>   What is philosophy, and what is its practical usefulness
>   Renaissance and Enlightenment
>   Manliness, Gentlemanliness, Stoicism, Virtue, Anti-Feminism
>   Memetics
>   Zen, nihilism, and the mixing of East-Asian and Western culture
>   Software, technology and documentation design precepts
>   Mental survival tricks
>   Physical survival tricks

>   Learning and adaptation by means of evolution of brain structures
>   Artificial brains that can do memetics
>   Programs for experimenting with evolution
>   The AI Research Club
>   Sociality and colony organisms
>   Cellular automata
>   Philosophical considerations

>   Languages
>   Various programs to experiment with planetary orbits, solid geometry, ray tracing, graph manipulation, etc.
>   Various software tools
>   Music

o   practical philosophy

• What is philosophy, and what is its practical usefulness
  • Menno Rubingh's Philosophy Page: An essay on the practical usefulness of philosophy

• Renaissance and Enlightenment
  • Thoughts on Western technological Enlightenment, and on Transhumanism
  • Views on the Renaissance and on the rationalism in European culture, and on the mechanisms behind its emergence
  • ``Micromégas'', an avant-garde SF story by Voltaire (from 1752), illustrating the critical and rationalistic Enlightenment view at things
  • My practical philosophy discussion mailing list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/materialist_2

• Manliness, Gentlemanliness, Stoicism, Virtue, Anti-Feminism
  • Manliness --> Have a look at http://artofmanliness.com
    This is a very laudable and extensive website (or blog), aimed at reviving Manliness.
  • An essay on the classical Stoic notion of "Virtue", and its connection with Manliness.
  • Gentlemanliness --> My discussion mailing list Gentlemanliness_Study_Group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Gentlemanliness_Study_Group), for the more abstract-thinking men. Its aim is to explore those aspects of Gentlemanliness that are mental and philosophical, and that go beyond mere manliness or machismo.

• Memetics
  • The seminal chapter of Richard Dawkins from ``The Selfish Gene'', which started the science of Memetics.  This short text is a very good and accessible introduction to memetics .
  • Edward Gibbon on Tartars : A historical example for how freedom from limiting beliefs (memes) can be a big advantage.
  • For more on memetics on the Internet, --> see the following webpage which seems to act as a ``hub'' of memetics resources on the Internet: http://virus.lucifer.com/alt.memetics/

• Zen, nihilism, and the mixing of East-Asian and Western culture
  • The very powerful personal uplifting method of Zen explained scientifically.  All mystery and mysticism taken out of Zen, and an attempt at working towards a synergetic fusion of Western and Eastern thought.  (Temporary text, under construction)
  • The story of the Swordsman and the Cat, illustrating some aspects of the practical use of Zen.  This text is also a nice, concise example of the way in which Zen is normally ``expounded'' in the Asiatic world.
  • nzen -- Nederlandstalig open Zen discussie forum / mailing list.
  • Nihilism looked at from a positivistic side.

• Software, technology and documentation design precepts
  • Enablement of change and Improvement through opening the way to insight. Catalyzation in the medium of ``information'', ``knowledge'' and ``science''.

• Mental survival tricks
  • ``The Ethos of Strength'': A collection of practical philosophy and mental survival tricks
  • The usefulness of Free tarot and psychlogical benefits explained
  • Menno Rubingh's INTP page
  • Basic concise library of Philosophy, Mathematics, Memetics, Cultural history, Physics, Technology, and Engineering books

• Physical survival tricks
  • Vitamins and space-age diets

• Learning and adaptation by means of evolution of brain structures
  • The progress of such an endeavour can be seen very clearly through products such as Genbrain that through their effects on the human brain can help produce strongly elevated positive outcomes. This includes enhanced long-term memory, anti-aging benefits, improvements in performance, focus, and efficiency and lastly promlem solving skills. The Genbrain link contains a full outline of the capabilities of the human brain through the right health supplementation.

• Artificial brains that can do memetics
  • ...by being constructed so that internally in the brain, evolutionary processes are used
  • Why really intelligent AI needs to be capable of doing memetics

• Programs for experimenting with evolution
  • ``Crea6ures'' : An on-line Java program/applet (with source code)  A minimally complex program demonstrating interesting genetic and/or memetic evolution effects in populations of interacting entities. For now, temporarily only with commented Java source code but alas not yet with any more explanation/documentation.

• The AI Research Club (Artificial Intelligence Research Club)
  • Introduction: The AI Club, working towards a real, practical self-aware AI
  • Table of contents of source code and documentation on this site
  • The Main AI Research Club site : http://aiclub.4mg.com
  • My open mailing list ``[email protected]'' for discussion and information exchange between active amateur and `professional' AI researchers who believe in `evolutionary' approaches to constructing AI.

• Sociality and colony organisms
  • Evolution as a means to create coherent behaviour in a non-centralized colony organism

• Cellular automata
  • Spiral formation in cellular automata of predator-prey systems explained.

• Philosophical considerations
  • Doubts and questions on (self-)consciousness
  • The story of the creation of Conscious Life

• Languages
  • Pinyin (Mandarin Chinese) pronunciation primer
  • Names of the Chinese characters 3021 to 5779 in the GB2312 Chinese font, in Pinyin spelling
  • Some good links on how various non-ascii character sets are encoded in computers.
  • A simple, 100% logical, systematic, phonetic, extensible and adaptable notation for written speech, for any language

• bitcoin profit trading programs, planetary orbits, solid geometry, ray tracing, graph manipulation, etc.
• spacenav : Space navigation game. Putting spaceships in orbits and landing them on planets; solar system reengineering; planetary pool billiards.
• A physical visualization tool/toy for crystallography and solid geometry; and software for playing ``virtually'' with solid geometry
• Various software tools
  • Software to make calling trees from C source code. (As yet undocumented)
  • Source code (C++) of a program to convert ascii text to a PostScript file to print the text in N columns, using a monospace font.

• Various useful mechanical constructions
  • Using Euro coins as standard weights

• Music
  • Rhythm in Baroque music