Heh, still unpacking from the move to Bloomington. I came to the realization that I have a bunch of action figures still in the box. This is unacceptable. I don't want to be that guy. The one who collects toys but doesn't play with them because that would kill their resale value. They are toys. It is like Magic the Gathering. Sure, mint copies of the older cards are worth lots of money, but honestly? It was a game, it was meant to be played. Saving toys to never play with is just plain wrong.
So, I saw a truck with a bumper sticker on it that said "Drive it like you stole it."
I suspect this means different things to the owner of the truck and myself.
I bet they mean drive your vehicle hard without worrying about damaging it.
I read it as "obey the traffic laws and keep your speed within 3 mph of the limit so as to not attract the attention of the police to your newly stolen vehicle."
So I just went and looked at a bunch of graphs of the value of the dollar vs other currencies. I should have grabbed the data and played with it. oh well. Mostly? The US Dollar is getting weaker, though the graphs weren't all on the same scale. (We were up vs the Yen, and the HKD has to be notched to our dollar.)
Honestly? What I want is the value of a currency vs the price of a kilo of bread or a liter of milk or some similar measure.
About that last post?
New thought.
Instead of adding the difficulty of needing 2 screens for face to face play, make the controllers have different numbers of contact points. The front one has one fewer pairs than the person in the back (because it is much harder to manipulate things behind your back) I'd say 6 or 7 to 8 or 9
Sex and Video Games (well foreplay and video games at least.)
This looks like it has some potential. Well, the interface looks a little clunky, and I'm not sure that it wouldn't be better to work out a front to front version for symmetrical challange levels (as it is currently, the player in the briefs appears to have some serious advantages. Spreading the contact areas out a little more would help that, but having the player in the bra facing the other way would be a big help. Sensors in the groin area would be a logical extension, and probably more than just six sensors total. Also, while this is a natural set up for rhythm games, I don't think the DDR scroll up the screen method is best here. Give different sensors different functions, match the shoulder ones for the woman to some lower back ones for the man, have those sort of a power maintenance button or score multiplier (so that constant contact is a boon instead of batting at the sensor when it comes up.) Actually all of the sensors should encourage slightly elongated periods of touch instead of the quick batting motions in the first video. Also? the game they demoed appeared to be neither competetive nor cooperative enough. Either you should be able to distract your partner in order to rack up more points, or especially skillful manipulations from person A should set person b up for something special point wise. Possibly different sorts of sensors for different body parts too, though possibly a series of touch mouse touch pad type sensors on a soft backing would be best.
(Actually, the shoulder/lower back sensors should be touch pad like, the butt and breast sensors more based on uniform gentle compression, maybe outer thigh or stomach sensors that are more button like, and maybe a groin sensor too, though I'd have to give that one some thought as to best method of manipulation.
I suspect that you could come up with at least as many distinct games as they did for the Super Scope.
A Miracle of Science
My only serious complaint about this webcomic is that it is over. If I had been diligent about reading all of the comics from the Whiteboard's cameo comics, I'd have caught this one earlier and possibly already bought the first book. (Moving. Can't afford it now. Gladness resides in the fact that it is with a PoD company so they won't sell out their stock.)
Some nice transhumanisim stuff, a neat set of governments, a passel of mad scientists, and possibly a few too many pseudo-pacifists.
Also, there is a scene where a [spoiler] hits on [spoiler] This is wonderful.
Um if the comic is loading slowly go to another tab. You don't want to read the news posts first. They are often spoileriffic. In fact the writer posted that a scene was important, so no news post today before one scene. Sadly that tag needed to go before many scenes in the tow or so weeks after that one too.
Wowness.
Also <3 the ending.
SO yeah, yesterday's thing? Sure it was an N^k solution to the problem, but it took on the order of N^N photons to do it, so for example, a 150 city problem would take more than 10^200 times as many photons as actually exist.
that is 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
(the actual number being about 10^326 or 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
http://www.opticsexpress.org/abstract.cfm?id=140598
I just tossed out my old trumpet. I think I need a fiddle.
(Note, these folks might not have anything.)
Better than I could say it
Taken whole cloth from
In the thread that billowed out of my last post, I was informed that by comparing a woman who gives frequent birth to (in my original wording) an exotic dancer who ejects ping pong balls from her vagina, I was calling both women "whores."
In a response, I said that the exotic dancer was not a prostitute, but a sex worker. I was then told that a comparison between a sexually active women and a sex worker is generally intended as neither neutral nor flattering.
