Hoelder1in's Mindfile
Der Name ist gefälscht, ich habe nie Hölderlin geheissen.
the poet Hölderlin upon seeing an edition
of his own poetry
The namesake of this page is German 18th century poet Friedrich Hölderlin. While it is almost impossible to translate poetry, I wanted to share with you these two translations of his poems. They are among the best I could find and I like them almost as much as the original.
In case anyone got interested, here are links to Hölderlin's complete works and lots of German literature at Projekt Gutenberg-DE.
This is my first attempt at a blog-style web page format - please bare with me...
What do I have in mind with this page? Not sure yet - I guess this may turn out to be a collection of loosely connected thoughts and ideas, prompted by whatever I read or think about, whatever pops up in my head, and which would otherwise have been lost, had I not typed it on this page - ideally, over time this may develop into something in the spirit of Howard Bloom's Omnologist Manifesto.
Ok, so this isn't really a blog: the entries aren't dated and I mostly write them from top to bottom (and occasionally edit old ones). But I seem to be comfortable with this format, so this is how it is going to be. Also, you may have noticed that my HTML style is kind of minimalistic. I guess I don't want to procrastinate even more by thinking about fancy formatting tricks...
DISCLAIMER: I will be writing about various subject areas I am not an expert on and some of it may even be somewhat tongue-in-cheek (whatever pops up in my head). It is for you, dear reader, to make up your mind whether any of this makes sense. Read at your own risk!
This is to inform all Hölderlin lovers of planet Earth
that, as of Friday, January, 14th 2005, a copy of the poem
Hyperions Schicksalslied rests on the surface of
Saturn's moon Titan,
the most distant celestial body on which humankind has yet left it's mark.
Background: Before the launch of the
Cassini-Huygens space probe on October, 15th 1997, the
Europen Space Agency (ESA) asked the
public to submit short messages which were to be
copied onto a CD, to be carried to the surface of Titan by the Huygens
space probe.
I submitted Hyperions Schicksalslied as one of 80,000
messages (nr. 4532) that were sent in. The last line of the poem,
Jahr lang ins Ungewisse hinab, seems to be particularly fitting, given
Huygens' long and perilous journey.
Your IP address: 38.103.63.55; your browser and OS: CCBot/1.0 (+http://www.commoncrawl.org/bot.html).
Hey, it's a long time since I last posted here. For now, I just want to report that I set up an openID script on my Web server which allows me to log into various Web sites and blogs using my Hoelder1in identity. So, no more anonymous commenting in blogs... ;-)
I don't seem to be able to get this poem out of my head. I first encountered the famous part (From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free...) in one of Stanislaw Lem's books (His Master`s Voice, German title: Die Stimme des Herrn) where he quotes it in the final chapter. Speaking of Lem and poetry, the Steven Soderbergh movie Solaris comes to mind where the lead character (played by George Clooney) quotes from this poem. Oh well, two poems about death - not sure what got me into this mood. To end this post on a less somber note, here is yet another poem which plays a central role in a work of science fiction (in Dirk Gentley's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams). Could I revive within me Her symphony and song are the lines that most stuck in my head.
Another poem I am very fond of righ now is Herbsttag/Autumn Day by Rainer Maria Rilke, which perhaps should be read alongside Hölderlin's Hälfte des Lebens/Half of Life - both of these poems seem to express a very similar mood. My thanks go to Cybertron Flower for reminding me of this one. Also, since the choice of books, I am currently reading, is influenced a great deal by Cybertron Flower's blog/favorite author list, I thought I might als well share with you my list of books, I have read (English and German; books, I am currently reading are listed at the top).
I seem to be talking a lot about poetry these days - time to get back
to some left brain stuff! But before I do that, one last bit about poetry:
I already linked to two of Hölderlin poems
(Da ich ein Knabe war/In my boyhood days,
Hälfte des Lebens/Half of Life) at the very top of this page
and wanted to provide links to a couple more
(Hyperions Schicksalslied,
Empedokles,
Rousseau,
An
Diotima,
Sonnenuntergang)
which I like.
It is amazing that a love poem (An Diotima) speaks of nothing but nature.
The numerous Diotima poems, as well as his novel Hyperion were inspired by
the love of his life, Susette Borkenstein Gontard (english/german).
Seventeen of her very touching
letters,
she wrote to Hölderlin, as well as one of
his
letters to her were preserved.
