Please, allow me to share with you a graphical representation of the most disappointing thing about my recent business trip to Australia. It occurred during my return trip through Heathrow, Terminal 3. This is the current map of Terminal 3: This is slightly different than my mental picture of what Terminal 3 looks like, which is apparently a good half… Read more →
Author: Mr. McLaren
There is no more speaking to the nation
I recommend that if you haven’t already you head over to this month’s issue of the Internet Review Of Science Fiction and read Kristine Kathryn Rusch‘s essay “What’s Louder Than Noise“, in which she puts forth her argument for why the Great American Novel is no longer something that it’s possible to write. The essay isn’t terribly long, but it… Read more →
Female Music
It’s been a little while since I did a music post, so let’s do a bigger than usual one, with nine tunes instead of my normal five. Tonight’s theme is pretty broad: music from some awesome female artists. I’m not going to try to narrow it more than that–it’s some good stuff, and hopefully there’ll be something that works for… Read more →
Aside
“Science is the outcome of being prepared to live without certainty and therefore a mark of maturity. It embraces doubt and loose ends.” That’s one of many entertaining quotes from AC Grayling‘s appearance in the Guardian’s “This much I know” series.
Saturday Night Shotgun Post
While I’m uploading some MP3s for a music post a little later tonight, let’s do the tab closing dance: Did you see the story about the scientists who unfroze the blob of 120,000 year old life in the Arctic? I can’t do my usual thing of making the news sound like a creepy SF or Lovecraftian story, since the actual… Read more →
SF Writers Say Smart Things: Jonathan Carroll
Better to have a good story than a good time. Bad life experiences often end up great material for stories. Good times are often forgotten. —Jonathan Carroll Read more →
Marco Polo, Nativity, Divine Fire, and blindspots in the mind
So I spent some time today–when I probably should have been doing something else–reading some of the Travels Of Marco Polo. Oddly, I don’t have a print copy of this in my library–an omission I shall have to correct at some point–but that wasn’t a problem since Project Gutenberg has a decent translation. I wasn’t reading for any particular purpose,… Read more →
Old John D. Knew A Thing Or Two
A parade is a group, and I’m not a group animal. I think a mob, no matter what it happens to be doing, is the lowest form of living thing, always steaming with potential murder. Several things I could write on my placard and then carry it all by myself down empty streets. UP WITH LIFE. STAMP OUT ALL SMALL… Read more →
The why of your eye, and the tricking of it also
This week when I was picking up comics at the shop, my daughter talked me into buying Jay Hosler‘s latest science comic, Optical Allusions, to read with her. This was a pretty easy sell, considering my previous enjoyment of Hosler’s Clan Apis and Sandwalk Adventures (both of which, it occurs to me just now, are good candidates for being pulled… Read more →
A Monday Night Gallimaufry
Let’s see if we can close some of the myriad tabs I’ve opened in the process of trying to catch up with everything that happened in the non-work world while I was off spending time at the Melbourne office: I’m quite impressed at the 16-year old (from the city where I did my university days) who managed to isolate plastic… Read more →
That’s The Problem.
I will have more to say about this when I’m not about to start a 24-hour flight around more than half the world, but I just want to nail down this quote from Clay Shirky talking about Iran/Twitter/etc: Absolutely. I’ve been saying this for a while — as a medium gets faster, it gets more emotional. We feel faster than… Read more →
Language and the Shaping Of Thought
While I was doing my undergraduate studies, in addition to my Engineering degree, and my minor in Philosophy, I also pursed a number of “options”, notably including an option in Cognitive Studies. Both the mechanics of thinking and the philosophy of cognition and identity were (and remain) of great interest to me.I wonder if there’s anything to be noted from… Read more →
Aside
It’s just vanishingly possible I’ve mentioned my appreciation for Scott Morse‘s art on the blog in the past. Given that I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that he’s doing a crazy online comic called The Shogunaut, which he’s been updating regularly. He’s up to 25 pages as I type this, and will likelly complete it soon. It’s kind of a Jack Kirby-meets-Maurice-Noble thing–perhaps not for most people, but if it’s the kind of thing you like, it’s really the kind of thing you’ll like.
Aside
While I’m mildly interested in the medical issues surrounding tire dust and latex allergies that Peter Montague raises in his piece “Tire Dust“, I’m much more interested in the history of automotive cabals explicitly destroying electric public transit, as that’s something I was previously unfamiliar with (and frankly, from this one source I don’t have enough to know if it’s something that can be tarred with the “conspiracy theory” brush, despite having footnotes
Now I’m Going To Have To Reread The Prince
I heard quite a lot–references and allusions–about Machiavelli during my early teen years, and that lead me to get around to reading The Prince at some point during my time living in Switzerland–I was 16 at the time. I remember being impressed and amused by the book, and by what I knew about how it connected to political life in… Read more →
