Klowey > Recent Status Updates

Notes:
The Miracle of Ash Wednesday Yevgeny Zamyatin 10/7/2025 ***
Heartburn by Hortense Calisher 10/25/2025 **1/2
The Accident by Ann Bridge 10/25/2025 ***
Joyce Marshall The Old Woman 10/26/2025 ***1/2
A Short Trip Home 1927 by F. Scott Fitzgerald 2/4/2026 **1/2
The Brute 1906 by by Joseph Conrad, 2/5/2026 **
Mr Sleepwalker by Ethel Wilson, 2/6/2026 ***
A Self-Possessed Woman by Julian Barnes, 1975, 2/7/2026 ****

Dawkins' 2003 version reserves the first edition's 14 chapters intact but abridges by cutting ~50% of the text, removing repetitive examples, lengthy footnotes, some digressions while retaining core arguments & nearly all chapter headings.

Finished Chapter 2: Variation under Nature
Summary:
Darwin argues that variation occurs ubiquitously in wild species, with the line between varieties and species being arbitrary and fluid. Well-marked varieties can become "incipient species," setting the stage for divergence through natural means.

Chapter 1: Variation under Domestication
Darwin illustrates how humans have profoundly modified plants and animals through selective breeding, producing vast diversity from common ancestors, like numerous pigeon breeds from the rock dove. He emphasizes small, inherited variations accumulated over generations, showing modification on a scale relevant to natural processes.

Summaries of 1 & 2: focus on variation as the foundation for evolution. abridged edition retains Darwin's original content, with annotations and a preface but no major rewriting of the core text.

Starting The Woman Who Talked to Horses

Starting A Self-Possessed Woman by Julian Barnes

Starting Mr. Sleepwalker

Finished
Lecture 9: Signals and Bandwidth
(really technical, kind of boring)

Lecture 10: Cryptography and Key Entropy
(interesting, how codes are created and broken, knew much of it already)

Starting
Lecture 11: Cryptanalysis and Unraveling the Enigma

Finished Lecture 18: Horse Races and Stock Markets

Starting Lecture 9: Signals and Bandwidth

Finished
Lecture 17: Erasure Cost and Reversible Computing
(more on Maxwell's daemon)

Starting
Lecture 18: Horse Races and Stock Markets

Finished:
Lecture 16: Entropy and Microstate Information
(ended on Maxwell's Daemon)

Starting:
Lecture 17:
Erasure Cost and Reversible Computing

Finished:
Lecture 14: Life’s Origins and DNA Computing
(wrt natural selection: a mistake produces a better match, error correction favors the innovation)

Lecture 15: Neural Codes in the Brain
(capacity of brain, false memories)

Starting:
Lecture 16: Entropy and Microstate Information

Finished 1-8, 19-24
and 13: What Genetic Information Can Do
(on DNA as information)

Starting 14: Life’s Origins and DNA Computing

Finished Lecture 22: Quantum Cryptography via Entanglement

"we cannot use the information relationship of entanglement to send messages instantaneously"

Completed 1-8, 19-24
To go 9-18

Finished Lecture 21: Qubits and Quantum Information

Starting Lecture 22: Quantum Cryptography via Entanglement

Finished Lecture 20: Uncomputable Functions and Incompleteness
(included halting problem, ramifications? we will never know all of mathematics)
Shannon->codes and communication
algorithmic->description and computation

Starting Lecture 21: Qubits and Quantum Information
Remaining: 9-18, 22

Finished Lecture 19: Turing Machines and Algorithmic Information
(touch and a bit boring)

Starting Lecture 20: Uncomputable Functions and Incompleteness
(on computational limits, sounds good)

Finished 24: summary focus on communication with future humans, aliens

Completed 1-8, 23-24
23 was on black holes, a little on quantum physics and the double slit and delayed eraser experiments

Starting 19, 20, 21, 22

Finished Lecture 8, really tough/mathematical

Skipped to Lecture 23 (really good)

Continuing but not necessarily in order

Finished Lecture 8
(that was tough)

Starting Lecture 9

Finished commentary on Book V
Fabulous explanation by Bloom of how the key discussion is about:
- Socrates' and all citizens' private lives vs. the ideal city and the elimination of the private
- poetry vs philosophy
- ideal forms vs. individual examples
- justice as natural vs perfect city as art, thus art winning over nature and man

Starting Book VI

Book 5 has a sudden turn into epistemology and metaphysics: Socrates is trying to define the philosopher and explain why only philosophers can rule, and the language gets very abstract, with talk about “being vs. becoming,” “knowledge vs. opinion,” and the “love of the Forms”. In Bloom’s translation, this shift can feel especially abrupt, because he preserves Plato’s literal, dense phrasing without smoothing it out.

Finished Chapter V
Starting commentary on Chapter V

Finished Book 4 commentary (419c-427c), (427c-445e)
Seems to question the city vs the individual, the start of Socrates' trial.
This is the most intriguing book so far. Need to reread.

Finished Book 4
Starting Book 4 commentary by Bloom (419c-427c), (427c-445e)

starting Chapter 30 (from book)

Finished Book 3 and commentary.
Noble lie, poetry, Homer, education of military class, souls=metals, leaders have no wealth or privacy.

Starting Book 4.

starting Chapter 29 (book), 28 audible

Finished Chapter 2
Starting Chapter 3