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 Now online (1)big ...and 514 guests Last 5 registered Oplandisks nothingstar N_loop yipe foxtrotromeo Browse members... |
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what do you read, if you read? i read books. mostly books that contain information that is supposed to be useful or 'real.' I like fiction ala kurt vonnegut, garcia marquez.. More nonfiction the past few years. Vonnegut and Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman are all dead, and their books will become more important the longer they are dead. Its good to learn about skepticism, evolution, and culture. It is good to learn at all. I am reading P.D. Ouspensky's "In Search of the Miraculous," an account of his time with the Guru Gurdjieff, in the early 20th century. Gurdjieff been experimenting, trying to verify the inner components of the human machine through behavioral studies. He started groups to do work on themselves, on remembering themselves, and aquiring esoteric or objective knowledge tied to essence rather than artificial personality complexes. Interestingly enough, the core foundation of his theories were that of the "laws of octaves"-- a business that any musician interested in entrainment and harmonic movement should become familiar with. Also, Jeff Hawkins' "On Intelligence" was a good read a few weeks ago. The guy who invented the palm pilot may have also defined auto-associative pattern matching more definitively than anyone has yet. A functional theory of the predictive power of the human cortex! Read books. |
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science fiction and xlt i could benefit from "laws of octaves" though .-) |
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i buy books that come to me someway, and if i'm not in the mood to read them now, it might happen a reason to read them later. |
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sci fi, fantasy, any stephen king, star trek novels, dean koontz... not much non-fiction (except maybe political satire like "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot" and "I Am America and So Can You") |
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Its fun to follow random intersting link paths on wikipedia, despite organizations, like companies etc, editing it with agenda/bias, as evidenced by wikiscanner. Lately I've been focusing on astronomy/physics mostly since I'm really lacking there. I recently read 'robotic nation', rather short but interesting after you get past the crappy mcdonalds beginning. (he's a singularity summit 2008 speaker I think- I feel stupid for replicating their nerd mind viruses actually) I like nonfiction way more than fiction mostly because hardly anybody can write good fiction, and the effort to weed and find it wouldn't be worth it. 'a new kind of science' was very interesting but the guy sucks in the skill of writing, as opposed to dawkins who is as much a master of english as evolution. I did read that hawkins book, quite interesting. I just followed an amazon recommendation and also got 'the accidental mind'. |
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nice. dawkins is tight-- selfish gene is really important and basic book that contains points which elude most who are not evolutionary biologists, or at least pretty familiar with random mutation and selection. god delusion was good too. i started "human natures" by paul erlich(sp?) who is also an evolutionary biologist. it is a rather decisive examination of our 'evolutionary hangovers' -- or i imagine it to be, for I've not read much of it yet! you should check out sagan for his expanded look on new worlds, and feynman for his contributions (wiggly lines called path integrals) to quantum physics. in fact, richard feynman is the most interesting thing i've read in a while, cuz he can play 10/11 on the bongos. he learned to do that while he was in brazil, showing them how their physics wasn't up to snuff. feynman is no bullshit physics-- read "the joy of finding things out" or "six easy pieces" (lectures on physics) or anything he wrote, he's a hell of character. |
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and when I say "is" i mean he is now a ghost-- an archetype even. claimed to be a "one-sided guy." Thats some respectable shit. |
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His unified theory of the brain argues that the key to the brain and intelligence is the ability to make predictions about the world by seeing patterns yeah, sounds like a model to descibe the quantum field, the third eye or whatsoever. i'll have to give a further look sooner or later. it is happening right now. |
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in psychology they call it the analytic third-- or the creative field. two people can become one consciousness apart from the two of them, and do. the third I, eye, paradise, -- its symmetrical, whatever it is. |
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yes |
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also thanks for the recommendations |
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i like to read (or re-read) juvenile fiction try sideways stories from wayside school |
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I think I read 6 easy pieces already. He's a better oral communicator than writer imo and have seen most of the youtube vids. Here's perfect pitch having matt savage's blues in 33/8: . Reading is sorta a drug actually, just surrogate activity to replace what replicator vehicles would normally do in nature (eat, mate, fight, etc). But humans were never ones to play to fairly with nature. A critique of that aspect is the unabomber manifesto: http://cyber.eserver.org/unabom.txt |
