someone who collects hopelessly useless words And gee, we don't know anybody like that, do we?
Douglas Hofstadter: whodat? Ah, yes: Works by Douglas R. Hofstadter (b. 1945)
1979 Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. The professor of computer science at Indiana University explores human consciousness and the connections among mathematician Kurt Gödel's Incomplete Theorem, the art of M. C. Escher, and the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Despite its complex subject, it wins the Pulitzer Prize and sells more than 100,000 copies in the year following its publication. (from Answers.com)
I didn't know he was at IU--that's right up the road from me. One of these years I ought to get around to trying to read that book, y'all mention it so often. Am I going to be able to understand it?