The narrator of Janna Levin’s novel can’t stop thinking about Turing and Gödel — “my two mad treasures” — and what their lives have to say about genius, human fragility and abstract truth. This narrator, it should be noted, is a somewhat spectral presence in the book. Although there are few textual clues, we are meant to guess (so says the dust jacket) that it is a woman and a scientist who is addressing us — rather like the author, who teaches physics and astronomy at Columbia University. At a few points in the book, the narrator briefly pops up to tell us that she’s crossing a New York City street, that she’s headed for a subway entrance and that the story she’s relating is a lie. Yet that “story” consists of alternating scenes from the lives of Turing and Gödel — scenes that, though imaginatively filled out, are based on fact and drawn from published biographies. Which raises the question: is this really a novel?

Well, if you accept Randall Jarrell’s famous definition of a novel — “a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it” — Levin’s book certainly qualifies. In fact, it fits squarely in the subgenre of the novel of ideas. The big idea associated with Gödel is “incompleteness”: no logical system, he proved, can possibly encompass all the truths of mathematics. The big idea associated with Turing is “undecidability”: no purely mechanical method, he showed, can reliably decide what is and what is not a logical truth. Both incompleteness and undecidability are technical notions. Yet they sound existentially fraught, and so (up to a point) they are. Brood on them a bit and you may be led to think about free will, the limits of understanding, the nature of truth, the existence of God. As it happens, both Gödel and Turing exploited the ancient paradox of the liar. This paradox can be succinctly captured in the statement “I am lying,” which is true if it’s false and false if it’s true. So when Levin’s narrator says that she is lying, one should not be too hasty to dismiss this as a cheap metafictional trick.

NYT seems unimpressed, as does Publishers Weekly, but the book earned praise from Brian Greene, Lee Smolin, and Alan Lightman.

'A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines,' by Janna Levin

NYT follows the Long Tail.

As a senior music analyst at Pandora Media, he spends roughly 25 hours a week wearing headphones in an office suite here, listening to songs by artists like Sonny Boy Williamson and Memphis Slim and dicing them into data points. Is the singer’s voice gravelly or silky? Is the scope of the song modest or epic? Does the electric guitar sound clean or distorted?

Bit by bit, Pandora’s music analysts have built a massive archive of data, cataloging the minute characteristics of more than 500,000 songs, from alt-country to bossa nova to metal to gospel, for what is known as the Music Genome Project. The site is adding about 15,000 new songs a month to the database.

The New Tastemakers

In one episode of "The Simpsons," Marge asks, "Did you know there are over 600 critics on TV and Leonard Maltin is the best looking of them all?" (Lisa sensibly replies: "Ewwww!")

Inside the List

"It was a great mission and a great success and now it's over," said mission manager Gerhard Schwehm.

During its months in orbit around the moon, the spacecraft scanned the lunar surface from orbit and took high-resolution pictures. But its primary mission was testing a new, efficient, ion propulsion system that officials hope to use on future interplanetary missions, including the BepiColombo mission to Mercury slated for 2013.

Europe’s Spacecraft Reaches Moon

Until the beginning of the 20th century, Arabs didn’t write novels, in large measure because Arab society didn’t recognize the individual.

Man in the Middle

When General Musharraf comes to the United States, he loves to be lauded as a leader in the war on terrorism. Back home, his government too often acts like a garden-variety military dictatorship.

The Wrong Battle in Pakistan

That humans have been afraid of snakes for a long time is not a fresh observation; that this fear may be entwined with our development as a species is. New anthropological evidence suggests that snakes, as predators, may have figured prominently in the evolution of primate vision — the ability, shared by humans, apes and monkeys, to see the world in crisp, three-dimensional living color.

Talk about an obscure strike at fifteen minutes of fame!

Snakes on the Brain

Gloria Steinem: I wish someone would write an article called "How Did Condoleezza Rice Get That Way?"

Heh.

All About Eve

Religion has always been a major force in U.S. politics, but the recent surge in the number and the power of evangelicals is recasting the country's political scene -- with dramatic implications for foreign policy. This should not be cause for panic.

As used here, the term "fundamentalist" involves three characteristics: a high view of biblical authority and inspiration; a strong determination to defend the historical Protestant faith against Roman Catholic and modernist, secular, and non-Christian influence; and the conviction that believers should separate themselves from the non-Christian world.

The difference between fundamentalists and evangelicals is not that fundamentalists are more emotional in their beliefs; it is that fundamentalists insist more fully on following their ideas to their logical conclusion.

Mead offers a reading list.

Consider:

"The test of a first rate mind is to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time." [1]

"It is the rare thinker who keeps two contradictory thoughts simultaneously in mind; yet this is precisely what is often needed to get at the truth." [2]

God's Country? - Walter Russell Mead | Foreign Affairs

Pick up the latest issue of Foreign Affairs at your local newsstand, and check out this article by the author of "The Codebreakers."

Modern militaries' obsession with intelligence gathering and evaluation would have bemused Caesar and Napoleon, since such behavior was rarely engaged in until recently. In the war on terrorism, intelligence is playing its greatest role yet, but even today, espionage and intelligence analysis will not be the decisive factors.

If you think that GWOT rarely requires "boots on the ground", think again.

For previous David Kahn threads, check out:

The Reader of Gentlemen's Mail
How Good Intelligence Falls on Deaf Ears
When Navajos Fought Japanese for Ne-He-Mah
The Atlantic | February 2002 | Losing the Code War | Budiansky
The Literature of Secrets

The Rise of Intelligence - David Kahn | Foreign Affairs