Two books in one

Heinlein's The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

I didn't like it. After 100 pages I quit. The characterization is nonexistent.

Jerry King's The Art of Mathematics

Really great, thought-provoking book. I'm curious about this idea of math and art being related.

How do I learn about art and music criticism? *pulls hair*

He discusses art's audience, going back to a 1912 work by Bullough titled "Psychical Distance as a Factor in Art and an Aesthetic Principle." Bullough asserts that those who are psychologically too close to an artwork are unable to appreciate it; instead, they link it to themselves and fail to see it from an aesthetic point of view. He also asserts that there are those who are too psychologically far from the artwork and are unable to understand it from an aesthetic point of view. He goes as far as saying that the only people who can understand anything from an aesthetic point of view are the true artists themselves. An odd idea on the whole.

He also discusses how the ivory tower, elitist math departments are bad for the growth of their subject. He longs for the day when math will become an integrated part of a liberal arts education. I'm frankly so fed up with the "publish or perish" idea, and so are most professors, I am sure. It's a sad state when our universities are more focused on research than on actually teaching.

Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

I finished it! I liked it more than I thought I would.

Spoilers below.

The end was sooo sad. Mike, the computer, stopped talking. Nobody knows whether he is too scared to talk again or if he lost the capacity to talk when part of him was blown away.

Is he really a sexist author? As a man, I'm not as sensitive to sexism as women are, but in the battle scenes, the men were fighting and the women were there for morale and didn't do any fighting. He had a strong female protagonist though, and she was instrumental in the plot as well as good-looking.
"Women are amazing creatures - sweet, soft, gentle, and far more savage than we are." (148)

I like how he makes fun of our society, like on page 161 where he discusses the woman who wanted a long list of insane rules made into laws. Also, the stupidity of the Earth dwellers who put Mannie in jail for being polygamous (um, Puritanical, much?). And ESPECIALLY the idiots who went to the sites that they knew would be bombed, and the idiots who were outraged by the death of those idiots.

"I used to question Mike's endless reading of fiction, wondering what notions he was getting. But turned out he got a better feeling for human life from stories than he had been able to garner from facts; fiction gave him a gestalt of life, one taken for granted by a human; he lives it." (109)

I would think that fiction doesn't give a good idea of what normal human life. Most fiction is far from real, everything is happy in the end and the characters all have this hunky-dory lifestyle in which any two people can fall in love. Also, it doesn't present a normal life, it presents only the events in each character's life that are relevant to the plot. It's like that Wierd Al song "Stuck in the Drive-Through," look it up on youtube and you'll see what I mean.

What are your thoughts? What are some good, thought-provoking scifi books you have read that deal with artificial intelligence?