Category Archives: Psychology

McCloud (Dennis Weaver) Dies

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Just heard that TV actor Dennis Weaver (aka ‘McCloud) has passed away. In the US they are wondering how come Don Knotts, Darren McGavin, and Dennis Weaver all died this weekend gone? But for me it’s just another funny coincidence. Why?

Well ’cause back in 2003 I went to a nerdy conference in Portland (same trip I coincidentally presented a paper which quoted the Muslim invention of algebra which I recently blogged for Headshift on 1001 Inventions & where I saw a T-shift for Ozomatli which eventually led to me figuring out that I was called ‘Stuart’ for American cultural reasons (see earlier blog entry about my father’s US work for NASA) rather than Scottish & where I heard at Seattle airport on the TV that Microsoft where finally gonna release some code & where I caught K19-the Widower; another coincidence); at the conference dinner (where I was sitting with my Harvard friend Meg, recently dooced) there was a guy who was a really close match to McCloud in my eyes though no one else had said anything.

So I asked the guy, “hey anyone tell you that you look like McCloud?”; and his reply was peachy. “Funny you should say that, but my grandmother dated Dennis Weaver”. This guy was an academic so of course I believed him!

PS: What a coincidence of coincidences.

What is your dangerous idea?

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Got to say that I really don’t have any dangerous ideas for life, the universe and everything – but it looks like some people may well have:

“Something radically new is in the air: new ways of understanding physical systems, new ways of thinking about thinking that call into question many of our basic assumptions.  A realistic biology of the mind, advances in evolutionary biology, physics, information technology, genetics, neurobiology, psychology, engineering, the chemistry of materials: all are questions of critical importance with respect to what it means to be human. For the first time, we have the tools and the will to undertake the scientific study of human nature.

“What you will find emerging out of the 119 original essays in the 75,000 word document written in response to the 2006 Edge Question — “What is your dangerous idea?” — are indications of a new natural philosophy, founded on the realization of the import of complexity, of evolution. Very complex systems — whether organisms, brains, the biosphere, or the universe itself — were not constructed by design; all have evolved. There is a new set of metaphors to describe ourselves, our minds, the universe, and all of the things we know in it.

“Welcome to Edge. Welcome to “dangerous ideas”. Happy New Year.”