"an abstract model behind the sensual surface..."

At Yale, each semester begins with a few weeks called "shopping period" in which students can attend classes without having to make up their minds about what exactly they wish to take. This semester, I shopped two upper-level computer science classes which met at the same time.

To protect the innocent, I won't go into the gory details of the first class, except to say that it was a bit too entry-level for my taste. Dejected, I walked down the stairs to the second class, "Computer Music: Algorithmic and Heuristic Composition". There, waiting on my desk, was a printed sheet bearing the following paragraph:

"Although Algorithmic composition became popular with the rise of computers, algorithmic thinking is far older -- it can be traced back to the ancient times of Pythagoras and the Jewish Kabbalah. It is a method of perceiving an abstract model behind the sensual surface, or in turn, of the construction of such a model in order to create aesthetic works. Behind the various approaches there is one common denominator: a longing to create something infinite that exceeds the limited horizon of our individual knowledge."

Needless to say, I'll be taking that second class.

P.S. Apologies for the drastic slowdown in posting, but move-in took longer than expected. I now have about 1000 backlogged posts to read. Fortunately, however, roughly 500 of them are Andrew Sullivan's demented ramblings about Sarah Palin, so they can be safely skipped. I am so with John on this one.