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<alt.fan.hofstadter> and "GEB" FAQ


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Maintained-by: TANAKA Tomoyuki <tanaka@cs.indiana.edu>
Archive-name: books/hofstadter-GEB-FAQ
Version: 2.1 (about 1260 lines)
Posting-Frequency: at most once every two or three months
Last-modified: 1999 6/26
URL: http://www.cs.indiana.edu/hyplan/tanaka/GEB/

See reader questions & answers on this topic! - Help others by sharing your knowledge
 Written/edited-by:  TANAKA Tomoyuki  <tanaka@cs.indiana.edu>


 new in Version 2.1:  http://www-ai.ijs.si/eliza/eliza.html
 			http://www.umcs.maine.edu/~chaitin
			film "The Matrix" ...

 new in Version 2:    Genesis in ancient Hebrew, quines, GEPs, ...

=-------------------------------------------------------------------
contents:

-- 1. what is <alt.fan.hofstadter> about?
-- 2. what is GEB?
-- 3. D.R.Hofstadter personal info
-- 4. D.R.Hofstadter bibliography
-- 5. www links

-- 6. common topics in <alt.fan.hofstadter> / other tidbits
----
---- Does DRH read this group?
---- What are some other books/authors I should look at?
---- self-ref sentences, jokes
---- 10^N in TNT
----
---- Hofstadter on Deep Blue, EMI
---- Hofstadter/GEB mentioned in the movie "2010", Jargon File, etc.
---- GEB, Tristram, Joyce
---- pangrams
----
---- translations of GEB, etc
---- Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
---- hidden tricks in GEB
---- DRH anagrams: GEB themes
---- GEB limericks, GEBerwocky

-- 7. GEB-ish / experimental music MIDI files
-- 8. submissions to this FAQ


=-------------------------------------------------------------------
-- 1. what is <alt.fan.hofstadter> about?

 the one-line description supplied at the newsgroup's creation was
 "Douglas Hofstadter and Godel, Escher, Bach".

 read the newsgroup from your news server:  news:alt.fan.hofstadter

 read the newsgroup from DejaNews:
        alt.fan.hofstadter">http://www.deja.com/=dnc/dnquery.xp?QRY=alt.fan.hofstadter

 i would guess the newsgroup has been around since the early
 1980s.  [info on the newsgroup's early history here if poss.]

 when was this RFD written?
 http://www.evolve.com/~drseuss/stuff.i.like/hofstd.rcd.html
 (you post a "Request For Discussion" to propose a new newsgroup.)

=-------------------------------------------------------------------
-- 2. what is GEB?

 from the Jargon File (The Hacker's Dictionary)
http://beast.cc.emory.edu/Jargon30/APPEND_C/GEB_BOOK.HTML
http://www.fwi.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/b/Bibliography.html
|
|   Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
|     Douglas Hofstadter, Basic Books, 1979 [...]
|
|   This book reads like an intellectual Grand Tour of hacker
|   preoccupations. Music, mathematical logic, programming,
|   speculations on the nature of intelligence, biology, and Zen
|   are woven into a brilliant tapestry themed on the concept of
|   encoded self-reference.  [...]

 the funny character after the first "G" in the book's title is
 the German "O Umlaut".  it's an "O" with two horizontal dots on
 top.  Kurt Go:del's name is sometimes spelled as "Godel" or
 "Goedel".  nonstandard alternatives:  "Go:del", "Go"del".
 educated Americans usually pronounce Go:del as "Girdle".  the
 more authentic pronunciation of "O Umlaut" (with your mouth
 shaped for "Oh" say "Eh") would probably sound affected.

=-------------------------------------------------------------------
-- 3. D.R.Hofstadter personal info

from:   http://www.psych.indiana.edu/cogsci/hofstadter.html
|
|                         Douglas Hofstadter
|
|   College Professor of Cognitive Science and Computer Science;
|   Adjunct Professor of History and Philosophy of Science,
|   Philosophy, Comparative Literature, and Psychology
|
| Research Interests
|   The main focus of my research is on emergent models of high-level
|   perception, analogical thought, and creativity.  [...]

=-------------------------------------------------------------------
 info easily available from publications:

 --- born in 1945
 --- father Robert Hofstadter received the 1961 Nobel Prize in
        physics.
        see http://www-cgi.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/chogan/Web/hof.html
 --- grew up bilingual (English, French) from having lived in Geneva.
 --- Ph.D. in physics, University of Oregon, 1975
        see the "butterfly" picture, Fig 34 (Page 143) in GEB.

 see: http://www.penguin.co.uk/Penguin/Authors/1715.html
 for more info look in "Contemporary Authors" in the library.
 or look in "Le Ton beau de Marot".


=-------------------------------------------------------------------
-- 4. D.R.Hofstadter bibliography

see also:   http://www.alienlogic.com/~sasha/books/Hofstadter.html

from http://www.psych.indiana.edu/cogsci/hofstadter.html

    Representative Publications

	Hofstadter, D. R. (1979). Go:del, Escher, Bach: an
	Eternal Golden Braid.

	Hofstadter, D. R., & Dennett, D. C. (Eds.) (1981). The
	Mind's I:  Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul.

	Hofstadter, D. R. (1985). Metamagical Themas: Questing
	for the Essence of Mind and Pattern.

	Hofstadter, D. R., & The Fluid Analogies Research Group
	(1995). Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies. Computer
	Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought.

	Hofstadter, D. R. (1997). Le Ton beau de Marot: In
	Praise of the Music of Language.

