 
Date: Fri, 28 May 1993 13:22 EST
From: BLUECANARYINNAOUTLET 
Subject: hey again, y'all.
To: +dist+/afs/andrew/usr/js9b/Public/camc.dl@andrew.cmu.edu
Message-Id: <01GYPKVWG30400189P@YANG.EARLHAM.EDU>

Hey all--

   been incommunicado for a while, we have!  I was beginning to worry that 
because of recent changes in my school's net-connections, I wasn't getting 
mail from the list anymore.  We're now full-fledged participants on the 
Internet; people without tans can now spend hour upon hour MUDding and 
MOOing away, it's disgusting.  On the brighter side, we now can use things 
like FTP and GOPHER.  So, progress of a sort.

Jon sez:

>so now i am on to reading Diet for a Small Planet, by Frances Moore Lappe.
>it is interesting, only 50 pages into it. this is like a 1986 edition,
>which is a 10th anniversary edition with lots of extra commentary and
>editing and such.
> 
>if people like, i will type in sections i found to be particularly
>interesting or poignant.

   Go for it.  I'm not familiar with the book, though I've seen it around.

>i'd appreciate hearing other folkz comments on what Lappe has to say
>and about any info they have on her and the Food First group.

   Actually-- if I'm remembering straight, and not confusing her with 
someone else-- Lappe went to the school I'm at now, Earlham College.  
Small planet, indeed!

>PS: started taking Tai Chi Chu'an with Tom recently. (not sure about
>the spelling of the Chu'an part, btw). its kul. if you can find a good
>teacher you should check it out.

   You got the spelling right, insofar as it can be spelled correctly in 
English... I took basic Tai Chi myself, a couple years ago.  *Neat shit*.  
As a prime skeptic, I can't accept the traditional account of what 
*happens* in that dance of muscle movements, but something certainly does; 
wonder if physiologists have done much work on it? Probably releases 
endorphins, as shamans are able to induce their subjects' brains to do.  
In any case, beautiful.  I should really learn some more; I've forgotten 
most of it already.

   What else goes on, here.  I just got my first copy of the *Autodiadact's 
Journal*, a rather quirky but well put-together publication... ah, how 
inbred this is, commenting on a zine in a mailing list which is reviewed 
in the zine which we're talking about in the mailing list.  Ack.  Still, 
very innaresting.  I particularly enjoyed the outline of *Walden* and the 
essay on retranslating Japanese translations of American rock lyrics.  As 
well as, I must confess, reading Jon Slenk's portrayal of our discussions. 
(Andy Warhol, eat your heart out. :-)
   At the moment, I'm working on pulling together a tremendous paper for 
my combined philosophy classes on language and AI, in which I'll try to 
make a case that the post-structuralists, in pointing out the problems of 
language and learning, have overlooked the innumerable successful trials 
of language and learning in everyday human experience.  In particular, 
I'll be drawing on the theories of Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores in 
*Understanding Computers and Cognition*-- a book worth checking out.  
Winograd used to be one of the promising wunderkinds of AI, the creator of 
what looked like a very successful prototype system called SHRDLU, before 
he was seduced by Hubert Dreyfus, phenomenological philosopher and critic 
of AI efforts.  Under Dreyfus' tutelage, he appropriated the theories of 
Martin Heidegger, whose philosophy centers around the act of 
interpretation and the experience of being-in-the-world ("dasein"), and 
fused them with the biology of Humberto Maturana, who extrapolated his 
work in understanding perception (he was one of the authors of the famous 
paper on "What the Frog's Eye Tells the Frog's Brain") into a 
broad-ranging description of the characteristics of cognition, language, 
and life.  Cybernetics and hermeneutics meet, and their offspring are 
fruitful.  They produce not only a strong critique of the classical 
approach to AI, but relevant suggestions for the human use of computers as 
media for communication.
   Anyway, that's the news from Lake Wobegon.  I'll be heading home for 
the summer again on June 11th.  Amazing that it's been more than a year 
this thing's been in operation, even if CAMC has petered out of late.  I'm 
glad to be part of it.  Take care, y'all.


   --Jesse.

   "Nonsense doesn't break down the codes; speaking precisely that which 
the codes forbid breaks the codes."

                                   --Kathy Acker
                                     *Empire of the Senseless*


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