So let's clear up my intentions right here and now, since my rewording of that disgusting term doesn't seem to have made my intentions clear.
First things first. Exotic dancers and/or strippers are not prostitutes, as has been alleged elsewhere. They dance for a living; they display their bodies; they perform the oft-touted "lap dance" for extra cash, and yes, that is supposed to arouse the client. That is each person's choice. This is what feminism is about. And it doesn't make these men and women prostitutes. They are workers in the sex industry.
The men and women who perform in sexually explicit movies are sex workers. Yes, they perform sex for money. It can be all kinds of sex. This is also true of men and women who have pornographic websites and telephone chat lines. (Many of these people work with their partners, by the way.) This is their choice. They are sex workers.
Then there are prostitutes, women and men who sell the act of sex--many kinds of sex, or certain specialties of sex--to those who will pay them.
For those who have not been and are not forced to do this by exploitative others, this is their choice. This is true of other sex workers as well. If they do their work of their own free will, with no one else to force them, then they have the right to do it. They have the right to equal protection under the law. They have the right to medical care and respect as human beings.
THEY HAVE THE RIGHT NOT TO BE CALLED WHORES, SLUTS, SLAGS, SKANKS, HOS, GASHES, SLITS, CUNTS, MEAT.
Do you want to be outraged over the sex trade? Do you want to punish someone and slap them in jail? Round up the pimps who batten on the women and men who don't have the tools to see them coming, who turn them out and control them through violence and drugs. Round up those who turn out children as prostitutes and create sex tours to the countries that give such tourists access to child prostitutes. Round up those who make their money on women, men, and children used violently, against their will. Go after the customers who leave a battered sex worker who refused a service or an instruction to bleed.
I do not believe that sex of any kind between consenting adults is a crime. I believe coercion is. And it makes me angry to hear those in the sex trade treated like dirt by those who don't know them, their lives, and their choices, but who are quite willing to despise them all the same. I know some really decent people who are sex workers. They have the right to pursue their trade and/or avocation without risk, with proper medical care, with legal rights.
Feminists will never be free of the past until we stop turning on our own. ANY of our own.
"Kevin Zuccato, head of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre in Canberra, says terrorists can gain training in games such as World of Warcraft in a simulated environment, using weapons that are identical to real-world armaments."
I think that some of those words don't mean what he thinks they mean.
Part Two: Unblocked!
(03:13:52 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: haye hh ru?
(03:13:57 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: why u r sad
(03:14:05 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: i am in here dont worry
(03:16:09 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com just sent you a Nudge!
(03:20:19 PM) Michael: Er, hello. I'm afraid that your message was missing things. Packet loss? Keyboard Error? Neurological dysfunction? Who knows. No matter, please send again. Maybe this time words will appear on my side of the screen
(03:21:34 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: yeah yeah u r so funny
(03:21:34 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: heeheheeeh
(03:21:56 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: u must be serios oky
(03:23:54 PM) Michael: Well, actually, I don't really follow college sports, and the the Okys aren't particularly popular around these parts.
(03:24:45 PM) Michael: actually, I think that is spelled Okie
(03:25:13 PM) Michael: but again, not really popular in this region so I don't know.
(03:25:18 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: oky is the paricularly piont of my and our life so we r use the oky and think about it oky so whats ur opinion about oky
(03:27:50 PM) Michael: sports fan then?
(03:28:37 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: oky
(03:30:34 PM) Michael: So are you real or are you just a gutted and abused version of Alice?
(03:31:42 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: listen me who u r ?
(03:32:37 PM) Michael: Well, Alice has better grammar and makes more sense, so we can probably scratch that off the list.
(03:33:07 PM) Michael: It is really a shame, the more recent revisions of Alice are quite entertaining.
(03:33:31 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: yas
Rather more nonsensical than last time. That takes talent.
Or a really bad attempt at an Alice type bot.
Rule #1:
If you open this you GOTTA take it. (yeah, right)
Rule # 2:
You are NOT ALLOWED to explain ANYTHING unless someone
messages you and asks
Rule #3:
Only answer True or False to the first set of questions
Q: Kissed someone on your friends list - False
Q: Been arrested?- False
Q: Kissed someone you didn't like? - False
Q: You like someone?- True
Q: Held a snake?- False
Q: Been suspended from school?- False
Q: Sang in the shower?- True
Q: Sat on a roof top?- True
Q: Been pushed into a pool with all your clothes on?- True
Q: Broken a bone?- False
Q: Shaved your head?- False
Q: Played a prank on someone?- True
Q: Had/have a gym membership?- True
Q: Made a boyfriend/girlfriend cry?- False
Q: Donated Blood?- False
Q: Had your heart broken?- False
Q: Broken someone's heart?- False
"Who was your last?"
