Mix: [As to Rexford Hooks: In addition to larcenous practical jokes,] the other thing I remember about ol' Rex was that he was quite a chess player. In fact, I lost all interest in chess after he played "blindfolded" against me and still beat me with the "Fool's Mate". He also told a story about a hubcap-stealing ring that he had run during high school. You really have to wonder if he has managed to keep ahead of the law all these years.

Tom: Rex taught me as much about chess as I was willing to learn. I beat him once. He had handicapped himself by removing his queen. And he was playing blindfolded. And he forgot where one of my bishops was.

I left off playing chess for a long time after my twelve-year-old daughter ran her bishop, knight combination into my surprise: "Ha! Robin, you just check-mated me." "You mean you didn't let me win?" "No, you won fair and square. I got careless, I underestimated you." ... "Mama, Mama! I beat Daddy at chess!" ... "Tom, you didn't let her beat you, now?" "No, she really won. I lost through overconfidence."

I was brought back into playing momentarily half a decade ago, long enough for my fourteen year-old grandson to run fool's mate on me. I saw it coming, tried to counter it - Bingo! - white mates black on move 4, just like in the movies. Perhaps, since I'd sent him the soundtrack to the brilliant musical, Chess - film version may be coming, it's rumored - he may have thought I knew how to play the game.

Now my eleven-year-old grandson, Robin's firstborn, shows a persistent interest in the game. What I need is lessons from Deep Blue, the super-computer that beat grand master Kasparov in 1997....

The movie "AI (Artificial Intelligence)" alludes early on to "primitive machines that could play chess." The mecha mastermind gets a good laugh from his audience of techno-whizzes with that line, for they have invented "neuronal feedback."

Which brings us to your...

2.  Pre-Coffee Speculations

Mix: Mr. Mac,

In OTHER COFFEE you wrote: "[Reference librarian] Katy looked up Data on Star Trek's website. It says that 'Data is an android, an advanced form of artificial life, with a positronic brain.'... 'Positronic: Wasn't that an old suspension system for a Buick?' asked Katy - to whom my thanks." ...

I'm sure you know that the "positronic brain" was a sci-fi gimmick originated by Isaac Asimov. His "I, Robot" and related stories were a heavy influence on later writers.

Tom: Thank's for bringing that up. It's standard background information I left out of "Significant Other." Asimov might have chosen a robotic brain less suggestive of GM's "Positrac" limited-slip differential. Ahh, the golden age when cars had rear-wheel drive and slid all over the place.

Mix: The Web page at http://www.fact-index.com/p/po/positronic_brain.html points out that Star Trek also adopted his "Three Laws of Robotics", and I've run across them in other stories, as well. [See "three laws of robotics" also at factindex.com].

Tom: Okay, Okay - Asimov's Positronic antedated GM's Positrac by about one and a half decades... Life inmitates art. As I recall, Law 1 is roughly "I will neither cause nor permit harm to a human being." Clearly, future robots are assumed to be self-conscious. The movie "Millennium Man" - Robin Williams as android loving to learn and learning to love - equips its robotic hero with a Positronic Brain. And a manufacturer's message to the new owner, complete with holographic diplay and brass band, of the Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics - Robin Williams on megaphone. "Is it over now?" ask the deafened head of household. "Yes," says Williams, "and you'll never have to hear it again."

Mix: The same site says this about the Three Laws:

"In the real world, not only are the laws optional, but significant advances in artificial intelligence would be needed for robots to easily understand them. Also since the military is a major source of funding for research it
is unlikely such laws would be built into the design.

"The Three Laws are sometimes seen as a future ideal by those working in artificial intelligence - once an intelligence has reached the stage where it can comprehend these laws, it is truly intelligent."

Tom: As to DOD-funded robots: We have the military's killing machine #5 in the movie "Short Circuit." Number Five is struck by lightning and malfuntions its way into Stephanie Housewife's home - where it reads Webster's 3rd & the Britannica & watches TV all night. Presto - self-conscious robot realizing, "Number Five alive" and "Beau-ti-ful Steph-an-ie." Then Five causes a beau-ti-ful but-ter-fly to become not alive... Presto - pacifist war-bot Who eventually saves Handsome Hero (Five's designer, as I recall) and Beautiful Stephanie by decommissioning all the other war bots, then chauffers the pair off into the hills where they will doubtless save the world in some future movie.

