conscious entity

Vangelis favourites

2012-01-02T00:41:00.003+11:00

A playlist of my favourite Vangelis tunes. I've left off 'Chariots of Fire' and 'I'll Find My Way Home' as I think they are a bit over-played. Enjoy.

manifesto2

2011-10-24T21:58:00.001+11:00

part 2 of a series of podcasts

Bill Moyers w/- Dopplereffekt – Z Boson
Atom Heart – Give it to ‘em (information)
Zia Mian w/- Der Zyklus – Hand Geometry & The Other People Place – Let me be me
Scott Ritter w/- Der Zyklus – Biometric
Transllusion – Negative Flash
Scott Ritter w/- Der Zyklus – Optical Fingerprint
Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five – Beat Street

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books 2010

2010-12-28T23:59:00.002+11:00

Here are the books I read this year, with some short notes.

A Darwinian Left (Politics, Evolution and Cooperation) - Peter Singer

I've read a few books by Singer now, so I suppose I'm pretty into him. I don't always agree with him, but I find his arguments clear and get me thinking. This book attempts to reign in some of the more optimistic ideas of the left about the perfectibility of man, to a view more in concert with contemporary scientific thought about human nature. I suppose it is somewhat of a response to the ascent of the right in the last 20-30 years.

Introducing Barthes - Philip Thody

I'm quite opposed to postmodernist philosophy, especially since reading Fashionable Nonsense, but I'm trying to find the last moment when left critical theory still might have had something going for it, before it went completely off the rails. So I'd heard about Barthes and gave this little intro a shot. While I'm sympathetic to the idea that there are embedded ruling class capitalist messages or whatever in popular cultural artefacts eg ads, films, music, such as Barthes analyzed, it's just that I don't find this literary mode of analysis very convincing. I'm more into the sort of forensic comparisons of historical case studies and newspaper column inches such as done in Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent. These 'Introducing...' books are also pretty weak, they could do a lot more with the graphic presentation style, it's feeling very dated since a lot of titles in this series date from the late 80's when photocopied cut and paste seemed very avante garde. I much prefer Paul Strathern's '90 minutes' or the Oxford Uni Press 'Very Short Introduction' series.

I just noticed Barthes wrote about Albert Camus' The Outsider, which I bought and plan to read next year, based on a recommendation by John Pilger.

Logicomix - Apostolos Doxiadis

I'm quite into graphic novels (or comics for 'serious adult intellectuals' as Robert Crumb might call them), and this is a great one. It's a great look at the early life of Bertrand Russell and his contributions to mathematical logic around the early 20th C. Doxiadis also wrote a great fiction book about a mathematician obsessed with Goldbach's conjecture.

Animal Farm - George Orwell

This is one of those classics that I had never got around to reading. I enjoyed it, as I did 1984. After this, I was able to enjoy Aardman's Chicken Run even more. I hope to read more Orwell in the future.

Rum Punch - Elmore Leonard

I've never really been into crime fiction, so I thought I'd try to rectify that. I liked Jackie Brown the movie by Tarantino from years ago which was based upon it, so I read this while on a holiday. Very enjoyable and breezy. It was interesting to see how Tarantino changed parts of the book. I watched the movie again and got more out of it. I like its more relaxed tone which I think caused some people to like it less than Pulp Fiction.

The R.Crumb Coffee Table Art Book - Robert Crumb

This is a book I wanted for a long time after seeing the Zwigoff documentary, but when I could finally buy/afford/justify it, I slept on it for a while. I really enjoyed it. It is a great mostly chronological look at his art and life. The next things I will read by him will probably be Mr Natural and My Troubles with Women.

Sweet Dreams (Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Counsciousness) - Daniel Dennett

I've read practically all of Dennett's books, but this one came out a couple of years ago without me noticing until recently. I think that is because it is just a compilation of recent essays, not a major singular body of work. That said it is worth checking out for Dennett fans. It revises and polishes some of the ideas from Consciousness Explained. I felt happy that some of his objections to various qualia inducing thought experiments were similar to my own. It made me feel that I might be able to do some worthwhile philosophy if I put my mind to it. Maybe I should go back and reread Consciousness Explained, I remember it really rocked my world at the time.