---Last person...
1. You hung out with? Christiane
2. last person you texted? Eva
4. Went to the movies with? Matt
5. Went to the mall with? Matt
6. You talked to on the phone? Mom
7. Made you laugh? Christiane
8. You hugged? Jessica
---Would you rather...
1. Have white bread or wheat? Wheat
2. Be serious or be funny? funny
3. Drink whole or skim milk? Skim
4. Die in a fire or get shot? shot
---Choices---
1. Sun or moon?-- Moon
2. Winter or Fall?-- Fall
3. Left or right?-- left
4. Sunny or rainy? drizzly
5. Hugs or kisses? Hugs
6. Where do you live? Podunk Southern Indiana
7. Rock or Techno? Rock or SOudntrack Techno from 80s anime
8. Do you want to get married? some day
9. Do you twirl your spaghetti or cut it? twirl
10. Do You Cook? Yes, rather well
11. Current mood: happy
In the last 72 hours have you...
1. Kissed someone? Nope
2. Sang? Yes
3. Been hugged? Yes
4. Like someone you can't have? Yeah
Just got back from Jessica and Daniel's wedding. I had a great time at the reception. Best DJ I've ever heard at a dance, so I enjoyed the whole night even though I don't dance. Very little new music, no rap, no crappy midwestern dance songs (like funky chicken dance) Just enough corny stuff that the folks on the floor were having a blast.
Also, the music was, miracle of miracles, not too loud.
Held the reception at the clifty inn.
Jessica and Daniel's friends are my kind of people. Had I known them, it is possible I would have been out there with the interpretive dance folks.
The food was good. DIY salads, choose your own adventure meals (I had the asparagus, the roast potatoes, the to kill for roast beef, and some fish that was quite good.
Got to see some people I seldom see.
Got to see some people I see a little more often but not nearly enough.
Ran out of champaign before I got there.
Had Coke products, specifically Diet Coke.
Also. 4th Garter Belt.
Very awesome party. (If you didn't know all of the above are plusses)
I'm trying to find two Science Fiction short stories. No idea who wrote them, what their names are, or when they were written.
The first is about reality TV, possibly even before MTV's The Real World.
In it 3 men (Artist Athlete and something) go on a series of dates with a young woman on camera. All three of them manage to have sex with her off camera even though they are supposed to be filmed the whole time. She has a secret that they are to be told at the end. All three men fall madly in love with her. Won't give the ending away.
Second concerns a man who is saving a current addict (cyberpunk neurojack type thing) at least partially against her will. He spends days or months staying with her helping her pull her life back together. In the end it turns out that he was there initially to rob her apartment.
Hee hee.
So I need a word for a typo that goes on to influence word choice later. This happens to me a lot.
For example I recently said:
"From my come-lately position, that sounds like the definition of an early 3rd wave feminist."
I accidentally added the an which propagated to the last word, which was supposed to be feminism.
This would have given:
"From my come-lately position, that sounds like the definition of early 3rd wave feminism."
These are importantly different statements.
Yaknow what would have been great?
A forum bot that went about posting on random forums posts of the sort:
OhmyGOD!!! X kills Y by Z on Page N
Where X is a member of a X list of good or bad guy characters from Harry Potter.
Y is a complementary list of characters
Z is a manner of setting acceptable manners of death (no locking them in a dark room so that they are eaten by a Grue.
And N is a number between 1 and 759
so, a big part of why I have qbasic on my computer is that I can use it ot solve simple np complete problems, like this one:
By the way, this comic is from xkcd.com. I suspect that if we know each other in real life, you'd enjoy the comic. The rest of you? I bet you'll enjoy it too.
here's the code:
CLS
ms=4.2
mf=2.15
ff=2.75
ss=3.35
hw=3.55
fs=5.8
d=0
FOR u = 0 to 7
FOR v = 0 to 7
FOR w = 0 to 7
FOR x = 0 to 7
FOR y = 0 to 7
FOR z = 0 to 7
price = z * fs + y * hw + x * ss + w * ff + v * mf + u * ms
IF price = 15.05 THEN PRINT u; v; w; x; y; z
d = d+1
NEXT z
NEXT y
NEXT x
NEXT w
NEXT v
NEXT u
PRINT d
END
So the expected output is:
0 1 0 0 2 1
0 7 0 0 0 0
262114
meaning that the two solutions are
1 mf, 2 hw, and 1 fs
and
7 mf
the actual output is
0 1 0 0 2 1
262114
I've fiddled with the program and I had it display price after each individual set of numbers... the output at 0 7 0 0 0 0?