=-------------------------------------------------------------------
-- 5. www links

 --- GEB major resources

	http://www.cogsci.indiana.edu           CRCC page
	http://www.psych.indiana.edu/cogsci/hofstadter.html

	http://www.lsa.umich.edu/ling/jlawler/geb.html

	http://www.nada.kth.se/~d90-mst/geb/

	http://pw1.netcom.com/~sjustus/geb.html

=-------------------------------------------------------------------
 --- other www links    (more links throughout the FAQ)

 GEB
http://www-cgi.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/chogan/Web/Hofstadter.html
http://home.earthlink.net/~paulcarr/books/GEB.html
http://www.california.com/~rpcman/godel.htm
http://www.forum2.org/tal/books/geb.html
http://www.forum2.org/tal/books/marot.html
http://www.pronetinc.net/~fermigas/DouglasHofstadter.html
http://is2.dal.ca/~jafraser/htm.htm
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~plujan/geb.html
http://www.wired.com/wired/3.11/departments/electrosphere/kelly.html
http://www.bizcharts.com/stoa_del_sol/conscious/conscious2.html
http://public.logica.com/~stepneys/bib/nf/hofstdtr.htm
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dougb/filename.html
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dougb/srat.html test your aptitude for self-ref

 Go:del
http://www.logic.tuwien.ac.at/kgs/home.html  the Kurt Goedel Society
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Godel.html
http://www.vex.net/~buff/godel.html
http://nl.ijs.si/~damjan/g-m-c.html

 Escher
http://www.WorldOfEscher.com/   World of Escher

 Bach
http://www.jsbach.org/
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~tas3/bachindex.html  Analysis of Canons & Fugues
http://www.astro.umd.edu/~sgeier/xB.html
http://www.prs.net/bach.html   Classical MIDI Archives - J.S.Bach
ftp://ftp.cs.ruu.nl/pub/MIDI/SONGS/CLASSICAL/BACH/
http://www.basistech.com/bach/  alt.music.j-s-bach FAQ
http://www.uni-bonn.de/~uzs083/akustik.html  Endlessly Rising Canon

 Carroll
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/metastuff/dir.html
http://www.users.interport.net/~fairrosa/carroll.html
http://www.pair.com/~keithlim/jabberwocky/ Jabberwocky Variations

 geometry
http://forum.swarthmore.edu/dynamic/geometry_turned_on/download/01-hof/
http://www.astro.virginia.edu/~eww6n/math/HofstadterPoint.html

 math, games
http://www.astro.virginia.edu/~eww6n/math/HofstadterFigure-FigureSequence.html
http://www.astro.virginia.edu/~eww6n/math/math0.html
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~dgarrett/undercut.htm
http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~malcolmr/nomic/FAQ.html  The Nomic FAQ

 philosophy of mind
http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDict/dictindex.html
http://ling.ucsc.edu/~chalmers/index.html

 Eliza, Julia, Sylvie
http://www-ai.ijs.si/eliza/eliza.html
http://www.vperson.com/mlm/julia.html   Julia's Home Page
http://fuzine.mt.cs.cmu.edu/mlm/julia.html   Julia's Home Page
http://foner.www.media.mit.edu/people/foner/Julia/section3_3.html#tex2html200
http://www.cee.hw.ac.uk/~ceeih/nlp/agents.html  NLP Systems
http://sakharov.ai.mit.edu/Start.html  START Information System
http://stick.us.itd.umich.edu/cgi-bin/chomsky.pl  Chomskybot
http://www.vperson.com   Sylvie

 trip-lets 
http://www.IAE.nl/users/richtofe/triplet.html  by Christ van Willegen 
http://christ.ik.nu/
http://cips02.physik.uni-bonn.de/~scheller/vrml/main.html
  	    Scheller's Science Site: VRML Virtual Reality: S3 triplet
http://www.astro.virginia.edu/~eww6n/math/Trip-Let.html

 self-rep code, quines, (Lx.xx)(Lx.xx)
http://www.fwi.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/q/quine.html
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/hyplan/tanaka/GEB/quine.html
http://www.nyx.net/~gthompso/quine.htm
http://math.cornell.edu/~chruska/recursive/selfish.html
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/csk/paper/   C quine tutorial

 misc
http://www.scottkim.com/
http://www.ambigram.com/
http://www.cs.yale.edu/HTML/YALE/CS/HyPlans/gelernter/150b.html
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/07/20/reviews/970720.20altert.html#1
http://wwwhome.cs.utwente.nl/~joris/IWCH/research.html
http://www.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/cogsci.html
http://www.iscs.nus.edu.sg/~tanyongj/philosophy.html
http://search.go2net.com/crawler?general=recursion+tutorial
http://search.go2net.com/crawler?general=recursion+introduction
http://xarch.tu-graz.ac.at/autocad/lisp/recursive.html
http://www.deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=488371695  film "The Matrix"

 net search
http://search.go2net.com/crawler?general=Hofstadter
http://search.go2net.com/crawler?general=Douglas+Hofstadter
http://search.go2net.com/crawler?general=Godel+Escher+Bach
http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?q=hofstadter
http://www.altavista.digital.com/cgi-bin/query?what=web&amp;q=Hofstadter
http://ink.yahoo.com/bin/query?p=hofstadter
http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=hofstadter

 <alt.fan.hofstadter> and "GEB" FAQ
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/hyplan/tanaka/GEB/
http://www.deja.com/=dnc/dnquery.xp?QRY=alt.fan.hofstadter+%7Ea+tanaka+faq
news.answers">http://www.deja.com/=dnc/dnquery.xp?QRY=%7Ea+tanaka+%7Eg+news.answers
http://self
http://self.pointer

=-------------------------------------------------------------------
-- 6. common topics in <alt.fan.hofstadter> / other tidbits

 ---- Where is everybody?

 Answer: It seems many people read the group, but it tends to be
                low in traffic.

