Search found 380 matches
- Thu Mar 08, 2007 11:05 pm
- Forum: Literature and Cinema
- Topic: Movies and Representing History: The Case of "300"
- Replies: 20
- Views: 140543
Re: Premiere of "300"
I have not read or seen the graphic novel by Miller but have devoured the fantastic recounting of the Battle of Thermopylae and the sacrifice of the Spartans, their retinue of hoplites and allies by Stephen Pressfield. // So, on to the visual presentation of guts, gore, glory and gluts (pecs too!) ...
- Thu Mar 08, 2007 6:39 pm
- Forum: The Poetry and Prose of Science and Science Fiction
- Topic: Many Little Dimensions or One Big One?
- Replies: 41
- Views: 255290
Re: Snow day again??
If one abstracts the control logic that much, I agree that they are similar. The difference I perceive lies within the "brain determines this is not a good thing" part. // I don't think we are disagreeing necessarily, but focusing on different aspects of the scenario. Actually, the determ...
- Thu Mar 08, 2007 5:39 pm
- Forum: The Poetry and Prose of Science and Science Fiction
- Topic: Many Little Dimensions or One Big One?
- Replies: 41
- Views: 255290
Snow day again??
Yikes, you guys! But I'll indulge in replies myself, because I feel happy today. Not only am I getting an itsy-bitsy grant... my best postdoc agreed to rejoin the lab as soon as I activate it. So, without more ado: An AI would, by one definition, be a completely neuter being - wouldn't it? And if so...
- Thu Mar 08, 2007 4:21 pm
- Forum: Literature and Cinema
- Topic: Cyberpunk, the new generation
- Replies: 19
- Views: 140146
But I think you've touched upon the key: plot, and then character, are foremost. Modern English departments believe that narrative is dead, or a delusion, and so their graduates are reduced to either (a) writing metanovels or (b) writing novels about mean people being mean to each other (in my wife...
- Thu Mar 08, 2007 3:33 pm
- Forum: Literature and Cinema
- Topic: Cyberpunk, the new generation
- Replies: 19
- Views: 140146
- Thu Mar 08, 2007 3:28 pm
- Forum: The Poetry and Prose of Science and Science Fiction
- Topic: Many Little Dimensions or One Big One?
- Replies: 41
- Views: 255290
- Thu Mar 08, 2007 3:13 pm
- Forum: Literature and Cinema
- Topic: Cyberpunk, the new generation
- Replies: 19
- Views: 140146
- Thu Mar 08, 2007 2:29 pm
- Forum: The Poetry and Prose of Science and Science Fiction
- Topic: Many Little Dimensions or One Big One?
- Replies: 41
- Views: 255290
It seems premature to say whether or not we can make a human-like mind in a computer, but we can say that many have tried and all have failed. I suspect that true AI is possible using computer hardware and software, but we are so very far from it that this is akin to an ancient Egyptian imagining s...
- Thu Mar 08, 2007 1:48 pm
- Forum: The Poetry and Prose of Science and Science Fiction
- Topic: Many Little Dimensions or One Big One?
- Replies: 41
- Views: 255290
Re: Colored glass condensate
I am reminded, however, of Roger "I'm just as smart as Hawking but I'm not in a wheelchair so no one pays attention to me" Penrose and his desperate cry for attention, The Emperor's New Mind which is just as awful in its cognitive pscyhology as it is in his biology, as Athena has alluded ...
- Thu Mar 08, 2007 1:47 am
- Forum: The Poetry and Prose of Science and Science Fiction
- Topic: Many Little Dimensions or One Big One?
- Replies: 41
- Views: 255290
Colored glass condensate
Here's the initial Brookhaven link about colored glass condensate. As Calvin said, the terms describe what may happen in a very high-energy collision. Each of the three terms (colored, glass, condensate) has a specific meaning. http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/2003/colorglasscondensate-background....
- Wed Mar 07, 2007 11:00 pm
- Forum: The Poetry and Prose of Science and Science Fiction
- Topic: Many Little Dimensions or One Big One?
- Replies: 41
- Views: 255290
Re: Celestial music
Randall's brane theory--actually a whole class of theories--have reinvigorated the field in a way that has not happened with superstrings for a long time. Not only is it more immediately testable, it also explains the mystery of why gravity is much weaker than other forces, and also, through a vari...
- Wed Mar 07, 2007 9:24 pm
- Forum: The Poetry and Prose of Science and Science Fiction
- Topic: Many Little Dimensions or One Big One?
- Replies: 41
- Views: 255290
Re: Celestial music
Part of the reason Lisa Randall's brane theory became very popular--and she shot to a professorship at Harvard--is that it has more directly testable consequences than string theory, namely, that gravity ought to be modified at short distances. I must confess a fondness for string theory, although ...
- Wed Mar 07, 2007 6:13 pm
- Forum: Musings and Chats
- Topic: But why is it snowing again?
- Replies: 13
- Views: 88346
Re: Stan Robinson
Full disclosure: as an undergrad at UC Davis I took courses on the literature of SF and writing SF (the latter included Karen Joy Fowler, author of "The Jane Austen Book Club") from Stan. I met and interacted with Stan Robinson during my brief time of giving talks in the wake of my lone b...
- Wed Mar 07, 2007 4:40 pm
- Forum: Literature and Cinema
- Topic: Cyberpunk, the new generation
- Replies: 19
- Views: 140146
Scott and Morgan
Even so, I'm also open to other cyberpunk titles. Here you go, then! (*smiles*) Melissa Scott is not your usual cyberpunk writer. She wrote a highly acclaimed early book, Trouble and her Friends which, in my opinion, prefigures The Matrix . She has also written very interesting novels of future hum...
- Wed Mar 07, 2007 4:17 pm
- Forum: Musings and Chats
- Topic: But why is it snowing again?
- Replies: 13
- Views: 88346
Stan Robinson
Uhm... You know you ARE right. Let's see... integrity - wealth, wealth - integrity... New Zealand... oh dear! Let's get crackin'! (*laughs*) For a fictional discussion, see Kim Stanley Robinson's newly concluded trilogy. He's been described in Salon as the "anti-Crichton." Most here proba...