the ubiquity of new ideas

The zeitgeist is pregnant with new ideas. Our minds are much alike. Our world is so linked up, that we swim in the same pool. Subject to much the same stimuli, is it any surprise that we often originate similar creative ideas and insights?

is the AI the artist?

If you feed a prompt into an AI image generating system such as Midjourney, who is the artist? Most people seem to want to give the credit to the AI, but, depending on how you go about it, I believe that the Prompter can claim to be the artist

genes as prime numbers

A scheme for representing genes as prime numbers, thus enabling relationships between organisms to be explored mathematically using computers

masks and faces

It is not the eyes alone that are the windows to our soul but our faces, whose fluid expressions unconsciously reveal our stream of consciousness, so that, to hide our souls, we resort to putting on fixed expressions, as masks

Lobsang Rampa and what we choose to believe

When I was perhaps 14, I was intrigued with books by Lobsang Rampa, but I could only afford to buy very few books with my pocket money, and so I would buy another Asimov. Leafing through one of those Lobsang Rampa books, I recall reading about the mummified bodies of giants hidden under the Potala Palace in Lhasa. I don’t know whether I knew anything much about Tibet then, or whether, indeed, it was this …

some thoughts on Herbert’s Dune

Dune by Frank Herbert has been, and still is, an inspiration to me. That it should still be read by so many people—more than fifty years after its publication—is a testament to its greatness. I would suggest that a major factor underlying this success is how skilfully Herbert plundered history. He did not, as so many writers do, merely break European Medieval history into a handful of pieces and reassemble them to make his story—instead …

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