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I actually forgot the most frequently asked question: "How do you pronounce SUSE?" ;-)

After an uneventful, if bumpy, flight in an Airbus which thankfully didn't burst into flames at the end of the runway, but just did what it's supposed to do, I'm back home now. With a pile of new books - I had time for trips both to Borders and City Lights Bookstore while in San Francisco. Interesting catches among them are "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins, two novels by Ursula K. LeGuin who I adore, and an Introduction to the Mind by John Searle.

I'm already finished with the first one. It is a high level introduction to the current state of neurobiology regarding how our neocortex manages to store and handle information, and a new (well, to me it was new) theory how intelligence is created there. Basically he says that everything is achieved by recognizing patterns in the world around us and making predictions what will happen next based on them. It is an interesting read, though unfortunately non-trivial enough for me not to be able to sit down and hack up a quick simulation of the workings of the neocortex as he's describing them. ;-) If it was that simple, we'd be surrounded by simulated brains already.