Bill Thomas, having been an emergency room doctor, became the medical director of a nursing home in upstate New York. He found the place, as the Washington Post put it, “depressing, a repository for old people whose minds and bodies seemed dull and dispirited.”

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Chronicles of a Martian

“There are two kinds of people: Earthlings and Martians”
Dr. David West Keirsey

People who are generally observant are more ‘down to earth.’ – Earthlings

People who are generally introspective are more ‘head in the clouds.’ – Martians

This iNgenous Martian wrote a book.  

Author of: An Anthropologist from Mars

And he will have written and published 12 other books, including his autobiography, when he will die later this year. For he has realized he has terminal cancer.

“I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight.

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Big Think

The guy makes sense.

“It is very REASONED with compassion too.”  Some might say he is Rational in his thinking.

And people are slowly, but surely realizing this.

Charlie Munger for one.  Even John Stewart has caught on. 😉  And me too, even though I thought his fantastic idea about fast and slow ideas was the only article I would read of his.

openquoteThere are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.closedquote — Hannah Arendt

tortoise-hare

“And one of the things they showed us was how to really focus on making it swift and usable. We made a two-minute surgery checklist; it had just 19 items. Some of them were just make sure you don’t forget dumb stuff: make sure you gave antibiotics, make sure you have blood ready for a high-blood-loss case. And then there were other interesting parts: make sure everybody in the room has been introduced by name and role; make sure the surgeon actually explained to the team what their goals for the operation are; make sure the anesthesiologist and nurses had a chance to explain their plans for the operation. We put that checklist in eight hospitals around the world, ranging from rural Tanzania to Toronto and Seattle, and every single hospital we put it in had a double-digit reduction in complications. The average reduction in death was 46 percent. That made me realize there was something much deeper and more important going on here about this set of problems we’re grappling with in the modern world.

You see, his main ideas are Slow Ideas.  Complex ideas: hard to take hold in the general public zeitgeist.

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A New Page

of History.

You’re Hired. You’re Fired.  That’s business.

You’re Fired!  It was Donald Trump‘s phrase, he tried to trademark it.  But it is the old, tried, and true random way: Neo-Darwinism (but do not blame Darwin for he understood his views better than that).

No, how about Margulian Darwinism?

Because, Larry’s plan is different — fundamentally different. His choice.

You’re Hired.

A New Page of History

You’re hired, and your salary is a one time gift, of ~30 billion dollars give or take some billions, no strings attached, but Metaperson tethered.

Are we on the SAME PAGE? Not likely.

Larry Page
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Leverage

The Human is the tool using animal.

“… Thus it is the lever, above all other tools, that fascinates and preoccupies the Rational to the seemingly infinite possibilities of harnessing energy that can be used to impart thrust to levers.” [Personology]

lever

“…  there are complex mechanisms, such as automobiles, airplanes, and ships, towers and buildings, stairways and bridges, derricks and lifters, drill presses and band saws, milling machines and lathes, as well as cameras, monitors, printers, and even computers, all strategic aligning tools.  … the strategic aligning tools, that are used more efficiently by Rationals than by any of the other characters, this because they are frequently intent upon getting remote pragmatic results by strategic building.” [Personology]

He was fascinated by the leverage of the computer.  As he put it, “the computer is the bicycle for the mind.”

There were some of us that saw it coming.  Note this was 1990, three years before the Web (with Mosaic) actually started to explode.

Many viewed Steve Jobs as arrogant.

But,

“If this is arrogance, then at least it is not vanity, and without question it has driven the design engineers to take the lead in molding the structure of civilization.” — David Keirsey

Unbelievable, In Memoriam

They did’t believe her.

And you wonder why?

Don’t ask.

Homo anthropologicus?

Scientists are supposed to be objective, open minded, fair minded, and logical. Paleoanthropology is supposed to be a science. Think again.

Unbelievable.

Most of science is good, and mostly right, if not trivial and mundane. It’s the best we can do at the moment. But, there is this particular case — the question of origin of mankind — it’s unbelievable — these so-called “scientists” are acting like priests. Not objective, not open minded, not fair minded, not logical, and not scientific. What’s up?

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The Exceptional Twins

They varied in creed and circumstance.

They were the same in Temperament and interest.

They were exceptionally invariant in their passion.

They were the exceptional invariant twins.

invariant_twins

You don’t chose your passion, your passion choses you — Jeff Bezos

Passion breeds talent — Stanislas Dehaene

Passion requires Temperament — David M. Keirsey

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Of Complex Character, Revisited

Gaia is a tough bitch.

Hot Cold Passion: a passion for science.

She was a Scientist, first.

And she was a Character — a very interesting, and complex character.

Having entered the science community as a woman, when men still dominated science, and being charmed by a huge scientific ego, Carl, she luckily had to explore the backwaters of evolutionary biology at the time, bacteria, not getting much support from him or her male contemporaries.  Of course, like all good science, that estuary of knowledge contained biological riches totally ignored by well established conventional scientific community.  Like Darwin before, she was sui generis: a driven, feisty, no holds barred, idea brawler — an intellectual maverick — by necessity and choice.  Initially ignored, she generated a fair amount of hostility from the conventional scientific community when they were challenged.

And intellectual mavericks, with persistence, are the only type to challenge the major ideas of conventional science, and win — somewhat.

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A Modern Greek Tragedy of Temperament .. and Gender, revisited.

It is a modern Greek Tragedy of Temperament

… and Gender.

The Fates can be cruel or kind, or boththree-fates-greek

It seems so in this story.  This story is about discovery.  This story is about life and death.

She had worked hard all her life.  She had overcome her circumstance. Latin: Circum– to encircle, stance to take a position, to contend. Yes, it had been a man’s world, she was surrounded by her society and her family who discouraged her from her passion: science. Of course, other women had suffered discrimination before her: Marie Curie and Emmy Noether to name two, but they had their families to teach them, encourage and help them. Nobody had encouraged her, certainly not her family, and still was a man’s world in science in 1952.  She had to rely on herself, so she thought and acted.

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Systemic Threshold

Iron Man 3-4

The 2013 Screen Actors Guild Awards evidently put Argo in front-running position to take home The Oscar’s coveted Best Picture.  After being Oscar snubbed as a directorAffleck and his film have since cleaned up on awards culminating in SAG’s top-honor ensemble award.  Daniel Day Lewis’ Oscar chances went from 95%  to 99% with a SAG win, while Jennifer Lawrence and Anne Hathaway are also now a “shoe-in” as well or so they say.

Disney purchased 3 TV spots for tonight’s BIG GAME (Superbowl XLVII) at about 4 mill a pop while Warner Bros. opted to sit out for it’s third year in a row.  Industry insider info indicates that Warner Bros. is strongly hinging on the commercial success of Man of Steel, before “moving forward” with it’s top-priority project:  Justice LeagueThe studio has every right to be nervous, banking it’s flag-ship character hopes on a director like Zack Snyder.  Snyder had early success with 300 (60%), and arguably Watchmen (64%), but his most recent film Sucker Punch (23%), was literally god awful.  Which explains why WB execs are hesitant.

AND SO while Warner Bros’ ensemble team-up film remains in limbo, Disney’s ensemble team-up film is well into it’s phase two, with Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World coming this year.  Marvel head honcho Kevin Feige says that the studio is going to “keep taking risks” creatively  in phase two and beyond.  One of such risks was casting Robert Downey Jr. as billionaire inventor Tony Stark.  But that seemed to work out for everybody:

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