Random thoughts..mainly about books

[shadowkat]

1. If you cannot find a pattern or design in reality, the universe or nature - it does not mean it is not there. It just means "you" can't find it.

[My reaction to a description or blurb on Richard Dawkins book about Evolution (entitled "The Blind Clockmaker" - great title by the way, half tempted to steal it) and his thesis that the randomness of evolution proves there is no design in the making of the world. This is an issue I have with people - how do you know life is random? Just because you perceive something as random, doesn't make it random. Our perceptions aren't necessarily truthful. Our minds do lie to us. No, what you perceive as random doesn't mean a thing - just that you don't have the ability to comprehend it, doesn't mean its not there. Don't feel bad no one else does either. The great flaw in human thinking is thinking that we know or understand things absolutely - ie. the human "ego". Suffice it to say - I dislike Dawkins. I believe in evolution, I just have issues with some of the nitwit who study it.]

2. Hee Hee...I Need a Himbo - one of the few parody songs that actually worked for me.

3. I was hunting through the audiobook sale. Scored two - Anne Leckie's Ancillary Justice - which my brain refuses to read, so I'm thinking maybe it will listen? And Nelson Mandela's Favorite Folk Stories - all proceeds go to the kids in South Africa (which makes me kind of wish I got it at full price), read by various vocal talents that I will not recognize, because everyone tends to sound the same to me for the most part.

4. I'm about two thirds of the way through the audio book "Chins That Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Star, by Bruce Campbell". This book is rather good. He goes into detail about various movie shoots - really showing how unglamorous and painstaking the profession truly is, not to mention how many people don't get recognized for the jobs they do. Also shows how assinine the directors and stars of these pictures can be.

He tells a story about how Sam Rami has to work to get Gene Hackman to deliver a scene, manipulates a top character actor, and how his friend John Cameron drove himself nuts trying to get Sharon Stone to get her mark. This was the Quick and the Dead. Bruce said it was a tough film to make.

Also goes into detail about the hazards of making a television series, and how relieved he was when Brisco County, Jr was cancelled - because he could finally sleep.

Irreverent at times, but also blatantly honest.

One of the better audio books I've listened to. I rather like the actor bios. I'm going to try and get Michael Caine's next, also I want Hillary Clinton's Lessons Learned - the Hard Way - about her time as Secretary of State.

Comments

[mtbc]

Huh, I just watched Michael Caine in Funeral in Berlin. I did like Ancillary Justice, haven't read the lot of them though.

Humans are very bad at judging randomness, one of the reasons it's so easy for computers to beat us at rock-paper-scissors.

[shadowkat]

I think humans have a tendency to see it from their perspective, no one elses? OR incapable of a completely objective perspective? Computers don't really have an ego - so can do it? I think the ego gets in the way?

[atpo_onm]

Evolution does appear to be random when you're at the microscopic level. However, things change as soon as the randomness manages to produce something that can reproduce itself. Once that happens, then you introduce positive, neutral and negative mutations. Positive mutations increase the chance of the organism to keep on replicating and mutating. Negative ones cause it to die off.

Give things a few million years, and you get... us? And is that a beneficial mutation for the universe, or a negative one?

( Asks universe... gets no answer. Tsk, typical. )

You know the whole big problem with asking why we exist is that it's the wrong question. The right question is... why does anything exist?

Because, if one considers it physically/mathematically, it is an impossibility for something to come out of nothing. Therefore, the universe must always have existed.

But then, that means that, temporally, the universe is infinite. And mathematically, infinity is an abstract concept, because it can't exist in reality. No number, after all, is so big that you can't add one to it.

Personally, I'm more interested in how my dreams are taking place in alternate / parallel universes. It's both annoying and fascinating, and I'm really too busy to ponder it overly.

Oh, well...

To infinity, and beyond !!!

[shadowkat]

You're brain is connected to the collective unconscious, and you are picking up on others dreams? Or you've spent way to much time reading about that stuff - and your subconscious mind is a heck of a lot more creative than you give it credit for?

[atpo_onm]

I have not dismissed the possibility of what is usually referred to as the collective unconscious. It is a fact that our brains emit electrical energy, the question is a matter of how far that energy can radiate. It is also not impossible that our brains radiate an as yet undetectable energy, perhaps even dark matter/energy related. During sleep, with the conscious functions greatly diminished, we may be able to detect the thoughts of others, asleep or awake.

Or you've spent way to much time reading about that stuff - and your subconscious mind is a heck of a lot more creative than you give it credit for?

I had considered that, except for the fact that I can't imagine images of people or buildings or whatnot when I'm awake. That thing people say to do, for example, "Imagine yourself in a quiet forest..." -- I can't. I can only recreate images in my mind of things I have experienced often enough that I can sort of, weakly, picture them in my mind.

The people I see in my dreams are often total strangers, and I see buildings, streets, other things that I have never seen before. I, me-- I am there, but I feel like I am a passenger in someone else's body. It might seem like my body at times, but other times-- not.

This would get into more time to explain than I have here, but I have a theory that the reason these dreams have only started to occur in me in the last few years has to do with the gradual increase of the amount of electromagnetic energy in the air, due to wireless transmission of audio, video and data becoming so prevalent. To explain it would require the role of bias current in magnetic tape recording to be explained, but the short version is, without bias-- a strong, high frequency signal-- being applied to the tape, recording quality is difficult to achieve beyond a very primitive level.

Anyway, leaning towards the collective whatever at the mo.

[yourlibrarian]

I was sorry that Quick and the Dead didn't do better. I thought it was fairly interesting as westerns go. My SO loved Brisco, and I could see the appeal, particularly at that time. It makes me wonder how many actors are actually happy when their shows end but need to act publicly as if they wish it hadn't been.

[shadowkat]

Apparently Brisco was hard to do. Campbell doesn't like horses or riding. And they had a lot of trick stunts - that never quite worked as expected. But mainly it was dealing with the studio politics that drove him nuts.

I know the cast of Angel collasped at the end, in a kind of weird relief.

Television writers are nasty to actors. So are directors, apparently. LOL.

[trepkos]

I found Ancillary Justice a heavy read.