"Since 1963, when Pynchon's first novel, V., came out, the writer-- widely considered America's most important novelist since World War II-- has become an almost mythical figure, a kind of cross between the Nutty Professor (Jerry Lewis's) and Caine in Kung Fu."

-- Nancy Jo Sales in the November 11, 1996, issue of New York Magazine

"Click on the Yellow Book."

Good's Singularity

Irving John "I.J." Good died Sunday, April 5, 2009.

The date of his death was also Palm Sunday and the day of the Academy of Country Music Awards.

Information from Wikipedia:

Good, 92, was a cryptanalyst at Bletchley Park during World War II.

"He was born as Isidore Jacob Gudak to a Jewish family in London. In his publications he was called I. J. Good. He studied mathematics at Jesus College, Cambridge, graduating in 1938. He did research work under G.H. Hardy and Besicovitch before moving to Bletchley Park in 1941 on completing his doctorate.

At Bletchley Park, he was initially in Hut 8 under the supervision of Alan Turing..."

[Related material: the death of Turing (a major fan of the Evil Queen in Snow White) and yesterday's entry]

Wikipedia states that "I. J. Good's vanity car license plate, hinting at his spylike wartime work, was '007 IJG'.... He played chess to county standard, and helped to popularise Go, an Asian boardgame, through a 1965 article in New Scientist (he had learned the rules from Turing). In 1965, he described a concept similar to today's meaning of technological singularity, in that it included in it the advent of superhuman intelligence:

Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an 'intelligence explosion,' and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make....

-- Good, I. J. (1965). 'Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine', Advances in Computers, Vol. 6."

"Philosophers ponder the idea of identity: what it is to give something a name on Monday and have it respond to that name on Friday...."

-- Bernard Holland in The New York Times of Monday, May 20, 1996

Yesterday's afternoon entry cited philosopher John Holbo on chess. This, together with Holland's remark above and Monday's entries on Zizek, suggests...

Holbo on Zizek
(pdf, 11 pages)

In this excellent analysis,
Holbo quotes Kierkegaard:

"... the knight of faith
'has the pain of being unable to
make himself intelligible to others'"

(Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling)

Perhaps a game for bishops?

Cardinal Manning

Click on the cardinal
for a link to some remarks
related to the upcoming film
 "Angels & Demons" and to
a Paris "Sein Feld."