Archive for category Books
The Selfish Gene: curious family mechanics and the question of population
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Books on 2009/04/25
In many species a mother can be more sure of her young than a father can. The mother lays the visible, tangible egg, or bears the child. She has a good chance of knowing for certain the bearers of her own genes. The poor father is much more vulnerable to deception. It is therefore to be expected that fathers will put less effort than mother into caring for young.
…
Similarly, maternal grandmothers can be more sure of their grandchildren than paternal grandmothers can, and might be expected to show more altruism than paternal grandmothers. This is because they can be sure of their daughter’s children, but their son may have been cuckolded.
…
Indeed in a society with a high degree of marital infidelity, maternal uncles should be more altruistic than ‘fathers’ since they have more grounds of confidence in their relatedness to the child. They know that the child’s mother is at least their half-sister. The ‘legal’ father knows nothing.
The Selfish Gene, Chapter 6, Genemanship, page 106
[Wynne-Edwards] suggested that individual animals deliberately and altruistically reduce their birth rates for the good of the group as a whole.
…
We have probably all seen examples of the startling calculations that can be used to bring [unchecked population growth] home. For instance, the present population of Latin America [as of 1976] is around 300 million, and already many of them are under-nourished. But if the population continued to increase at present rate, it would take less than 500 years to reach the point where the people, packed in a standing position, formed a solid human carpet over the whole are of the continent. This is so, even if we assume them to be very skinny — a not unrealistic assumption. In 1,000 years from now they would be standing on each other’s sholders more than a million deep. By 2,000 years, the mountain of people, travelling outwards at the speed of light, would have reached the edge of the known universe.
The Selfish Gene, Chapter 7, Family planning, pages 110-111
Hmm, so I guess the question of space travel will be answered by the Duggar’s of the world. Well, at least now we know what their contribution to humanity will be.
A lack of updates, an extended post – part the third
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Blog, Books, Reviews, Sci-Fi on 2009/04/05
The third part of this extended post is really not necessary. I just felt weird having only two parts to the extended post. So this will be almost unrelated to the rest. Here (and by which I mean “after the jump”), I’ll write a bit about the work of Neal Stephenson.
And here’s that jump.
A lack of updates, an extended post – part the second
Below is a continuation of this post.
Getting right into the middle of the post immediately after the jump. This will be a bit about Japan and a religious ramble/question.
A lack of updates, an extended post – part the first
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Blog, Books, Sci-Fi, Writing on 2009/04/05
I haven’t posted in a while. That’s an understatement, sure. I haven’t posted in five months. I can give a few reasons, like work, NaNoWriMo, work, laziness, work, lack of material, work, Japan trip, work, etc. And I’ll give those reasons (as well as a bit of an explanation for each of them) below, but they’re not real reasons. Sure, they’re “reasons”, technically, but they’re not the reasons I haven’t been posting. There’s no reason for that. I just haven’t been. If you want a reason, you’ve come to the wrong place. On the other hand, if you want some random rambling, a possible religion rant, a crappy attempt at a sci-fi novel and some minor notes about a 2.5 week-trip through Japan… well, keep on reading. The first part of this extended post is just after the jump.
Reviews of "Subterranean", "UBIK" and "Destiny's Road"
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Books, Reviews, Sci-Fi on 2008/07/12
During the week I spent in Michigan – away from work, the internet, my Xbox… well, you get it – I had time to write up reviews for three books I have read. These are Subterranean by James Rollins, UBIK by Philip K Dick and Destiny’s Road, by Larry Niven.
Reviews right after the jump.
The works of Robert J. Sawyer
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Books, Reviews, Sci-Fi on 2008/06/28
This will be a review of the books by Robert J. Sawyer that I have read. Those not interested in such things can spend their time better by perusing the FAIL Blog or catching up on film trailers.
Reviews after the jump.
Yet Another Lack of Posts
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Blog, Books, Games, Humor, Pictures, Random Thoughts, Religion, Reviews, Sci-Fi on 2008/05/11
Once again, a considerable amount of time has passed without a new post appearing in this space. But this time I have valid reasons! It’s even plural, as in there is more than one explanation for me dropping the ball on blogging once again.
The main reason (look, I even ranked them!) is that my right arm is in a splint, which translates to “no typing, no driving, no sushi, no gaming“. Man, that’s really harsh, since I love to do all of those. In short, it means that since this Monday I haven’t been working, blogging, driving myself or having sushi. I have come up with a way, of sorts, to play GTA IV, but it’s not a perfect solution that starts to hurt after a few hours, but it’s better than nothing.