The Chomsky-Foucault Debate on Human Nature - Noam Chomsky & Michel Foucault

I first watched part of this famous debate as a snippet within the Manufacturing Consent documentary about 20 years ago. More recently I watched the doco again in DVD and the debate was featured more fully as part of the extras. It interested me then, so when I saw that it was the subject of a book, I decided to delve deeper. In it, you can really see a split in their modes of analysis, with Chomsky coming off much clearer and more convincing. I have some sympathy with Foucault's aims, as I guess Chomsky did, but ultimately I think he led progressive left thought down a blind alley.

The Great War for civilisation: the conquest of the Middle East - Robert Fisk

At 1300 pages, I think this is the longest book I have read. I saw Fisk's lecture a few years back at the time of the book's release and knew I had to read it eventually. It covers modern middle east history since about 1918 and the Balfour declaration, mostly through Fisk's experiences there as a reporter from the 70's onwards. The most interesting parts are his 3 meetings with Osama bin Laden, the Soviet and later US invasions of Afghanistan, the Iran-Iraq war, the first and second gulf wars, and various invasions and atrocities by Israel in Palestine and Lebanon. You come away with a powerful sense of western government's callous disregard for life, the violence inflicted, the hypocrisy of their pronouncements, support for dictators, etc. I think if there is one person that could make amends with the arab world on behalf of the west, it would be Fisk. This is a great book and a must for anyone wanting to make sense of what is being perpetrated in our name in the middle east.

The Dark Knight Returns - Frank Miller

This is one of those pivotal graphic novels that I felt I had to read. I suppose it's an important twist on the superhero genre, being very dark and adult, but I was never really into superhero comics as a kid anyway so some of what is revolutionary about it is lost on me. I liked the artwork and the layering of exposition and dialogue. It feels modern, and in parts it's quite difficult to follow. Worth a read for anyone interested in graphic novels.

The First Eden - David Attenborough

I read this as part of my ongoing project to read all of Attenborough's doco-linked books. I find reading the books and watching the docos together a really good learning experience. It's fascinating all the clever adaptations evolution has come up with. I would contend that Attenborough is one of the greatest teachers of all time, if you consider the quality of what he has produced and the number of people he has reached.

This series is about the Mediterannean world and man. It covers geology, pre-history, mans impact and its impact on us. Since it was the crucible for western civilization, it's animal and plant motifs are embedded in our culture in a strong way. An interesting factoid is that lions roamed in ancient Greece. Our impacts led to deforestation and poor soil and hence a shift to olive trees and goats. Bull worship is also discussed. Great stuff.

Just So Stories - Rudyard Kipling

This book was mentioned in Dennett's book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, in relation to far-fetched evolutionary explanations. It's a collection of amusing and fanciful stories about how certain animals got their unique characteristics.

Democracy and Disobedience - Peter Singer

I knew this was an early book by Singer, but I didn't realise until I started that it was his first and was basically his PhD thesis. He starts with some toy model societies, democratic and otherwise and proceeds to argue in each case when disobeying the law can be morally justified. He argues that in the case of his ideal democratic model society, one can justify breaking the law in order to bring some perceived wrong to light, or to reconsider a decision, etc. There are caveats too.

In a final chapter he applies it to the IRA which was contemporary at the time of writing. When his theory is applied in practice to the sort of representative democracy we have, say, in Australia, then he concludes that a lot more is permissable.

I read this book partly to think through some of the ethics in P2P file sharing. Actually I emailed Singer about this topic over a year ago but he replied only that he didn't have time to pursue it. This book gave me something to think about but certainly didn't give me any obvious answers.

Let it be said though that I have this idea that we should ditch copyright and find ways to socialize the cost of easily copyable entertainment (and possibly a lot more). For example, the cost of mathematical research is more or less socialized. Can one justify one's file sharing as civil disobedience with an aim to bringing about such a socialization?

