John McCreery's Blog – April 2010 Archive (5)

john@oac

What is it about Cats (the musical, that is)?

Today was Midori no Hi 'Green Day' in Japan, the…

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Added by John McCreery on April 29, 2010 at 2:31pm — 4 Comments

There can be truth in fiction, truth as a topic, or truth as something that rings true, if only to one particular reader. For example, the reader is me; the fiction is Cloud's Rider, an SF novel by C.J. Cherryh. Third paragraph, page 87.

Truth, he'd been halfway religious before he became a rider. He was still trying to figure the ins and outs of the preachers' religion as it applied to him now that he'd…

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Added by John McCreery on April 26, 2010 at 5:06pm — No Comments

john@oac

Millenium Assessment of Human Behavior

Are you aware of this project, now being promoted by Paul Ehrlich at Stanford University? Seems like it should be right up Keith Hart's alley.

Tip of the hat to…

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Added by John McCreery on April 18, 2010 at 3:23pm — No Comments

john@oac

From Intent to Execution

Somewhere, can't put my finger on it just now, Alfred Schutz remarks that sociological theory treats its subjects like programmable automatons. The input is social norms and other information, and the output is predictable given the input. But hold on a minute? Is life ever really like that?

Over on…

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Added by John McCreery on April 8, 2010 at 8:30am — No Comments

john@oac

Question No. 1

Over on Savage Minds, Kerim Friedman asks if it would make sense for anthropologists to try to formulate a list of fundamental unsolved problems, analogous to the 23 problems proposed by mathematician David Hilbert in 1890. In response, I have written…

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Added by John McCreery on April 4, 2010 at 3:26am — 12 Comments