One thing that I used to dread when I was working was someone asking me “what do you do at work then”? I suspect that I must have written about this somewhere, but the answer “I do modelling” is perhaps the most accurate and yet least informative one that I could give. Suddenly “modelling” is becoming quite the in-thing.
Worldview
Facts Not Fear
This is a first for this blog – a version of a “re-tweet”. The following open letter was written by an Infectious Diseases Specialist in response to the relatively uninformed response by many to the Covid-19 pandemic. I have republished it here because it is bang on topic of “feeding my ignorance” and it reinforces the sort of message I was trying to convey in my previous writing on the subject.
This Time It Wasn’t a Butterfly
Its Chaos Theory time. No – not when everything goes awry – although given the situation in the world today that could well be true(-ish). I’m talking about the mathematical version of chaos – small changes in initial conditions make huge differences in outcomes – another subject that I have talked about often. Its most ‘famous’ instantiation is perhaps Lorenz’s “Butterfly Effect” – but as the title says we cannot blame the butterfly this time – or perhaps, more correctly, it is likely that no butterfly was involved – we cannot be sure.
Every Little Thing They Do…
….is magic! The coronavirus pandemic has triggered two different posts – this being the first – which are not necessarily about the virus itself, but comment on some aspects of life that the current outbreak highlights rather well. We hear a lot these days about invisible illnesses and – whilst covid-19 is not always such, sometimes there are no symptoms and neither the person who is ill, nor their friends and relatives will have any idea that they are carrying and spreading the virus.
Democracy Is Great…
…but flawed! After writing my previous post I had a bit of a “lightbulb moment” regarding the democratic system. I am not saying for one minute that I have in any way solved the problem – but perhaps my lightbulb will shed a little luminance on it.
More Than Politics
Its almost a year since my last post – and slightly strange that the trigger should be (nearly) the same. There have been a number of things that, perhaps, could have been written about in that time – maybe a few that should have been – but my thoughts never got written down. This does not mean that there is only one thread going through my mind these days – although the fact that the previous post was on a very similar topic may make it look like that.
Ways To Go Beyond
A follow up, in a way, to Science and Spiritual Practices.
The Gulag Archipelago
It has taken me quite a while to read this – and this is just the abridged version. This is one of those books that I have been intending to read for years and, in many ways, I now wish that I had gotten round to reading it sooner.
Spiritual Science
Once again back to this recurrent theme of the interplay between spirituality and science.
Usandthemism
Maybe its not a real word – but it is perhaps a description of a ‘disease’ that seems to be increasingly threatening our stability all around the world. This, perhaps, is nothing new – whether it was sectarianism in Ireland or racism in the USA or apartheid in South Africa or countless other instances throughout history the disease of usandthemism has never worked out well. Perhaps it is all in our imagination, but it seems to be thriving in the current climate with plenty of people/groups happy to open themselves up to infection.