The picture on the left shows a graffito which at some time was
sprayed onto the river embankment, very close to where Hölderlin,
after the untimely death of his Diotima,
had spent the second half of his life in insanity, saying: Hölderlin wasn't mad!
in the dialect of the area.
A tapestry of memories and thoughts and emotions, millions of voices murmuring: it is said that writers can achieve immortality through their works. The offspring of their creativity dwells in many brains, prospers and grows, mixes with a stream of stories and characters and ideas, flowing from generation to generation, ever extending, never ending. But can't the same thing also be said of readers? The artist of many ages, striving for truth and perfection ... the lover seeking eternity in loving eyes ... the peasant's life full of hardship, their longings never to be fulfilled ... the countless lives, like sand in the wind, yearning for their niche of meaning and happyness ... the cherished moments we look back to, saying was this all? ... even the bitterness and desperation of ultimate failure and loss - all inhabiting the reader's mind, shared by thousands of brains, young ones discovering new worlds, old ones, having to let go of memories and dreams. I want to be all of those - a single life just isn't enough. I am all of those!
A good friend (who is able to read the Russian original) has suggested to me, that I should read Chekhov's stories. I just started to read a few of them (in German translations) and it is dawning upon me that there is a whole universe waiting to be discovered! So, I felt like sharing this link with whoever reads this, providing (in chronologial order by publication date) English translations of 201 stories written by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. Enjoy!
I herewith solemnly promise to read Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. All of it! All of 4,200 pages (the length of my edition of the German translation)! I probably will not read all the seven parts in one go. My current idea is to alternate them with the four volumes of Uwe Johnson's Jahrestage. Aus dem Leben der Gesine Cresspahl (Anniversaries. From the Life of Gesine Cresspahl). Another 1,900 pages and another promise. Fulfilling both these promises will probably take me well into 2009. And there are the many Chekhov stories I haven't yet read, of course. Which feels good, as I now know at least one part of what will happen in the next several months. So one might say that Remembrance of Things Past is not just about the past but also about the future (like all worthwile things). Anyway, so far I only read the first part (Combray) of Swann's Way which is only some 5% of the total. I was already hooked after the first 10 pages, where young Marcel describes how he wakes up, in more detail than I ever had consciously thought about waking up. Which is amazing. And of course he goes on to describe many specific memories and things he thought about in his childhood with the same level of detail. Oh, and how I love those long sentences. They are the longest (at least in the German translation) I ever encountered in any book. And it it is somehow a stretch of my working memory to still remember the beginning of a sentence once I have reached it's end. So I need my full concentration and I re-read many sentences and it is somehow slow going - but I love it! The computer person in me calculated that all of Remembrance amounts to less than 10 MByte! Which makes me wonder about my estimate that a true mindfile would require at least something like 1 GByte. One of the reasons I decided to read Remembrance was Ben Goertzel's The Hidden Pattern where he discusses it in the context of his AI work. I can almost physically feel how the web of small observations and thoughts which make up Remembrance - which could for example be stored and manipulated in a huge (or even not so huge) database - gives each memory, each bit of conscious thought, the color and meaning which make us alive. Oh, and did I mention that the full text of the English translation of Remembrance is available on the Web?
Having had a specific reason to think about dorm rooms (I lived in one for several years while I was a physics student) and how to decorate them with personal things, I seem to need around me to make me feel at home in a new place, I decided to share this list of quotes (as part of my personal Remembrance of Things Past), many of which were typed on white cardboard with my old OLYMPIA Report de Luxe typewriter when I was in my early twenties (yes, there were no PCs at that time ;) to decorate my dormitory room. If you saw the movie Em@il for you (with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks), then you also have seen that particular model typwriter (actually two of them ;). Re-reading those quotes, it is amazing to see in which ways my thinking evolved over the years and to what extent it stayed the same - I guess, I simply got older....
Following a suggestion by one of the (few) readers of this page, it is now possible to leave comments. Additionally, Hoelder1in can now be reached on jabber (hoelder1in at jabber dot org). Since those two means of communication are probably enough to get in touch with me, I removed the old aol contact address which, at any rate, was only checked at rather long intervals.
Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome. -Dr. Samuel Johnson
Two links I hope to check out at some time in the future, when I run out of more urgent things to do (so maybe never): the New England Complex Systems Institute and some of the work of Andrey Korotayev.