All this spare time is damn ironic: I can come up with things to write about or stuff to do at work, but Ican’t actually do anything. Bah. I did manage to get some work done on Friday, but it was slow going. So here are a few things I can remember at this late hour.
PostSecret for May 11th
Aside from the usual commentary about the secrets (one to follow), I have my usually-negative commentary about PostSecret: I don’t like “themes”. It’s sort of boring to see a whole page of the same damn secret, over and over. Sure, there’s a bit of variety, but, for instance, most of this week’s secrets are “I wuv you mommy” or “I wuv my kids”. Big whoop. I’m not sure if all the secrets are so similar naturally, or if that ass-hat of a “blogger” specifically biases the collection for his own reasons.
I read about this a few weeks back and I gotta say, “what’s the big deal?” It’s just a woman who became a man, kept her reproductive organs and then decided to become pregnant (his wife is unable to have children). Big whoop. The guy went on Oprah and called this a miracle. Ha. It’s not a miracle, it just another (genetic) female giving birth. It happens every day. It’s not a miracle. Considering that the father is on hormones, it might be a miracle for the baby to turn out to be perfectly fine, but that’s about it. There’s nothing interesting about this.
To the author: (1) it’s your imaginary friend, you can come up with reasons for doing this, and (2) what do you care if a pseudo-man is pregnant?
To the author: chicken-shit.
GTA IV
I love cabs! Often times there are instances when I need to get from one end of an island to another, or even to a different island, so I simply jump into a cab, point the driver the right way and enjoy the ride. I use the time to admire the city, wonder at the great level of detail or make mission-related phone calls. Or, hell, just chill out and listen to some conservative gun-nut on the radio. It’s great.
But now, after just unlocking the second island, I stumbled onto something even cooler: helicopter tours! Now I can admire the city from above while listening to a right-wing, crack-pot tour guide who goes on about the downfall of society. How awesome is that? And since this is GTA, you can always finish your tour by pulling the guy out of the cockpit and beating him to death with a baseball bat. I haven’t done that yet, but it’s certainly on my mind.
Oh, and speaking of beating people to death: it seems you don’t actually kill most people in Liberty City. I can shoot up a pedestrian, but give them a minute or two and they’ll get up with the minimum amount of health and try to stumble away. Curious. Though that’s only for non-mission NPC’s: if you pop a cap in someone’s ass in the course of the story, they’re certifiable fish-bait.
Argh
Typing with only my left hand is a royal pain, not to mention it’s so gorram slow and error-prone, that I must call it a night. Perhaps sometime later I’ll write down some more of my rambling-like thoughts from this week, but don’t count on it.
Oh, I’ve also started reading “Snow Crash” and aside from being good cyberpunk (I wish “Neuromancer” was more like this), it’s a hilarious book loaded with great similes and LOL-worthy expressions and acronyms. A must-read! For those who read.
Too long
It’s been so long since I’ve posted here, and much longer since I’ve written something original, that I’m kicking myself. Well, sort of. I mean, there’s gotta be a reason why I’ve basically dropped the ball on blogging and couldn’t even remember my login for WordPress, right? In a few words, I’ve been busy. After the jump, more words about what I’ve been up to. Actually, it’s something like five posts all rolled into one. Though, honestly, it’s nothing interesting or worthwhile, hence the reason for not putting the whole post on the main page.
A word or two about 'The Wreck'
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Books, Reviews, Sci-Fi on 2008/02/27
A bit of a book review. Don’t think it’ll be much of a spoiler, since not many readers are likely to read the book, but whatever. Rest of the post, along with some of my thought-processes typed up, right after the jump.
English-major novels and recursion
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Books, Programming, Random Thoughts, Sci-Fi, Work on 2008/02/14
Rachel (my coworker) made an interesting point earlier today. She said that as programmers we appreciates the structure, the semantics, more than the content. That is, she was speaking of programming languages and our ability to appreciate a well-written piece of code, regardless of the purpose. Similarly, she said that we are people who appreciate a good turn of phrase, regardless of the content. I whole-heartedly agree. Reading ‘The Wreck of the River of Stars’ I have come to love and long for an elegant simile or a perfectly-executed double entendre, in the same way I love an ingenious recursive function or a simple and efficient bit of assembly code. Oh, sure, I’d rather the simile was about solar sails and the function in question was not Sharepoint-related, but I think I can enjoy the beauty regardless of the context.
