How the body shapes the way we think

It is one of the many perks of working in such an exciting field of research as robotics that I get to meet some of my real heros. But it is a rare privilege to be working in a project with one of the true geniuses of the field Prof. Rolf Pfeifer. Today I took delivery of his new and sure to be influential new book coauthored with the brilliant young scientist Josh Bongard.

How the body shapes the way we think should help to turn our idea of intelligence on its head and make us really understand how cognitive function of low and high order came about as part of the physical body and not separate from it as Descartes might have you believe. Embodied intelligence is not new thinking to be sure (just think of Messrs. Maturana and Varella) but the clear and fresh thinking, examples and experiments in this book should help to make more people take the message on board and stop trying to design intelligent systems and robots from a disembodied computational perspective.
buy it on Amazon

Pao

It was so beautiful and in such good condition. So impressed - real retro interior too - very sixties, very chic. I was thinking, maybe a Fiat (but not enough rust), maybe some French model (but too well engineered). Looked at the front ... a Nissan ??? Is this possible? I thought back in the sixties - if it existed then at all - Nissan was called Datsun, right??

But, a quick search on Google revealed that this is one of a few models of retro cars that Nissan produced in the late 80's early 90's. The other well known one is the Figaro, which is equally stylish (and also explains why I keep seeing what I thought were very well maintained small stylish Volvos around).
Anyway, I want one.

Italy trip

Just for Kirk ...
Away from home again. This time beautiful Ferrara in Italy. Having left home at 4:30am on Sunday and not got back till 2:00am Wed morning, I think I'd rather have stayed at home.
Still, as expected the city was glorious, the food was delicious and the weather was perfect.
Can't be bad.

The pic is of what was supposed to be a beautiful spreading oak tree in full blossom in the couryard of an ancient monastry. However it seemed to have been attacked by a madman with a chainsaw before we got there.

Kill Me. Is it?

Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip - Thou shalt always kill.


Seems to be a kind of threshold for me, but as soon as I listen to a track 6 times in a row, I have the urge to spread the word. But, in this case it really is not necessary.
I was hooked on my first listen last week on Radio 1. Clearly, the fact it was a daily play track on the biggest station in the country means that I'm not the first person to have fallen in love with Scroob's infectious lyrics and vocal delivery. Nevertheless, if you do fancy hearing a white rapper from Essex, dressed in a suit with a full, almost ZZ-Top or Mad Mullah beard, splice keenly chosen lyrics into a background of blips and beeps out of an old-school gameboy-type soundtrack, then you could do a lot worse than clicking here.


The lyrics speak of not deifying Crass, Minor Threat, the Beatles or Led Zeppelin, the genius of Stephen Fry, the sanctity of the Four Elements, the evil of Coke, Nestle and the NME, and the hypocrisy of our evaluation of value/newsworthy-ness of human life based on whether they speak English or not. In case you think it is just political, you'd be wrong - he get's passionate about music, girls and rejection there too.

This, in a word, Kills.

St Totteringham's day

Just realised that Tuesday was in fact St. Totteringham's day. Calls for drinks this weekend.

The way the gunners have been playing recently there was always a chance that it would get dragged out till the last week of the season. But, Spurs have been worse than expected - mainly because they can't defend for toffee, so here we are with Arsenal 13 points ahead of Spurs with just 4 games to go.