I've been doing a lot more reading than blogging recently. But that just means I've got lots of fresh material to write about.

Here's what I've read since my last report:

Old Man's War, John Scalzi (Excellent old-school SF! I wouldn't say he's derivative of Heinlein, but definitely writes in the same fine tradition. If you're reading me, you probably know that John Scalzi keeps a great blog, too).

The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester (I'm surprised this one hasn't been made into a movie yet. [Wait - I wonder?])

The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson

The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography, Sidney Poitier

In progress:

The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins

I Am a Strange Loop, Douglas Hofstadter

The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God, David J. Linden

On deck:

1776, David McCullough (Yeah, I know it's been waiting on the "to read" list for 3 months now. Best intentions and all that...)

Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Daniel C. Dennett

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God, Carl Sagan (edited by Ann Druyan)

I used to be extremely interested in the philosophy and science of human consciousness. When I graduated from high school in 1986, I planned to pursue a double major of Linguistics and Computer Science at UT and become a researcher in the field of artificial intelligence. I was a Doug Hofstadter disciple, reading and re-reading Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, studying formal logic, teaching myself different languages and alphabets. There's a story as to why that plan went off the tracks, but I'm not telling it yet.

Long story short, I am now (and again) very much interested in the science of thought and the mind. Having suffered a brain trauma of sorts 25 years ago (the abuse by my uncle), and having gone through a paradigmatic response to that trauma during the past 25 years, I am fascinated at how the hardware and software in my skull have operated. While I still believe in free will, I now see and want to better understand the deterministic elements of consciousness.

This month's Heinlein quote (which my illustrious co-blogger and I happened to independently choose, for entirely different reasons) echoes that theme, and I will be building on it in future posts.

Posted by: JohnL at 12:20 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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