The hell?
A Jumper video game? Oh, man. Now I will know how those Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, Golden Compass, etc. fans feel when their beloved story is sucked dry by the entertainment industry to create a crappy game.
Here’s the Kotaku story and trailer that made me weep.
That video looks horrible! I don’t think I’ve seen worse game graphics in quite a long time. And it’s one thing that the movie take a different direction that the book, I’ve come to accept that already, but the game seems to be really taking things too far. In the trailer, the teleporter kills people in a variety of ways that just weren’t in the original novels: one guy is dropped into a shark tank, another character is left at the mercy of a polar bear, and, this is a bit odd, that same character seems to be left in the shockwave of an atomic blast. Huh?
Anyway. While I don’t think I’ll be buying this game, I’ll probably try to rent it from Blockbuster, just to see what those bastards are doing with the story.
An open letter to English majors
To Taty and English majors everywhere:
I finally understand why you like classic literature that is sprinkled with 5-dollar words and lacks a story. I understand why you enjoy mind-numbingly-boring narratives that only work to saciate your thirst for adjective-filled writing styles. I am currently reading “The Wreck of the River of Stars” and that book fulfills almost every criteria for a classic English-major-endorsed masterpiece: the author goes on and on about every minute detail, nuance of character and minor past happenstance; he uses 5-dollar words, complicated metaphors and exquisite play on words; there are entire chapters devoted to character analysis/development that at the same time manages not to progress the story forward by even a millimeter.
I have so far progressed 200 pages out of 1100, (and here is yet another criteria you people so long for: 10-pound books), and not much at all has happened. But I do know an awful lot about each and every member of the crew. Hooray!
So, that being said, how do I feel about the book? It’s great. Yes, it’s slow, the author is quite verbose and it seems that every single word a character utters is misunderstood by another character (which, obviously, has to be expounded in detail as being a result of each character’s varied upbringing and personality), but so far I like it. The word-play is quite good and reminds me of some of the better episodes of House (and I can’t believe I have to wait three more weeks!). The character development, though drawn-out, introduces more of the universe that the story is based in. And that’s the main reason I put up with and enjoy this experience: the story, once you get past the exposition, is a captivating one. Which is not something I could say of “the classics”: I could care less about the romantic prancing of 18th century Englishmen or bootlegging millionaires (man, I hated that book). “The Wreck of the River of Stars” is a book about a revamped magnetic-sail spaceship flying to Jupiter. Aside from the obvious sci-fi angle, I am drawn to the story by the whole “magnetic-sail” angle, as that is something I have been very recently studying and quasi-experimenting with. Oh, and the spaceship’s computer might be self-aware. I don’t know, I’m just a fifth of the way into the book, but it seems that the computer might pull a HAL fairly soon and try to “off” the crew.
So, there we go, I’ve admitted to having a problem, but I don’t think I’ll be seeking help for it. I quite like Michael Flynn’s style and prose and the next book on my list will be his novel “Eifelheim“. Let’s see how that turns out.
I really HATE Vista
I can’t stand Windows Vista. I absolutely hate it and I’m considering upgrading to Windows XP.
(Note: This may seem to be a conflict-of-interest post, but these are my opinions as a user, not as a Microsoft employee.)
So, where do I begin? Ah, yes, the ubiquitous bullet-point list to sort out my grievances.
- Memory hog: Vista uses memory like nobody’s business. My computer at work started out with 2 Gigs of RAM. I decided to upgrade that when I noticed Vista routinely taking up 3 or more Gigs, even when I had only Firefox, Outlook and Remote Desktop Connection Manager. So, 2 Gigs later (for a total of 4 Gigs), I find Vista using 5 Gigs of RAM. And the same thing happens at home. Ahh!
- Folder settings: This is one of the most frustrating things about Vista. It’s especially frustrating because it’s hard to explain the problem, so St. Google has no idea what I’m asking. The problem is that every time I open a folder in Explorer, the folder’s settings have magically, and randomly, changed. Example: I open a folder, see that the files in it are shown as thumbnails instead of as a list and that the columns don’t have “Modified”, “Type” and other information. So, I make all of these changes, do my work and close Explorer. Fast forward half an hour. I open that same damn folder to find that instead of a list (or thumbnails) the files are shown as tiles. And they’re grouped by extensions. And the columns once again don’t have “Modified” or “Type”. So I scream obscenities, say yet again that I’m going to switch to XP and go on setting the folder to look as it should. Repeat 1-6 times per day.
