…Greenpeace offered me the chance of moving from one of the most conservative universities in the world to one of the most radical environmental groups.
I jumped at it.
Jeremy Leggett on his dilemma between teaching method of oil drilling and geology in general at the Royal School of Mines and his environmental conscience; The Carbon War.
I found a dead-tree, first edition, hard cover Green Mars, an installation one of the greatest sci-fi in the 90s and bought it for USD5 at Dawn Treader. I’ve been searching for the Martian Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson for years in Malaysia but now, I even found a first edition hard cover Green Mars. If you are wondering how precious this book is, even Borders doesn’t have any hard cover edition of Red Mars, Green Mars or Blue Mars.
It’s a collection edition and I’ve bought it for merely USD5. OMG. OMFG! OOOMFG!
I think I’m going rich. At home back in Malaysia, I have a coin that dated back to the Straits Settlements and now, here in Ann Arbor, I have one of the greatest sci-fi novels in hard cover. Now, the hunt for dead-tree, first edition, hard cover Red Mars and Blue Mars has begun.
p/s – The __earthinc is still in renovation stage. I haven’t written a code for the gallery section yet.
Rumi’s Mathnawi.
Beautiful piece of work.
From love, bitter things become sweet,
From love, copper becomes gold,
From love, the dregs become pure,
From love, pains become medicine,
From love, the dead are made alive,
From love, kings are made slaves…
Thank to one of my friends, my interest in Dune has reemerged.
Dune is one of the best science-fiction ever written. Some would even go further by saying Dune is an epic, a science fiction answer to the Lord of the Rings.
Dune is a series of novels written by Frank Herbert concerning the struggles between three great houses with the Spacing Guild plotting against each other. The storyline gets more complicated (very) as it progresses.
Dune is a desolate desert planet, also known as Arrakis. However, Arrakis is the center of attraction as the Spice, the most precious mineral in the whole known galaxy only exist on Arrakis. The Spice enables the Spacing Guild to fold space and thus controlling trade. Furthermore, all the great houses depend on the Guild for trade and the Guild on the other hand depends on the stability of the galaxy to ensure the continuous flow of the Spice. As the author puts it, whoever controls Arrakis, control the Spice; and whoever controls the Spice, controls the universe. Distrust is everywhere when the Spice is concerned.
Due to the epic’s popularity, it has been introduced to the silver screen a few times. The best adaptation was done by David Lynch back in 1984. Dune was further made known to the public by the legendary Westwood Studios when they made the revolutionary real time-strategy (RTS) game called Dune II in the mid-90s. The game was such a success that a few sequels were made, including the highly rated Emperor: The Battle for Dune.
Up-to-date, there are roughly four games that bear the Dune’s franchise.
To the Star Trek: The Next Generation fans, Dune might be known to them as one of the movies that Patrick Steward starred in. The actor took the role of Gurney, one of the main characters.
I would highly recommend Dune to all readers that share an interest in the science-fiction and fantasy genre.
Below is the Bene Gesserit’s Littany of Fear, one of the famous lines in Frank Herbert’s Dune.
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
When the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
I’ve updated __earth Inc.’s source code last week. As you can see, the scroll bar has been changed to suit the current __earth Inc.’s design. Admittedly, I didn’t construct the code by myself but it was taken from a site. However, I didn’t take the whole lot of the code and paste it into the source code but rather I did some alteration of myself.
Not much happened in my life except that I am getting too indiscipline for my own good. Throughout the weeks, I’d promised myself to revise my mathematics but that promise was eroded easily. Although the current math level to my pleasure does not provide a significant challenge to me, such complacency is dangerous. It was this sort of complacency that made me lost an A, in fact, a few A’s for the past few semesters.
Nevertheless, my life has started to resemble the way I had lived it a few years ago. I’m starting to read comics; currently, my taste stands with Darkhorse Comics instead of Marvel and books. Usually, I would read fantasy and science fiction novels but now, the taste changed to something more serious.
During the Fourth of July, a few friends of mine accompanied me to Borders Bookstore nearby Ann Arbor’s downtown. The first section that I visited was as always, fantasy and science fiction section. I was searching for Kim Robinson’s Blue Mars, which is the last installment of the Martian trilogy. It’s one of the best sci-fi novels ever written last decade.
I was about to buy Blue Mars until I found this newly released book by Tom Standage entitled “The Turk” under the chess section. I couldn’t tell why did I suddenly invested such an interest at the chess section but I sat there for nearly an hour and in effect, managed to finished off a few chapters. Later, I bought the book for USD 25. What made me bought the book was not because it looks impressive. The reason was because it discusses about The Turk, a name that strike a chord inside of my head.
Back when I was a small boy, I was introduced to the game of chess by my uncle. I must say that I am not an expert player but playing chess provide a satisfaction that no other game could present. On the other hand, one of my favorite subjects is history. Therefore, I am quite please to say that I have a splitter knowledge of chess history even when I was about 12 years old. It was during this time that I heard the machine called The Turk.
The Turk was a machine, an automaton to be precise, that could play chess; a mechanical being that could think on its own, built by Wolfgang Von Kempelen back during the 18th century. The idea of a being that consists only gears and metals could play chess is absurd but somehow in history, The Turk was a formidable chess player. For about one century, the Europeans were tricked into believing that this mechanical being could think on its own.
I myself was not well-versed in The Turk’s history but at the moment I read the book, my first thought was that someone must be inside of the machine. I believe that a machine that was made out of just bolts and nuts couldn’t think for itself. The idea of the machine such as that could play chess is an insult to human intelligence. Nevertheless, after reading a few chapters, the author somehow managed to convince me to seriously think that the automaton could think for itself, which was foolish of me. Only near the end of the book did the author revealed that the automaton was a fraud. Nevertheless, Francis Willis, one of The Turk scrutinizer thought that, as mentioned in the book:
“…the Turk as a mechanical puzzle to be solved, rather than a fraud to be uncovered.”
Truly, whether it was a hoax or not, The Turk itself was designed by an excellent man whom managed to keep the secret on how The Turk works to his death. If you are curious of what empowered The Turk, read the book. You’ll be surprised at the answer no matter how obvious the answer is.
Yet, after analyzing the content of the book, I believe the main idea of the book is not about the rich history of The Turk which had played against well-known figure nor about the secret that Kempelen kept. The book actually discusses about human dreams of building a machine that could think for its own good; an artificial intelligence. Quoting the book, this in turn paraphrased Lady Byron in London:
“Unlike the machines of the industrial revolution, which replace human physical activity, this fragment of the Difference Engine, like the Turk, raised the possibility that machine might eventually be capable of replacing mental activity too.”
Latter part of the book, there is a chapter that entitled “The Turk versus Deep Blue” which I haven’t read yet but the title itself convinced me that the main idea of the book concerns about artificial intelligence rather than the “Promethean heat” that empowered The Turk.
Be mindful, this book is not a sci-fi. It’s an investigative book that discuss real history.
Read this for a related post.