http://www.vukutu.com/blog away beyond many a far meridian Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:40:06 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I listed here many of the teachers and thinkers whose influence I have felt.   In his wonderful new book on John Cage's 4' 33'', the indefatigable Kyle Gann says this (pages 71-72): The meme that Cage was more of a music philosopher than a composer has become commonplace, most of all, it ... http://www.vukutu.com/blog/2010/03/the-sources-of-silence/ The Australian Department of Defence has been accused of ignoring the religious beliefs of Australian soldiers killed in World War I currently being re-buried, by assuming they were all Christians.   This assumption is a very odd one for the DoD to make, given that the first Australian-born commander of Australian ... http://www.vukutu.com/blog/2010/02/revisionist-history/ Further to my post speculating about Robert Mugabe's personality, here is some news from The Times about his physiology.  Apparently, he nods off to sleep every few minutes, even when meeting foreign visitors.  (HT:  Normblog) The Times article mentions the two main contenders for the leadership of ZANU (PF) following Bob's ... http://www.vukutu.com/blog/2010/02/memories-of-underdevelopment/ I wondered here whether [tag]Robert Mugabe[/tag] had been an informant for CIA in the years prior to Zimbabwean Independence in 1980.   If so, many strange events in Zimbabwean politics, before and after Independence, would be explained.   The thought has now occurred to me that such a relationship, if it had ... http://www.vukutu.com/blog/2010/02/the-psychology-of-robert-mugabe/ These are some notes on deciding to do a PhD, notes I wrote some years ago after completing my own PhD. Choosing a PhD program is one of the hardest decisions we can make. For a start, most of us only make this decision once in our lives, and so we ... http://www.vukutu.com/blog/2010/02/doing-a-phd/ I am a great fan of the writing of [tag]Richard Brautigan[/tag], so I was delighted once to encounter a short reminiscence of Brautigan by that Zelig of the Beats, Pierre Delattre, in his fascinating memoir, Episodes (page 54): The last time I saw him [RB], we were walking past the middle ... http://www.vukutu.com/blog/2010/02/brautigan-on-writing/ Belatedly, I have just learnt of the death last month of [tag]George Leonard[/tag] (1923-2010), writer, journalist, and aikidoka.  He took up aikido in middle age, a journey he wrote about movingly (see reference below), and ended up co-founding Aikido of Tamalpais.  His writings on life, the universe and everything have been ... http://www.vukutu.com/blog/2010/02/vale-george-leonard/ Cosma Shalizi at Three-Toed Sloth cannot understand why people desire original works of visual art rather than printed reproductions, especially when we've been buying printed books rather than manuscript codexes for centuries now.  He presents - and demolishes too quickly, I believe - some potential reasons for this.  I am very ... http://www.vukutu.com/blog/2010/01/copy-me-im-on-my-way-out/ Ljova and the Kontraband have today released a video of their song, Mnemosyne, a setting of the poem by Joe Stickney which I posted here.  I mentioned listening to their superb album here.   The evocative video uses footage from Ilya Khrjanovsky's film 4, and is available here. http://www.vukutu.com/blog/2010/01/mnemosyne/ [tag]Seymour Papert[/tag], one of the pioneers of [tag]Artificial Intelligence[/tag], once wrote (1988, p. 3), "Artificial Intelligence should become the methodology for thinking about ways of knowing."   I would add "and ways of acting".  Some time back, I wrote about the painting of spirit-dreamtime maps by Australian aboriginal communities as proof of ... http://www.vukutu.com/blog/2010/01/maps-and-territories-and-knowledge/