----
=-------------------------------------------------------------------
---- Does DRH read this group?

 this question has come up several times, and the short answer
 is "No".  he probably has looked at it a few times in the last
 decade.  if you post something *really* interesting, his
 students or friends will probably forward the article to him.
 by the way, Marvin Minsky sometimes posts in <comp.ai>, etc.

=-------------------------------------------------------------------
---- What are some other books/authors I should look at?

 some of the books/authors mentioned:
    Raymond Smullyan
    http://www.randomhouse.com/special/puzzles/smullyan/smullyan.html

    Hans P. Moravec   http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/
    Roger Penrose, "The Emperor's New Mind"
    Stephen Jay Gould
    Marvin Minsky, "The Society of Mind"
    Rudy Rucker
    Peter Suber   http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/hometoc.htm

    Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, "Figments of Reality"
    Stan Franklin, "Artificial Minds"
    James P. Hogan (the Sci-Fi author), "Mind Matters"
    A.K. Dewdney  http://www.csd.uwo.ca/faculty/akd/
    G.J. Chaitin  http://www.umcs.maine.edu/~chaitin

    David Chalmers, "The Conscious Mind"
                        http://ling.ucsc.edu/~chalmers/index.html

        (look in DejaNews archive for other suggestions.)

    The Jargon File lists "Illuminatus!" and several other books.
    	http://beast.cc.emory.edu/Jargon30/APPEND_C/APPENDXC.HTML
	http://www.fwi.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/b/Bibliography.html

=-------------------------------------------------------------------
---- self-ref sentences, jokes

 Hofstadter talks about self-referential sentences in GEB
 and MT (Metamag. Themas).  some examples:

     This sentence contains five words.

     This sentence no verb.

     This sentence is false.

     This sentence I am now writing is the sentence you are now reading.

     This sentence sofa contains six words.

     This sentence contains two erors.

     If this sentence were in Chinese, it would say something else.

     .siht ekil ti gnidaer eb d'uoy ,werbeH ni erew ecnetnes siht fI

     I eee oai o ooa a e ooi eee o oe.
     Ths sntnc cntns n vwls nd th prcdng sntnc n cnsnnts.

     from the Unix "fortune" command:
     >
     > f u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgrmmng.
     > F u cn rd ths u cnt spl wrth a dm!
     > f u cn rd ths, itn tyg h myxbl cd.

	http://mickey.cs.uah.edu/~criswell/self_ref_sentences.html

 so people in <alt.fan.hofstadter> try to come up with new twists
 on the theme.

	Mike Geller <mgeller@avnet.co.uk> wrote:
	>
	> fi siht nes-ecnet erew ni beh-wer dna tes ot um-cis, ti
	> dluow kool tsuj a til-elt ekil siht


        Hauke Reddmann <fc3a501@AMRISC01.math.uni-hamburg.de> wrote:
        >
        > If this sentence were self-ref, I would post it to afh.
        >
        > I desperately sought a way for not mentioning pink
        > elephants in this sentence, but to no avail.
        >
        comment: did you really try?
        >
        > Yeah, and I was finally successful in this sentence ;-)


	from http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/88old/bulb.html
   	>
   	> Q: How many light bulbs does it take to change a light bulb?
   	> A: One, if it knows its own Goedel number.
   	>
   	(contributed by Alan Hoyle <alanh@nelson.oit.unc.edu>)


 TT's most favorite sig of all time:
=-------------------------------------------------------------------
===== M(tm) mtm@walsh.dme.battelle.org ====
  "I turned to look, but it was gone.  I cannot put my finger on it now."
          "The ground is rich from tender care, repaid do not forget."
My mailer limits my sig to 4 lines. But ingeniously I bypassed this problem by

=-------------------------------------------------------------------
 Question: What is the most commonly asked question on <a.f.h>?
 Answer:  It's "What is the most commonly asked question on <a.f.h>?"

        (adapted from a post by Alan Hoyle <alanh@unc.edu>, who
        suggested, "What is the most commonly asked question on
        <a.f.h.> and what is the answer?")

=-------------------------------------------------------------------
 do you know of great GEB-ish / self-ref jokes?

        http://beast.cc.emory.edu/Jargon30/JARGON_R/RECURSIO.HTML
	http://www.fwi.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/r/recursion.html

 (btw, i just heard of a great way to keep a dummy in suspense.
 i'll describe the method here in the next version of this FAQ.)

 i'm looking for something more elaborate than the following.

Chris Cole <chris@questrel.com> wrote:
|
| from the rec.puzzles archive:
|
| ==> trivia/jokes.self-referential.p <==
| What are some self-referential jokes?
|
| ==> trivia/jokes.self-referential.s <==
| Q: What is alive, green, lives all over the world, and has
|       seventeen legs?
| A: Grass.  I lied about the legs.
|
| The two rules for success are:
| 1. Never tell them everything you know.
|
| There are three kinds of people in the world: those who can
| count, and those who cannot.
|
| Q: Why did Douglas Hofstadter cross the road?
| A: To make this riddle possible.
|
| Song from the Sheri Lewis Lambchop hour:
|       This is the song that doesn't end
|       Yes it goes on and on my friend
|       Some people starting singing it not knowing what it was
|       Now they'll continue singing it forever just because
|       (repeat)
|
| How long is the answer to this question?
| Ten letters.
|       (There are endless variations on this theme)
|
| What is the only word in the English language that is
|       an anagram of itself?
| Answer: STIFLE (also FISTLE, FLITES, FILETS)
|
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/puzzles/
ftp://ftp.uu.net/usenet/news.answers/puzzles/archive
ftp://mirrors.aol.com/pub/rtfm/usenet/news.answers/puzzles/
ftp://ftp.cs.ruu.nl/pub/NEWS.ANSWERS/puzzles/
ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/usenet/news-faqs/news.answers/puzzles/archive
ftp://ftp.uni-paderborn.de/doc/FAQ/rec/puzzles
ftp://ftp.hk.super.net/mirror/faqs/puzzles/
http://einstein.et.tudelft.nl/~arlet/puzzles/index.html
http://www.nova.edu/Inter-Links/puzzles.html
http://xraysgi.ims.uconn.edu/searchform.html
http://xraysgi.ims.uconn.edu/others.html

=--------------------------------------------------------------------
  GEPs -- Generico-Eponymic Paradoxes
        	http://www.cs.indiana.edu/hyplan/tanaka/GEB/GEPs.html

	"Homer's epics weren't written by him, but by someone
		else of the same name."

