proximity1

Category: Tempting But Expensive and possibly over my head reading: Author: KANEKO, Kunihiko Life: An Introduction to Complex Systems Biology ; Springer Publications softcover isbn: ISBN 978-3-642-06915-4

I laughed a good bit after looking up an example of "Black Books" and watching a few minutes of season one, episode one. Funny. Thank you, that was --well, I'd never heard of the program before. So, now I understand what you're driving at. Anyway, like you, I ordered a copy on-line, too. It's just that I didn't use amazon.giant-killer-squid.com. I used another source and, like you, my book should land in my mailbox in coming days---which prompts me to write that I'd be very interested in discussing the book --perhaps we could read & discuss it as a very tiny 'book-club' of two?

Hmmm. Okay. I'd say "friends don't let friends go to amazon.com" --but that's just me. For your information, I learned of the Cohen book when ethologist Richard Dawkins referred to it in , found at Youtube.com. And, now, more "dangerous" reading recommendations. THE NET DELUSION : The Dark Side of Internet Freedom by Evgeny Morozov; see Chapter One of the book (.pdf file). Morozov also wrote an article for Slate.com published 19 March, 2012, A Robot Stole My Pulitzer! which I found published in a translation in this month's issue of Le Monde Diplomatique (page 28). AMENDED TO ADD: A forthcoming book by Morozov, The Digital Fix: Smart Machines, Dumb Humans and the Myth of Technological Perfection (all topics near and dear to my heart) is scheduled (tentatively) for publication in March, 2013.

I've just found out about a relatively recent book which I'm now quiite eager to read. So, this is a rather a "What are you soon-to-be reading?" kind of post: both of them by NicK Cohen, the first is his You Can't Read This Book: Censorship In an Age of Freedom and the second, Waiting for the Etonians: Reports from the Sickbed of Liberal England . In the publisher's promotional copy, at Harper Collins' page (same as the link on the title, above) for You Can't Read This Book, one finds the following, and I excerpt that, here, for citation here because it is (i.e. " [we are] told that we [are] living in an age of unparalleled freedom"), almost verbatim, a view I have seen pronounced here in discussions. I suspect that more than a few readers of SFN find this their view as well and think this topic well deserves a broader discussion. ---------------------------------- * emphasis added

additional to the above, by Charles Darwin: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life

by Bertrand Russell: A History of Western Philosophy The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell My Philosophical Development by Neil Postman: Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology ( a philosophical treatise on technology, science and culture) and, my musings of last evening, found already-written brilliantly in this essay's exposition by Stephen Maitzen: Stop Asking Why There's Anything, (2011, Springer+Business Media ) .pdf link: http://philosophy.ac...itzen_SAWTA.pdf

Hello. As an introduction, I'm here, as I see it, as a refugee from the inanity of practically all other public internet discussion fora because it appears from experience that I'm either too smart or too stupid or both to be able to bear the, to me, amazing idiocy that is so common in other discussion fora. That, and the fact that I'm an amateur of sceince have led me to search for and join such a site as this. I'm not unmindful that science-"fans" are human, too, and that they can exhibit peculiar notions--some of mine would almost certainly strike some as peculiar--but I think that I have a better chance of finding interesting people and topics and discussions here than has been the case elsewhere. Because I prize science as a method, a way of approaching the world, there is really a very great deal about contemporary society which fills me with despair for the present and future. I am by nature not a particularly optimistic person. In other fora, my tendencies to speak frankly have found much resentment from other readers. The most recent unhappy experience was at the U.K. newspaper, The Guardian's discussion fora--which, though I haven't announced it there, I'fve left definitively. They would regard this as their gain and my loss; though I'm not inclined to see it that way. Some people who've been important influences on me by their lives, their careers, and, most of all, their writings, have been, to give you insight into my tastes and my politics, one of my other great intellectual interests-- Bertrand Russell, George Orwell, C. Wright Mills, Karl Popper, Benoît Mandelbrot, Konrad Lorenz, and, most recently and quite importantly, the person and work of Jean-Jacques Kupiec. Thanks for reading. Pleased to be here I hope.