“We are here to witness; if we were not here the show would play to an empty house . . . .That is why I go for walks . . . to keep an eye on things.” –Annie Dillard While I am unsure about the teleological implications, I am sure I love the quote. I believe that nature is a… Read more →
Category: Linkapalooza
I (heart) public domain
From Japanator: Did you know that right now you can get a handful of Akira Kurosawa films for free? Like, as in legally for free? That’s right! The nice people over at Japan Probe have pointed out that some of the master’s films have fallen into the public domain. Archive.org has them available for download right this second. Among the… Read more →
SurveillanceSaver again
Following up from the recent post on SurveillanceSaver, I saw that very talented writer M. John Harrison had also been playing with it. Just let me quote him: after a bit, the narrative possibilities collapse, the intensity of your gaze subsides & these are just empty corners of the world again. It’s a bit like hitch-hiking & not getting a… Read more →
A Targeted Miscellany
A Sunday link list, of things that made me think of specific people. For my lovely wife, to share with her radical feminist associates, is the story of the most famous pirate of all time. Especially the bits about the pirate laws governing female prisoners. And the end of the story. Also for her yet another story about people who… Read more →
Miscellany: Your lab fees at work.
For a long time now I’ve been asking to be cremated and buried or scattered, rather than being embalmed and buried whole. This is primarily because I find the whole embalming thing a bit icky and unnatural, and secondarily because as an engineer I realize that the conventional burial model doesn’t scale with geometrically expanding population. However, I think I’ve… Read more →
Bringing The Tone Back Down: Shut Up, Little Man!
After that last post, I feel like I need something to bring the tone back down into my gutter. So, I’ve dug into the archives and pulled out something that you can listen to that will fully counteract any benefits you might have received from watching some of the TED presentations: Shut Up Little Man. I’m not sure how to… Read more →
Expose yourself to hours of great ideas
So, do you know TED? Not some dude named Ted; it stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. Let me quote them on what it’s about: TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the… Read more →
Thursday Night Bookish Links
Some bookish links: Have you read Vernor Vinge‘s True Names? If you haven’t then “for shame”. According to the Wikipedia entry “It was one of the earliest stories to present a fully fleshed-out concept of cyberspace, which would later be central to stories in the cyberpunk genre. Because of this, it is often referenced as a seminal work of the… Read more →
A Weekend Miscellany
(You may not think it’s the weekend, but since I have Friday and Monday off, and my late night meeting with Australians is done, I am now into my weekend.) OK, let’s talk unexpected interpretations in cover tunes. Sarah Nixey covers Human League‘s Black Hit Of Space [via jwz]. Petra Haden covers Journey‘s Don’t Stop Believin’ [via Scalzi]. Ophelia Blitz… Read more →
The Day The Bulls Won
I meant to mention this last month, and then things got out of hand. So, you know the “running of the bulls” in Pamplona? I don’t get it, but then there’s a lot of that Hemmingwayesque butch stuff that I don’t get. Knowing that “Injuries are common, both to the participants who may be gored or trampled, and to the… Read more →
U.S.A. Number One!
I think that’s probably just Ted A’Zary screwing up the curve for you guys. (Still, that’s a crazy gap. No wonder you guys can’t tell Fox News from reality any more.) Read more →
Q.O.T.D.
“I pretty much started believing they’ll try anything they can get away with once it was confirmed that they really have instituted a series of secret prisons around the world and that they reserve the right to kidnap anyone on the planet, hold them forever without trial, and torture them to death.” Read more →
A really fun way to waste some time.
Have you seen the Skeptic’s Dictionary site? It bills itself as “A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions”, but I think it should really be labeled with a warning about the potential for losing quite a bit of time browsing around the amusing entries. The entry on true-believer syndrome may shed some light on those people who… Read more →
Proving Once Again That The Real World Is At Least As Creative As Fiction…
Man, that’s one hell of an obituary: Count Gottfried von Bismarck Count Gottfried von Bismarck, who was found dead on Monday aged 44, was a louche German aristocrat with a multi-faceted history as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and a reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies. The great-great-grandson of Prince Otto, Germany’s Iron Chancellor and architect… Read more →
A Wednesday Miscellany
For some reason I’ve been on a things-in-space-with-cool-pictures kick this week, so why stop now? Here’s a picture of the aurora australis, as seen from Antarctica: That’s one of two images from a post at Canadian hard-SF author Peter Watts‘ blog. Read the post for a higher resolution version, another picture, and a very disturbing mental image. Of course there… Read more →