- Audigy 2: I have an Audigy 2 sound card, and it doesn’t exactly play nice with Vista — the damn thing makes constant crackling noises, like static from a radio. The only way to minimize the effect is to turn down the volume, but then I can’t hear whatever it is I’m listening to. Ridiculous! Yes, yes, it’s not exactly a Vista issue, but it does take two to tango. Or, in this case, to work together.
- Compatibility: Compatibility of software, as well as hardware, sorta sucks. Yes, I have mentioned this above, and yes, I am running x64 Vista, a potent combination of new technology, but still, if the thing is available in stores and is selling like hotcakes, you’d expect either Microsoft or device/software manufacturers to step up and provide the necessary updates, but no, ain’t happening. What is happening? Well, I can’t use my webcam, my wireless access point, my e-book software (that’s a BIG problem), TaskBar shuffle, the graphics drivers are having problems (Nvidia at home and ATI at work), the above-mentioned Audigy 2 issue, “Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones” refuses to run, as does “Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow”.
- “Error detection”: Vista has this horrific feature that if it thinks that a program has crashed, it actually closes it. Maybe that avoids crashes, but a few times I’ve seen programs behave in a way that was expected (I’ve seen programs do that in XP) that I know won’t result in a crash, yet Vista just kills them. This actually happened while I was writing the post: I started another application that I knew would require lots of memory, which would force Firefox to be off-loaded onto disk, so that when I came to Firefox, it would take a few seconds to restore. Well, Vista noted those few seconds and thought that Firefox was crashing. In this case, Firefox came back soon enough, but there have been instances when Vista closed the browser, saying that it crashed. Hmm.
- TrustedInstaller.exe: Where to start with this one. Well, first things first, its name. I mean, come on, if you wanted to give somebody a good reason not to trust a program, you name it “Trusted”. At first I actually thought it was a virus or something, but it appears to be part of Vista (and no jokes about Vista being a virus!). TrustedInstaller is a program that pops up at random times and tries to utilize 100% of the CPU for something like 5 minutes at a time. AFAIK, the program starts up randomly.
- Not being an Admin: I’m not an administrator on my computer. When I run a program, I want to know that it has all the privileges it may need. WinRar, for some reason, has serious problems running if User Account Control (the thing that asks me to authorize every little thing) is enabled. Like, it may not start at all or, on a good day, I’ll have to actually authorize WinRar to start, something that I don’t have to do for other applications. Better yet, some programs don’t even make it so apparent that there’s something wrong: they run, without errors, and never bother to inform you that because you didn’t run them in Raised Mode (as Administrator) they are unable to complete a specific task. Argh.
- Taskbar ordering: Vista has a tendency to, for some stupid reason, rearrange the programs in the Taskbar whenever a program “freezes”. See, Vista has this great sixth-sense kind of thing where it knows that a program is taking too long to run, so it does some weird voodoo with the program window, highlighting it in a specific way. Well, that’d be nice and all, except that 9 out of 10 times, the program unfreezes and keeps on working just fine, so you’re distracted every time a process takes a bit longer than Vista thinks it should. But, that’s not all. When this “freeze” cycle happens, the program moves in the taskbar from wherever it was to the very end, making it seem that it was the last program to be launched. It’s really annoying when Outlook moves from the spot it was in for the last three days to some random new location, all because it “froze” and made Vista crap its pants.
- Same content, new locations: Vista offers very little new functionality over XP, but you’d be hard-pressed to confirm that, as everything has been shuffled around: menus are in places, the control you were expecting in this tab is actually in a completely different form, etc. It’s like someone (Microsoft, in this case) took a book, let’s say a chemistry text book, swapped a few chapters around, put a “BRAND NEW” sticker on the cover and sold the whole thing for double the original price: it looks pretty, but there isn’t much new and now I can’t find the old stuff.
- GTA: SA: When I play Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas at work (after hours, of course), 3 times out of 4 my play is ended when the game crashes. This happens if I press the escape button to see the menu: there’s a chance that the game will freeze. Just from going from the game to the menu! I checked this at home just now and gotten the same results, that if I go from the game to the menu, eventually the game will crash. The odds of a game crashing on a single transition are fairly low, but considering that I have to pause the game a few times and will usually play for a lengthy period of time, the chances of the crash occurring before I’ve had my fill of fun is fairly high.