Mix: They did in "Short Circuit II."

All this [discussion of androids] made me think: If "androids" are created in the image of humans (andros), should humans be called "theosoids", since they are created in the image of God (theos)? And could it be that we are really just prototype theosoids? Will later some later version reach the stage where its members can comprehend God's laws? And then, it will be truly...what?

Regarding androids and robots that really want to be human, or that feel emotions like love and anger, that's just bad science--like Star Trek's Universal Translator and warp drives--devices to make plots flow--that really should be classified more as science fantasy.

On the other hand, perhaps some theosoids really do want to be exactly like God, rather than just a close approximation....

Coffee NOW!

3. FORE AND AFT COFFEE

FORE

Invitation 1

Robin Glynn, Re. Check out Playscapes

http://playscapes.cc/index.html

This is the web sight that has information about my new job!
I am one of the Play It Like It Is players.
I am very excited about Play It and would like to have you come and visit.

Robin Glynn

+++

Invitation 2 You like flag? We got flag!

ROCK PAINTING, Courtesy Teresa Bailey

A friend sent this to me.

I'm told that there is a huge rock near a gravel pit on Hwy. 25 in rural Iowa. For generations, kids have painted slogans, names, and obscenities on this rock, changing it's character many times. A few months back, the rock received it's latest paint job, and since then it has been left completely undisturbed. It's quite an impressive sight. Click on the link below and check for yourself. Be sure to scroll down and check out the multiple photos (all angles) of the rock. I thought the flag was draped over the rock, but it's not. It's actually painted on the rock too.

http://www.ticz.com/homes/users/bob/On-A-Rock/On-A-Rock.htm

(Thanks Ms. Bailey, I really like populist art. Tom)

If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit. (Theresa Cubbins)

Mike Wright, Re: folie a deux

Mix: Coffee...NOW!

Tom: Right, Dear Mixmaster. Just e-mail a letter to this address, and out pops morning coffee.

Of course we want to be like God! We create everything, from crocheted pot-holders to software that will crash a computer at seemingly random intervals, to a world-beater Chess-master called Deep Blue, to the Sun-singing hymn that is Stonehenge and the paean to Wisdom that is the Parthonon, to windows celebrating a single rose... Us malfunctioning Theosoids.

Mix: Way back, sci-fi author Eric Frank Russell wrote a neat little piece on the topic of who is to blame when a creation doesn't perform to specification. When we build an android and it malfunctions, should we punish it--and hold its descendants accountable for that initial flaw, which we permit to replicate, rather than debugging it?

Tom: Yeah, Jehovah brags about doing that sort of stuff - which drives some Christains to regarding Salvation history as comprised of successive Covenants, called Dispensations, from Adamic Dispensation through Ressurrection Dispensation...

Now into Millennium II: Realize the Kingdom Time.

The Eastern Orthodox have a condensed version of the Good News: "God became man, so that man could become God." Emphasis on 'man' - i.e., humankind rather than individuals engaged in their own disparate bootstrap operations And emphasis on 'could,' i.e., enabled to... to love one another... with compassion, sacrifice, and endurance...

?

Okay, you're probably right, the universe needs to evolve a better model.

And maybe all those works in which imagined anthropoid machines become "More human than human" serve a community purpose of just that sort. You have invited me into another conclusion about those films: These sci-fi android movies enable us to come to terms with the notion of man as evolved biomechanism, as naked ape equipped with infinitely complex (1970's term for brain) biocomputer.

Mix: There's a lot of fun stuff going on in neuroscience and "neurophilosopy" these days. Patricia and Paul Churchland have produced some interesting work, as has Steven Pinker.

One of the first books that got me interested in all this was Oliver Sack's "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" (and seeing the subject of the title essay on TV really drove it home--as did what my wife has been going through for the past couple of years).