A People's History of American Empire: a graphic adaptation - Howard Zinn, Mike Konopacki, Paul Buhle

Sadly, Howard Zinn died this year. This is a graphic adaptation of his most famous book. It covers many of the key lessons from 500 years of US history. If you had to set someone in the Tea Party movement straight, getting them to read this book would probably be about the best way. Native Americans, the Philippines, Vietnam, Reagan in Central America, Operation Ajax (to overthrow Mossadeq in Iran) were among some of the most interesting topics for me.

Dreams of a Final Theory - Steven Weinberg

I didn't read much science this year. What's happened to me? But I really enjoyed this book. It's both sad and happy. It's sad because it is partly a defence of particle physics in support of the super conducting super collider which was never built, but happy now that the LHC has been built and seems to be a pretty good substitute. Weinberg is a great scientist and communicator. He makes some important points about reductionism and philosophy, while explaining the importance of symmetry in fundamental physics. It's not a terribly technical book, there are no formulas for example, and is still worth a read 16 years after publication.

I Peed on Fellini (Recollections of a life in film) - David Stratton

David Stratton is probably Australia's most famous film critic. This is a very entertaining autobiography, mostly dealing with his involvement in the film scene, as the title suggests. One aspect I found interesting are the places in Sydney he lived and worked in from the 60's onwards, and the old cinemas that used to play quality films. Stratton played an important part in the push for the relaxation of excessive censorship that used to exist here. (It still has a way to go) The quality of films that Stratton programmed in the Sydney Film Festival is amazing, and he showed many great director's films at the beginning of their careers. This book is full of great anecdotes and an enjoyable read.

Radio Free Albemuth - Philip K Dick

I read this in prep for the new film which I saw recently. Not one of Dick's best, but it was later reworked into Valis, which does have that distinction. I've safely read quite a number of Dick's books, but I had a slight fear that this book might make me go a bit crazy. Thankfully (?) it didn't. Although surely Dick had some mental problems, he had the ability to step outside that and write rationally about his experiences. This book is semi-religious. Maybe religion is a form of paranoia. The film was done pretty cheaply and not great either, but I think I was able to appreciate it better having read the book first. One for Dick fans.

The Forever War - Joe Haldeman

This is classic SF from 1976. It concerns a low ranking soldier recruited into interstellar wars with some bad aliens, but in between battles he has to travel long distances close to the speed of light so relativistic effects cause him to jump through hundreds of years at a time. The scientific exposition was refreshingly non-silly, despite being written some 35 years ago. The plot is pretty simple and episodic, but it accumulates into an affecting parable of war and the passing of time. At the time I think it was read partly as an allegory of the Vietnam war, but that association is not necessary any more and transcends it. Ridley Scott is apparently trying to make a film of it. I think it has the potential to be a really good one.

Molvanîa (A land untouched by modern dentistry) - Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner, Rob Sitch

Molvania, a fictional former eastern bloc country, is the subject of this parody travel guide. The jokes are light and breezy, if a little repetitive. I've always liked the authors, who are famous Australian comedy writers of my generation (D-generation, Frontline, The Castle, The Dish) and having quite a collection of Lonely Planet's on my shelf I found the mis-appropriation of that style and format amusing. There seem to be a lot of cheap copies of this book floating around 2nd hand, which is partly why I bought it.

North Korea, South Korea: US policy at a time of crisis - John Feffer

This is a good shortish book on North Korea from Seven Stories press, who publish other good left progressive books by Chomsky, Zinn and others. It was published during the height of Bush II macho posturing when things looked bad. Well they still do now. It would be interesting to hear what the author has to say about Obama's policies. I learnt that there were some positive steps taken during the late Clinton years but they were rolled back under Bush II. The North has taken positive steps to open up and change and more can come but wants to do it on its own terms. It could be unified peacefully with the South eventually provided the US used more carrot and less stick. The US has 35,000 troops in South Korea. The North knows that weak countries (like Iraq) get attacked and is only doing what is rational in trying to get a nuclear bomb. One day there are even plans to build fast rail through China and down the peninsula and under the sea to Japan. If the two Koreas were united and this sort of thing happened then the whole NE Asian region could become the economic powerhouse of the whole world. Fingers crossed, no war.