- Copying files: Try to copy a large amount of data, like a few gigabytes of photos from one disk to another, and Vista slows to a damn crawl. It’s horrific: applications stop responding, everything slows down, simple things like IE take 10-20 seconds to switch tabs, etc. If you’re planning on moving data, make a sandwich, cause you won’t be able to do much else. At least, not with your computer.
- Basic Theme Mode: If you’re using an application that needs 3D acceleration (I think…), Vista switches into a Basic Theme Mode, which is basically a prettier XP look, lacking the newer Aero interface. The problem with this mode is that it causes slower graphical performance in Firefox, IE, a Java IDE and some other applications: the mouse doesn’t move smoothly, it’s slow and jumpy. (What I mean by “I think” is that this happens when I use such applications as the in-browser Divx player. I remember there being other cases in which this happened, but can’t recall the exact circumstances.)
- Resource hog: Vista requires, and uses, a lot of resources. It’s not really an issue for me and everyone in the world is already aware of this little fact, so I don’t even know why I’m writing about. Bah.
- Sony Reader: More compatibility woes, but whatever. Sony’s atrocious software and e-book store require XP. 32-bit XP. And nothing else! You can’t buy books from the Sony Connect Store without the client software, and you can’t install the software on Vista! Argh! Until I flattened an XP server at work to install Vista on (need I say that that was a mistake?), I used that computer to buy books, but now I don’t even have that. I have a second partition with XP on my home computer, but that version is x64! Here’s hoping Heinlein’s “The Puppet Masters” will last until I’m in Chicago next week: my dad is running XP x86.
But, to be fair, there are things about Vista that are good:
- Vista is necessary to run “Halo 2″ and “Flight Simulator X”.
- Vista Ultimate x64 can reference 128 GB of RAM, while XP (x86) will only go as high as 3-3.5 GB.
- It looks nice.
You know, that’s it. I wish I could say something more, but I just can’t think of many reasons to use Vista.
Anyway, I think that’s about it. I started writing this post about a week ago and have been adding on items as I remember/encounter them, and I think it’s about time I posted this thing.
Of gods and things
I’ve recently finished reading “American Gods”. Gotta say, one of the longest books I’ve read. Not specifically in terms of (electronic) pages, but just how long it took. You know what I mean: a short book can go really slowly, while you can be sprinting right along through a tome. For instance, “1984″ is going by very quickly. I’ve just started on it and already I’m about half-way through. But, back to the matter at hand.
I’ve said before that “American Gods” was a great book. And, at that time, it was. But toward the end I realized that, while it was still great, there was just too damn much of it. You know how that is: you like ice cream, but a whole pint of it is just pushing it. Same thing here. “American Gods” could have been half as long and still have been just as good. The prose was excellent, the descriptions wonderful, the conversation snappy, the gods… somewhat boring. The thing was that Gaiman spent so much time describing the gods, in their original locales or here-now, that I simply got bored. There was no action whatsoever, and considering that the subject was a war between the new and the old gods, I was expecting, well, something! Generally speaking, the energy level never rose above a 6 (out of 10) and almost constantly hovered at 4. There just wasn’t a lot to get excited about. Gaiman managed to bore the crap out of me at even the most lively parts of the book, nevermind the long periods of recounting step-by-step the events of Shadow’s mundane existence in a small Wisconsin town.
But, anyway, now that the pitiful excuse for a book review is done with, I can get down to the mini-rant for the evening.
How come all the cool gods have been forgotten while the wimps remained? The old gods were something cool, something I could even get behind. Not in the way of believing in them, of course. But something like having a drink to thank Ares for a good head-shot in ‘Halo’, that’d be interesting. Of course the attribution in this case is done purely for the hell of it, for fun: I know that I made that head-shot, I know that there are no all-powerful gods on Mount Olympus who give a rat’s ass of how I do in a game. Or that there is a Christian god who deems one baseball team more deserving to win another silly game. Just saying, those are equivalent.
So, how come we lost the cool gods, gods who like a bit of sacrifice here, a little feast there, only to be replaced by gods who deem it necessary for people to be boring and mundane? Why did gods change to desire passive sheep as followers? Did this change happen because the religious following has increased with time? Certainly it seems that streamlining worship to one god would increase “efficiency” (read: brain-washing), while a more passive audience is easier to control. But these are just theories, I’m not sure what the truth is.
"Making of". Of sorts.
I feel I should provide a bit of an insight into how this blog is written and updated. From the outside, it may seem the answer is “infrequently” or “poorly”. All too true. But here’s why.