0 7 0 0 0 0 15.05
The program should identify that as a win. No idea why it isn't.
I want to scream. And learn a new language. And get a different computer.
Edit 11:00 AM 7/10/2007
The talented and lovely
It is also possible that qb dislikes 7. I seem to remember that being a problem years ago for something or another.
I got my own little MSN imbecile today!
Start Chat Log
(02:30:40 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: ;helloo
(02:30:41 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: voic e of th e p eople h ru?
(02:30:41 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: whats u p?
(02:34:26 PM) Michael: er something seems to be wrong with your keyboard
(02:35:15 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: why
(02:35:17 PM) Michael: your space bar is having troubles, and apparently some of your keys register only sporadically.
(02:35:37 PM) Michael: for example "voic e of th e p eople h ru?"
(02:36:45 PM) Michael: see? one word is interrupted by random spaces and then there is a cluster of letters that I'm sure would make sense if all of the keys you hit had registered.
(02:36:53 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: no no its my style
(02:37:29 PM) Michael: oh... that was on purpose?
(02:40:46 PM) Michael: Oh and also? The contraction for it is? Yeah see, that has an apostrophe.
(02:41:16 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: so explain something about u
(02:43:59 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: i am waiting for ur anwer
(02:43:59 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: *answer
(02:44:46 PM) Michael: 21st letter in the modern Latin alphabet, u was introduced to that alphabet in the 16th century. One of five vowels common to the English language, it follows the basic English rules for long and short vowel sounds.
(02:47:48 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: sorry
(02:47:48 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: so u like friendship to me..
(02:49:05 PM) Michael: U, being a letter, has no likes or dislikes, or more accurately, it has no mental states so it can have no desires.
(02:51:35 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com just sent you a Nudge!
(02:51:40 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: please what ut age
(02:51:40 PM) syedzeeshan_301@hotmail.com: please tell
(02:52:52 PM) Michael: well, u was introduced in the 16th century, and we are at the foot of the 21st century, so no more than 500 years and no less than 400 years.
(02:55:05 PM) Michael: ah a brief correction. No more than 507 years and no less than 407 years, this being the two thousand and seventh year Anno Domini
(03:00:07 PM) Message could not be sent because a connection error occurred:
ah a brief correction. No more than 507 years and no less than 407 years, this being the two thousand and seventh year Anno Domini
End Chat Log
And that's a blocked for the win ladies and gentlemen.
I am Homo sapiens sapiens descendant of H. erectus and H. habilis . My people are masters of fire and steel, water and air, of the very energies of the storms themselves. I am heir to two and a half million years of tool users, and more than a million and a half years of weapon makers. Thus I find it ridiculous that you would suggest we use our hands in a fight. When I come for you, I shall come bearing the harnessed fires of Hell itself.
MIddle of the year reading list.
Oops, forgot to post this in April. That's okay though, since I haven't read all that many new books this year.
Also? Firefox's dictionary doesn't recognize okay.
1 A Fistful of Data Stephen Dedman Hurm, well, it is a shadowrun novel that isn’t a direct riff on Gibson. Sadly, I liked the one that was a direct riff on Gibsion much better. The “party” was a little bit off, especially with their focus on non-lethals (the Mercs they were fighting would have cleaned up against the squatters.) Oh well, a fun bit of fluff.
2 The Jennifer Morgue Charles Stross. British intelligence meets lovecraft. This one had fewer laugh out loud bits than the first one (The Atrocity Archives) and the best turns of phrase were all near the end, but this did some really nice riffing on the James Bond themes, though I think that maybe the part where the characters discuss the riffs on the James Bond theme was questionable. (Oh I admit, I’m not familiar enough with JB to have picked out the variations that they talked about, and I suspect that most of the audience wouldn’t be either. That said, it strained the fourth wall to the breaking point.) Still a damned good book, with [DELETED FOR SPOILERIFICNESS]. Also, this wasn’t really the second book I read this year, just the second new book. I reread the Belgariad in-between. Still too few books for Early March of a new year, but better than 2.
