Recent Posts
Kafka on the Shore
I read this book a while back, but I never managed to post about it.
I liked it a lot. Similar to 1Q84, there was world-bending and a magical substructure to daily life, but I enjoyed the characters’ journeys and the beautiful descriptions of rural Japan. If ever I make it there, I truly hope to be able experience the fields and forests of the more-remote islands.
Having looked through the notes I marked, I’m really in awe of the quality sentence construction expressed in the annotated lines. In particular, I’m really picking up on the theme of that sometimes things bear a name that doesn’t change, but they are, in definite ways, something entirely than they were previously. Take a look at Murakami’s thoughts, recalling Heraclitus, about things being new, all the time, in the illusion of the “present moment.”
Conscious
Review
Having heard a few interviews with her, I’ve enjoyed Ms. Harris’ perspectives on consciousness. I became familiar with this work via Sam Harris’ podcast where the Harrises facilitated a discussion with Donald Hoffman.
Both Conscious and Hoffman’s The Case Against Reality suffer a primary problem: what they propose is extremely jarring to our daily experience. They bear the burden of presenting some evidence that reality is not what you think of in daily awareness. Their method is to jar the reader one millimeter so that they can open them to being willing to move 1 kilometer. As a result, the books recount anecdotes and experiments designed to “freak the squares” as the hippies might have said.
In Memoriam: The Hacker Edward Lodewijk van Halen
October marked the passing of one of the greatest guitar players ever, a true innovator to the form, Edward Van Halen. As I pondered his death, I realized how much he had been a part of my life, first as an 80’s icon, then as an aspirational goal for a suburban strummer, and, ultimately, as a craftsman and fellow hacker.
Van Halen (the Band)
There was a day in 1984 when I went over to my cousin’s house in Houston, Texas. Some eight years or so older than me, she was that perfect 80’s “I want my MTV” generation child: she took me to see “E.T.” (and took us to the bathroom during the sad part), drank Mr. Pibb, gave me a “Star Wars” poster, and had a banana-yellow skateboard. In fact, she even bears the most-common girl’s name of the year she was born. At any point you needed a cute extra or a best friend to play opposite Molly Ringwald, you could have swapped in my cousin.