Lately, work has been a monstrous pain: there’s lots of things to do, not enough time to do most of them, and yet all of them are being pushed as the most important tasks. First and foremost, I have to investigate the new features I will be responsible for. First and foremost, I have to fix bugs in my old features. First and foremost, I have to attend meetings about both. First and foremost, I have to answer to six people why I’m behind schedule. There’s a pattern here. All of this makes for a stressful day, an unhappy me and an almost-forgotten-about blog. Hence, the recent lack of updates.
Now, here’s a small foray into what makes it into the blog and exactly how. I get ideas. Strange things I think about on the way to work or during yet-another coma-inducing meeting. Then I e-mail myself whatever idea I can still remember by the time I get to a computer. Right now, I have 12 unread, self-addressed e-mails with such descriptive titles as “idea”, “for the blog” or simply “thoughts”. So, once a week (or so) I sit down, sift through the rubble and dredge out whatever I still find interesting. Those thoughts are sometimes enough to fill a few pages-worth with crazy ramblings. Most of the time, though, I just make bullet lists and blabber on about entirely disjointed concepts.
So, here’s what’s on tonight’s menu:
Josh Groban’s “Awake” CD sucks. It’s essentially rap. When he’s not singing in Italian, he’s reading prose to semi-classical music. I’m sorry, what the hell is that? I’m no expert when it comes to music, but it seems that songs sound better when the lyrics actually rhyme. I don’t know, that’s just me. What he sings in Italian is great and I adore it, but I find myself fast-forwarding past the rest of the songs that he sings in English. Maybe that’s his new style? Or maybe I just don’t “get it” (which is quite possible). I know I loved his first album (“Josh Groban”) when I first heard it in college. I really like “Closer”. But “Awake” disappoints and bugs me. Like I said, seems more like rap. Or some guy reading a phone book.- People stumble onto this blog for a variety of reasons: some of them might be regular readers (wishful thinking), but most come here by way of a search engine. Here’s a choice list of verbatim search terms that leads people to this blog. In [brackets] are my comments, not part of the actual query:
- CSI “feather database”
- picture of a cartoon saying SICK BASTARD
- alien pick [I think this refers to a guitar pick with an alien picture. Maybe?]
- gta sa hot coffee clips
- spying on boyfriend
- thick babies [WTF?]
- cocaine happiness quotes
- blank gun TV rules [Are they wondering what rules actors on TV follow when using a gun?]
- screenplay randomizer
- reverse determinism [Wait, what? Who in the world is wondering about reverse determinism?!]
- dish chairs with fuzzy coverings
And every day (really) there’s someone looking for an electronic copy of “Jumper”, “Replay” or a Heinlein book.
People end up here for really strange reasons. - Stephen Fry told an interesting story during the sixth episode of season 1 (series “A”) of QI:
I was in a room with Paul Merton and Nicholas Parsons… Paul Merton was writing on this piece of paper for quite a long time, and Nicholas Parsons said to him “What are you writing?”, and Paul said, “It’s a suicide note.” [*] And Nicholas said, “Oh”. And then Paul said, “Sign here, Nicholas, would you?”
Now, that part denoted with the [*] is the interesting point. It’s a point at which I laughed really hard. On the show, however, there was dead silence. It wasn’t until Fry said “sign here, Nicholas”, that the panel and the audience broke up in laughter. Is it bad form to laugh at something so drastic and uncommon? How often does it happen that you’re present in the room with a person in the process of writing a suicide note? What is happening at that moment that the person in question decided, right there and then, to end their life? This reminds me of a PostSecret card (that is now inaccessible, thanks to Frank’s asinine posting practices) where the author say something along the lines of “[Someone] called me and asked me how to spell [some word]. I later read it in his suicide note. He was writing the note while talking on the phone with me.” I like that card, wish I could see it again.
Fry follows up his anecdote with the following (paraphrased):The Spanish general and political leader Ramón Blanco y Erenas, when asked by a priest on his death bed, “Do you forgive your enemies?”, said “No, I have no enemies, I’ve had them all shot.”
At this point both the audience and the panel laugh. Murder is funny but suicide isn’t?
- Good night.
A few minor updates
Some things have changed, both on this blog and off. Here’s a bullet-list:
- I’ve changed the look of the site. Which is sort of hard to miss, unless you’re reading this through an RSS feed. The different look is to accomodate Flickr pictures. The previous template was about 400 pixels wide, so the default 500-wide pictures didn’t fit.
