ALL THINGS BIG AND SMALL 2.0

1. Artificial Life Forms generated by a computer program 2. Tom Ray's Tierra Artificial Life and World -less graphical but no less revealing 3. Conway's Game of Life-cellular automata, Life created on a Grid A ONE-PAGE DEFINITION OF LIFE Prologue Until a few decades ago, most people thought they knew what it meant to say that something was alive. Breathing, eating, the ability to reproduce, having a shape, existing in a time-space dimension etc were some of the characteristics which defined Life. Until the advent of computers and programmers who wrote code that could also perform most of the things which living things do. And that has led people [like me] to re-evaluate the meaning of saying that you are a living thing. It was John von Neumann, who first thought of self-reproducing cellular automata, and inspired John Conway, Chris Langton, Tom Ray, and Stephen Wolfram, John Holland and countless others to institute the study and creation of entities that exhibited life-like be...

1. Selling Shanghai Hairy Crabs and River Shrimp In The Waiting Room of Suzhou Railway Station 2. A Popular Pastime Among Chinese Babyboomers: Card Games At The Park 3. Aplate of Jellied Shark Meat. 4. An Autumnal Hot Pot Dish: Frog Legs, Lotus Roots, Leek, Garlic, Pine Nuts etc 4. The Ancient Back Gate to City of Suzhou, 5. View From One of the Many Bridges in this Venice of the East. Om my last trip to Shanghai, I took a 30 minute train ride to Suzhou, in Jiangsu province ,one of the most beautiful cities in China-sometimes called the Venice of the East, because of the number of canals and bridges that criss-cross the city. Being on the lower reaches of the Yangtze river, Suzhou has always been an important city for commerce, having been in existence for at least 2500 years. But it's also known for its scenic bridges, pagodas, shophouses with verandahs and wood- carved windows. Though only about 80 kilometers from metropolitan Shanghai it has a distinctly rural ambience. W...