lazy

I got a somebody to do my work for me so I can be a nobody for a couple of weeks.

Horizontal is my kinda position.

Read up: Ancestors' Tale by Dawkins. Rich! Not to do on a full stomach, no way to keep eyes open. Just wondering, why do people hate Dawkins so much...is it because he is an aristocrat and not the slightest embarrassed about it. Or is it because he says what he thinks is right.

I like his writing, the man I do not know.

Alex Studies, Irene Pepperberg's story of herself and "her damned bird", the beloved Alex who (due to his anatomical restraints) managed to speak with humans without having neither Broca's or Werdnicke's areas of the cerebral cortex. Actually, no cortex at all but a hypothalamus. 

Elkhonon Goldberg's Executive Brain makes one think how a very small difference can make a big difference. Such as being a jew, for instance, in the Soviet Union and managing the big leap out of there. Other than that, I feel he has something very politically incorrect to say and to our delight, he lets us guess what it might be.

Immunologist-Nobelist turned neuroscientist Gerald Edelman gives a very brief presentation about where his study group now is with the machines that simulate human thought processes.

The reading is very heavy. Had I not read his (and Tononi's) A Universe of Consciousness, I would probably not have understood at all what he was about.

Basically, IF we have certain functions hard-wired and soft-wired in a certain fashion, the media becomes irrelevant and the construction can achieve consciousness-like properties.

Which takes a lot of BS out of the consciousness talk of today.

Certainly, no need for philosophers here, as they seem to be focusing on the wrong questions. Our language is not adequate to describe phenomena that are alien to our perception. (makes sense) So any verbal construction will be useless in trying to predict what an unknown entity might behave like. Whereas the Philosophers' Way is to declare things impossible if there are no words to describe them.

As if universe was dependent on our ability to comprehend it.

Anyway, I got very very wet and possibly destroyed my Canon D30 while trying to capture the evening swoosh by the seaside.

Worth it?

What do you think