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A Thousand Country Roads : Robert James Waller

Robert Kincaid finally decides to go out in search of Francesca Johnson one final time after those 4 wonderful days many years ago which changes their lives forever. Elsewhere Carlisle Macmillan decides to go out in search of his father whom his mother Wynn Macmillan had seen but only for a few days ...

Somewhere destinies meet ...

A thousand country roads is a befitting epilogue to The Bridges ... a book that actually made a Romantic sentimental fool out of me ! RJ Waller continues to wield a pen that can slice through human emotions. The manner in which he imbibes a soft touch to a personality like that of Robert Kincaid is the kind of stuff that literary legends are made of ...

If you havn't read it yet ... pick a copy up right now. Spend a weekend with it, your life will probably take an unexpected turn ;-)

Amazon.com

Epimenides paradox

Epimenides was a Cretan who said "All Cretans are Liars"
Extensions of this can be "I am lying" or "This statement is false"

If all Cretans were liars then the statement made by Epimenides that all Cretans are liars would need to be a lie, given that Epimenides was a Cretan and therefore his definition of Cretans would include himself and therefore by calling himself a liar he is paradoxically speaking the truth therefore contradicting his original statement that all Cretans are liars !!!

Looking at the statement "This statement is false" ... If the statement is indeed false, then the statement is True and therefore a paradox, if the statement is false then the statement is actually true and thereby a paradox again !!!

The Epimenides paradox from Wikipedia

The "Strange Loop"

The first concept introduced in GEB-EGB (Godel, Escher, Bach - An eternal golden braid) is that of "Strange loops" The "Strange Loop" phenomenon occurs whenever, by moving upwards (or downwards) through the levels of some hierarchical system, we unexpectedly find ourselves right back where we started the 2 examples quoted to help understand Strange loops are Bach's "Musical Offering" to King Freidrich in which the voice starts out in C minor key and ends in D minor progressing onwards to E and thereon till finally it joins back at C and thereby starting the loop all over again The other visual example which I could well understand is in works of the Dutch graphic artist MC Escher, who very effectively used the concepts of symmetry and progression to bring out the concepts of praadox, illusion and "Strange loops" Imagine a drawing representing an infinite loop starting from Reality and progressing to something purely imaginary. Given that this is a loop brings the paradox of the situation right before our eyes - What is real and what is imaginary ?

Godel, Escher, Bach : An eternal golden braid by Dougals Hofstader

After almost 10 years of coming across and hearing about this book, I finally picked it up from the library today. Besides my regular rants on Linux, the Economy, Telecom, Wireless etc I would also blog interesting snippets and thoughts from the book

Amazon's editorial review about the book says :

Everything is a symbol, and symbols can combine to form patterns. Patterns are beautiful and revelatory of larger truths. These are the central ideas in the thinking of Kurt Gödel, M.C. Escher, and Johann Sebastian Bach, perhaps the three greatest minds of the past quarter-millennium. In a stunning work of humanism, Hofstadter ties together the work of mathematician Gödel, graphic artist Escher, and composer Bach

Gödel, Escher, Bach, a Pulitzer prize-winning treatise on genius, explores the workings of brilliant people's brains with the help of historical examples and brainteaser puzzles. Not for the dim or the lazy, this book shows you, more clearly than most any other, what it means to see symbols and patterns where others see only the universe. Touching on math, computers, literature, music, and artificial intelligence, Gödel, Escher, Bach is a challenging and potentially life-changing piece of writing

Godel, Escher, Bach : An eternal golden braid by Dougals Hofstader