Search found 380 matches

by Windwalker
Thu Mar 08, 2007 11:05 pm
Forum: Literature and Cinema
Topic: Movies and Representing History: The Case of "300"
Replies: 20
Views: 140566

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!) ...
by Windwalker
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: 255393

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...
by Windwalker
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: 255393

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...
by Windwalker
Thu Mar 08, 2007 4:21 pm
Forum: Literature and Cinema
Topic: Cyberpunk, the new generation
Replies: 19
Views: 140176

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...
by Windwalker
Thu Mar 08, 2007 3:33 pm
Forum: Literature and Cinema
Topic: Cyberpunk, the new generation
Replies: 19
Views: 140176

I loved Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy. Loved its inventivess and defiance, loved the humanity and complexity of its protagonists (even the non-humans are fully human and stay with you indelibly).

I must look up the Otori series, sounds like I'd really enjoy them!
by Windwalker
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: 255393

We are very far away from true AI, and I think it is because we do not really understand how our own minds work. // I also think that if we ever do create "true" AI it will be very different from human, simply because our body and our chemistry affect us far more than we allow ourselves t...
by Windwalker
Thu Mar 08, 2007 3:13 pm
Forum: Literature and Cinema
Topic: Cyberpunk, the new generation
Replies: 19
Views: 140176

I'm always delighted when I see such intriguing plots in a YA novel. Culivates the young mind and often hooks the scientists and writers of the future. I've never been a believer in "baby books" for young people. Very much so! One of the points I make to learned panels (NIH et al -- possi...
by Windwalker
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: 255393

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...
by Windwalker
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: 255393

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 ...
by Windwalker
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: 255393

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....
by Windwalker
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: 255393

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...
by Windwalker
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: 255393

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 ...
by Windwalker
Wed Mar 07, 2007 6:13 pm
Forum: Musings and Chats
Topic: But why is it snowing again?
Replies: 13
Views: 88378

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...
by Windwalker
Wed Mar 07, 2007 4:40 pm
Forum: Literature and Cinema
Topic: Cyberpunk, the new generation
Replies: 19
Views: 140176

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...
by Windwalker
Wed Mar 07, 2007 4:17 pm
Forum: Musings and Chats
Topic: But why is it snowing again?
Replies: 13
Views: 88378

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...