p5545

Taking turns fairly

2010-06-27T21:23:00.004+10:00

In most turn based games, players alternate ABABABAB..., such as in chess. It's not exactly fair though, because the first player is one move ahead of their opponent half the time. Or to put it another way, player B alternates between being behind one move, and being on a equal number of moves. That's why white tends to win more often in chess. In other games, such as hex, it can be proven that this gives the first player a 'winning strategy'. This is game-theory speak to mean that there exists a way of playing that can guarantee a player a win, regardless of the opponent's strategy.

In tennis tie-breakers, this is improved slightly to ABBAABBA..., so that B is ahead just as often as A. I think this works well because the results of a previous point have almost no effect on future play, other than perhaps the psychological effect of the score. This is not the case in a game like chess however, because giving a player 2 turns in a row probably leads to an easy early win to one of the players (I need to check this).

I was thinking though, this is still not perfect, because although player B is ahead by 1 turn equally as often as A, if you look at the tally not of the number of moves, but the tally of the number of times a player is ahead by a move, B is always behind or equal. So in the sequence above, after 8 moves, both players have been ahead of the other player twice, but A was always equal or ahead by one on that count. (eg after 5 moves A had been ahead twice to B's once, but then after 7 moves B catches up to be ahead twice, so the tally is at 2-2).

So I came up with this sequence:
ABBABAABBAABABBABAABABBAABBABAAB..., which I think balances it out.
The algorithm is this:
1. Start with player A
2. After turn 2^n, play the opposite of all moves so far.

If I put commas every 2^n, it might be clearer:
A,B,BA,BAAB,BAABABBA,BAABABBAABBABAAB, ...

I think that this will balance out all 'n-tallies'. The n-tally is the number of times a player is ahead on the n-1 tally. The 1-tally is just the number of moves so far.

I guess that there is still some slight advantage to player A, but that this has been diminished as much as possible.

I can see though that in the game of 2x2 hex, it just gives a winning strategy to player B. I wonder however, if there are some nontrivial games that it changes the game from a first player win to a forceable draw.

In practice of course, the big drawback would be remembering whose turn it is. Unless someone made a cool digital watch with it programmed in.

-----

Postscript: Thanks to Prof Alan Knutson of Cornell who pointed out to me subsequently that this sequence has been known for a while. An interesting recent article about it is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jul/13/perfect-coffee-improbable-research

books 2009

2009-01-01T16:43:00.011+11:00

The Trials of Life - David Attenborough
Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer
The Travels of Marco Polo
Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino
The Adventures of Tintin/The Blue Lotus - Herge
The Ancestor's Tale - Richard Dawkins
The Great Big Book of Tommorow - Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins)
The Beats (A Graphic History) - Harvey Pekar et al
Childhood's End - Arthur C Clarke
The New Rulers of the World - John Pilger
The Culture Struggle - Michael Parenti
Pale Blue Dot - Carl Sagan
The Earth (An Intimate History) - Richard Fortey

p3750

books 2008

2008-12-31T10:25:00.000+11:00

A Rebel's Guide to Marx - Mike Gonzalez
The Essential Locke - Paul Strathern
The Man Who Loved Only Numbers (The Story of Paul Erdös and the Search for Mathematical Truth) - Paul Hoffman
The Essential Hegel - Paul Strathern
King Lear - Shakespeare
We Can Remember It For You Wholesale (short story) - Philip K Dick
Invitation to Number Theory - Oystein Ore
Unknown Quantity (A Real and Imaginary History of Algebra) - John Derbyshire
Anarchism - A Very Short Introduction - Colin Ward
A Mathematician's Apology - G H Hardy
The Little Blue Book (definitions, formulas and techniques from 1st year mathematics) - SC Britton, CE Coleman, J Henderson
The Stuff of Thought (Language as a window into human nature) - Steven Pinker

p1970

Mystery image of 'life on Mars' clearly underground electro genius James Stinson

2008-01-24T23:15:00.003+11:00

The recent discovery of a man on Mars found hidden in a picture taken by NASA's Spirit rover has certainly shocked the world. Further detailed photographic analysis by Conscious Entity can now reveal that the man in question is undoubtedly mysterious Detroit underground electro genius James Stinson, formerly of Drexciya fame, and presumed deceased since 2002.