- I got myself a camera: Nikon D80. (Amazon link, Wikipedia link) It’s beautiful! So, as I am prone to do, I have gone nuts, snapping pictures like a mad man.
- To accomodate my new-found addiction, or maybe to fuel it, I’ve got a Flickr Pro account. It comes with unlimited uploads and storage. So far, it’s a pretty good service. They have some issues to work out, like easily setting sets to be public or private (ATM, I think you have to see all the pictures inside a set to be either public or private, sets themselves don’t seem to have a permission flag), but overall I am very satisfied. A coworker said that Flickr has a public API, so maybe I can code some sort of batch-editor for that specific purpose. We’ll see.
- Oh, here’s the page of my photos: Flickr link. There are private sets, like pictures of my parents, my coworkers or friends. If you’d like to see them, drop me a line.
- Yesterday, for the first time ever, I went to Belltown at night. Yikes. Finding parking at 11pm on a Saturday night is an experience I am not too anxious to repeat any time soon. But, it was worth it. I went to Umi Sake (link) and was thouroughly impressed and satisfied: the sushi was great (and there was quite a bit of it), the sake hit the spot and the steamed peas are a good starter.
- Lately, I’ve found myself placing a bookmark every time I see a funny or really quotable passage in the book I’m reading. It’s a good thing these books and bookmarks are electronic, ’cause I use lots of them. Here’s a short list of these passages, taken from ‘American Gods’:
- “I got a son, stupid as a man who bought his stupid at a two-for-one sale, and you remind me of him.”
- The song on the jukebox ended, and for a moment the bar fell quiet, every conversation at a lull.
“Someone once told me that you only get those everybody-shuts-up-at-once moments at twenty past or twenty to the hour,” said Shadow. - “The boundaries of our nation, sir? Why sir, on the north we are bounded by the Aurora Borealis, on the east we are bounded by the rising sun, on the south we are bounded by the procession of the Equinoxes, and on the west by the Day of Judgement.” – The American Joe Miller’s Jest Book
- Shadow had done three years in prison. He was big enough and looked don’t-fuck-with-me enough that his biggest problem was killing time.
- [Shadow is talking to a raven.]
“Say ‘Nevermore,’” said Shadow.
“Fuck you,” said the raven. - “CIA”, said Wood. He shook his head, ruefully. “Those bozos. Hey, Stone. I heard a new CIA joke. Okay: how can we be sure the CIA wasn’t involved in the Kennedy assassination?”
“I don’t know,” said Stone. “How can we be sure?”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” said Wood. - “There’s never been a true war that wasn’t fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right. The really dangerous people believe that they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is what makes them dangerous.”
That’s about it, I think. Here are some of the Flickr photos to finish up this long-overdue blog post.
Charles Stross
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Books, Pictures, Reviews, Sci-Fi on 2007/09/28
‘Glasshouse’ and ‘Accelerando’ 
A few years ago I saw ‘The Magic Flute’ (I think that’s what it was, I could be wrong) and there was a quite enchanting set-piece: large, angled rocks to illustrate a bluffs area and a thin, wiry tree. Something about the setup really struck me. The same could be said of Charles Stross’ ‘Glasshouse’: the set upon which the story plays out is enchanting. The difference between ‘The Magic Flute’ and ‘Glasshouse’ is that the set of the latter is much more interesting than the characters who appear on it. I was impressed with the ‘Flute’ set design, my focus was always on the characters and the story. I’m sorry to say this, but the Glasshouse of ‘Glasshouse’ is more fascinating than Reeve or Sam or Sanni; the universe of both ‘Accelerando‘ and ‘Glasshouse’ are deeper and more interesting than the one-sentence descriptions Stross sees fit to whet our appetites with.
‘Glasshouse’ is a good book. It has an interesting story, its share of surprises, a bit of action, a veritable wealth of quotable descriptions, musings and utterances… but it could have been so much more. Stross has at his disposal a gloriously architectured world in which literally anything is possible, and he barely scratches the surface. Instead of delving into the vast possibilities of the 27th century, nine-tenths of the book (starting on digital page 129 of 1060) are spent inside a ‘simulation’ detailing pre-Singularity human society – the latter half of the 20th century in one of the developed countries. Want a visual example? Imagine a Star Trek movie where the first 10 minutes are spent aboard the ship, and the rest of the film happens in faux-Indianapolis during the 1950′s, with the entire crew forced to abide by the rules and societal norms of the times. That means no phasers, no androids (sorry Data), no spaceships, no inter-racial or same-sex romance (are there same-sex relationships in Star Trek now?) and, please, no talking about any of this – it ruins the realism. 