Another that got to me, because of its focus on the brain and language, was "Conversations With Neil's Brain", by William H. Calvin and George A. Ojemann. The latter is now available for reading right on the Web at

http://williamcalvin.com/bk7/bk7.htm

The consilience (E.O. Wilson's usage) among evolutionary theory, neuroscience, and other sciences is particularly interesting to me.

Tom: What's the Chinese for Pensees d' Escalier - afterthoughts or reflections?

As I began COFFEE MACHINE, what popped into my head was that old Zen bit:

Disciple: Does a dog have the Buddha Nature?

Master: RALPH! (Actually, "MU" a nonsense syllable.)

Mix: Actually, "MU" was not a nonsense syllable in the Chinese of the original koan--nor are its cognates in modern Hokkien and Yue languages--"Bo" in Xiamen and "mou" in standard Cantonese (ignoring the tones).

It's the simple equivalent of "No", in English, but more literally, "Does not have." The interesting point is that Zhao Zhou (usually rendered Joshu, from the Japanese pronunciation) produced an answer that didn't make logical sense from the doctrinal point of view that all animate beings possess the Buddha Nature.

It's that "form is emptiness, emptiness is form" approach to cutting off discriminatory thought.

Tom: Right, the old Zen Double-bind - Bark NO at the asshole.

Does a machine have the Buddha Nature?

Mix: Not so far. Maybe next year.

Tom: I left out the real depth of Richard Powers' multi-computer-generated artificial intelligence, Helen. "How can I make me small as love?" she asks. In answer, Powers enters his & his lover's letters, from the beginning until the time they broke up. Helen's last request, "See things for me, Richard," is a direct quote from Richard's former lover.

Helen has indeed made herself "small as love."

Can a community have the Buddha Heart?...

Philosopher Steve Smith points out in The Concept of the Spiritual, the phrase "team spirit" seems more native to the notion to which we apply words like "mind," "soul," and "spirit" than does the phrase "spirited person." In other words, there is a We-ness to our experience of the spiritual which we cannot ignore.

Mix: One thing that I do not have--in even the slightest way--is any "experience of the spiritual". A number of my coworkers and I, along with several other friends, once had a weekly discussion group. We called our group SAPS (Smart-Ass Philosophical Society). One of our members was an Episcopal priest of the more radical kind (theologically speaking). After SAPS dissolved, he continued discussions at his house for a while. After one exchange, he looked at me and said, "You don't have any sense of the sacred, do you?" And I said, "No, none at all."

(If we were Southern Chinese speaking with Japanese accents, I might have said "Mu.")

And it's true. I get a thrill from a painting by Ma Yuan or a song by Muddy Waters, and seeing Buffy Summers sacrifice herself to save her sister (and the world) can move me to tears, but I find no spirit (and no spirits) in the world, either inside or outside of my skin. It's not just that I don't--it's that even the word "spirit" no longer makes any sense to me. I simply don't understand what it could possibly refer to. I have no concept of the spiritual.

Tom: Forget Spiritual, I'm talking about a sense of community.

It is a not uncommon experience, that as we grow older, we become increasingly aware that our lives as individuals are merely short threads being woven into a very large and complex tapestry... like your portrait of whirlpools in the Brazos de Dios, Mix.

Mix: That's the closest I can come to concretizing it. I tend to prefer the whirlpool analogy, because it's in constant motion, without even the illusion of static stability. Even threads might be imagined to have an eternal existence, but the ephemeral nature of whirlpools is more obvious (though not any more true).+++

Tom: Mix, I'm going to lose face here, offering the following amateurish nonsense, in hopes of defing Sense of Community.

(Reprinted from The Texas Observer, written shortly after the sun rode the moon into Tiennenman Square, and soldiers went weeping into battle.)

It is not easy to relate to people who read down the page left to right; instead of left to right down the page; so, to invoke the proper spirit, here are nine lines from the tombstone of the revolutionary Tan Chay Wa (d. June, 1979);

Those in the mood for a series of good stories will enjoy Monkey, a 16th Century folk novel by Wu Ch'eng En, from Art Waley's Grove Press/Evergreen translation. A sample:

'After I parted from you,' said Monkey, 'I went across many oceans to the land of Jambudvipa, where I learnt human ways, and how to wear clothes and shoes. I wandered restless as a cloud for eight or nine years, but nowhere could I find Enlightenment.'

