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READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
So when we say "information" in everyday life, we spontaneously think of information-as-the-result-of-a-discarding-of-information. We do not consider the fact that there is more information in an experience than in an account of it. It is the account that we consider to be information. But the whole basis of such an account is information that is discarded. Only after information has been discarded can a situation become an event that people can talk about.
The User Illusion Chapter 5, "The Tree of Talking"
I'm kind of taken with Nørretranders' description of information, in these early chapters, as that which is not communicated -- as what has to be discarded in order for communication to occur. The state of being that one wishes to impart to one's interlocutor contains, necessarily, orders of magnitude too many bits of information for it to be expressed across any available channel of communication; so before one speaks one must create meaning by throwing away information. This also applies, in a different way, to memory -- in order to remember a moment of being one must forget vast reams of context.
Yesterday afternoon I had a chance to go to The Strand, lovely bookstore that I have not been back to for far too long, and took the opportunity to buy several books that have been on my reading list for a long time now.
Theogony and Works and Days, by Hesiod. (tr. M.L. West)
Uno y el universo and Heterodoxia, both by Ernesto Sabato.
I felt like a kid in a candy store... Now I just have to avoid my initial impulse which is to jump in and start reading and commenting on all of them at once!
posted afternoon of August 14th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Book Shops
In the first chapter of Tor Nørretranders' User Illusion (an engrossing and highly interesting read which I am starting on the recommendation of the Julian Jaynes Society) I find a quotation from James Clerk Maxwell which I think will serve very nicely as an epigraph for READIN (and for the phenomenon of blogging in general):
A memorandum-book does not, provided it is neatly written, appear confused to an illiterate person, or to the owner who understands it thoroughly, but to any other person able to read it appears to be inextricably confused.
I don't really see yet how Nørretranders is planning to move from thermodynamics and information systems to consciousness and perception; but his enlightening summary of the history of physics in the 19th and 20th Centuries is delicious reading even without the frisson provided by wondering where he is headed with it.
posted afternoon of August 14th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Epigraphs
I met up with Miriam and Jon last night to go see The Shirts. This time they were playing Cha Cha's, on the Coney Island boardwalk, and they were completely in their element. A very different experience from watching them at Arlene's Grocery on the Lower East Side -- the crowd was a Brooklyn crowd, probably half of the audience was made up of a big extended family whose yearly reunion at Cha Cha's coincided with The Shirts' date... Listening to the crowd sing along on the chorus of "Only the Dead Know Brooklyn" warmed the cockles of my heart.
It's been a long time since I've been at Coney Island at night. That is the best time there. The crowds of tourists thin out, the gray dusk of evening and the darkness of night settle over the beach and the water -- the few people still out walking on the sand are black silhouettes against the dark water. Then you turn your gaze back inland and get a fever of brightly colored neon shapes and hawkers yelling, rides sliding past and spinning around, smells of fried food and sunburnt bodies...
Miriam and Jon and I had dinner at Tatiana's in Brighton Beach and walked down the boardwalk in the gloaming. When we got to Cha Cha's, we were happy to find Bill and Brian of Shanghai Love Motel and their S.O.'s, Lisa and Maia rocking out to The Shirts' pop beat. A great way to spend a Saturday evening.
posted morning of August 14th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about The Shirts
A bit frustrating: last night's vivid dream was a dream explicitly about words; but the vividly recalled portion of the dream is all visual imagery and context, no words.
In the dream, I am writing a poem and think of a line that I want to use in it, a poorly-remembered line from a Salt-n-Pepa song. I bring up Google to check my memory of the lyric. Somehow Google will not give me the transcribed lyrics to the song, I can only find the song's video on YouTube. So I start watching it and listening. It is a fantastic, breathtaking video, with references to film noir and to Kurosawa, one that brings out resonances and meanings in the song that I have never understood before. But it is distracting and frustrating to be watching it and listening for a particular line, and trying to keep in mind the poem that I was writing and the way I wanted to use the line. The video is very long -- long enough to be divided into mutiple parts on YouTube -- and I wake up before I find the line I am looking for.
posted morning of August 12th, 2011: 2 responses ➳ More posts about Dreams
Darcus Howe speaks to BBC News about the riots in London. The interviewer* does not hear a word he's saying.
Update: Mr. Howe appears on today's Democracy Now!
*(Indeed "interviewer" seems like the wrong word here.)
posted morning of August 10th, 2011: 1 response ➳ More posts about Politics
This is an exciting find: when Steerforth is growsing to Copperfield about his lack of ambition and drive, he makes reference to his childhood --
At odd dull times, nursery tales come up into the memory, unrecognised for what they are. I believe I have been confounding myself with the bad boy who "didn't care," and became food for lions --
and my mind leaps of course to my own childhood, and to Pierre. But wait! How could Dickens have known of Sendak's work?... Clearly Sendak was taking off from an older source. I wonder what it was? Not finding much of anything with Google.
Here is something that has been puzzling me about David Copperfield (which I've been reading, and lazily enjoying, for the past week or so): When David travels from his mother's home in Suffolk (northeast of London) to the school Murdstone sends him to, which I'm pretty sure was described as being near London though I can't find that now, he travels by way of Yarmouth, which is southwest of London (assuming Google Maps is not misleading me) -- and similarly, I believe, when he travels to work at Murdstone and Grinby. This doesn't make any sense to me. It is certainly possible I got mixed up about the location of the school; but in any case why would the carriage from Suffolk to Yarmouth not stop over in London? Never mind all that -- Google Maps is indeed misleading me. The Yarmouth referenced here is Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, fairly close to where David and his mother lived. (It is still farther away from London than is Suffolk, but I can easily imagine it to lie on a main road which bypasses David's mother's house.)
Also -- I wonder what age David is when he goes to work for Murdstone and Grinby. I've been thinking it is roughly in the range of ten to twelve, but I don't think that was stated in the text, it is just a guess. (The first time in the book that David mentions his age is when he is fallen in love with the eldest Miss Larkins, near the end of his time at Dr. Strong's school, and he is 17 -- I think that could fit with him being about 11 at the time he's working in London.)
Yesterday afternoon I had a chance to go to The Strand, lovely bookstore that I have not been back to for far too long, and took the opportunity to buy several books that have been on my 
probably half of the audience was made up of a big extended family whose yearly reunion at Cha Cha's coincided with The Shirts' date... Listening to the crowd sing along on the chorus of "Only the Dead Know Brooklyn" warmed the cockles of my heart. 
Then you turn your gaze back inland and get a fever of brightly colored neon shapes and hawkers yelling, rides sliding past and spinning around, smells of fried food and sunburnt bodies...
This is an exciting find: when Steerforth is growsing to Copperfield about his lack of ambition and drive, he makes reference to his childhood -- 
