Strange Loops

Strange Loops
Author: Liz Harmer
Publsiher: Knopf Canada
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2023-01-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780345811295

Download Strange Loops Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

A propulsive, darkly gripping novel about the power and paradoxes of human longing, faith, trauma and taboo, from the acclaimed author of The Amateurs, shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award. A fractured portrait of a darkly riveting sibling relationship from the inside out, Strange Loops is an electrifying, intelligent and emotionally charged second novel from an award-winning young literary star on the rise. Francine and her twin brother Philip share a powerful bond in childhood that fades as they became young adults. When Philip unexpectedly becomes intensely religious, his sister decides to join his Christian youth group and soon becomes infatuated with the youth pastor. Obsessed by this transgression and what he sees as his sister's moral impropriety, Philip eventually uncovers a dark secret that threatens to shatter his faith and estranges the two siblings for decades. Later, as an adult, even as the storm clouds of resentment and mutual betrayal between her and her brother still churn around them, Francine finds herself both stirred and alienated by her attraction to an ex-student who has recently reappeared in her life, making her feel caught in a condition of perpetual departure toward the same inevitable calamity. Crackling with the intensity and plot twists of a dark domestic thriller but bursting with ideas and distinguished by Harmer's penetrating eye for the messiest and most meaningful human relationships--all rendered in lean, sharp pose, Strange Loops shocks, rattles, and entertains while asking vital questions about the paradoxes that make us who we are, and probes the possibility of love outside of any will to possess or be possessed.

I Am a Strange Loop

I Am a Strange Loop
Author: Douglas R. Hofstadter
Publsiher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2007-08-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780465008377

Download I Am a Strange Loop Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Can thought arise out of matter? Can self, soul, consciousness, “I” arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can you or I be here? I Am a Strange Loop argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is the “strange loop”—a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. The most central and complex symbol in your brain is the one called “I.” The “I” is the nexus in our brain, one of many symbols seeming to have free will and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse. How can a mysterious abstraction be real—or is our “I” merely a convenient fiction? Does an “I” exert genuine power over the particles in our brain, or is it helplessly pushed around by the laws of physics? These are the mysteries tackled in I Am a Strange Loop, Douglas Hofstadter's first book-length journey into philosophy since Gödel, Escher, Bach. Compulsively readable and endlessly thought-provoking, this is a moving and profound inquiry into the nature of mind.

The Amateurs

The Amateurs
Author: Liz Harmer
Publsiher: Vintage Canada
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2019-04-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780345811257

Download The Amateurs Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

In the style of Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood, Dave Eggers' The Circle: a post-apocalyptic examination of nostalgia, loss and the possibility of starting over. Allow us to introduce you to the newest product from PINA, the world's largest tech company. "Port" is a curiously irresistible device that offers the impossible: space-time travel mysteriously powered by nostalgia and longing. Step inside a Port and find yourself transported to wherever and whenever your heart desires: a bygone youth, a dreamed-of future, the fabled past. In the near-future world of Liz Harmer's extraordinary novel, Port becomes a phenomenon, but soon it is clear that many who pass through its portal won't be coming back—either unwilling to return or, more ominously, unable to do so. After a few short years, the population plummets. The grid goes down. Among those who remain is Marie, a thirtysomething artist living in a small community of Port-resistors camping out in the abandoned mansions of a former steel town. As winter approaches the group considers heading south, but Marie clings to the hope that her long lost lover will one day return to the spot where he disappeared. Meanwhile, PINA's corporate campus in California has become a cultish enclave of survivors. Brandon, the right-hand man to the mad genius who invented Port, decides to get out. He steals a car and drives north-east, where he hopes to find his missing mother. And there he meets Marie. The Amateurs is a story of rapture and romance, and an astoundingly powerful tale about what happens when technology meets desire.

The Strange Loops of Translation

The Strange Loops of Translation
Author: Douglas Robinson
Publsiher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2021-12-16
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781501382444

Download The Strange Loops of Translation Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

One of the most exciting theories to emerge from cognitive science research over the past few decades has been Douglas Hofstadter's notion of “strange loops,” from Gödel, Escher, Bach (1979). Hofstadter is also an active literary translator who has written about translation, perhaps most notably in his 1997 book Le Ton Beau de Marot, where he draws on his cognitive science research. And yet he has never considered the possibility that translation might itself be a strange loop. In this book Douglas Robinson puts Hofstadter's strange-loops theory into dialogue with a series of definitive theories of translation, in the process showing just how cognitively and affectively complex an activity translation actually is.

