Vurtual Reality on a Virtual Book

Neuromancer by William Gibson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

OK, OK, I finally got around to reading Neuromancer but William Gibson. For some reason I always meant to read it but just never seemed to make the time. I think I was slightly turned off by the cyberpunk hype, not a good reason but there it is.

Yes I like it. It good.

The thing is, I dug all the “jacking in” and accessing the matrix and all, but maybe I think for all the supposed noir atmosphere that is supposed be there...everybody is pretty at peace with themselves. The bad guys are totally cool being bad, the junkie is at peace being a junkie and the assassin is fine with tall the killing.

Armitage/Corto is confused but not really conflicted.

I don't know that a story has to have people struggling to find themselves but I guess I am saying everybody seems to be a little bit of cardboard cut outs. Maybe a little too predictable.

Then again it Sci Fic which sort of has a tradition of one dimensional character.

I tell people something about it reminded me a little of Philip K Dick and not because there is a superficial similarity in setting to the movie blade runner. Rather I seem to remember a scene from Ubik where you don't know what is “reality” and what isn't, so maybe I was waiting for the paranoia and fear. But in Neuromancer the virtual world is just another room in the real world and there is no need to fear anything. But HEY, maybe that is the insight of the whole cyberpunk worldview. I think I just learned something!!

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On the Road Again

I took the day off and spent a good part of the day riding my bicycle.

But I had the stop Bicycle Cafe at Lawther and Northwest HWY and have second breakfast and some coffee

Then I worked my way to the Park Lane DART rail station and rode it up to the Parker Rd station in Plano

Once there I rode over 75 and found the Chisholm Trail  and took it up to the Bluebonnet Trail

Somebody forgot to mark the southbound Preston Ridge Bike trail  but I figured it by following the power lines

Central Expressway and the trail

Then Cottonwood Trail and onward to White Rock Trail

I was pla.nning to take it all the way to Downtown Dallas but I guess I need to work up to since the heat took it out of me and I just headed home

Remembering Gatsby

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The fact that I don't remember it probably proves my fear that I am more susceptible to subliminal suggestion than I think I should be. You see one day recently I had a sudden but strong urge to re-read The Great Gatsby and fortunately found many used copies in the used book store I frequent (where it just happens I work).

Anyway, a few days after that I saw a commercial for the new Gatsby movie, and even though I really thought I had spontaneously decided to read it, it is much more likely I caught a glimpse of the ad and unthinking tucked it just out of conscious view.

That said, I only read it once before and then as an adult, having defiantly, and in retrospect stupidly, refused to read it for a high school lit class. And although I read it sometime in the last 5 to 10 years all I remembered was that I told people that I liked it. So this was almost like reading it for the first time.

From my middle aged perspective I can see why it is considered a classic and I can also see why I probably only read a few pages in high school and threw it aside. For me the characters are somehow simultaneously shallow and complicated, and the story itself even more so. And I have to admit that in high school my literary depth never got much past A Separate Peace and even that was a stretch.

Ready Gatsby also clarifies for me why I didn't do well in lit class even if I had to read a book I enjoyed. In Gatsby there are loads of allusions, possible metaphors, foreshadowing and other literary attributes one could write a paper about. But for me that would take all the joy out of reading and letting all of the possible meanings and ambiguities roll over you as you read. Of course I suppose I could read it once for delight and then for possible analysis, but since I don't now and haven’t for years had to read to write a paper to get a grade I'll just hang onto what I have and luxuriate in its ambiguity.

So yes I think it is a great book and the more I reflect in general about what I just read the more I feel that way. But gun to my head, had to write a paper about it for high school or community college American lit class I am pretty sure anything I could come up with would NOT be what the teacher might be hoping for.

And writing this just now make me kind of want to read it again already. BUT now I'm off to Neuromancer by William Gibson.

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A Very Certain Life

What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite by David Di Salvo

My rating: 3 of 5 stars




Cool words and phrases I got from this book

problematic memes

the pleasure of certainty

framing bias

confirmation bias

amygdalae

the need for cognitive closure

embodied cognition

the zeigarnik effort

I just need to go through my bookmarks and dog ears to remind myself what they mean.

A nice book that basically says in our human desire for certainty we will bend, change, morph our thinking to avoid being uncomfortable or acknowledge ambiguity or uncertainty.

That would explain things.

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A Graphic Life

The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I happen to visit a comic book store today and bought this knowing only that Jonathan Ames wrote the series Bored to Death.

Engaging but perhaps a little predictable. His drinking led him from bad to worse as one tends to expect with this sort of story. Still, a good example of a graphic autobiography. And the artwork by Dean Haspiel fits wonderfully.



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The Path Taken After Work

I ended up skipping class to ride my bike. I went up White Rock Trail and then onto part of The Cottonwood Trail that eventually goes to Richardson. It took a lot out of me but I finally got to see the trail thread through the north Dallas High 5 traffic ramps.

Along the way I snapped a few photos and while preparing them to post I accidentally saved two with the wrong orientation and felt they looked way better than the intended view.

The one below threw me when I first looked at it since I couldn't figure out what was wrong. I honestly didn't know what these things floating in the air were. Of course I had the water reflection at top and the sky on the bottom... I wish I had thought of that myself.

Aimless Aim

Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A slim book with some really wonderful insights, but the good stuff takes up less that half of the tale. The parts where he simply describes himself learning Japanese archery and what the teacher told him are really, really great.

I especially like this...

"The right art," cried the master, "is purposeless, aimless! The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will receed."


But whenever he tries to go beyond that it just seems a bit pretentious.

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