www.felixcohen.co.uk

This weeks popbitch has an interesting (and unusually acute) observation:

Dr Robert Spitzer is probably America's
leading psychiatrist. In the 80s he
identified a vast number of disorders -
Obsessive Compulsive, Attention Deficit etc.
In 2007 more than 50% of Americans have been
diagnosed as suffering from a psychological
disorder. But Dr Robert says he now thinks he
was wrong, and that his diagnoses just
confused these syndromes with ordinary human
behaviour and unhappiness. Which is, I guess
bad news for the highly-paid therapists

on machine-envy about links between the Popperian open society and Agile Software Development, a very user-centred method of designing effective software, following a number of very socio-political rules. This dovetails nicely with my feelings on usability and the importance of thinking about the end-user in everything, from making web pages to making democracies.
Go read; it is definitely worth it.
And here's a link to Open society and It's Enemies.

I was in the Guardian on Saturday!. The dead-tree version had pictures. Expect a scan soon!

I just came across this, which arguably, I should totally have known about before, but have just discovered the whole back-story, and it really is incredibly cool. I mean, obviously I love the image, and I've seen it all over the place, especially in London.
Discussing The Princess Bride with Martyn (my housemate) last night, which disturbingly, he hadn't seen, I had the realisation that André the Giant has managed to enter into my memeplex without my ever even really realising. And now I discover that the is an incredibly well orchestrated, McLuhan-esque (links to large, but incredibly worthwhile MP3), campaign that has been running for almost my entire life without my ever making the connections. Wow.

A torn and lovelorn BoingBoing reader
writes; is it OK to ask for a girls email address if she seems interesting but doesn't necessarily share all your views?
Disregarding the question of whether it is appropriate, in a Mars/Venus way, to KO someone simply for disagreeing with you, I'd like to address the far more fundamental issue of; is it appropriate to ask for a girls email address. What sort of geeky, technophile message does this send out, or is it just as acceptable as getting a phone number in the year 2006.
There's a lot of psychological arguments to be made that email provides different modes of communication to a phone conversation (I'm wilfully disregarding the question of SMS'ing at the moment); it has many commonalities with the time-honoured letter, but even then lacks the appropriate social cues that one would get from hand-writing, layout etc. And is it then appropriate to judge them based on their email domain; I'd sure as hell consider what I was doing if a girl ended up having the email fluffybunny69 at hotmail.com (sorry, whoever has that mail, but really...).
I've been offered email addresses a couple of times since I mmoved to the big smoke, and kinda assumed it was a subtle brushoff; "sure, e-mail me, but at least I can pretend my spam filter caught you...". Perhaps I'm wrong, and the email is the equivalent of the mobile number now; it certainly seems a lot harder to stalk someone with just their email address, and if your date is planning on googling you apres your next meeting, he or she can probably find some interesting snippets from it, like message board postings and so on.
But it says a lot about peoples online presence; which are you more likely to be upset about, a day without your email or a day without your mobile phone. Hell, I'd go for the email anytime, which may surprise some of you, but I guess I can treat that like going on holiday and coming back to a mound of exciting mail on the doormat, whereas a phone has real-time aspects.
So, in response to the lovelorn boingboing reader, I think my response has to be; get her number, dude; you can always get the email later if you feel a burning desire to forward tat or show links, but a voice chat is a lot more interesting for both of you.
And really, if she disagrees with you about Microsoft's Quality Assurance/DRM, perhaps you should take her out just to talk some sense into the poor girls head. Not everyone can be as wise and sensible about user-experience as most BB readers; if it works for what she needs, I guess it works for her. Take the opportunity to enlighten her with your swanky Apple or KDE desktop if you ever get her back to yours...
A brief hey to BB readers who've found their way over here...feel free to take a look around. Especially at some of my swanky new URL's; many people seem to enjoy these cocktail discussions

Blogged with Flock

Visited the science museum on friday with Frankie and Martyn, and we had a lovely time. Especially worth seeing, especially if you are as geeky as me, is the great history of computing, although it seems the PDP-1 has been put in the gaming exhibition which has sold out. And not even pretending to be from the Make-A-Wish foundation would have got us in, apparently...
Upsettingly, however, the Science Museum is a user-experience nightmare...queues, broken machines, non-visual exhibits and weird paths around the exhibits. Letters will be written! And the future, apparently, consists of woky tables, crashed windows boxes, intelligent toilets and choosing the gender of our babies. Pretty much what I'd expected, then. So much for the Singularity.

