On Thursday 24 October 2013 at 7.00pm Peter Beresford introduced Mad Matters at the 17th Edinburgh Independent Radical Book Fair. This is a podcast of his talk: Read more…
As part of the Ragged Library, Katrina Parkin, Teacher in Psychology at The English College in Prague suggested ‘Phantoms in the Brain by Ramachandran’…
This book offers a unique and intriguing insight into the wonders of the human brain. It gives an accesible account of what we have learnt about the brain as a result of some truly astounding case studies of human behaviour; from Phantom Limb syndrome to an individual who is blind yet can ‚see‘ movement. This book inspired me in University and the understanding it gave me of just how wonderful yet bizarre the human brain is, and how much we have the capacity to learn about it, has continued to fuel my curiousity in Psychology ever since.
I once came across a statement of purpose for an organisation and it read as follows: “We exist to professionally build long-term high-impact sources so that we may endeavour to synergistically leverage existing effective deliverables to stay competitive in tomorrow’s world.” So there you have the purpose! Everyone now clear on what they need to do, how to measure progress and how to do it? Not a chance!
True purpose can only be established by studying the WHAT and WHY of current performance. A statement of purpose must be expressed from the customer’s point of view and in their terms, i.e. from the outside-in not top-down. This outside-in perspective is one of the key features of a new way of thinking about organisations and management method. Read more…
As part of the Ragged Library, Professor Linda Dryden, director of the Centre for Literature and Writing at Napier University suggested ‘The Ebb Tide by Robert Louis Stevenson’…
Local knowledge involves the situated knowledge – the understandings unique to a particular place, time and orientation which can be vital for solving problems of complexity. From reading Elenore Long’s work on ‘Rhetorical Techne, Local Knowledge and Challenges’, I found her work resonant with my experience and so developed a derivative digest of it.
This is a podcast and summary of ‘To sleep, perchance to dream: 30 years in the land of Morpheus’ a talk done by Professor Ray Miller, on the 7th of November:
Sleep is something we are all so familiar with that it rarely occurs to us how little we know about it. We spend around one third of our life in sleep. It is something we share with the entire kingdom of plants and animals. We can’t seem to do without it. But even basic questions like why we sleep at all are only just beginning to be answered. Read more…
On the 7th of November 2013, Ciaran Healy gave a talk on ‘Noumenal Contouring; The Secret Of Science, The Secret Of Skill’. This is a summary and podcast of the event when Ciaran was kind enough to take the time to share his thinking and inspiration with everyone:
The Philosophy Of Science is best understood as a kind of unsolved crime, but instead of a crime you have the most incredible and unprecedented advanced in understanding. But like an unsolved crime, nobody has yet accounted for why it happened, or how it happened. The philosophy of science means you undertake that investigation. Read more…