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  Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert M. Pirsig My rating: 5 of 5 stars What made my reading of this book so interesting was that I was given my copy by my friend Pete who is an engineer. Every Friday night Pete and I ride our pushbikes 25 kms around the east side of Singapore, drink a beer or two and ride back again. We talk: Pete about engineering, me about teaching and the books I read. One Friday Pete passed me a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and said he'd always wanted to read it; he'd bought two copies and we could read and chat about it each week. Thus began a remarkable bookclub. What Pete loved and helped me to see better was the idea of an engineering problem as holistic. When things go wrong you can treat the symptom or you can think more holistically to understand the nature of the system. But, as Zen and the Art explains, the engineering systems we engage with also include the user as an integral eleme...
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The company I keep

The company I keep Includes poets.  Odd individuals  Who see the world sideways,  Lurking in conversations,  Waiting for the weird words,  The unusual observations, And surreptitiously wrapping them  In paper napkins  To sneak them home.  Best to keep your insights hidden  Lest they pilfer those too  And sell them to the world in a poem. A friend has been writing a poem a day and publishing on Facebook. At dinner last night he was asked if he'd written the day's poem. "I'll do it later" he said, "hopefully someone will say something that will give me inspiration". 
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  The Invention of Science: The Scientific Revolution from 1500 to 1750 by David Wootton My rating: 5 of 5 stars This book matters. It matters generally because of its meticulous scholarship and its well-reasoned articulation of the processes that underpin scientific knowledge. It matters specifically now as an antidote to the forces of counter-scientific thinking that, through ignorance or self-serving lies, are picking away at the fabric of society and academia. In the context of COVID, a robust and reliable scientific process is life-saving. What I came to better appreciate through reading Wootton is both how recent and also how fragile the processes we call "science" really are. My crude understanding prior to reading the book was that the key transition into modern thought occured with Aristotle. Plato represented antiquity with the proper locus of inquiry being the mind; the objects of the world are no more than interesting approximations of intellectual "f...
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Banksia

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When I trace my hand it’s   Naturally the right that   Picks up the pencil and marks The page with tracing lines. Dominance ironically results   In the right being erased And the image on the   Page emerges as a Mirror to that Determination to define. The wordless left: An empty space Inside the boundaries   That seek to contain   And frame and Control. The spirit of the Law, A Terra Nullius, Which we try to contain   Within the legal letters that write Who belongs where. The vast openness   That Banks and Cook   Traced as they sailed North labelling the Flora and Fauna. … An educational mentor Reminded me regularly that “Values are Caught Not Taught.” “Create the right space”   He said,   “Model respect,” Which he did, Walking gently through   The world.   … We wear paths   In the landscape. Tracings   That define Us And circle   The soils Too beautiful,   Too soft, For words. “Whereof one cannot speak...
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Airconditioning

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Sitting in aircon drinking coffee and  Singapore Coffee Shop CC licensed. Click image to view source. Hearing accents like my own  I'm looking out through picture-frame glass  At the local coffee shop across the road.  The price of my coffee would have  Bought me breakfast over there.  I could say I’ve already eaten -  Which is true -  But I also wanted the comfort  Of the familiar,  Of a filtered environment  Where I can breathe easy.  In the humidity over there  And the noise of passing traffic  I'm a little less in control,  A little less comfortable.  Here, in my ubiquitous  Coffee shop,  I can quietly turn my back  On the world I am colonising.
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The Overstory by Richard Powers My rating: 5 of 5 stars This novel reads like an epic poem to the beauty and complexity of the natural world; an invocation to understand how little we know and to know how little we understand. "Life will not answer to reason" Powers reminds us, "and meaning is too young a thing to have much power over it." In the understory of this wildly branching narrative are the humans who live within the systems of the natural world. Trees, and nature more generally, form a metaphor for human interdependence and the slow, primitive evolution of human reason. Powers voice is clipped, precise, almost scientific, but unambiguously poetic. This is undoubtedly a text where meaning trumps reason - but never fails to acknowledge its debt. View all my reviews
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What price to pay?

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Lin Biao CC Wiki commons Life will not answer to reason. And meaning is too young a thing to have much power over it.   Richard Powers Overstory Loc 2075 A foreigner with a little language Is still a novelty in   Hangzhou in the 90s. So much so that I   Bargain a pair of gloves,   For a knock-down price. My Chinese friend is Miffed when he goes back   The next night but Can’t do so well. “How come you sold it   Cheeper to the foreigner?” He asks and is answered With a shrug. I buy a plaque of Mao But pass over a similar Memento of Lin Biao - The official villain of   Modern Chinese history.   It costs 5 times more. Later that day we Visit Lin Biao’s   Holiday compound.   Unused for years It feels like a wealthy   European suburb. Acres of manicured   Forest with several   Two storied villas   Dotted about. Delightful in their   Colours and porticoes But eerie in their emptiness. Entering one villa we Go behind ...
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