Best wishes to you all to enable you to survive the xmas period

There is an excellent story to be found in "The life of Pi." So well written and so many great ideas.  Like all good books it apparently ripped off some story elements from a german book written some 10 years before.

Well there is nothing like a bit of Samuel Taylor Coleridge rhyming about some ancient mariner to get your carbuncles a itchin on a Monday arvo.

Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.

I blame my love of Iron Maiden in the mid 80's for my knowledge of the ancient mariner.

On a more ( Read more... )

So what about the human brain function and social behaviour?
The brain is a funny thing.  It doesn't like to do any more work than it has to (then again who does?).  Quite simply  our brain could not manage to do all the things it does, if it did all of them properly, or needed complete information to decide on a course of action.  So the brain ( Read more... )

What is a meme?  It is a self replicating entity -usually an idea, but it can also be a set of behaviors (like wearing your baseball cap backwards).  Religion has been considered to be the single greatest meme of all time, plus it has the added bonus of generally being transmitted to subjects who are too young to know better (commonly described as ( Read more... )

So now on to the social aspects of racism ( Read more... )

So racism ( Read more... )

I was going to write an essay on the evolutionary origins of racism as I was inspired by
( Read more... )

Just finished "The broken shore" by Peter Temple.  It was recommended by the first Tuesday book club on the ABC. I liked the book but not necessarily certain aspects of the story.  Mrs PR also read it so we could compare notes.

Peter Temple writes like he is Irish in that he has the engaging turn of phrase of a professional story teller.  Peter was ( Read more... )

Facebook -I still dont know what all the excitement  is all about.  Clearly I am not an "early adopter" of this technology.