joe_haldeman @ 2012-01-25T11:05:00

(semi-responding to sff.net . . . )  

  A bunch of old questions, Dave, with the same old answers perhaps no longer sufficient. Since we have created a kind of life on several fronts, have we 
also changed the definition of death? It was already an old paradox, with the 
Turing test and von Neumann machines, when I was in graduate school. Has its 
basic nature changed with the ubiquity of artificial intelligence (at least 
by some functional minimum standard)? 
   
Hmm. Trying to think while the maid vacuums around me. Dangerous business. 
 I'l paste in the review of last night's play . . . 


Last night we went to see the little play Sirens , which was amusing, a little 
bit sexy – maybe a little too short, which is an unusual complaint for me. 
Perhaps I didn’t see enough of the cute mermaid. 
   
The male character is a songwriter who had one big hit and dried up. He and 
his slightly shrewish wife have been living on the royalties from that one song 
since they were married, 25 years ago. On an anniversary cruise, he jumps overboard 
and is (pun alert) washed up on a little island with a siren, a buxom lass 
who delights in luring sailors onto the rocks with her eerie voice. She does 
a fine comic turn, vicious and vapid. The logic of the play gets a little herky-jerky, 
but he comes back from the island a couple of weeks later – the siren released 
him to go get batteries for her newfound love, a calculator -- to find his wife 
prematurely celebrating widowhood by going out on the town with his old rival. 
 Things bounce around a bit and come to ground with a happy and not-too-sappy 
ending. 

It was a fun evening, with astronomy friends Chuck Broward and Judy. Had a 
good Italian meal at Amelia’s and indulged in ice cream afterwards. 


This Ron Paul parody is vicious and kind of innocent at the same time . . . 
Merciful Lee Dickens sent it along . . . 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=igQlbesF0zA 

Joe