Here’s something I didn’t see coming. Remember the MIT Open Courseware class on Gödel, Escher, Bach I discovered and wrote about a month ago? Well, that day I submitted it to /r/cogsci on Reddit to bring it to the attention of some people I thought might appreciate it. I expected it to generate little interest, since it wasn’t formal cognitive science narrowly construed, such as a link to an article about cogsci research. Well, I was wrong.
That link became one of the most upvoted submissions to /r/cogsci in recent memory, and generated tremendous interest. Someone cross-posted to /r/philosophy. Around this time I submitted it to Wubel, where it became the featured submission for a few weeks. Then a redditor announced he was going to lead an online scheduled reading of the book with anyone who was interested. His home for this reading, /r/geb, mushroomed from 4 members to over 2700. Big class!
It looks like I launched a kind of online GEB movement. Quite a response to nothing more than free course materials for a beautiful but very intellectually challenging book! I’m happy to see it. Class starts today.
Got a rockin’ band… but you all suck at graphic design? Can’t even come up with your band name? Generally lacking any inspiration whatsoever? No worries. Generate your own album art the easy way! (Warning: this is addictive.) All you need are these three things and a photo editor:
- Cover: The third image in this ever-changing gallery.
- Band: The title of this random Wikipedia article.
- Album Name: The last 3-4 words of the last quote on this page.
My first three creations:
Now you can tell everyone, “I knew about Paugus Bay before they were cool.” Some others found in the Internet wilds:
(If any of these images are yours, don’t tase me, bro. I’m just lazy. I’ll add attribution or take them down at your request.)
How cool is this. MIT Open Courseware offers a class called Gödel, Escher, Bach: A Mental Space Odyssey. It is an entire course geared around Douglas Hofstadter’s book Gödel, Escher, Bach.
This is one of the greatest books I’ve ever read; it’s a true masterpiece. I first encountered it in high school. Ostensibly it’s a gorgeous web interconnecting art, mathematics and music, but that’s actually instrumental to the book’s true purpose. Quoth Wikipedia:
Hofstadter has emphasized that GEB is not about mathematics, art, and music but rather about how cognition and thinking emerge from well-hidden neurological mechanisms.
And now MIT offers a free class geared around this book, using it as a kind of textbook, bracketed with a syllabus and class notes in PDF. All this for free. Wow. Props to the instructors, Justin Curry and Curran Kelleher, and to MIT for providing this to the world gratis.
I just unloaded all the gear from the van; we’re back from SD Decom 2011. It was a great time. Tickets sold out, there were 1200 people out there–three times what it used to draw back when I was involved in 2004!–and it seemed like half of them were old timers like me. Old friends and familiar faces I hadn’t seen in ages, like some demented class reunion. More than a few interesting conversations; art, dance and sexy costumes; and of course giant flames and thudding rhythm radiating miles into the night. And best of all, people trying like hell to be awesome to each other just because it feels great. Quintessential, really. Even the stupid annual theme, terrible DJs and the anarchic, totally fucked up parking/camping situation was heartwarming and nostalgic. And La Jolla Indian Reservation really is a beautiful environment for a giant creative loud party. Nice way to spend a weekend.
Note: This is fourth (and last) in a series of entries about my experiences at Burning Man 2002. If this is new to you, please start with the first one for the full story of the adventure.
Nocturnal Joy.
Strange electronic creatures ply the dark seas.
A garden of propane.
Early stages of burn night. Euphoric anticipation builds.
The Fire Conclave performance.
Ignition.
A gigantic, raging fire.
The man falls, and thousands of burners get ready to run.