	"Shakespeare's plays weren't written by him, but by
		someone else of the same name."

 	American TV commercial for Smucker's (maker of jelly) ---
        	"With a name like Smucker's, it's got to be good".

        at a fast-food restaurant:
        	"You want the Coke or some other Coke?"

=-------------------------------------------------------------------
---- 10^N in TNT

 someone posted an outline of a solution to the problem of
 expressing "b is a power of 10" (GEB, Page 215).  that answer
 used the Chinese Remainder Theorem.  here's another approach:

 http://einstein.et.tudelft.nl/~arlet/puzzles/sol.cgi/logic/hofstadter

 http://www.cs.uu.nl/wais/html/na-faq/puzzles-archive-logic-part1.html

----
=-------------------------------------------------------------------
---- Hofstadter on Deep Blue, EMI

 Mean Chess-Playing Computer Tears at Meaning of Thought
 By BRUCE WEBER, New York Times, February 19, 1996
| ...
| "It was a watershed event, but it doesn't have to do with
| computers becoming intelligent," said Douglas Hofstadter
| ...
| "They're just overtaking humans in certain intellectual
| activities that we thought required intelligence. My God, I used
| to think chess required thought. Now, I realize it doesn't. It
| doesn't mean Kasparov isn't a deep thinker, just that you can
| bypass deep thinking in playing chess, the way you can fly
| without flapping your wings."
| ...
|
| [in GEB , Hofstadter said ...]
| Now, he says, the computer gains of the last decade have
| persuaded him that chess is not as lofty an intellectual
| endeavor as music and writing; they require a soul.
|
| "I think chess is cerebral and intellectual," he said, "but it
| doesn't have deep emotional qualities to it, mortality,
| resignation, joy, all the things that music deals with. I'd put
| poetry and literature up there, too. If music or literature were
| created at an artistic level by a computer, I would feel this is
| a terrible thing."

=-------------------------------------------------------------------
 ---- Hofstadter on EMI

http://www.deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=336359992

In article <...>, Hans Moravec  <hpm@cs.cmu.edu> wrote:
>
> Of course, shortly thereafter, Hofstadter was introduced to
> David Cope's music composing program EMI.  In August 1997
> New Scientist article:
>
> http://www.newscientist.com/ns/970809/features.html
>
> excerpt:
>
> The fact that a program running on an ordinary Macintosh
> computer can produce high-quality music is turning heads in the
> field of artificial intelligence, as well. "I think it's one of
> the most provocative, if not the most provocative thing I've
> come across in artificial intelligence," says Douglas
> Hofstadter, [...]
>
> Hofstadter, a passionate amateur pianist, thinks most of EMI's
> output still falls short of the real thing. But occasionally
> it's bang on, as in the case of a "Chopin" mazurka. "When I
> first played through that mazurka and got to know it, I was
> quite stunned by it," he says. "It sounded to me, except for a
> few glitches, as if it could slide right into the book of Chopin
> mazurkas."
>
> Many people--including Hofstadter--find Cope's program
> profoundly threatening. "EMI has no model whatsoever of life
> experiences, has no sense of itself, has no sense of Chopin, has
> never heard a note of music, has no trace in it of where I think
> music comes from. Not a trace," he says. "I'm comparing that
> with an entire human soul, one forged by the struggles and
> travails of life [...]."
>
> Yet EMI's mazurka is all but indistinguishable from the real
> thing. Does that mean, worries Hofstadter, that the composer's
> soul is irrelevant to the music? "If that's the case--and I'm
> not saying it is--then I've been fooled by music all my life.
> I've been sucked in by a vast illusion. And that would be for me
> an absolute tragedy, because my entire life I've been moved by
> music," he says. "I've always felt I've been coming into contact
> with the absolute essence of humanity."



>Re: help converting (Mac) bin -> (PC) midi
>> (subtitle: revenge of the Mac users)
>>
>> the if the copyright holder agrees, i'll probably offer
>> the PC .mid versions in my home page.
>(the copyright holder has not responded to my email request.)
>
>>--------------------------------------------------------------------
>> http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/emi-midi.html
>>
>>   Here are a few select EMI MIDI files for downloading.
>>       EMI-bach-invention-1
>>       EMI-bach-invention-2
>>       EMI-bach-fugue
>>       EMI-chopin-mazurka
>>       EMI-joplin-rag
>>


=-------------------------------------------------------------------
---- Hofstadter/GEB mentioned in the movie "2010", Jargon File, etc.

     	from the Unix "fortune" command:
     	>
     	> Hofstadter's Law:
     	> It always takes longer than you expect, even when you
     	> take Hofstadter's Law into account.

