Fabula

The secret to a successful animated movie: fish. Two of the most popular animated flicks of recent years are Disney's "The Little Mermaid", and Pixar (aka Disney's) "Finding Nemo". Both films contain fish.

Check out Stephen Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science". It's a bold conjecture, particularly in the sciences, where understatement is generally the rule. In this case, Wolfram has probably overstated things a bit -- particularly his assertion that he is the generator of this new science. But it is interesting.

One can't help but find the ideas behind A New Kind of Science fascinating: the philosophical implications of a universal computer are disturbing and powerful. Robert Wright summarizes the views of Edward Fredkin: "Fredkin believes that the Universe is very literally a computer and that it is being used by someone, or something, to solve a problem. It sounds like a good-news / bad-news joke: the good news is that our lives have purpose; the bad news is that their purpose is to help some remote hacker estimate pi to nine jillion decimal places." [1, Kurzweil] This is somewhat akin to Stephen Wolfram's perspective; for more information, click on the Kurzweil link above.

Speaking of Robert Wright, he's written a new book: Non-Zero. Check out the book's website [2, Wright], and an interesting review [3, DeLong]. Apparently, Wright believes that there is an arrow for human progress: one that points towards increasing complexity. He also posits that organic evolution is quite similar to cultural evolution; both point towards increasing complexity. While the reviewer, DeLong, disagrees with this idea, I think it has great merit. It is obvious, I think, that the world is more organically complex today than it was three billion years ago; I think this can also be seen in an isolated environment. Say, for example, a Petri dish. Life tends to complexify things; and, by the definition of evolution, this complexity leads, over time, to progress.

Why were the Germans called The Hun by American and British propaganda? Because of Kaiser Wilhelm II's decree to his soldiers in the 1899-1900 Boxer Rebellion to behave like the Hun: "let the Germans strike fear into the hearts, so he'll be feared like the Hun" [4]. This was seized upon by the Allied propaganda machine in 1914 and used to describe the German soldiers' so-called despicable conduct.

posted by Rob @ 7:57 PM