G del Escher Bach

G  del  Escher  Bach
Author: Douglas R. Hofstadter
Publsiher: Penguin Group(CA)
Total Pages: 832
Release: 2000
Genre: Art and music
ISBN: 0140289208

Download G del Escher Bach Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

'What is a self and how can a self come out of inanimate matter?' This is the riddle that drove Douglas Hofstadter to write this extraordinary book. In order to impart his original and personal view on the core mystery of human existence - our intangible sensation of 'I'-ness - Hofstadter defines the playful yet seemingly paradoxical notion of 'strange loop', and explicates this idea using analogies from many disciplines.

Summary of Douglas R Hofstadter s I Am a Strange Loop

Summary of Douglas R  Hofstadter s I Am a Strange Loop
Author: Everest Media,
Publsiher: Everest Media LLC
Total Pages: 86
Release: 2022-06-09T22:59:00Z
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9798822529700

Download Summary of Douglas R Hofstadter s I Am a Strange Loop Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The author’s mother said that the photograph of her father had no meaning, and that it was just a flat piece of paper with dark spots on it. The author explained to her that the photograph was a soul-shard of someone departed, and that she should cherish it as long as she lived. #2 I do not feel any sense of guilt when I slice up and eat tomatoes. I do not go to bed uneasily after having consumed a fresh tomato. I do not believe it is meaningful to try to imagine how the tomato felt as it was sitting on my plate being sliced apart. #3 I had a summer job at age 15 punching buttons on a Friden mechanical calculator in a physiology lab at Stanford University. I was asked to bring down two animals for my friend’s next round of experiments. I fainted right away, and the next day, I was told not to do that again. #4 I was 21 when I read the Norwegian-English writer Roald Dahl’s short story Pig, which changed my life and the lives of other animals as well. It showed me that meat-eating was a common background fact in the lives of my friends, and that vegetarians were strange and sternly moralistic nutcases in my mind.

I is a Strange Loop

I is a Strange Loop
Author: Marcus du Sautoy,Victoria Gould
Publsiher: Faber & Faber
Total Pages: 106
Release: 2021-06-03
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780571360741

Download I is a Strange Loop Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Alone in a cube that's glowing in the darkness, X is content within its little universe of infinite thought. This solitude is disturbed by the appearance of Y, who insists on exposing X to the richness of the physical world. Each begins to long for what the other has, luring them into a strange loop.In this play for two variables, Marcus du Sautoy and Victoria Gould use mathematics and theatre to navigate the furthest reaches of our world. Through a series of surreal episodes, X and Y tackle some of life's greatest questions: where did the universe come from, does time have an end, do we have free will?I is a Strange Loop was first performed by the authors at the Barbican Pit, London, in March 2019.'I is a Strange Loop is a play that plays... with ideas, concepts, abstractions and relationships that are, usually, hidden from the sight of ordinary mortals, articulating the ineffable, incarnating the incorporeal, revealing the inconceivable... it makes us feel we know a great deal more than we do.... and is also very funny, utterly compelling and marvellously human.' Simon McBurney

A Strange Loop

A Strange Loop
Author: Anonim
Publsiher: Hal Leonard Corporation
Total Pages: 173
Release: 2022-11-01
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9781705185674

Download A Strange Loop Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

(Vocal Selections). Winner of the Tony Award for Best Musical, Michael R. Jackson's Pulitzer Prize-winning blisteringly funny masterwork exposes the heart and soul of a young artist grappling with desires, identity, and instincts he boths loves and loathes. This collection features 15 songs from the show arranged for vocal line with piano accompaniment. Songs include: Boundaries * Didn't Want Nothin' * Exile in Gayville * Inner White Girl * Intermission Song * Inwood Daddy * Memory Song * Periodically * Precious Little Dream / AIDS Is God's Punishment * Second Wave * A Strange Loop * A Sympathetic Ear * Today * Tyler Perry Writes Real Life * We Wanna Know.