	Hofstadter's "Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies" was
	the first book sold over the Web by amazon.com (May 10, 1995).
		source: "SmartMoney" (published by WSJ) Aug 1998, p.104

=-------------------------------------------------------------------
http://beast.cc.emory.edu/Jargon30/APPEND_C/GEB_BOOK.HTML
	http://www.fwi.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/b/Bibliography.html

http://beast.cc.emory.edu/Jargon30/JARGON_G/GLARK.HTML
	http://www.fwi.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/g/glark.html

http://beast.cc.emory.edu/Jargon30/JARGON_M/MU.HTML
	http://www.fwi.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/m/mu.html

http://beast.cc.emory.edu/Jargon30/JARGON_Q/QUINE.HTML
	http://www.fwi.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/q/quine.html

http://beast.cc.emory.edu/Jargon30/JARGON_R/RECURSIO.HTML
	http://www.fwi.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/r/recursion.html

	http://www.fwi.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/h/HackerWritingStyle.html

	http://search.go2net.com/crawler?general=Jargon+File

=-------------------------------------------------------------------
 Arthur C. Clarke's "2010" (1982) Chapter 26,
 commenting on Hal's malfunction in 2001:

 "As a result, Hal developed what would be called, in human
 terms, a psychosis - specifically, schizophrenia.  Dr. C.
 informs me that, in technical terminology, Hal became trapped
 in a Hofstadter-Moebius loop, a situation apparently not
 uncommon among advanced computers with autonomous goal-seeking
 programs.  He suggests that for further information you contact
 Professor Hofstadter himself."

 	(contributed by Frederic Marchal <aardvark@worldnet.fr>)

=-------------------------------------------------------------------
---- GEB, Tristram, Joyce

| in GEB the author comments that GEB contains "Shandean
| digressions". (Page 748)
|
| the adjective "Shandean" comes from this book
|         The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent.
|         (1759-67) by Laurence Sterne
|
| which is considered to be one of the strangest books ever
| written.  the entire book is available online at
| <http://www.gifu-u.ac.jp/~masaru/TS/contents.html>.
|
| one literary work DRH probably had in mind when he wrote GEB is
| "Finnegans Wake" by James Joyce.  the book begins as
| follows:
|        "riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to
|        bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of
|        recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
|        Sir Tristram, [...]"
|
|    http://search.go2net.com/crawler?general=Finnegans+Wake
|    http://www.mcelhearn.com/joyce.html
|    http://cal.bemidji.msus.edu/English/Morgan/SharedTexts/FWpage.html
|    http://www.con.wesleyan.edu/~polson/finnegans.html
|    http://plaza13.mbn.or.jp/~FWKEY/FALLtxt.htm
|    http://www.mcs.net/~jorn/html/jj/fwake2.html
|    [one more link by Jorn here]
|
| characteristics GEB and "Finnegans Wake" share:
|       long, inspired by Carroll, contains puns and hidden
|       tricks, constant allusions in form and content, end of
|       book points to the beginning, special emphasis on
|       certain initials ("GEB", "EGB" in GEB; "HCE", "ALP" in
|       FW), etc.
|
| for more parallels see
|       http://www.cs.indiana.edu/hyplan/tanaka/GEB/GEB_FW.txt

=-------------------------------------------------------------------
---- pangrams

 self-doc pangrams or "Sallowsgrams" are described in
 "Metamagical Themas".  see:

http://www.cs.indiana.edu/hyplan/tanaka/GEB/pangram.txt  "pangram Appendix"
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/hyplan/tanaka/GEB/pangram.html "pangram Appendix"

http://www.cs.uu.nl/wais/html/na-faq/puzzles-archive-language-part2.html

http://einstein.et.tudelft.nl/~arlet/puzzles/sol.cgi/language/english/
                                        self.ref/self.ref.letters

=--------------------------------------------------------------------
 ---- Sallowsgrams in many tongues

        (i haven't seen all the relevant articles yet.)

 ---- English
        i've seen many in English.  see below.

 ---- Dutch
        a Dutch one is in the pangram Appendix.
        MT (Metamag Themas) contains a Dutch one by Sallows. (?)

 ---- French
        MT contains a near-miss in French by (Bob) French. (?)
        two French variations below.

 ---- Japanese
        a Jp version is described in the pangram Appendix.
    	http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~tankh/pangram.html

 ---- Chinese
 	Casey Tan's Sallowsgram in Chinese:
    	http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~tankh/pangram.html
    
 (i have not seen a German version yet.)

=--------------------------------------------------------------------

     Tanaka Tomoyuki found this sentence which consists of exactly
     three `T's, ten `a's, one `b', six `c's, four `d's, forty-one
     `e's, fourteen `f's, three `g's, thirteen `h's, twenty-one `i's,
     one `j', three `k's, five `l's, four `m's, twenty-nine `n's,
     twenty-four `o's, four `p's, two `q's, sixteen `r's, forty `s's,
     thirty-one `t's, nine `u's, five `v's, eight `w's, six `x's,
     twelve `y's, one `z', six hyphens, thirty commas, twenty-seven
     pairs of single quotes, and a final period.

=--------------------------------------------------------------------
 ---- two French versions

Frederic Marchal <aardvark@worldnet.fr> wrote:
>
>>>--
>>>Cette signature contient trois a, six c, huit d, dix-sept e, deux f,
>>>deux g, deux h, treize i, dix n, cinq o, deux p, cinq q, cinq r, six
>>>s, douze t, onze u, un v, neuf x et quatre z.
>>
>> nice.  but this isn't a pangram!
>
>It's not a bug, it's a feature! :-)  It tries instead to be the
>shortest self-documenting (French) signature.
>
>In the same vein, here is the shortest self-documenting French
>sentence (enumeration, actually) I could find :
>
>Trois a, trois c, trois d, neuf e, quatre f, deux h, neuf i, six n,
>quatre o, deux p, cinq q, six r, sept s, huit t, neuf u, cinq x.


 for pangram programs in Perl and C and more, see
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/hyplan/tanaka/GEB/pangram.txt  "pangram Appendix"
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/hyplan/tanaka/GEB/pangram.html "pangram Appendix"

----
=-------------------------------------------------------------------
---- translations of GEB, etc

 translations of GEB, etc are discussed in "Le Ton beau de Marot".

 see http://www.cs.indiana.edu/hyplan/tanaka/GEB/J_GEB.txt

Harry Foundalis <hfoundal@indiana.edu> wrote on 18 Jul 1998:
|
| GEB has been published in Chinese, Danish, Dutch, French,
| German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and
| Swedish.
| The Russian translation has been completed but not published yet.
| Translations into Korean, Polish, and Turkish are underway.
|
| The Mind's I has been published in Chinese, Dutch, French,
| German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish.
|
| Metamagical Themas has been published in Danish, Dutch,
| French, German, and Japanese.
| A translation into Italian is at present underway.
|
| FCCA has been published in Italian and German.
| [...]


=-------------------------------------------------------------------
---- Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction

 here are some other books that won the Pulitzer Prize for
 General Non-Fiction.

* 1964 Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, by Richard Hofstadter
                                        (is he related to DRH?)
* 1978 The Dragons of Eden, by Carl Sagan
* 1979 On Human Nature, by Edward O.Wilson
* 1980 GEB by DRH
* 1981 Fin-de Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture, by Carl E. Schorske
* 1982 The Soul of a New Machine, by Tracy Kidder
* 1989 A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in
                                        Vietnam, by Neil Sheehan
* 1991 The Ants, by Bert Holldobler and Edward O. Wilson

 for the complete list, see "The World Almanac and Book of Facts"
 or http://www.ccc.govt.nz/Library/Lit_Prizes/Pulitzer_Non_Fiction.html
http://www.ccc.govt.nz/Library/LiteraryPrizes/Pulitzer_Non_Fiction.asp


=-------------------------------------------------------------------
---- hidden tricks in GEB

        ----------------------------------------
        ###    S P O I L E R    A L E R T    ###
        ----------------------------------------
        this sections contains *SPOILERS*.  skip this section if
        you want to search for the hidden GEB tricks on your own.
        these tricks are subtle enough that 99% of people who
        bought GEB have not found them.


 --- The beginning of Genesis, in ancient Hebrew
	http://www.deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=382942417
	http://www.deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=383411928
                        (Simon Montagu <smontagu@my-dejanews.com>)
	(i thought Simon provided more detailed info, but i
	can't find it in dejanews now.)

 --- check out "chunked versions of this book" in the index.
                        (Tal Cohen <tal@forum2.org>)

 --- the index entry: "Dboups, Hfpsh".  shift each letter (like
        IBM->HAL) and you get "Cantor, Georg".
                        (Neil Harris <neil@nharris.demon.co.uk>)

 --- in the index, the entry "Hofstadter, D.R." points to Page 310.
        i wondered for a long time why this was, and discovered
        the hidden letters "HOFST" and "ADTER".

 --- in the index "Hofstadter, D.R." also points to Page 742.
        on that page, Achilles's first line ends with "host of
        formal structural tricks." (hofst); the next line begins
        with "After describing the Endless Rising" (AdtER).

        "towards the very end of the Six-Part Ricercar, ...
        Bach slyly hid his own name, split between two of the
        upper voices." (Page 719)
                        (Simon Montagu <smontagu@my-dejanews.com>
                        Tony Pay <Tony@stsm.demon.co.uk>)

 --- Page 131,
        "The confusion among the audience
            {that out-of-order popping from the stack
                (onto which the professor's verbs had been pushed,)
            is amusing to imagine,}
        could engender."

        (parentheses and indentation added)
        i hope you see the out-of-order popping from the stack.

 --- the dialogue "Aria with Diverse Variations" really ends on
        Page 404, as hinted earlier in the dialogue.  The rest
        of the dialogue follows another suggestion of including
        two extraneous characters, the coppers Silva and Gould.
        Hint about the hidden 'end': look for words with missing
        letters.                <smontagu@my-dejanews.com>

 --- in the Bibliography, there's "a reference ... to an
        isomorphic, but imaginary, book".   this book is
        described as "turgid and confused", the same words used
        to describe Bach's work by some critics (Page 3).
                                <tal@forum2.org>

 i'll add other hidden tricks you've found here, unless it's too
 obvious like TTortoise (ATTACCA) or Contracrostipunctus.

=-------------------------------------------------------------------
---- DRH anagrams: GEB themes

 anagrams of
           Douglas Richard Hofstadter
           Douglas Hofstadter
           ...

 (i checked correctness of many anagrams in this "GEB themes" section.)
 (i can't find any interesting anagrams of "Go:del, Escher, Bach".)

Steve Krakowski <krakowss@digital.net> wrote:
>
> Douglas Richard Hofstadter =
>       So draft us a rich gold thread.
>       Search for AI's gold; add truth.
>       Reach for AI's gold; adds truth.
>       Godel: Dr. H craft'd us AI's "Torah".
>       Did a search for "God's truth", Al.
>       Gild; as a search for odd truth.
>       As lad did go; search for truth.
>       Sad goal? Did search for truth.
>       Ad said: "Search for gold - truth".
>       Godel: Sh! Do craft AI sutra, Dr. H.
>       Godel: Doh! Craft AI sutras, Dr. H!
>       Godel: Dash, D.R.H.; tour AI's craft.
>       D.R.H. had Godel tour AI's crafts.
>       Dr. D.R.H. fought sacerdotal AI's.
>       Dr. Godel shouts; "AI? Hard craft!"
>
> A couple of humourous ones based on the idea that the tortoise
> had to be taught (by DRH) before he could teach Achilles (or
> us!). I hope you enjoy the self-alter-ego-reference inherent in
> these little gems.<g>
>
>       Tortoise: Hard flashcard, Dug!
>
> The wee reptile also had to be taught how to navigate the
> psychedelic landscapes of M.C. Escher, yes?    Maybe this is how
> he was prepared.<g>
>
>       Tortoise: Arf! Ach! Hard LSD, Dug!


        Doc DRH, author, digs a self-art.   (TT)

        AI: a craft Dr. DRH got shed "soul".   (TT)


Graham Perkins  <gperkins@dmu.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>       Go:del's acid truth, hard so far.


Hauke Reddmann <fc3a501@AMRISC02.math.uni-hamburg.de> wrote:
>
>       Add ghost at our self.


Cerulean <kevinpease@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>       Dr. DRH casts forth a dialogue.
>
>       Trio hard-glued fast as chord.
>
>       Ah, stars of auld: G, E, third cord.
>
>       Arch Tortoise adds hard gulf.


Jean Fontaine <jfontain@odyssee.net> wrote:
>
>       O! That's Go:del's fraud!
>
>       Thus for Go:del's data
>
>       Soft Go:del data rush


Mike Hatton <mike@pyramus.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>       God of ruthless data


> DRH in front of a theorem-prover says:
>
>       "FALSE! --- O! God, sad truth."    (TT)
>
>       "Did a god crash?  --- Truth or False?"    (TT)


kindall@mail.manual.com (Jerry Kindall) wrote:
>
> [...]  I'd also mention that "Metamagical Themas" can be
> re-anagrammed into:  That's A Magical Meme
>
(is this mentioned in MT?)

=--------------------------------------------------------------------
 --- anagrams of "Go:del, Escher, Bach"

Steve Krakowski <krakowss@digital.net> wrote:
> 
> Godel, Escher, Bach = Ahh! Celeb codgers!
> 
> Share droll weirdness by clown-land lord (ace logician). =
> "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson).


Wayne <baisley@fnal.gov> wrote:
> 
> Here are some.  Burps seem to have carried the field.
> 
> ABCDEGH closer, eh?             (What, no F?)
> Archd. Cheese-Glob              (Will say mess, er, mass)
> Beg cache-holders.              (Give me a reference!)
> Belch crashed ego.
> Belched graces?  Oh!            (Archd. Cheese-Glob, stop that!)
> Belcher chose D-A-G.            (Simple, danceable, I give it a B)
> Belch gas cohered.
> Beseech gold arch.              (Give me Eternal Golden Fries!)
> Bocce gelders?  Hah!
> "Bog!", screeched HAL.
> Borg's leech ached.             (Hmm, not quite assimilated)
> C-A-G-E belchers?  Doh!
> Cage holds breech.              (Leggo my Leg-o)
> C:\DOS\BREACH\HEGEL             (Synthetic virus)
> Ce belch -- Hors d'âge          (The French are past that now?)
> C. Gable's credo?  Heh.
> Chad's hog célèbre
> Chaldee borsch, e.g.
> Ché beholds Grace.
> Cheech drags lobe.
> Cheechers go bald.              (Hair?  Up in smoke?)
> Cheech, so garbled.
> Cher beholds Cage.
> Cher caboshed leg.
> Cher held boscage.              (Treehugger.)
> Cher's hog debacle
> Ché's dog bleacher
> Chloë badgers Ché.              (Everybody's a diacritic these days)
> Choc. beer had legs.            (Made me run away)
> Coed belches -- Argh!           (Guess she's not a French kisser)
> Corsage?  He'd belch.
> Crèches go bald, eh?            (You want wigs on them?)
> Deborah's leg?  Ecch!
> Descale Hochberg.
> Ecce H. -- Behold rags?         (Cynical translation!)
> Geraldo, Cheech -- B.S.
> Globe caches herd.
> Go bleed cash, Cher.
> GOD reaches belch.              (Strange loop indeed)
> Gold beaches, Cher.
> Gore belched, "Cash?"           (Nuns were not amused)
> Herbaged cloches                (Flowery hats?)
> He's a codger.  Blech.
> Hog-belch as creed?             (Our motto: Braaaap)
> H.O.R.D.E.s belch C-A-G-E.
> Lecher begs, ad hoc.
> Leeches bag chord.              (The key of suck?)
> Ochs belched rage.              (And then excused himself)
> Ogled Rebecca -- Shh!
> Scorched bagel, eh?
> 
> http://www-oss.fnal.gov/~baisley


=--------------------------------------------------------------------
 --- DRH anagrams: non-GEB themes
                        (i haven't checked these for correctness.)


Earle Jones <ejones12@concentric.net> wrote:
>--
>Douglas R. Hofstadter
>       oh ultrafast Dodgers   (is he a Dodger fan?)
>       fold toughest radars
>       shatter flood guards
>       frustrated God's halo
>       Atlas forgot shudder
>       ultrashort God fades
>       Ford slaughters toad
>       a ruthless dad forgot


Mike Hatton <mike@pyramus.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>       Gosh! dreadful toast
>       Holds soft graduate
>       Farthest dogs aloud
>       Loads soft daughter
>       Saddest fourth goal


=-------------------------------------------------------------------
---- GEB limericks, GEBerwocky

 big limerick site:  http://www.katsden.com/webster/limerick.html

 Kaberi Chakrabarty <kaberi19@mail.idt.net> wrote:
>
>       "There once was a fellow named Go:del,
>       Whose law gave logicians a hurdle" ---
>               DRH with his flock
>               Of both Escher and Bach
>       Put the words in the mouth of a turtle.


        There once was a book that explained
        AI and math; entertained.
                Grant me to ask its name,
                Everyone who's game,
        By hinting this rhyme's self-contained.
                                                (by TT)


 Mike Geller <mgeller@avnet.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Here's one about Go:del.
>
>       There was a young man named Kurt
>       Who oft wore an interesting shirt
>               Upon it was writ
>               In calligraphic script
>       "This sentence misspells one wurt."


        
=-------------------------------------------------------------------
  "GEBerwocky" by TT

  (see http://www.pair.com/~keithlim/jabberwocky/ )
        
        'Twas brainiac, and the chalming zombs
        Did cyber and symble in the Cage:
        All chinocells were overbached,
        Ant Thememe neuroed epiphenage.
        
        "Beware the Go:dzella, my friends!
        The Go:del-numbing of the 'Spell of G'!
        Beware the poisonous Pen-rose gardens
        And other dualistic absurdity!"
        
        They packed their favorite tome to be brought:
        Long time the metal-logical foe they sought---
        So rested they by the Escher-esque tree,
        Humming a Fugue in G.
        
        Then came Go:dzella, fuming flames frumiously,
        And casting the spell of String G:
        "You two are but characters in a book;
        And hence can never kill me!"
        
        Almost caught in a Strange-Loop trance,
        They found the code, but alas the manual's in Japanese.
        Then Doug's voice echoed:  "Use the Source, Luke!"
        They left the beast to freeze.
        
        "And did you snuff out the Go:dzella?
        Oh, happy day!  T. and A.!
        I reward you with Dumplings and a tale
        Of a monster-hunt which begins as: 'Twas ...'"
        
        <repeat first stanza>
        
 for "BladeRunnerwocky", more self-ref limericks, etc
 see http://www.cs.indiana.edu/hyplan/tanaka/GEB/limericks.txt


=-------------------------------------------------------------------
-- 7. GEB-ish / experimental music MIDI files

 are there samples of super-complex music (MIDI files)?
 Hofstadter described such music as "Bach squared" in GEB.

 i discovered MIDI files in summer 1998 and found it pretty
 exciting at first, but soon discovered that there are very few
 GEB-ish / experimental music MIDI files around.
 i'm maintaining this section in the hope that it may stimulate
 interest in this area.

http://www.computer.org/tab/cgm/cd.htm
        excerpts (.wav files) from some of the projects
        published in the July 1991 issue of IEEE COMPUTER and in
        the book "Reading in Computer Generated Music".

 (see also: EMI in this FAQ)

=-------------------------------------------------------------------
http://midiworld.com/collabor.htm  Collaborative and Experimental MIDI

 there were several pieces i liked in this page

 --- Twilight.mid
        [...] I collaborated in writing the aleatoric ("fractal")
        software which we called AMBIENT, that produced the
        initial sequenced tracks. [...] --- Francis Joseph Leach

 --- The Sound of Mathematics
        Prime Numbers Whole Tone Quartet by Daniel Cummerow
        The music was determined prime numbers in base 5. The
        digits were mapped to 4 parts using tones of the E whole
        tone scale.

=-------------------------------------------------------------------
 Bach's 3-part and 6-part Ricercar
 [URL here]
 the arranger (sequencer?) does a good job of assigning
 distinct-sounding instruments to the voices.

 too bad he had to give it quirky, syncopated arrangement.
 when it comes to Bach, i prefer the "untouched by human hands"
 approach.

=-------------------------------------------------------------------
 the American version of the book "The Science of Musical Sound"
 by J.R.Pierce came with a thin phonogram (LP) record.
 the Jp version came with a CD containing the same material.

 among the most interesting pieces to me were:

 1. a Bach fugue played in three scales:
        a well-tempered scale, Pythagorean scale, and [one more].

        can this be done using MIDI?
        (possible to make a GM (general midi) file xxx.mid so
        that my SoundBlaster-compatible sound card can play it?)

 2. a piece (a fugue?) written in a scale which divides an
        octave into 8 equal intervals instead of the usual 12.
        can this be done using MIDI?


=-------------------------------------------------------------------
-- 8. submissions to this FAQ

 email submissions to <tanaka@cs.indiana.edu>.

 it'd be better if you could also post the submission to
 <alt.fan.hofstadter> and <alt.tanaka-tomoyuki>.

 if i become unable or unwilling to update/maintain the FAQ,
 i hope future maintainers of the FAQ will change the FAQ name
 and the archive name so that the future versions will coexist
 with, not overwrite, my version.  repositories of FAQ files are
 capable of storing multiple files for a newsgroup's directory.
 don't worry about waste of resources --- remember that today
 much of Internet traffic and computer resources are taken up by
 cyberporn.

=-------------------------------------------------------------------
motivation:

 i've always thought it strange that <alt.fan.blade-runner> is
 so active, with a great FAQ and all,
                        http://www.bit.net.au/~muzzle/bladerunner/
			http://www.faqs.org/faqs/movies/bladerunner-faq/
 while <alt.fan.hofstadter> is so quiet.

 i wanted to write this FAQ because i thought it was a shame
 that many younger folks (even CS majors) haven't read GEB.  i
 wrote this FAQ for the same reason Oliver Stone and Camille
 Paglia can't stop talking about the 1960s.

http://www.acm.org/pubs/citations/proceedings/oops/127056/p114-tomoyuki/

;;; TANAKA Tomoyuki   ("Mr. Tanaka" or "Tomoyuki".)
;;;
;;; For <soc.culture.japan> and <soc.culture.asian.american> FAQ
;;;     files, see <http://www.cs.indiana.edu/hyplan/tanaka.html>.
;;;
;;; e-mail:  tanaka@cs.indiana.edu

=--------------------------------------------------------------------
(will these long lines break this file in some FAQ repositories?)
(look for "END of long lines")

http://www2.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/kenny/papers/godel.html

http://einstein.et.tudelft.nl/~arlet/puzzles/sol.cgi/language/english/self.ref/self.ref.letters

http://www.astro.virginia.edu/cgi-bin/webglimpse/astro2/users/eww6n/public_html?query=hofstadter

   _________________________________________________________________
 END of long lines, and END of FAQ 
        _______________________________________________________
              ___________________________________________
                    _______________________________
                          ___________________
                                _______
                                  ___  
				   J

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