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I remember reading that when I was a kid! But I can't for the life of me remember what the stories were like. Didn't it have a sequel too? |
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@ Wolfslice: several, actually |
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Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. (just started it though.) |
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I like to read deep, philosophical books, on stuff like art, having titles like 'journey to the absolute' but they are usually pretty dense and difficult to get through- can only usally read about 15 pages at a time. Therefore I try to find books like Rothko's Philosophy of Art and What Good Are The Arts? by John Carey which are both reasonably light and stimulating. It is sometimes difficult to find a medium between entertaining and informative. Andrew Marr's A Modern History of Britain is also a good medium. |
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i prefer light reading. dawkins has never really interested me. i can't imagine sitting through a book called "The God Delusion". i gave quantum mechanics a go but that left me with a headache before i even got started. when it comes to science i enjoy having it explained to me as if i were an idiot, which i am. novels are great, i go through phases where i just get books from one author. i went through a heavy Evelyn Waugh phase at one point. i tend to re-read J.D Salinger's stories religiously. if you go through my books you will find that I have more books by Paul Theroux than anyone else. I was addicted to him in my early 20s. He writes best travel. in general lots of random things that happen to come my way. Hmm...at the moment besides reading ethnographies I've fallen in love with Gerrald Durrell, who was introduced to me by the lady who owns this cute little book shop. she loves that i love him so i can't step foot in there without her pulling out yet another Durrell that she happened to come across. there are a few i still need to get through. he is really cool though, zoologist/botanist documentarian travelling to exotic locations.... just what i need ease my mind. |
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"Meetings with remarkable men" is one of my favorites of all time. Did you know that there is a book.." Harmonic Development" that contains 19 hours of harmonium improvisations by Gurdjieff between 1948-1949?.. I own one & i've played it non stop on several particular times.. pure drone. Robert Fripp from King Crimson is a direct disciple of J.G Bennet..Bennet even is featured on Fripp's first solo album.. "..Music as medicine, instruction manual, promoter of conscience" - Robert Fripp- a underrated phillosopher. Btw read about 3 books per year..... actually i'm reading Oliver Sacks "Musicophillia"....but i'm stuck.. i'm still |
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just what i need ease my mind. i think that the people who read 'heavy' things are looking for the same thing. and that's true, hardly a book which you forced yourself to read becomes fruitful, but depeding on the path you chosen in your life, some books come your way more than others. |
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still stuck with sacks' one too |
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great stories in it.... more to be revealed |
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thanks for the encouragement =) at the right moment.. |
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:) |
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Non fiction , history stuff. |
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light |
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what you say is true, although it does happen. i have forced myself to read read things which bore me fruits. though admittedly i can be quite prejudiced when it comes to that. money is also a deciding factor. dawkins cost over R200+ where durrell usually costs just about R20. it makes more sense for my pocket. a second hand copy of 'on the origin of the species' only cost about R100. despite being cheaper, second hand books also offer a little character, with notes written by some person in 1970s. like many vinyl enthusiasts, i'd love to get my hands on a first edition 'franny and zooey' even though there have been many other editions. in about twenty years time i will probably pick up a cheap copy of 'the selfish gene', a dawkins book i might read. taking two years of english at university also exposed me to things i wouldn't have otherwise read and some of which i now hold dear. a lot of african and south african literature. and the usual defoe, haggard, swift. though i read those before uni. there's so much good shit out there and there's enough variation for most people to be satisfied according to their personal 'needs', or whatever. *sound of water dripping* |
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pawel can read |
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bore ya fruits haha dawkins' books cost like any other book round here? |
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road signs too ? |
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things like books and cds are a considerable expense to the average middle class south african. |
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i like oliver sacks very much-- an anthropologist on mars was really good. i will read that one you type of. |
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