I've received a lot of interesting mail since The Accidental Mind was published, but nothing quite like this dollop of haute-geek poetry by Dr. Hilton Stowell of Milledgeville, Georgia.
Kuntry Ham Kludge
In Harvard where the Mind is an Illusion
There's a Kludge of computational confusion
About neurons in the brain
Being mainly in the rain
Of Silly Con Soft plain
While the rest are just an NPG intrusion
Now an Accidental Mind
Was a radiative find
For peripatetic cooling
By Aristotelian ruling,
Where cognitive emotion
Was by cardiac promotion:
Neocortex was an airconditioning rind
Nobel Monod had his day
La Nécessité to play
With Le Hasard in the say
And no time for epigenetic restitution
Of Lamarckian Onward-Upward resolution.
In 20th c. before Translational Revolution
Uncle Syd described a tinkering constitution
For his Dear Old Evo Devo Dan the I Kin Fixit Man
Spanner in backpocket all set to tinker-knockit;
So what's there left to do that's new for 2052?