The master of far fetched fiction

People, knowing my fondness for and broad knowledge about books, often ask, which are the most remarkable books I've ever read. And after a lot of sophisticated remarks about classic novels, some good sips of brandy and furious critique of the post-modern literature, I always recommend to have a look at a certain Mister Rankin from London.

Actually, neither of the above is true, but I've read some odd books and among the most extraordinary books I've read are those of Robert Rankin and at the moment I'm reading his The Da Da De Da Da Code, so this is where I got the idea to tell you about this. It's pretty hard or actually impossible to describe Rankins books, so I suppose you just read them yourselves. The Brentford Trilogy, the Cornelius Murphy Trilogy (consisting of The Book of Ultimate Truths, Raiders of the Lost Car Park and The Most Amazing man Who Ever Lived), The Witches of Chiswick or The Brightonomicon might all be a good starting point.

But beware, you might consider it good advice to read one of Rankin's many biographies or have a look at the man himself first.

Natural language is not context-free

Richard McKinley recently pointed out to me that the evidence against the context-freeness of natural languages was first found in Swiss German. Now I'm looking forward to read the original paper Evidence against the context-freeness of natural language by Stuart M. Shieber.

A question about modal logic

Do modal logics enjoy a deduction detachment theorem?

My advice: Think really carefully about it and don't ask logicians about this. You're likely to get quite different answers.

"The sun's not yellow it's chicken"

Is there a better version of Bob Dylan's Tombstone Blues (see also here) than the one by Richie Havens in the movie I'm Not There?



(I actually prefer the soundtrack version where you only hear Richie Havens sing).

By the way, according to www.bobdylan.com, Bootleg Series No. 8 Rare and Unreleased 1989 - 2006: Tell Tale Signs will appear on October 7th 2008.

The best introduction to set theory

In my opinion, Yiannis N. Moschovakis's Notes on Set Theory is the best introduction to this topic for several reasons. First of all, it's written in a very clear and understandable style (which is far from usual even in undergraduate math books). Secondly, Moschovakis doesn't begin with a list of all ZFC axioms (as it is very often done), but begins developing his theory with as few axioms as possible and thereby is able to show which axioms are really needed for what and how. Last but not least, he manages to include lots of interesting topics such as recursion theory, order theory or descriptive set theory, which usually are omitted in introductions to set theory. There is even a really nice construction of the real numbers. By the way: for those of you who want to know even more about set theory, there's still the bible.

If you're looking for a general and very well readable overview over mathematical logic, I recommend a look at A Tour Through Mathematical Logic by Robert S. Wolf.

Book vs. Movie

I know that movies based upond books are always a little bit disappointing, but The Golden Compass has been my biggest disappointment in this respect so far. It seems like writers have scarcely read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, the trilogy upon which's first book Northern Lights the movie is based. I'd like to explain here, why that is, but this movie is just so weirdly gone wrong, that I can't. It's probably best, if you find out yourselves (or actually, it isn't, just read the book and leave it to that).

I wonder how the two excellent novels Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrel by Susanna Clarke and Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl will turn out as movies?

By the way: I really liked both the movie and the book Atonement by Ian McEwan.

Recent nudity trends in music

Nudity seems to be popular in music right now. The Icelandic band Sigur Rós has quite a naturalistic approach, see the music video for the song "Gobbledigook".

Quite a different and a very playful approach to censorship can be found in the BPA's in the music video for the song "Toe Jam" (if you have a YouTube account, you may access it directly here). This one is quite ingenious, but the again, has Norman Cook ever done something bad?