Cicero's Songs

The average Human brain consists of at least 86 billion neurons and perhaps ten times more glyial cells. Yet each neuron, through synapses, can connect to as many as ten thousand other cells. The estimated number of neural connections is thus in the order of trillions: in fact an estimated 0.15 quadrillion connections . Brain specialists believe that each Human Brain may be capable of processing as much as 2.5 petabytes of information through these synapse connections. This is about seven times larger than the entire library of congress .  Incidentally, to build a computer of similar power on current technology would require the power of a small city to run it. For the brain i t is not the total number of cells, but the connections between them that makes its processing ability so powerful.  As for the Brain so for other systems. In information systems, the value of an individual computer, no matter how fast its processing power or how large its memory, is as nothing compa...

Sometimes a book comes along that defies categories and recently Vitali Vitaliev has written a truly enthralling, unique book. (Full disclosure: Vitali is an old friend of mine). I have even- for the first time- reviewed the book for Amazon.com. Here is what I thought about the book: " Vitali Vitaliev is used to journeys, and in this book he takes us as a companion on a journey of time and space- dozens of countries over two decades- and a journey of the mind. He is a great companion. By turns wry, tragic and laugh-out-loud funny, in the end he delivers a tour- de -force of warmth and humanity. The stream of consciousness structure creates links between places and people- Tasmania and Clive James, London and Peter Ustinov- that scintillate with wit and wisdom. he meets his triumphs and disasters and eventually treats those two impostors just the same. Moving in a zig - zag across the globe from his native city of Kharkiv in Ukraine to Folkestone , Melbourne, the Falkland ...

The Following is an article I wrote for one of Estonia's leading newspapers. It was written in conjunction with a conference on Direct Democracy in Tartu which I spoke at this morning. Estonia is entering a new era in her democratic history. As in so many other areas, Estonia is pioneering the use of technology in its political system. Gradually, the use of e-voting is beginning to take hold and, as ever higher numbers of people cast their votes securely over the Internet, many suggest that it is the key to greater popular participation in the political process. Of course, so far, these e-votes have only been cast in order to elect their political representatives. Now, however, the question is being asked as to whether these systems could now be used more widely, to make political decisions directly. Given the low cost and open access that Estonian voters now have to the Internet, it seems self evidently true that it will soon become very easy to create regular e-referendums; to in...

Katie Price is something of a cultural phenomenon. She has distorted her body to turn herself into a brand: "Jordan". Her past as "glamour model" - there is a piece of newspeak for sordid pornographic model- has given her an entry into the basement of celebrity. Since then, she has parlayed her fifteen minutes of fame into a certain ubiquity, and now even the so-called serious press in the UK feels obliged to report her affairs. The latest is the breakdown of her marriage to one-hit wonder himbo, Peter Andre. As the squabbling couple fight their battles on the pages of the newspapers, I feel increasingly repulsed. The incredible immaturity that this hard boiled misfit shows is a truly disgusting example of the coarseness of modern Britain. Though apparently she sees herself as a role model, it is hard to believe that using your children as a weapon against their father is anything but the lowest form of behaviour. After a while I ask myself what it says about our ...

In some previous posts, I suggested that the likely effect of the economic downturn might include some significant cultural changes. After the age of excess, I suggested, there might come an age of restraint, and that not of of this would be negative. To a certain extent the suspension of Jonathon Ross and Russell Brand for making obscene telephone calls on a radio programme is the kind of thing that I meant. I do not particularly like Ross or Brand whose style of humour is pretty coarse at the best of times, but the spectacle of two middle aged men behaving like teenagers seems to have been pretty unedifying to a whole lot of people. Although some sources close to the BBC have suggested that the root of the complaint was "salary envy" at Ross's £18 million package, in many ways the whole idea of such a vast amount of money being paid to anyone seems, well so "last year". Ross's vulgar humour in any event is based on a certain level of cruelty which now s...

Oh dear. Sharia law at any level in the UK? No chance. Disestablishment of the Church of England as the State religion? Long overdue.

I made a comment on the putatively Scottish antecedents of Lech Walesa. I see Lepidus suggest that Walesa is another version of the proto-Indo European word for stranger that gives English the word Welsh and the Germans the word Wendisch- and indeed is the root of the name Wallace, from which (it is suggested) the Walesa actually derives. I don't think- short of DNA evidence- that we can truly check to what degree Lech Walesa is actually Scottish- after all there were so many Scots who settled in Royal Prussia, and in particular the City of Gdansk (then, of course, Danzig), so there is every chance that the former President has at least some Scottish blood- if not from the first bearer of his surname. The area around Gdansk has a distinct identity- and, unusually for Poland, quite a strong accent. Indeed the Slavic population of that formerly most German of Provinzen, Prussia has not always regarded itself as Polish, but rather Kashub- or Kaszub, in its Polish spelling. The Kaszuby...