Yasiru > Recent Status Updates

The sci-fi and fantasy nominations for the Goodreads Choice Awards are depressing. Perhaps I've been spoiled by Unsong of late, but so much seems to get published that's essentially rehashes of what's gone before- the same book written over and over again. And that with such narrowness of vision.

Everything feels same-y in published fantasy and science fiction lately. In the former there's this naivety that's taken hold as a result of the Young Adult takeover of the genre and an apparent inability to sell a book without the story helmed by an insufferable Mary Sue. In the latter, well, the 'sentient ship-kin with pronoun roulette' trope has got to go. So what to read? Worm, Unsong, Mother of Learning, so far.

My new Wordsworth Classics edition doesn't appear here, but it's illustrated! Hopefully it's an unexpurgated edition as well.

My last experience with pornographic literature was Lost Girls and I go into this rejecting the dichotomy that porn can't also be worthy art.

"Don't you get it? Sci Fi is only good if you have the words 'Margaret Atwood' on the cover and call it spec-fic. If Herbert had been a great author he would have realised that writing a dense, literary, philosophical novel on the nature of the goals of humanity isn't good enough and he should NOT have been so crass as to allow people to call it... ergh... "Science Fiction""

- /u/Palatyibeast

It's all coming back to me... sort of.

Doing a reread of The Thousandfold Thought as I couldn't remember much going into this. It's a better read the second time; the intellectual onanism is entirely bearable, even welcome.

Reading the first chapter is a bit like getting hit by a bus...

Neither series makes me feel good the way an epic fantasy saga like The Wheel of Time does- they often make me uncomfortable, in fact (A Song of Ice and Fire, for the record, doesn't), but I caught myself thinking about The Prince of Nothing and Thomas Covenant in unmistakably fond terms.
They're definitely on to something as to where epic fantasy can go, but imperfect, at least to the point I've read each.

Realised a preliminary version of this book is available here- http://www.cmls.polytechnique.fr/pers...

I'm always a bit surprised how tolerant people are of John Horgan, Malcolm Gladwell, those Steves from Freakonomics and all their ilk... They don't really bother me, but surely you realise their game?

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015...

Beyond disappointed that Go Set a Watchman sold as well as it did. Are book-buyers really that uninformed and credulous?

The money and market centred episodes on the excellent EconTalk podcast (which is most of them) reinforce a lot of this with reference to what's going on in the world.

On hold till I brush up enough to follow the MOOC easily.

Surprisingly compelling bedtime reading...

I've been rather impressed with OUP on the whole, for instance for their World's Classics series, but idiot moves like this now makes me hesitate to buy their titles-
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2...

Comment #171, one of the most reasonable things I've read about the topic (but soon savaged by ideological vultures)-
http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=...

Notice how this was prompted by a case of a publicity-sensitive administration failing to distinguish (literally) between what's been professed and its professor. An important issue in its own right.

The site for that Visual Group Theory book- http://web.bentley.edu/empl/c/ncarter...

Found these whilst refreshing my group theory-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnRcc...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWhQA...

Ha ha-
"String theorists don't make predictions, they make excuses"
- Richard Feynman

These Goodreads Choice award winners make me question the wisdom of crowds... among other things.

At least going by how fun these are, this is the royal road to mathematical logic.

Occasionally all thought seems a sustained meditation on death... I think, therefore will I be to think again?

Maybe what I'm reading is after all an expanded version of the meditation title I mentioned in an earlier update. But this is longer...

Once had a debate whether Enlightenment is possible with acquiring jhana as the objective. I maintained no, because this seems an unenlightened desire to begin with, but perhaps the question is wrong. Jhana seem to be milestones on the path rather than incidental fruits.

Bought a condensed edition of this alternatively titled 'Jhanas in Theravada Buddhism'. It's longer than the similarly titled book listed on Goodreads as by the author though.

Brilliant little bit of freeware-
http://www.angusj.com/sudoku/

Can now solve hard ones without hints between this and the book. Not bad for two days' effort.

In game theory you consider a utility function, but in puzzles like this maybe a frustration function is more helpful. In sudoku, the more numbers you fill in, said frustration function needn't become decreasing.

Very elegant compared to what I remember of Sipser's text. Lucky to get my hands on the first edition (for a few cents at that, considering I got a copy paper box full of books including this one for $5).

Resolution: Buy more Dover texts. Some of those they put back in print so affordably are real gems.