A London Sparticus Morning

Last night whilst the boxing was on, i watched a DVD of V For Vendetta, and this lovely old tune was featured on V's Wurlitzer jukebox, the classic Cry Me A River by Julie London.

The icon or avatar above here is one of myself with my six foot Finnish mate behind me at a DJ gig  some time ago and the 12" single i am holding is four mixes of  a track by Terry Callier from the Timepiece album. . The track is Love Theme From Spartacus ,originally composed by Alex North for the Kirk Douglas film.
The versions i have chosen is the Zero 7 remix (cool version)  and the 4 Hero remix (jazzy drum n bass version).

Enjoy.

Reading Habits

Reading across the blogosphere i chanced upon this article from Scientific American about digital vs. paper from another LJ post , and whilst i have  Google tablet with the Kindle app, the article made me think about how technology is affecting our reading habits and how we seem to retain less information from digital, such as E readers)  as compared to paper.

Here is that link -

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/

Disturbingly quite a few textbooks are going the digital way. Food for thought.

Book 50 - Steven Pinker "The Language Instinct"

Steven Pinker "The Language Instinct" (Penguin)




I greatly enjoyed this book, and that is despite having started the book last August. The reason for this it is not a quick read, and packs alot into the small paperback. It is also a subject i know little about, hence the long timescale, but now after reading the book these are my reflections.

His thesis is that the mind has an instinct for language - that we are not a blank slate (a tabula rasa) when we are born. The mind makes certain assumptions about patterns, and what patterns are meaningful. He does this by looking at commonalities across languages, experiments in (and humour created to show) how people use words, and studies of how children acquire their native language. Pinker is a Darwinist, so he examines how this instinct could have been selected for, in an evolutionary sense.

His writing style is readable and clear, but on the dry side. He leavens it with humour (which may not suit all readers) , but still it takes some effort to get through. Here is one example, from the book opened at random: "To become speakers, children cannot just memorize; they must leap into the linguistic unknown and generalize to an infinite world of as-yet-unspoken sentences. But there are untold numbers of seductive false leaps: Mind -> minded, but not Find -> finded," and he goes on with more examples (found on page 281). Another example from p. 85: "The way language works, then, is that each person's brain contains a lexicon of words and the concepts they stand for (a mental dictionary) and a set of rules that combine the words to convey relationships among concepts (a mental grammar)." Then he goes on to discuss the examples that support this thesis.

But for anyone interested in language, linguistics, and how the mind works, Steven Pinker's books are essential reading. Just give yourself the time. They are not a quick read. There is much to chew on here.

Book 51 - Glenn Yeffeth (ed.) "Taking The Red Pill"

Glenn Yeffeth (ed.) "Taking The Red Pill, Science, Philosophy And Religion In The Matrix" (Summerdale)





This book may be of interest to anyone who has seen The Matrix trilogy. As a fan of the films, I bought this book to explore some of the themes in ‘The Matrix’ more deeply. I was hoping for some insights into the movie’s motifs and hidden meanings. I was fairly well satisfied.


A couple of elements in the book took me into various authors' encyclopedic knowledge of science fiction or philosophy. However, highlights included:
An interesting discussion on ‘Was Cypher Right?’ ie: if you had the choice, and you knew the truth, would you plug back in forgetting the real world, and live out your fantasies in VR? An interesting question.

Another element in the book is the idea of simulation and the nature of reality, and the film is indebted to the ideas of Jean Baudrillard, particularly "Simulacra and Simulation".

A bonus revelation in Robert Sawyer’s enlightening explanation of AI and what was really going on in ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’.

Peter Lloyd’s explanations of how Matrix technologies could actually exist one day; a nice introduction to Buddhism from James Ford; Ray Kurzweil’s scary proposition that Matrix-type processing power is not all that far away; and Bill Joy’s counter argument that we should think about pulling the plug now.

The book’s real masterpiece, though, is the final essay, and I assume it was placed last intentionally. ‘Are We Living In The Matrix?’ by Nick Bostrum is one of those page turning revelations that just stuns you....well it stunned me, but then you may think differently.

Pond Life

I had a feeling i was close to Pond life -

You Are Amy Pond

You are fun loving, adventurous, and downright reckless at times. You enjoy a bit of danger now and then. You are childlike and playful, and you have a strong independent streak. You tend to be protective of yourself and a little skeptical. You can be a bit closed off at first. It takes you a while to really connect with and open up to someone. You may be a lone wolf, but you are loyal to your close friends and family. You can be ruthless in standing up for them and yourself.

What Doctor Who Companion Are You?

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