Iain Cameron's Diary
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2002-07-02 - 5:24 a.m.

Not my most focused day in the office.

I got a nice e-mail from LEMAN in Liberec - a small design engineering company that has spun out from the Technical University. I think this company has a lot of potential for business in the UK and so I suggested various contacts and approaches which seems to have pleased them a lot.

I already have a similar thing from Sloda Auto College. One of the things I didnt get down to was writing to the head of Cost Reduction at Skoda following my conversation with Graham although I did mail John Gambles suggesting a get together.

I also got an e-mail from the Belgian jazz guitarist Gilbert Isbin. He is very relaxed about the idea of me having taken the track Blossom and put it on the Plundafonix CD. I think he likes the idea of his stuff being alongside Cathy and Robin. He is keen to get Cathy to sing some of his songs.

He has visited this site which he really enjoyed. I should have thought of this before as he has a very wide ranging interest in the spanish guitar. He has loads of projects on the go including a commission to write a guitar quartet. I wrote a short biographic passage on him for the website which he agreed. I also editted down some stuff about Paul Wheeler - which seemed to be more of a mask than an invitation to find out more.

Gilbert seemed to be up for Fifths. I sent Mark a copy of this together with various pieces drawn from his BBC 500, something which has emerged from one of Webern's Bagatelles and the arrangement of You Are Here. As far as I can tell this is still in mid-air between UK and LA. Maybe when she gets it Robin will insist I destroy all copies. At the moment I would say it was interestingly different from the original.

I read some more of Philosophy Now. This comes out every two months and is an attempt to run a philosophy mag for the general reader. Its magnificent - I seriously commend it to everyone - and I am thinking of subscribing. I also plugged away at a philosophical work on rational action. You'd be surprised, given that we all think that we act for a reason everyday, how little understood the phenomenon is. There's a kind of thought experiment - short story in PN about a project to create someone who only acts on rational grounds. This is achieved by self analysis and control of emotions. The joke is that the person doesnt do anything and you can't tell if they are concious at all.

This is the Humean view - that reason is the servant of the passions. Aristotle and Kant think that there may be ends that are rational and which may generate action. In Kant there is the example of the categorical imperative but these days we think that it is an interesting quirk rather than a serious obligation. Aristotle may think that all action is for a rational end - maybe happiness or wellbeing.

There is an article about the Vienna Art Orchestra in this months Jazzwise - they have an album - nearly 20 years old of jazz minimalism based on the music of Eric Satie. Sounds like I must-have to me. Surely this can't be a matter of "passion"?

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