felis_ultharus

I haven't been online much. I've mostly been working on writing -- with two edited copies back from editors. I've also been working on financial stuff, putting in extra hours at work, and what little time I've had to myself has been mostly playing Okami and reading Stuart Kauffman's book, Reinventing the Sacred.

Kauffman's been on radio shows studiously misrepresenting his book. He talks about it as if he's trying to bridge the gap between atheism and religion with some kind of third way. Actually, he's an atheist who's arguing that classical science has gotten a lot wrong, but that doesn't mean there's (in his words) "a Creator God."

Kauffman is a University of Calgary professor who wears three hats -- biology, physics, and philosophy. He's clearly a genius in some ways, which only means that his failure to prove some of his points is more disappointing.

I'll save a full description for when I finish the book. But I just wanted to say that his arguments that consciousness is real and not an illusion generated by neurons is itself worth the read. He argues consciousness is Copenhagen-interpretation quantum -- acausal, probabilistic, nondeterminist, and not limited to matter or algorithms. This is how he tries to recuperate agency and free will without recourse to a god.

I haven't finished the chapter on "The Quantum Brain," but I'm waiting to see how he deals with certain problems raised by his (quite good) arguments on the subject. I'll see how he deals with these (or doesn't), but my suspicion is that he may have opened the door wider than he intended, and let divinity in through the back door.

I'm in the office again, and I've been listening to CBC most of the day while I work.

I couldn't handle Brent Bambury today, but momentarily caught him, when I switched back after running out of Sigur Rós CDs. I caught the final few minutes of his "superhero show" which pitted him against Stuart MacLean, playing a villain named the Vinylator.

Stuart MacLean must be really hard up for cash.

After that, on Quirks and Quarks, they were interviewing a woman who was exploring the relationship between the coloration of male barn swallows, and their testosterone levels -- the darker they are, the more testosterone, but they weren't sure which was cause and which effect. So they captured, tagged, and coloured male barn swallows, and released them back into the wild.

The high-tech technology they used to change their colour? Non-toxic black markers.

I want that on my résumé: "2008: coloured live barn swallows with black magic marker for science."

Naturally, when I went into Tim Horton's right after hearing this interview, the radio was playing "Ça fait rire les oiseaux."