3. Childe Morgan Katherine Kurtz. Good. I still wanted a new Kelson book, and the title character reached the venerable age of 4 by the last page, but I liked it better than the first in this set. I really hope that the next one covers his teen years and Brian’s young adulthood. (And the Priest whose name escapes me at the moment’s becoming a priest.) Also, I look greatly forward to watching Nigel grow up in the next book.
4. Time Travellers Pay Only Cash Spider Robinson This is supposed to be a Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon book, except that only half of the book is Callahan’s stories, and a fair chunk of what is left is not even non-Callahan’s stories, but essays. Including one of the pieces that establishes Robinson as Heinlein’s hagiographer, though to be fair, this particular essay was written for the book published as a remembrance of RAH. All in all, I thought this was fairly weak for a CCS book,
5. Gust Front John Ringo Military infatuation SF. Took me long enough to hunt down a copy (especially since it was published. For Free. On the Baen Free Library CDs.
5. When the Devil Dances John Ringo More military infatuation SF. I’m enjoying it, though I suspect that the series won’t end to my satisfaction.
6. Command Decision Elizabeth Moon
7. The Hero John Ringo and Michael Williamson Well, set a thousand years in the future of the setting of five, and I can now say that no, it didn’t though the setting is interesting. On the other hand, a thousand years of research and development ought to have brought them further than it did, especially with tame Postileen to add to the exchange of ideas (and the subjugation of the elf folks due to the fact that they directed the war to leave humanity broken at the end of the war.)
8, Deliverer C.J.Cherryh Well, more of what we expect from Bran and the horse people
9. Prodigal By the person who wrote hammerjack. Liked this one at least as much as the last. Seriously I do read non-military and or non-intelligence agency SF. I swear.
10. St. Patrick’s Gargoyle Katherine Kurtz. Um, I’d been saving this for when I got a strong urge to read more Kurtz. I haven’t read the adept books and really ought to someday, but I’ve been wanting to (do something) (Can’t remember what I was going to say
11. Off Armageddon Reef David Webber. Er, Mr Webber sure likes to rewrite the Hornblower books. This one has sailing ships.
12. Furies of Calderon Jim Butcher I grabbed this one because I wanted to read something by Butcher, but my library only has the 7th Dresden Files book (which I’ve already read.) Good. Very different from his detective novels. But different good, not different what the hell is wrong with you man, the old formula fits your style and this doesn’t!
13. The Android’s Dream John Scalzi. YANJSBTIWWTAL. Detectives, intrigue, shooty bits. Also, a nearly extinct breed of sheep and a would be alien overlord.
14. Storm Front (DF1) Jim Butcher
15. Fool Moon (DF2) Jim Butcher
16. Grave Peril (DF3) Jim Butcher
17. Summer Knight (DF4) Jim Butcher
18. Death Masks (DF5) Jim Butcher
19. Blood Rites (DF 6) Jim Butcher
20. Proven Guilty (DF8) Jim Butcher
21. White Night (DF9) Jim Butcher
22. Restoration of Faith and Something Borrowed (DF 0 and 7.5, short stories) Jim Butcher
So I read these straight through over about 4 days. Way better than the last series of mystery/detective/whatever books I read (Stephanie Plum.) Harry is more competent, way more faithful when he is in a sexual relationship with someone, and just a more interesting person than Stephanie. Also, he suffers real consequences for his actions. A few minor complaints. 1 The Fallen Storyline in book nine was resolved way too quickly for this series’ pace. The gun wasn’t fired in act 3, it was fired right after it was pointed out. Harry needs to hurry up and either give the sword to Murphy or start boinking her (his word) or ideally both. I mean sure Butcher is setting up the whole Arthurian line for her, but enough is enough. Hee book nine of approximately 20+3! Yay!
23 Academ’s Fury Jim Butcher
24 Cursor’s Fury Jim Butcher
I often forgot that I was reading something by the same author as the Dresden Files (I did the same with the Wolf books and A Brother’s Price by Wen Spencer.) I liked both sets muchly.
