From the monthly archives: November 2005

Psychoanalysis

By Rufus Pollock On November 25, 2005 · Leave a Comment

This is definitely up there for the greatest myth of all time award. Strong overtones of intellectual quackery and really begs the question of why did so many fall for this? Readings:

Richard Webster: Why Freud was Wrong Geoffrey Masson: Assault on Truth, Against Therapy Richard McNally: Remembering Trauma
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Summary of P2P Literature

By Rufus Pollock On November 21, 2005 · 2 Comments

I’ve put up a summary of the literature on the impact of P2P on music sales that has emerged over the years. You can read the full text here but these are the basic conclusions:

An explosion in research (mainly dependent on access to proprietary data) as a result of public interest in these [...]

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Open Knowledge Drives out Closed

By Rufus Pollock On November 17, 2005 · 1 Comment

Open knowledge drives out closed (in the long run).

(After Gresham’s Bad money drives out good though with opposite sense). I tentatively dub this Pollock’s law .

Open knowledge here is taken as given by the open knowledge definition and, in its essentials, means freely accessible, reusable and redistributable. Closed by contrast means knowledge [...]

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Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

By Rufus Pollock On November 11, 2005 · Leave a Comment

8.5/10. (2005-11-26) (DVD). Whilst overly generous to the central character this Powell and Pressburger masterpiece is certainly a compelling vision of a man’s journey into memory and the unpredictable nature of the passage.

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The Past Was Better

By Rufus Pollock On November 7, 2005 · Leave a Comment

The belief that the present is a particular nadir in human affairs be it culturally, politically or ethically is a frequent one throughout history. However its very recurrence indicates its falsity, something I couldn’t imagine better put than this quote from Sir Thomas Browne’s Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646; 6th ed., 1672) Chapter xi (cited [...]

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The Invention of Symbols

By Rufus Pollock On November 3, 2005 · Leave a Comment

We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us. Gene. M. Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun.

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