Have a look at this cartoon representation of the socalled
Hertzsprung-Russell diagram
- the standard tool astrophysicists use to classify stars and
to follow their paths from cradle to grave.
This funny Japanese cartoon obviously depicts the analogies between
the lives of stars and us poor humans who don't have millions of years
to play out our lives. Since I only possess an old photocopy of it,
the source of which is unknown to me, and I also can't find it on the Web,
I would appreciate if anyone who has seen this before and knows anything
about its origin could drop me a note. All I can say for sure is that
it originated in Japan in the 1970s or earlier.
Also, since I am unable to read the Japanese, a translation into English
would be highly welcome. Thanks, your help is
appreciated!
Since I now read a good part of the second chapter (Swann in Love) of the first volume of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, I felt like sharing some of my initial thoughts and observations - probably nothing too original but I want to say things in my own words. This chapter is about Swann's love for Odette, about the events through which he came to love her (a specific piece of music plays an important part), and also, later, about his jealousy. I find it absolutely amazing how Proust dissects Swann's motivations and emotions, how he cuts through to the inner machinery of the human psyche, with nothing but his own introspection and observations at his disposal. I wonder to what extent his insights are borne out by modern psychology (of which I am not too well informed). As I said, nothing special, just some first observations. Expect more as I read further.
This was bound to happen: last night someone spammed my new comments page full of BS. So I enabled the CAPTCHA function on the comments page (you will have to type in a short string to prove your humanness). A more fun CAPTCHA might have been this one (which I am sure the likely posters on this page would not have had any troubles with ;).
Due to my recent exposure to the livejournal culture, I learned of a somewhat non-standard use of the word meme which, however, seems to be related to the author I am currently reading (Marcel Proust). So, without further ado, here is the mother of all memes which, in all likelihood, is where the meme meme originated. ;) Feel free to use it on your blog or Web page (please leave a comment, so I will know about it). For the German speakers, there is also this page (see my next post for an English version) where one can post one's answers to the Proust Questionnaire, based on the famous F.A.Z. Fragebogen (something similar appeared in the Zeit-Magazin for many years).
This may not be everyone's idea how to spend (waste?) a sunny day of one's summer vacation. But after having seen a German Web form for submitting answers to the famous Proust Questionnaire (see the link in my previous post), I created a similar English language page. My new Proust Questionnaire Web page lists all of the questions from two questionaires Proust filled out at age 13 and 20, respectively. It gives both Proust's original answers and it allows you to enter your own which will then be displayed on a Web page. Let me know if you encounter any problems with the page (I haven't yet done very extensive testing). Have fun!
I spent some more time working on the Proust Questionnaire page: there is now the random answer page where each reload will display a random question and answer (it is kind of addictive to click on that page ;) and I created separate pages for each of the 35 questions which display all submitted answers in context. This brings back the phrase A tapestry of memories and thoughts and emotions... which I already used twice in previous posts. It seems to me that these pages will be a way to create such a tapestry in almost a literal sense. I envision a time when there will be hundreds or even thousands of answers to each question. Wouldn't it be great to display these on huge poster-sized printouts, say in the form of a triptych, showing the answers to such questions as What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?, What is your idea of earthly happiness?, and How would you like to die? on three facing panels? I see this almost as a work of art, created from the thoughts and wishes of hundreds or thousands of participants. At the present rate it will take several years to collect enough answers for something like that, but this is ok - I really want this to be a long term project. Thanks to all who contributed so far! I hope there will be many, many more.
This is to let you know that the personality type of yours truly, Hoelder1in, is either INTP or INTJ. The first result was obtained by having the Typealyzer web service analyze the writing style of the text on hoelder1in.org and the second one is the result of me taking a test provided at humanmetrics.com. In terms of percent, the test results were Introverted: 89%, iNtuitive: 88%, Thinking: 50%, Judging: 22%, close to the J/P border line. This is also mostly in agreement with my self-assessment. Oh well. I guess, it's a mixed bag. So, would I want a different personality type if I could choose one? Probably not...
Another multiple choice test and another multi-dimensional space to locate
myself in. I just hope I won't get addicted to these kinds of tests.
This is already the second time I took the
Political Compass test
to determine my location in a
two-dimensional political coordinate grid (economic left/right vs. social
libertarean/authoritarian). The results at the left (for those interested
in numbers: economic left/right: -1.25,
social libertarian/authoritarian: -6.72) are essentially unchanged from
a year ago, giving some credence to the test.