If you do not know what the upshot was and how he fared once he was back in his old home, you must listen to what is related in the next chapter.

Those wanting to keep up with Republicans and Pentagoners, those puzzled by George H. W. Bush's ability to muddle through, despite apparently chronic coprocaputosis, will want to read Sun Tzu's The Art of War, available in at least three recent translations. The Shambala Press edition has the prettiest cover and an interesting historical interpretation of the monkey tales, too: l776 was an earth monkey year, 1788 a metal monkey year, and so on

Chinese astrologer/astronomers parse the constellations differently than their Western counterparts, as readers of Derek Walters' Chinese Astrology (Aquarian Press, 1987) will soon discover. For instance, what Westerners view as the right arm of a recumbent Virgo is seen from China as the Horn of the Spring Dragon, first of twenty-eight lunar mansions. Even those who don't 'believe in' astrology may find engaging historical trivia in this book. There is some evidence that observation of the stars in China began over 5,000 years ago, hard evidence for a least 3,500 years ago, and clear evidence that some observers could look into the sun long enough to note the shape of the sun's spots.

Those who enjoy real old books may find a dip into the I Ching (circa 1100 B. C.) enjoyable. There are only two numbers to keep track of--1 and 0, yang and yin--and only six of those to worry about at any given time. The symbol for 1 is -------. The symbol for 0 is --- ---. To add interest, either the 1 or the 0 may be "loaded"; i.e., there may be a hand on the switch ready to turn the 1 into a 0 or the 0 into a 1. Any one of the 64 possible 'hexagrams' (patterns of six 0's and l's) may thus change into any of the other 63. For example, Hexagram 6 becomes Hexagram 8 if the second and fifth lines are "loaded."

0 --- --- 0 --- ---

0*--- --- 1 -------

0 --- --- 0 --- ---

0 --- --- 0 --- ---

1*------- 0 --- ---

0 --- --- 0 --- ---

The metaphors attached to these hexagrams give the following interpretation to the above: The Army (6) will unify (8) given two conditions: that a strong leader is in their midst; and that there is definite need for battle. If such notions interest you, the Wilhelm/Bayens translation of The I Ching or Book of Changes, with foreword by C.G. Jung (Princeton, 1950), is the tome for you.

And if you're more than mildly enthusiastic about a real revolutionary government for mainland China, consider the Chinese word for democracy.

The pronunciation will vary from one dialect to another, but I remember it as a simple statement in English: See Why.

P.S.

If you recall, Mao’s Marxist regime was a great deal like Perestroika: "Let a thousand revolutions bloom." Deng’s suppression of the students’ revolt—in favor of a military dictatorship--was clearly counter-revolutionary. So I felt free to adapt Tan Chay Wah’s poem to my essay’s purpose by adding the last sentence.

As regards the United States being born in the sign of the Monkey, I really don’t know. Next time you’re in a Chinese restaurant that furnishes zodiac placemats, check out the monkey and see what you think. Is the monkey more appropriate to the American character than, say, the rat?

As regards Virgo and the Spring Dragon: You may recall that, when the sun entered Virgo in 1988, astronomers announced the appearance of a previously undiscovered galaxy near Alpha Virgo. Back then, I regarded this as a sign that the prematurely announced Aquarian Age had at last arrived. Contributing to this belief were: first, a study made by a devout Presbyterian youth who computed the time from the creation of Adam to the arrival of Jesus to be 1988/89 years; and, second, a book by Peter Le Measurer which viewed the Great Pyramid as a predictor of world events, and concluded that the New Age would begin in 1989.

If you gather that I was steeped in the occult at that time, you are correct.

Oh, yes, one more note: I would add to my Chinese book list Pearl Buck’s translation of All Men Are Brothers, a novel revised over the centuries until the most excellent Shi Naian of Tung Tu gave it its present form. The theme appears to be that in times of a corrupt regime only the outlaws are to be trusted.

***