Category: minimum daily requirement

soups and such

Between Threads

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, minimum daily requirement, Theory

Reading to read again builds a muscle. Memory among others, even distant, is an extension of time.

Essays by Lydia Davis is a ready source of ways toward an open table awaiting stacks from around the house. Today she directed me toward a book I rarely read. I promise to read.

Lydia writing about lists and order: “You may have the elements you want in a list, within a sentence, but in an order that is arbitrary or a bit jumbled. The reader receives the content that you have offered, but doesn’t receive it in the best possible order …” She proceeds to suggest Tufte’s “Artful Sentences” and a Jefferson sentence.

Immediately pulled out Tufte… added it to a table by a chair with readings about AI. Bam. What you have is a reference set instead of a compelling sentence. I am easily distracted by interesting people. May be the bird-eye mind reaction.

… Lydia Davis calls to Virginia Tufte…

Okay. Today, I will flip through it. I begin, but stop, since on the floor I find a text on cognition. It is stuffed with stickies, unfinished notepapers. Better writing will have to wait. Instead, a collection of references from the book on the floor …

References of a time: Brain. Cognition.

  • Bechtel, W., and Graham, G. (1998). A Companion to Cognitive Science. Oxford, England:
  • Blackwell. (Encyclopedia-style entries on all the important topics, with a useful historical introduction by Bechtel, Abrahamsen, and Graham.)
  • Boden, M. (1990). The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. (Seminal papers by Turing, Searle, Newell and Simon, and Marr, with some newer contributions by Dennett, Dreyfus and Dreyfus, P.M. Churchland, and others.)
  • Boden, M. (1996). The Philosophy of Artificial Life. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. (Nice introductory essay by Langton, and a useful window on some early debates in this area.)
  • Haugeland, J. (1997). Mind Design II. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Fantastic collection, including a fine introduction by Haugeland; seminal papers by Turing, Dennett, Newell and Simon, Minsky, Dreyfus, and Searle; a comprehensive introduction to connectionism in papers by Rumelhart, Smolensky, Churchland, Rosenberg, and Clark, seminal critiques by Fodor and Pylyshyn, Ramsey, Stich, and Garon; and a hint of new frontiers from Brooks and Van Gelder. Quite indispensable.)
  • Lycan, W. (1990). Mind and Cognition: A Reader. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. (Great value-a large and well-chosen collection concentrating on the earlier debates over functionalism, instrumentalism, eliminativism, and the language of thought, with a useful section on consciousness and qualia.)
  • MacDonald, C., and MacDonald, G. (1995). Connectionism: Debates on Psychological Explanation. Oxford, England: Blackwell. (A comprehensive sampling of the debates between connectionism and classicism, with contributions by Smolensky, Fodor and Pylyshyn (and replies by each), Ramsey et al., Stich and Warfield, and many others.)
  • Braddon-Mitchel, D., and Jackson, F. (1996). Philosophy of Mind and Cognition. Oxford, England: Blackwell. (Excellent introductory text covering the more traditionally philosophical territory of identity theory, functionalism, and debates about content.
  • Kim, J. (1996). Philosophy of Mind. Boulder, CO: Westview. ( text, covering behaviorism, identity theory, machine functionalism, and debates about consciousness and content.)

Don’t be distracted by AI things. Read until nine-eyes dies.

Someplace NICE?

Posted on Posted in bead game, lost horizon, minimum daily requirement

texas movie

first the van. a very big Mayflower van . then the rental truck; she’s loading it with bins of belongings, and a couple of basketballs in a bag. 

I ask going someplace nice.
       she answers Minnesota. 

I say nice music good fishing. 
       she says we're going back. 

I say I think I understand.

2 marfa 2

the real marfa and the story marfa.

like all small, or remote towns, the place dies without strangers, newcomers. like all remote places, marfa is more fiction than location.

marfa is texas imagined. imagined by europe. realized, renewed by hollywood and again by manhatten success. in that way, it is abq… both fictiobs like bbq.

an imaginary perfect 50s lifestyle.  sunken living rooms and backyard gatherings of successful citizens living rewards of the after-war life. we won. we survived.

—–

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"Measles is the most infectious virus we know. However, it's a harbinger of low vaccination rates, and it is quite likely we will start seeing outbreaks of other diseases that are vaccine preventable as well as these vaccine rates decrease."

— Catherine Troisi, epidemiologist at UTHealth Houston, "Child in West Texas is first US measles death in a decade,"