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Nov. 4th, 2002
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Nov. 4th, 2002 09:06 pmWent to Monterey for the weekend with seventeen housemates. Was neat; we got a behind-the-scenes tour at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, including the aquaculture labs where they raise jellyfish and where they grow algae to feed to the jellyfish. It is very much the prototypical "mad scientist's laboratory," with flasks of greenish liquids with air bubbling through them... and we also got to go up on top of one of the main aquariums, one where the public looks in through a large window near the bottom. Some of the (slower moving) animals are fed by hand, and some of them, seeing us, came up to the surface to visit, expecting food, including one ray, which turned upside down (mouth up!) eager for food. It was very cute. One carload went back to Berkeley for the night but the rest of us camped out in Nick's living room, playing card games, huddling around the fire, and enjoying the hot tub. In the morning we visited his barn, which is really inhabited by barn owls! they were right up there, hanging out (sleeping) on the rafters. Good time was had by all.
School is moving on at its usual pace. I'm a bit behind in my classes, so I really have to crack down and learn the material in Numerical Analysis and Complex Analysis. The former just needs regular studying, but Complex Analysis requires some real thinking. I quite like it and am looking forward to having a concrete understanding of holomorphic functions, Laurent series, etc. For numerical analysis I just found an alternate textbook which is far more concise (and rigorous, for that matter) than our official one; it is Rainer Kress' Numerical Analysis, in Springer's GTM series. I think it will help a lot.
I also have to write a paper this week for ScanR5B. I'm not really sure what to write it on yet. The novel is A Living Soul by P.C.Jersild. In this book a critically injured man is "liberated" from his body and his brain lives on in an aquarium; he's lost his memory of his previous life and is given the name Ypsilon. Since Ypsilon no longer needs to concern himself with motor functions (etc) he can now use these parts of his brain for other purposes, and he allegedly becomes hyperintelligent. He has a crush on his nurse, and he begins thinking of escape from the lab, which becomes increasingly malevolent. I'm immediately reminded strongly of Flowers for Algernon (progress and regression, in the first person), or at what I remember of it from when I read it many years ago. I'm also reminded of the Rats of Nimh (intelligent lab creatures), and even Neuromancer (cybernetics) and H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man (superpower leads to craziness). Eventually the book takes a definite turn towards Brave New World. It also reminds me of Memento (the narrative is first person, and the reader comes to trust the narrator, although the narrator's memory may be unreliable, or even deceptive.). So, it seems this ought to be material ripe for paper-writing, but I think I'll find it difficult to constrain myself to the text; I'd much rather write a Cognitive Science paper than a literary analysis. (-: It doesn't help that I was reading Into the heart of the mind: an American quest for artificial intelligence (Frank Rose, 1984) simultaneously, putting me into the AI mindset.
That latter book (Into the heart of the mind), by the way, is a good read. Recommended to me by Maya while we were working in Israel, it's quick and lively, a popular science account of the AI researchers at Berkeley in the early 80's. I think I enjoyed it mainly because it takes place here at Berkeley, and I'm acquainted already with many of the characters and it's amusing to hear what they were up to back then, 15-20 years ago. Indeed, the first chapter begins with an amusing description of Evans Hall (``Certainly utilitarian is the word for Evans, a building whose most striking internal features are its air-conditioning shafts, vast ten-story pits of raw gray concrete put there to keep the bomputers from overheating. It sits in the northeast corner of the campus -- an area dominated by the engineering school, an area set off from the liberal arts zone by a sort of invisible psychic barrier.'') I enjoyed this book too because it describes the CS culture at Berkeley twenty years ago, and I feel strongly that we need to bring this culture together into a coherent community; having a known and proud past can only help that effort. It might also, however, instill a sort of retroactive advance melancholy when read with the knowledge that the effort described -- the grand pursuit of Strong AI -- was more or less a failure. Perhaps this is one reason why the book is now not only out of print but withdrawn from all but one campus library.
School is moving on at its usual pace. I'm a bit behind in my classes, so I really have to crack down and learn the material in Numerical Analysis and Complex Analysis. The former just needs regular studying, but Complex Analysis requires some real thinking. I quite like it and am looking forward to having a concrete understanding of holomorphic functions, Laurent series, etc. For numerical analysis I just found an alternate textbook which is far more concise (and rigorous, for that matter) than our official one; it is Rainer Kress' Numerical Analysis, in Springer's GTM series. I think it will help a lot.
I also have to write a paper this week for ScanR5B. I'm not really sure what to write it on yet. The novel is A Living Soul by P.C.Jersild. In this book a critically injured man is "liberated" from his body and his brain lives on in an aquarium; he's lost his memory of his previous life and is given the name Ypsilon. Since Ypsilon no longer needs to concern himself with motor functions (etc) he can now use these parts of his brain for other purposes, and he allegedly becomes hyperintelligent. He has a crush on his nurse, and he begins thinking of escape from the lab, which becomes increasingly malevolent. I'm immediately reminded strongly of Flowers for Algernon (progress and regression, in the first person), or at what I remember of it from when I read it many years ago. I'm also reminded of the Rats of Nimh (intelligent lab creatures), and even Neuromancer (cybernetics) and H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man (superpower leads to craziness). Eventually the book takes a definite turn towards Brave New World. It also reminds me of Memento (the narrative is first person, and the reader comes to trust the narrator, although the narrator's memory may be unreliable, or even deceptive.). So, it seems this ought to be material ripe for paper-writing, but I think I'll find it difficult to constrain myself to the text; I'd much rather write a Cognitive Science paper than a literary analysis. (-: It doesn't help that I was reading Into the heart of the mind: an American quest for artificial intelligence (Frank Rose, 1984) simultaneously, putting me into the AI mindset.
That latter book (Into the heart of the mind), by the way, is a good read. Recommended to me by Maya while we were working in Israel, it's quick and lively, a popular science account of the AI researchers at Berkeley in the early 80's. I think I enjoyed it mainly because it takes place here at Berkeley, and I'm acquainted already with many of the characters and it's amusing to hear what they were up to back then, 15-20 years ago. Indeed, the first chapter begins with an amusing description of Evans Hall (``Certainly utilitarian is the word for Evans, a building whose most striking internal features are its air-conditioning shafts, vast ten-story pits of raw gray concrete put there to keep the bomputers from overheating. It sits in the northeast corner of the campus -- an area dominated by the engineering school, an area set off from the liberal arts zone by a sort of invisible psychic barrier.'') I enjoyed this book too because it describes the CS culture at Berkeley twenty years ago, and I feel strongly that we need to bring this culture together into a coherent community; having a known and proud past can only help that effort. It might also, however, instill a sort of retroactive advance melancholy when read with the knowledge that the effort described -- the grand pursuit of Strong AI -- was more or less a failure. Perhaps this is one reason why the book is now not only out of print but withdrawn from all but one campus library.
(no subject)
Nov. 4th, 2002 09:54 pmEnter the Evans Hall Coloring Contest by coloring this diagram. Who's behind this shenanigan?