So on friday, my day off, I had the misfortune of being visited by the Jehovah's Witness'. But not your normal Jehovah's, but preaching the 'end times' philosophy that seems to be so popular at the moment. Very upsetting, to be honest, especially as the lady had her kid with her. Seriously, who is so poor at parenting that they feel it is appropriate to tell their child that they will soon be facing the apocalype and having to bear arms in the service of their lord? I said this to her, as well as a few other unfortunately confrontational comments, which didn't help when I had calmed down enough to invite her in to discuss the thoughts over a cup of tea. Also, I couldn't bring myself to take the leaflet from her, otherwise I'm sure I would have had some choice quotations about how all of us heretics (but especially the atheists, no doubt), are about to face an eternity of damnation.

An Evolutionary Account of Teleology: Why we Infer Design in the World around Us

“Every manifestation of design...exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater and more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation”
Paley (1802)

The question of whether design is present in the world, especially in the function of organisms has been important both in theology and natural philosophies; teleological arguments for a Creator have been discussed as far back as Plato, and ratified in Christianity by Thomas Aquinas(Houston, 1979). The answer to the question is seen, variously, as proof of the existence of God(s) or as evidence of the materialist process of evolution. The debate stems from a number of factors that shall be considered in this essay. I shall present an evolutionarily based explanation of why both believers in a creation story and scientists see design in the world, and what this might mean for reconciling these opposing views. Recently, this debate has been re-ignited by the work of the Intelligent Design (ID) movement, championed by Phillip Johnson and the Discovery Institute. On the other side of the debate is a movement of neo-Darwinists, labeled the ‘New Godless’ in a recent article (New Statesman, 10/04/06) and typified by arch-atheist Richard Dawkins, whose awareness of the problem of design is shown in his title, “The Blind Watchmaker” (Dawkins, 1986). The debate has crystallized as the ID movement has campaigned for the reintroduction of teaching non-evolutionary theories in American schools. The recent Dover School Board case (Jones, 2004) overthrew the ‘teach the controversy’ notion that the ID movement was pressuring the school with; in the eyes of the legal profession; ID is still rebranded creationism. While many ID advocates do not insist, or even suggest, that God need be the intelligent designer in question, it is significant to note that Phillip Johnson has been quoted as saying:

Cognitive Maps : Controversy or False Dichotomy?

Introduction
Cognitive maps are an area of psychology which has seen much research, and still supports a plurality of models for the way that the maps function. Many researchers have attempted to define the subject, but there are a number of schisms within the field between approaches, most of which are isomorphic to ongoing psychological debates such as top-down or bottom-up analysis and models in vision. Cognitive maps were first studied by early behavioural psychologists, most notably Tolman (1932), who coined the term when studying the behaviour of rats in mazes. Similar research was a defining part of the behaviourist milieu, and much data was gathered to show how rats behaved in various types of maps and mazes under a variety of conditions. More recently, however, research has focussed on human cognitive mapping ability, especially as this impacts upon behaviour in urbanised settings, the use of enabling and ubiquitous technology in tandem with our environment and the impact of disability on the formation of cognitive maps. The early behavioural models and more recent research have provided us with models of cognitive maps that draw on their indispensable features; landmarks, districts, paths & nodes. Landmarks and paths are, one hopes, self-explanatory. A district is an area defined by shared properties; for example, in Manhattan Little Italy is defined by the demographic of it’s inhabitants, 5th Avenue for designer boutique’s and so on. A node is an area in the environment that serves for the alignment of landmarks and represents a junction of several routes. It is useful in route finding as a checkpoint for decision making. (Lynch, 1960)

Category Specific Deficits:
Not just a visual or functional semantics.

Introduction
Subjects who manifest difficulties in identifying objects from certain semantic categories, such as animals, food or non-living objects (artifacts) despite showing normal recognition of objects in other categories following a trauma are classed as showing a category-specific deficit (CSD). This impairment can show a wide range of affect, from a loss of just fruit and vegetable identification, through to all living things, or artifacts. In some patients, it also sometimes appears to diminish as time passes since the original trauma (Parkins, 1996). This double dissociation presents an excellent opportunity to understand the way that recognition takes place in the brain, and how semantics are encoded and used by the attentional system.