04w06:1 Posted February 2nd, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 6 number 1 (it’s all about the wiring) Note: I was using an incorrect calendar for the week numbers – this is week six. – Timothy ——————————————————————— The machine that invents | Tina Hesman http://tinyurl.com/2bfn5 “Thaler, the president and chief executive of Imagination Engines Inc. in Maryland Heights, gets credit for all those things, but he’s really just ‘the man behind the curtain,’ he says. The real inventor is a computer program called a Creativity Machine. What Thaler has created is essentially ‘Thomas Edison in a box,’ said Rusty Miller, a government contractor at General Dynamics and one of Thaler’s chief cheerleaders. ‘His first patent was for a Device for the Autonomous Generation of Useful Information,’ the official name of the Creativity Machine, Miller said. ‘His second patent was for the Self-Training Neural Network Object. Patent Number Two was invented by Patent Number One. Think about that. Patent Number Two was invented by Patent Number One!'” Related Link http://www.imagination-engines.com/technologies/cm.htm Biology vs. the Blank Slate | Ronald Bailey & Nick Gillespie http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1568/5_34/91475038/print.jhtml “Pinker: […] The blank slate mentality is popular with people who believe that any human trait can be altered with the right changes in social institutions. It’s popular in the more radical branches of feminism, although not with the original core of feminism that stressed the drive for equity between the sexes. I think it allies to some degree with Marxist approaches to society. Not that Marx literally believed in a blank slate, but he certainly believed that you could not intelligently discuss human nature separate from its ever-changing interaction with the social environment. […] The noble savage myth is behind the sensibility that violence is learned behavior, a slogan that is repeated endlessly whenever violence is chronicled in the news. It’s also behind the Romantic idea that violent nonconformists are actually seeing the hypocrisy of society and challenging social institutions from a marginalized viewpoint, as opposed to the idea that such people are psychopaths and that we should prevent them from wreaking havoc on everyone else. [The doctrine of the ghost in the machine…] is there in a vaguer way, too, among others who fear that a materialist viewpoint–the idea that human experience and choice are products of a physical organ called the brain–is corrosive of morality, meaning, and ultimate purpose. reason: Why do you call these ideas myths? Pinker: Because they’re wrong. ” Long urls made short using TinyUrl (www.tinyurl.com) —————————————- http://www.instantcoffee.org/tim/goodreads To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@instantcoffee.org emailed by Timothy on Monday 02 February 2004 @ 1:15 AM
04w03:2 Posted January 22nd, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 3 number 2 ——————————————————————— Criticize, Don’t Vandalize | Roger Kimball http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110004585 “We are often told that establishment taste is parochial, obtuse and unreceptive to novelty. Since ‘transgressive,’ morally decadent art is the establishment taste of today, the good Swedish bureaucrats overseeing the exhibition doubtless expected all who gazed upon Snow White to demonstrate their sophistication by confining their response to appreciation or at least silence.” Talking Bacteria: The work of Bonnie Bassler | Marguerite Holloway http://tinyurl.com/39hoj “Quorum sensing, as this phenomenon is called, is a young science. Until recently, no one thought bacteria talked to one another, let alone in ways that changed their behavior, and Bassler has been instrumental in the field’s rapid ascension. She has figured out some of the dialects–the genetic and molecular mechanisms different species use–but is best known for identifying what might be a universal language all species share, something she has jokingly referred to as ‘bacterial Esperanto.'” Long urls made short by using TinyURL (http://www.tinyurl.com) —————————————- http://www.instantcoffee.org/tim/goodreads To add or remove yourself from this list, email tim@instantcoffee.org emailed by Timothy on Thursday 22 January 2004 @ 9:00 PM
04w2:2 Posted January 15th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 2 number 2 ——————————————————————— Making the Mind | Gary Marcus http://bostonreview.net/BR28.6/marcus.html “The brain, too, develops in the first instance from a simple sheet of cells that gradually curls up into a tube that sprouts bulges, which over time differentiate into ever more complex shapes. Yet 2,000 years of thinking of the mind as independent from the body kept people from appreciating the significance of this seemingly obvious point.” That crazy little thing called love | Andrew G. Marshall http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,11913,1105827,00.html “Psychologist Dorothy Tennov has already taken the first step towards this goal. She interviewed 500 people from different backgrounds and age groups, both gay and straight, about falling in love, and found a startling similarity in how each respondent described their feelings. […] To distinguish between these overwhelming emotions and the more stable, domestic feelings experienced by long-term couples who are only too aware of their partner’s failings, Tennov coined a new term: limerence.” —————————————- http://www.instantcoffee.org/tim/goodreads To remove yourself from this list, click and send tim@instantcoffee.org emailed by Timothy on Thursday 15 January 2004 @ 1:53 PM