According to the
Political Compass Web site,
the historical figure, closest to my position in the coordinate grid is
Thomas Paine,
British born intellectual, revolutionary, and inventor,
who participated in both the American and French revolution. Interesting!
Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they
are, without regard to place or person, my country
is the world, and my religion is to do good. -Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man
Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it. -Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man
No falsehood is so fatal as that which is made an article of faith. -Thomas Paine
Since a couple of days this page is now php-enabled, which among other things, allows me to send a special welcome to return visitors. ;) Well, to those who permit persistent cookies, at any rate.
but there was this moment, when after finishing a story, she would turn the book around and clap it shut in front of me and I can still feel the air from between the pages brushing over my face, --> but there is this one moment, when after finishing a story, she would turn the book around and clap it shut in front of me and I can still feel the air from between the pages on my face, holding this strange promise of worlds to be discovered...Another update on my Proust Questionnaire project: There is now an image gallery, showing the photos participants uploaded with their answers; I want this to become a patchwork or quilt over time, stitched together from hundreds of images, each one pointing to a participant's Proust Questionnaire answers - a quilt of faces to accompany the tapestry of memories and thoughts and emotions I talked about in a previous post. So, keep uploading those images...
The parting year would be marked above recent precedent if it had witnessed nothing more than the beginning of the end of the banking system under which the country has lived for a half century.
-The New York Times
Sounds familiar? It's worth noting, though, that the above quote appeared in the New York Times of December 31st, 1914; there is nothing new under the sun...
I donated 42 Euros to buskampagne.de,
today. ;) This is the German counterpart of the famous London
Atheist Bus Campaign which has
spawned similar campaigns in a number of
European and North-American cities.
Here is one candidate slogan (the one I voted for), considered for display on buses
in Berlin, Cologne, and Munich - well yes,
don't
panic: life is good without supernatural beliefs.
Somewhat related, I also signed a petition to the German
parliament to rename Ascension Day, one of Germany's many religious, national
holidays, to Evolution Day. Click on Charles Darwin on the left to
sign the petition (so far supported by some 5000 participants) or watch this
nice video of old, bearded
Charley, telling us that we are all childeren of the evolution. Have fun!
Both the petition and buskampagne.de
were organized by the (German)
Giordano Bruno
Foundation, promoting a secular, naturalistic world view based on
"evolutionary humanism".
Evolutionary Humanism also happens to be the title of an essay by Julian Huxley, published in his 1957 book New Bottles for New Wine, alongside another one of his essays which famously coined the term transhumanism - though I must say that some of his views, particularly those related to eugenics, sound rather hair-raising and unacceptable by today's standards. I am pretty sure that I read one of his books sometime back in my youth when I worked myself through our school library. Another book I remember from that library is Jacques Monod's Chance and Necessity. There was this quote from Monod's book which impressed me a great deal at the time and which I still know by heart (will try to find a good English translation):
Der alte Bund ist zerbrochen; der Mensch weiß endlich, daß er in der teilnahmslosen Unermesslichkeit des Universum allein ist, aus dem er zufällig hervortrat. Nicht nur sein Los, auch seine Pflicht steht nirgendwo geschrieben. Es ist an ihm, zwischen dem Reich und der Finsternis zu wählen.
So, you wanted to know what makes this Hoelder1in person tick? Here is your chance to find out - though I am afraid the resolution isn't quite good enough to show the actual gears and levers... ;)
Contemplating the unspectacular gray matter inside my scull (and the fact that it now appeared as a paperback) got me to order Thomas Metzinger's book Being No One (one page précis) in which he explains why "nobody ever had or was a self". Cool stuff! Incidentally, Thomas Metzinger is also listed as a member of the scientific advisory council of the Giordano Bruno Foundation which I mentioned a bit further up.
There is also this related article, titled Self Awareness: The Last Frontier, by V.S. Ramachandran which recently appeared on edge.org, as well as his previous edge contributions on mirror neurons, one of which I already briefly mentioned on this site (follow the links on his bio page).
I decided to buy more fair trade products - for the moment mostly tea (GEPA green Ceylon tea; bags and open) and perhaps occasionally some chocolate or wine. From the point of view of human dignity, this is probably one of the preferential ways to help those who were unfortunate enough to have been born on the poorer half of the planet. Or more precisely, it is a (small) attempt to counteract some of the ongoing economic exploitation. And I am also thinking about participating in one of those microcredit programs once more...
