confused of calcutta

Thank you very much for all your comments and queries. I realise from reading the comments that I haven’t been able to articulate the fundamental reason for my even beginning to look at this area.
And that is this:
The original Dunbar number was based on some understanding of the relationship between neocortical volume and group size [...]

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Apologies to Phil Collins, and heartfelt thanks to LaughingSquid, someone I now read regularly.
We’re at the edge of the traditional mid-January reality-distortion field, traditional because it happens before every Steve Jobs keynote at MacWorld. Not that Mr Jobs needs any help, but the distortion tends to be amplified by the rumour mill that precedes [...]

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An update on the recent xkcd.com cartoon, which I blogged about earlier today. As FND reminded me, and as reported here and earlier here, its very existence changed the context of the numbers it represented. Given it was Randall Munroe, I guess we should call that the Heisenblag Principle.

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As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been reading Scared To Death by Christopher Booker and Richard North. So you’d understand why I could not help but smile when I saw Randall Munroe’s latest over ca at xkcd:

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First of all, thanks for your comments on my previous post, where I posed the question on Digital Dunbar numbers. The views espoused helped me understand a little more about the area, led me down a few new garden paths, and led to a place where I could crystallise a little more of my own [...]

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Deep Throat: Follow the money.
Bob Woodward: What do you mean? Where?
Deep Throat: Oh, I can’t tell you that.
Bob Woodward: But you could tell me that.
Deep Throat: No, I have to do this my way. You tell me what you know, and I’ll confirm. I’ll keep you in the right direction if I can, but that’s [...]

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Richard Feynman was a genius. He did many amazing things. One of the more unusual things he did in his life was to make gargantuan efforts to visit the Soviet republic of Tuva. Even more unusually, he failed to do this, held up by the politics and bureaucracy of the Cold War; papers permitting him [...]

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That’s the subject of a very powerful set of essays published recently in the Edge World Question Center. I haven’t read all of them yet; I was working through them sequentially when I received an e-mail from Pat Kane of ThePlayEthic, pointing me at the answer given by Kevin Kelly. [Thanks, Pat, and I look [...]

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The passage below is from Gulliver’s Travels, Dean Jonathan Swift, Chapter 4. Amazingly out of copyright. [Shorely shum mishtake? Ed.]
One Morning, about a Fortnight after I had obtained my Liberty, Reldresal, Principal Secretary (as they style him) of private Affairs, came to my House, attended only by one Servant. He ordered his Coach to [...]

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Recently Stumbled across these sites and liked them.

Montana Skies, a cello-guitar fusion duet, covering songs ranging from Summertime thru Malaguena to House of The Rising Sun; I particularly liked Gringo Flamenco, which seems to be an original. i’ve VodPodded the last one for your convenience.
And then there’s Pablo Lobato from Argentina, who draws caricatures [...]

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