Wednesday, July 22, 2020
Tortoise: You've undoubtedly noticed how some authors go to so much trouble to build up great tension a few pages before the end of their stories—but a reader who is holding the book in his hands can FEEL that the story is about to end. Hence, he has some extra information which acts as an advanced warning, in a way. The tension is a bit spoiled by the physicality of the book. It would be so much better if, for instance, there were a lot of padding at the end of novels.
— Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach
Tuesday, July 21, 2020
Where does the information reside?... Somehow, it must be spread about in the colony, in the caste distribution, the age distribution—and probably largely in the physical properties of the ant-body itself. That is, the interaction between ants is determined just as much by their six-leggedness and their size and so on, as by the information stored in their brain.
— Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach
Monday, July 20, 2020
Achilles: It is interesting to me to compare the merits of the descriptions at various levels. The highest-level description seems to carry the most explanatory power, in that it gives you the most intuitive picture of the ant colony, although strangely enough, it leaves out seemingly the most important feature—the ants.
— Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach
Sunday, July 19, 2020
As for the white oppressors, their greatest crime is their "innocence"; they "have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it." Ida had told Vivaldo in Another Country that he had no right not to "know."
— David Leeming, James Baldwin
Saturday, July 18, 2020
Between his longing for a life based on love and his sense that power was necessary in a world that valued only power.
— David Leeming, James Baldwin
Friday, July 17, 2020
And finally, it had to do with the fact that what one can and cannot see "says something about you."
— David Leeming, James Baldwin
Thursday, July 16, 2020
Just like stand up, you wanted the joke to easily enter into a person's mind.
— Joe Rogan, "Joe Rogan Experience #1498 - Jon Stewart"
Wednesday, July 15, 2020
Really, the more porches the better.
— David
Tuesday, July 14, 2020
Nearly everyone is surprised to find out that in actual play, a master rarely looks ahead any further than a novice does... The trick is that his mode of percieving the board is like a filter: he literally does not see bad moves when he looks at a chess situation—no more than chess amateurs see illegal moves when they look at a chess situation. Anyone who has played even a little chess has organized his perception so that the diagonal rook-moves, forward capture by pawns, and so forth, are never brought to mind. Similarly, master-level players have built up higher leves of organization in the way they see the board.
— Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach
Monday, July 13, 2020
He found himself in a position, a decade and a half after emancipation, not unlike many leaders of the modern civil rights movement. They have to fight to protect political and constitutional triumphs, as well as a new national historical memory, while they also face a deepening crisis of structural oppression and inequality.
— David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass
Sunday, July 12, 2020
In much of Christian tradition—in which Douglass had learned to think and write—the forgiver often forgives for his own sake, not to excuse the oppressor.
— David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass
Saturday, July 11, 2020
In other words, TNT doesn't formalize the notions of tension and resolution, goal and subgoal, "naturalness" and "inevitability", any more than a piece of music is a book about harmony and rhythm.
— Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach
Friday, July 10, 2020
He knew that all groups desire a usable past.
— David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass
Thursday, July 9, 2020
Boy this makes everything worthwile reading this.
— Sid reading Lily's daily journal
Wednesday, July 8, 2020
Perfect crime. I had to turn off all the lights to get it.
— Sid after rushing to grab a ginger cookie from where they were hidden from him after the power went out and everyone went outside
Tuesday, July 7, 2020
Desperately, Douglass announced he "would show that nations should have memories."
— David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass
Monday, July 6, 2020
Yea, could you get me a perscription for suicide?... one for people who had good lives.
— S*
Sunday, July 5, 2020
What if everything was named that way? Lady bugs would be sister red wings, ants would be uncle three dots, moths would be brother dust wings... caterpillars, baby hair log... mosquitoes, cousin thin spring...
— Lily on if everything was named like daddy long legs
Saturday, July 4, 2020
I have to keep reminding myself of my age.
— Sid
Friday, July 3, 2020
It seems that the clarity of the outer message resides in the sheer length of the message. This is not unexpected; it parallels precisely what happens in deciphering ancient texts. Clearly, one's likelyhood of success depends crutially on the amount of text available.
— Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach
