Writing Samples

Jonathan D. Lettvin 愚公移山

Quora Writings old

Seeing Stars An analysis of hyperacute vision in vertebrates Brain Building Kit A fanciful view of neural mathematics A voice from under the piano Love Programming Again Pieces on practicing piano and the ART/discipline of coding Mistakes Text of a public speech Theodore Lettvin A web page of piano recordings Jerome Lettvin A wikipedia page 10 decade photo-amplifier A simple technical web page on my patented pre-amplifier On neural mathematics ... PAPER Home pages of a heavily used private wiki with over 100 multi-page topics DisQuick Antivirus diskette package insert An example of customer-oriented writing Poet Laureate at poetry.com Lots of poems AirPair Articles for AirPair Haiku A demonstration of Unicode rapid review of translations OPL bipolar A visualization of a retinal neuron ready for functional modeling How Seen Movement Appears In the Frog's Optic Nerve Annotation of a short but important neuroscience paper

JERRY LETTVIN MEMORIAL POEM You'll not from quaint and curious volumes quote forevermore nor pull electrodes from raw stock nor credit card your door. No octopus nor frog nor cat will know your twitching hand. No student's eye will open wide to see what you've unplanned. Dissenters now go undefended. Strange guests don't stay late. More zebras go undiagnosed 'though frank in tic and gait. We'll miss how wrong our theories are when we're so sure they're right. Without you we are all alone. There's none like you to fight. In Abject Memoriam Campbell L. Searle The sharpened mind is often tasked with fighting for each fact and guiding how a question's asked; but rarely known for tact. To be the gentleman in science's rare beyond belief, and Cam was one amongst these giants. I am lost in grief. Not just because he loved the world and made it prettier by teaching how electrons curled to us less wittier, but in debate, with firm resolve, exciting nuanced views on how machines like us evolved; a worthy lifetime muse. And when frivolity was apt his rugs were nicely cut. His fireside stories held us rapt. His ears were never shut. A day upon the road was naught if Cam was at its end. But now the road is endless, fraught, and I must yet unbend. I miss him now, Much time will pass and miss him I will still. So I will keep him in my heart to strengthen my own will.

Science vs. Religion? Why? I have a belief. I believe that living things invest energy in predicting outcomes from preconditions. This entails observing the world, discovering repeating events, extracting value, forming a mythology to capture this process, identifying common abstractions with other processes, forming a science and, finally, sharing the mythology and science with others. Science is nothing more than a way of predicting outcomes from preconditions efficiently. I am often shocked at the animosity between the mythology and science communities. You NEED mythology to bind together observations for which a proper science has not yet been successfully formed. However, science is a belief system too; and one which does not undermine religion if seen as a value-add for the individual and group practitioner. We need to value mythology for its continued capture of not-yet-scientific observation by magic. We need to value science for its partial success at codifying the ability to predict mechanically without invoking magic. Mythology and science are both necessary. I find it sad that the communities fight over which has the better gift.

on Parsey McParseface (a critique of machine-driven semantic style)

Much so dislike I order algorithm required very sentences. Ub fact, U an agaubst ebfircenebt. Write I ? as will I : nevermore ∃ poetry and longer no I am 愚公移山 merely but /dev/borg.

Just in case you are inclined to prefer PMcP, here it is in ordinary text.

I so very much dislike algorithm required sentence order. In fact I am against enforcement. I will write as I will else nevermore there exists poetry and I am no longer the foolish old man who moved the mountain, but merely a borg device.

Random Poesy

俳句 (haiku)
春の花	Haru no hana	Flowers in springtime
突風内花びら	Toppu-nai hanabira	Petals in a gust of wind
色の渦	Iro no uzu	Vortex of color

Certainty (haiku)

'Tis sin to judge sin. God sorts us out soon enough. Let's be friends 'til then.	罪人判断罪。 神梳理我们出去很快。 让我们成为朋友在那之前。
ومن الخطيئة الحكم على الخطيئة. الله يقسم لنا قريبا بما فيه الكفاية. دعنا نكون أصدقاء حتى ذلك الحين.	罪を判断する罪です。 神はすぐに十分な私たちをソートします。 のは、それまでの友達になりましょう。
דזשאַדזשינג זינד איז זינד. גאָט סאָרץ אונדז אויס באַלד גענוג. זאל ס זיין Friends ביז דעמאָלט.	Это грех судить грех. Бог сортирует нас достаточно скоро. Давайте дружить сезам тогда.

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