Following cryptic trails left by Stinson prior to his apparent heart attack, Conscious Entity discovered Stinson's diabolical plan in a star naming register not widely accepted in the scientific community held in the Library of Congress. Volume 6 of 'Your Place In The Cosmos' published by the International Star Registry, under the entry 'Drexciya' reveals that Stinson realised his aquatic technology could be adapted to the harsh requirements of human interplanetary travel.

Stinson, being a keen follower of NASA's unmanned missions, and sensing the once in a lifetime opportunity, faked his death and prepared to leave the planet by stowing away on board the Spirit launch rocket in June 2003. Stinson's motivation for this audacious plan will probably never be known, but Conscious Entity speculates that Stinson's disappointment relating to the constant misunderstanding of the significance of his musical output was a major factor in his decision.

Information in the 'Drexciya' entry of the register also explains that Stinson planned to separate from the rover upon entry into the Martian atmosphere, using his own parachute and a form of heat shielding developed from his studies of deep-sea crabs living near volcanic vents. "Evolution is smarter than you are," he writes. Stinson hoped to land some distance away from the rover to avoid detection once its cameras were turned on, yet close enough to rejoin it and collect supplies stowed underneath the landing apparatus.

What happened after the landing is still far from certain, but information just to hand from one-time Stinson associate Rudolph Klorzeiger has it that Stinson was also in possession of a retrofitted Iridium satellite phone that would have enabled him to stay in touch with earth via the Internet, albeit with a time delay and unreliable reception. Conscious Entity believes the photograph was captured by the Spirit rover just at the moment that Stinson came over a ridge before he discovered the rover for the first time.

Seeing the rover in the distance, Stinson thought it best to remain undetected and hid back behind the ridge, waiting until circumstances would allow him to approach the craft. Waiting for some period of time after the landing on Jan 4, 2004, Stinson used the cloaking effect afforded by a heavy transmission of underground techno music on Jan 21 courtesy of the Deep Space Network dance party crew located in Sydney, Australia, misinterpreted by NASA as a thunderstorm. The cloaking effect lasted for 10 days, easily allowing Stinson to gather his supplies and fluff over his footprints while walking backwards over the nearest ridge, in a sort of twisted homage to Michael Jackson's moonwalk.

Stinson's continued survival has been hotly contested but those who knew his music and philosophy believe that Stinson was willing to give up his life for the indescribable experience of a brief period on another planet. He knew that life truly was a one-way journey into the unknown with knowledge and imagination the only guideposts along the way. Perhaps one day his frozen body will be found atop a rocky outcrop on the mysterious red planet, a man so far ahead in time and space.

Blade Runner Ultimate Collector's Edition Demonstration

2008-01-08T22:49:00.001+11:00

records for sale

2008-01-06T00:02:00.000+11:00

Due to lack of space in my apartment with the impending arrival of my second 'bundle of joy' I've decided to sell all my vinyl records. 400 records all have to clear in about 6 months. They're all listed here on discogs - mostly Detroit classics, techno, electro and some ambient, jazz and pop records. If you know me, or want to pick up directly, contact me via email and I'll sort you out a nice discount.

books 2007

2007-12-09T20:28:00.001+11:00

Books I read in 2007:

Words and Rules - Steven Pinker
Introducing Plato - Dave Robinson
Islam - Karen Armstrong
101 Questions You Asked About Islam - Mehmet Ozalp
Airtight Garage - Mobius
Ronin (Graphic Novel) - Frank Miller
America Besieged - Michael Parenti
A Rebel's Guide to Trotsky - Esme Choonara
A Rebel's Guide to Gramsci - Chris Bambery
Hegemony or Survival - Noam Chomsky
Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction - Timothy Gowers
The Weather Makers - Tim Flannery
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
He Died With A Falafel In His Hand - John Birmingham
The Imagined World Made Real: Towards A Natural Science Of Culture - Henry Plotkin

manifesto1

2007-09-09T21:41:00.007+10:00

part 1 of a series of podcasts

monolake - amazon w/- james lovelock
monolake - bicom w/- john pilger
monolake - cern w/- george galloway

download

Drexciya - Hydro Theory

2007-08-12T23:22:00.001+10:00

Drexciya - Hydro Theory video clip I put together using footage from the BBC Blue Planet series. Need to sort out the aspect ratio - should be letterboxed.

2001 Space Odyssey vs Model 500

2007-08-12T23:19:00.001+10:00

This is an excerpt from a complete audio reworking I made of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

dj florian's electro liberation mix

2007-07-11T22:02:00.000+10:00

here is a dj mix I made a while ago.

electro liberation
01 kenji kawai - making of cyborg
02 dmx krew - nuclear war
03 der zyklus - electronisches zeitechno
04 the other people place - let me be me
05 my mine - hypnotic tango
06 underground resistance - journey of the dragons
07 atypic (black dog) - blah
08 revelation - first power (domination dub)
09 bbc radiophonic workshop
10 art of noise - legs (808 state remix)
11 dmx krew - who got the funk?
12 dmx krew - level selector
13 bodenstandig - wurmlochhymne
14 japanese telecom - pagoda of sin
15 dmx krew - echelon
16 drexciya - hi tide
17 dmx krew - x ray
18 dynarec - distant signal
19 transllusion - negative flash
20 seymour bits - hit me with technology
21 nwa - something 2 dance 2
22 dmx krew - bad sector ii
23 drexciya - hydro theory
24 dynarec - sickle
25 transllusion - walking with clouds
26 arpanet - illuminated displays
27 kraftwerk - numbers (live in san francisco)
28 billie's homecomputer (florian's edit)
29 underground resistance - final frontier
30 drexciya - universal element
31 drexciya - lost vessel
32 afx - analord 0801
33 afx - flow coma remix
34 mental cube - q
35 indo tribe - owl
36 giorgio moroder - utopia me giorgio

The mix also includes samples from: fannie lou hamer, assata shakur, mario savio, ho chi minh, martin luther king, paul atreides, and frederick douglass.

Download

Words and Rules by Steven Pinker

2007-02-07T17:30:00.000+11:00

I'm going to try to keep track of all the books I read this year, so here's the first one. Words and Rules by Steven Pinker. I've read all his other books since The Language Instinct, but this one I left aside for a while as it seems to be his least accessible one.

Well perhaps I wouldn't recommend this to someone who was starting out with Pinker but I found it very enjoyable and illuminating nonetheless. There are countless interesting examples of odd quirks in the English language and I found his central argument that language is a system implemented in the brain as a collection of arbitrary sounds associated with meanings (words) coupled with the combinatorial power of a few simple rules (grammar) to be quite convincing. Research has revealed that these functions are performed in different parts of the brain, so that people with Alzheimer's tend to have damage in a certain location that causes difficulty with words, whereas Parkinson's sufferers have trouble with grammar.

Brimming with great ideas, reading this you really feel you are in the hands of the world's foremost expert in linguistics.

coin operated kermit

2007-02-02T16:00:00.000+11:00

Does anyone remember these machines? This one went for $AU342 recently on ebay. I remember there used to be one in Wallaceway shopping mall in Chatswood in the early 80's. I think it was a Humphrey B. Bear. Never really could see the attraction though, I was probably a bit old and had already discovered Space Invaders.

Comet McNaught at Sydney Park

2007-01-23T00:12:00.000+11:00

A nice crowd turned out at Sydney Park on the 15th and 16th of January to see comet McNaught. Pics taken through a pair of Gerber 10x50 binoculars. Last pic is from the 20th.