Also, Hoelder1in now has an amazon wishlist! So far, with only a few entries and I am not really sure yet, how I am going to use it. Let's see...
Hey, it's actually the same person who somehow influenced me to do both of these things... :D
Two updates on my books page: there are now page numbers in the currently reading section, showing how far I read in each book (will be updated every couple of days or so) and I am rating the books on a scale from 1 to 5 in the read in previous months section ...now where did I get that idea from? :D (hint: see previous entry ;)
Hey, this is cool: hoelder1in.org was quoted in a real physics journal (Dominik Strazalka, Acta Physica Polonica B, Vol. 40 (2009), p. 41-47). My paper (Modeling Moore's Law: Two Models of Faster than Exponential Growth) was quoted alongside such other authors as Heinz von Foerster, Ilya Prigogine, Hans Moravec, and Ray Kurzweil. Incidentally, one of the plots of my paper also made it into the Redshift slide set (slide 3 of 47) by Sun Microsystems CTO Greg Papadopoulos.
Speaking of Moore's Law, I wanted to show you the
first and also the oldest computing
device I ever used (and still own). It is a Brunsviga model 13ZK mechanical
calculator, built between 1925 and 1950 (s/n 216,698) , and I used it (alongside a
slide rule) in my teens up until the mid seventies at which point I switched to an
electronic calculator. Its computing speed is approximately 0.00000001 MIPS, about one trillionth (10^-12) of the speed of the
computer which serves you this page.
More
photos of this particular model are available on the wonderful
Rechenmaschinen-illustrated
Web site. Two other calculating machines shown there are also very well
known to me, the
Olivetti
Divisumma 24 and the Olivetti
Summa Prima 20 both of which my mother used in our home in the sixties and early seventies, working
as an accountant. Now, what makes me a bit dizzy is whether computing speeds
will increase by another factor of a trillion in the next couple of
decades...
As of yesterday, I am an offical supporter of the
German Pirate Party
(international Web site)!
The recent successes
of the Swedish Pirate
Party were all over the media, of course (at least in
Europe), when they managed to win a seat in the European Parliament.
While their German counterpart attracted a similar number of votes in the
European elections, this wasn't quite enough to win a seat for their
candidate. Moving on from there,
they require several thousand listed supporters (of which I am now one)
to appear on the ballot in the fall national elections in
each of Germany's 16 states. They are currently mainly
focused on their core issues,
copyright and patent law, open access, and privacy rights, though, while all
of these are important and worth fighting for, they were also
criticised, I think justly, for being a narrowly focused, single issue party.
But I see this as just a starting point and as growing pains, perhaps
similarly to the origins of the green movement in the eighties, on the way
to become a full-fledged political party, addressing all the issues
of an ever more virtualized and net-centered world. From its beginnings,
a quarter century ago, the net has been seen by many as a
grass-roots movement which carried the hope to give netizens a
voice to paticipate in a new kind of global democracy. Sadly,
the hope and enthusiasm of the early days has come under threat
from commercial interests, big companies, and lately from governments.
With my signature to be listed as a supporter, and with my vote
in the upcoming elections, I want to help bring back some of
that enthusiasm... :)
Related link: Lars Gustafssons's blog, These are Crucial Freedoms (interview with PiratPartiet leader)
I
am now the proud owner of an original Japanese woodblock print (click
on the cutout on the left to see the full print;
200 DPI version for printing - feel free to
use this in any way you like).
While my knowledge of Japanese art, culture, and history,
embarrasingly, is almost non-existent, I somehow fell in love with this
particular print when clicking through the pages of the fuijarts.com Web site
(fuijarts page about
this print). The name of the artist is Yoshiiku (1833 - 1904) and
I am amazed how much he is able to convey about this group of people,
despite the cartoon like style, through just his attention to their
arrangement and body posture. I also like the pastel colors and the richness
of the dresses. ...more to come here.
I can't believe it! I never was affilated to any political party or
supported one in an election campaign, and here I am, having a
pirate party sticker on my car.
And it even has the right color: orange, the official party color.
I hope it will attract some attention when the car is parked on campus all
day...
Read/post comments or talk to me at hoelder1in at jabber dot org