25 Blood Name Robert Thurston. I read the first book in this set years and years ago. It is battle tech, mostly set before and during the Clan Invasion from the view point of a member of Jade Falcon. Honestly? These books fall prey to the same weakness that a lot of game fiction (and a lot of non-game fiction) do. Books one and two spend way too much time paraphrasing the descriptions of various things from the setting books. (In the case of Battletech Fiction, that goes both ways. Sometimes descriptions from books are co-opted for manuals.) It wasn’t quite as bad as Faith and Fire where the characters were carefully stated to have exactly the load outs that were listed in the codex and much of the description came directly out of the codex’s fluff text.)
26. Falcon Guard Robert Thurston Some of the same problems as the first two, though with less “it came from the rulebook” stuff in it and tighter plotting and writing. Not as good as the later Grey Death Legion stuff or the best of the TSR books, but much better than the first two.
27. Mutineer’s Moon David Webber
28. The Armageddon Inheritance David Webber
29. Heirs of Empire David Webber
These three are a trilogy together. Fun reads... themes that Webber has explored in depth. Glad I read Off Armageddon Reef fist, or it would have felt like more of a rehash than it did. (Webber has no less than 3 distinct settings where characters uplift a society’s weapon making to something just before the Napoleonic Wars. Two of them make an attempt to produce smaller versions of Horatio Hornblower’s style of navy. (The third set? Patience. They are 30,31,32,and 33.) By the way, the black power warfare in this series is actually only book 3. Book two is a hidden invaders story and book 2 is an endless hordes of aliens that must be stopped, but act in particularly silly manners story. Book 3 is the shipwrecked in a world wide theocracy story, one that feels very much like Off Armageddon Reef.)
30 March Upcountry John Ringo and David Webber
31 March to the Sea John Ringo and David Webber
32 March to the Stars John Ringo and David Webber
33 We Few John Ringo and David Webber
Shipwrecked. Endless Combat turns spoiled prince into bloodthirsty killing machine who gets the job done at any cost. 8 months of Endless Combat does the opposite to a number of his body guards. Stone age to early black powder natives and an endless succession of localized uplifting from a pike and shield unit from warriors to arbuquses to rifles and proper cannons as they walk across a continent. Political upheaval and space navies in the last book. Space combat that is remarkably similar to the Harrington books. (no surprise there.) These books probably sparked much of the research that lead to the ones above and Off Armageddon Reef.
34 Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall Bill Willingham et al. This is a prequel to the Fables comics with a framing story set several hundred years earlier and a bunch of sub stories set throughout the history of the fable worlds. It was enough to convince me to add it (the comics) to my “hunt down as soon as you have money again” list.
35 Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. Cory Doctorow See 36 for my hagiography of Cory. This book is an incredibly cool mixture of developing culture and mythmaking. (At least I think the son of the mountain and a washing machine are new bits of myth. It feels like Gaiman’s American Gods mythology but created from whole cloth.) GO check it out from his website (www.craphound.com,) then go buy your own copy.
36 Overclocked Cory Doctorow Hum. Award winning author. Postpost cyberpunk. Cory is an active member of the free as in speech movement, working against people who would prefer all expression to come at the sole control of major media cartels. Open internet, communications systems that aren’t controlled or owned by governments or cartels, a dozen other things. Cory is also a damned good writer from the generation that’s giving us Elizabeth Bear, Scott Lynch, Sarah Monette, and John Scalzi (I know there is some time overlap, and I’m being research lazy). He’s a proponent of creative commons, and before I’d ever picked up any of his books, I’d been reading his work on boingboing. This collection of short stories is, as expected, excellent.
37 Breakfast With the Ones You Love Eliot Fintushel Urban Fantasy. Home made Talmudic space ships. Looks that kill. Teen Angst. Russian Mafia. Boxing. Bringing about the Eschaton. A talking cat. A good deal of fun within these pags.
38. Making Comics Scott McCloud. This is Scott at his best. Witty, excited, full of the promise of the media and new technologies, lucid and coherent, grounded. There are hundreds of how to draw comics books. There are many fewer on the craft and art of all of the other tasks. Only part of a book though. The rest is online, though I haven’t read it. Liked this one almost as much as Understanding Comics.
39. What if the Moon Didn’t Exist? Neilf Comins A double handful of what if scenarios about the formation of the earth and how small (and large) changes would influence the development of life on earth. Pretty good. A couple points here and there that could go either way, but then that is always the danger in speculating about things like changes propagating through deep time.
40. Mystic and Rider Sharon Shinn Fun read. Actually grabbed this one because the cover of the second or possibly third book grabbed my attention. Fantasy novel with a romance sub plot. Hope it stays that way. (I have read too many series like that where they spiraled into Romance Novels with fantasy trappings by the 3rd or 4th books. We’ll see.) The first one is worth a read at least. (The worldbuilding exposition/dialogue thingy at the beginning was a little clumsy, but I don’t think that there is any really good way to do an info dump, and false transparency is apparently in vogue at the present. Personally? I’d prefer narrator asides *coughcoughHeinleincoughcoughLynchcoughcough* Not that anything I’ve ever written with a “here’s how the world works dialogue worked as well as this one.
Most moving, she said, were older constituents who first supported the amendment, but changed after meeting with gay men and lesbians.
One woman had “asked me to put it on the ballot for a vote, but since then a lovely couple moved in,” Ms. Candaras said. “She said, ‘They help me with my lawn, and if there can’t be marriage in Massachusetts, they’ll leave and they can’t help me with my lawn.’”
So, gays? remember, do lawn work for little old ladies and they'll write their law makers asking to let you get married.
From the today show from the last week about American Idol:
It will be the Upset of the Ages.
America has a new Idol to Worship.
*blinks*
Also, Caffeine Patches
and:
(11:40:23 AM) Michael: I hate it when they get newage in my stuff
(11:40:40 AM) PG: It rhymes with sewage
Just read books 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,,part of 7, 7.5,8, and 9 of the Dresden files. This is much less embarassing than having read the first 11+1 stephanie plum novels. Of course, Dresden has a lot less sex (and is way more faithful about who he has sex with) than Stephanie, and he is a lot more competant (and way less immune to bad shit) than she is.
Hum, major complaints:
1. He needs to hurry the hell up and give the sword to Murphy or take it himself. (Yeah yeah, England's Darkest Hour and all that shit. So, notice there is a war on? Give it to the chick.)
2. He needs to either find a cure for the half-vampire, or he and Murphey need to pair up. 4 years. Jeeze. It would make dealing with his apprentice much easier too.
3. While act 1 is definitely before act 3, I don't think that Checkov really meant use it immediately. Unless she gets resurrected soonish, I think he jumped the gun on the Fallen's shadow's plotline.
On the other hand, I want to have written those books.
SO, last year I read Wen Spencer's A Brother's Price . Base premise is an alternate earth where male births happen less than 1/10th as often as female births, and thus men are very much disenfranchised.
I like the story, I like the setting, but for the past year, a couple things have been nagging at me.
One, I want to know the mechanism for this culling.
There are textual hints that it originates with the men, specifically that some men ten to sire more male children than others, but this could very well be on the level of folk lore. Further more, I'd want to know if this was genetic (and if it is, how it is maintained. Imbalances on that scale tend to even themselves out in most populations quite quickly, and her humans aren't different enough behaviorally or socially to counter the selective pressure toward a 50/50 mix. In fact, their society seems to be set up to encourage it, putting a strong value on males who sire male children. With the extremely large brood numbers within a single family and the tendency to sell off male children, even small increases in the number of male children in a family would spread throughout a region in a hand full of generations.) It can't be a recessive X linked trait or there would be people out there with normal splits of male and female progeny, or even a co dominant x-linked (like ss anemia if it was on the X. Only female double carriers and male carriers would die of it. Wait, you'd never get female double carriers since male carriers are never born. Or it would only be with errors in the production of germ cells. Assume an Xx female and an xy male, Xy don't make it to term. so 1/3 of the total offspring carry the X gene with a tendency to half as many boy children as girls. In the next generation, the girls who have the xx gene set would tend to have more offspring than their sisters with the Xx set, if for no other reason than that they'll have fewer misscarrages, by about a quarter. Very quickly, the doubled effects of 1/4th again as many children, twice as many boys, and2.3s of even a carrier's children not being carriers, would make the X gene uncommon) and we would see those families grow very quickly. Oops more later. I'll get to my arguement for sperm banks shortly.
free beer
So we all know what Free, as in Beer means, but what are the alternatives that require us to specify that something is free like beer is free? Are there a standard accepted set, or did the free as in beer creators slack on the job?
My sister crushes the hopes and dreams of innocent notes with her capo.
She forces them to become sharks, but what if their aspirations are to be porpoi? I mean imagine a poor young note who has always dreamt of swimming and frolicking with the other porpoi, and then she comes and sticks a capo on it and turns it into a vicious shark.
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