It means that Troi spends her days shopping, gossiping with Crusher and trying to get pregnant, while Riker and Picard work in a fake insurance company, shuffling papers across a desk for the sake of appearances. That is exactly what’s happening in the book. Boring? Yeah, somewhat. Why do we have to spend time on a character shopping in a department store when we can explore the underlying concepts of transport- and assembly-gates, brain uploads, habitats orbiting brown dwarfs, achievable immortality, memory-erasing viruses, post-singularity society, humanity’s self-imposed exile from the Solar System, the freedom to be who and what you want to be (Want to be a four-armed woman? OK. Want to be a blue hermaphrodite centaur with chain-mail hauberk and no pants? Fine.), and, last but in no way least, the social implications of everything I have just mentioned. Which do you suppose I would like to read about?!
In this sense, Stross really reminds me of ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’. Sure, Douglas Adams didn’t bother to cover in depth many of the concepts he mentioned, but his work was a comedy long before being science-fiction.
If Stross has a failing, it is his inability to stop writing future-set soap operas. ‘Singularity Sky’, ‘Iron Sunrise’, ‘Accelerando’ and ‘Glasshouse’ all exhibit the same weakness: were the story set in a duller environment, it would be shelved alongside John Grisham and Dan Brown. The only sci-fi element is often-times the setting, and the concepts beneath that are skimmed oh-so-carefully so as not to disturb the giants laying dormant.
‘Singularity Sky’ and ‘Iron Sunrise’
The novels are both good, but, as I mentioned above, they barely touch upon the science and instead spend most of the time simply in the fiction end of the pool. There is a fair amount of political intrigue, a bit of romance, some disturbing imagery to illustrate the depravity of the antagonists and the perils of technology and, this is sort of strange, very little shoot-em-up action. What small amount of action scenes Stross does present us with, they’re mostly rather bland and are over entirely too quickly.
‘Singularity Sky’ is a story of an out-dated societal model (early Soviet-era Communists) attempting to stop a Singularity. At times the novel hits very close to home, reminding so much of the old country. Overall a good, light read.
‘Iron Sunrise’ is a sequel to ‘Singularity Sky’, only now it has left the Communists and moved on to the Nazis. I’m not kidding: the bad guys are trying to purify humanity, change them to fit a specific mold. They go around referring to each-other using names like “Oberkommando der Wehrmacht”. Like, but not quite: I can’t find the actual names they use, but they are long and contain an insane number of consonants.
Read Stross. I don’t hesitate to recommend anything written by Charles Stross. Sure, I’ll mention that you’ll be getting less science than ‘Rendezvous with Rama’, but it’s certainly more than Heinlein has ever dished out. I guess it’s somewhere in the middle. A very good place to be, actually.
A few half-thought-out ideas
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Books, Games, Humor, Random, Random Thoughts, Religion, Reviews, Sci-Fi on 2007/09/27
So, there’s a few ideas bouncing around inside my head. I figure a nice bullet list is the best way to get them the hell out.
- Do you realize that most of the matter on the planet is used to only increase the potential energy in other matter? Tables, chairs, shelves, counter-tops, buildings, carpets, shoes, our skeletons, blah blah blah. Basically, anything made with the express purpose of keeping other stuff off the ground. (To those who have no idea what I’m talking about, potential energy of an object increases if you pick it up, so a table increases the potential energy of a book simply by holding it up.) What an utter waste!
- China is trying to dictate the next reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. We’ve long known that they’re a bunch of assholes, but this is a new low. Actually, I’m not sure what’s more ridiculous, a communist state saying that the soul of a religious leader is going to end up in a different kid, or the idea that the current Dalai Lama will be reincarnated as yet-another male in roughly the same geographical location. OK, that could be a bit unfair: applying logic to religion isn’t doing either side any good. So, moving on.
- I was walking out of a store and saw a car in a parking space at a 90 degree angle. The guy parked across the space instead of along it. Immediately I thought “what an idiot.” Then I saw the handicapped sign hanging on the mirror and started to backtrack. I stopped in time, thankfully. What, handicapped people can’t be idiots? Hell, some of them are probably handicapped because they were idiots in the first place. Who knows, maybe this guy needs to use a chair because he cut his legs off while juggling chainsaws.
- New Olympic event: toss an object into a cup filled with some liquid, try to empty the cup without knocking it over or breaking it. The liquid can be anything: water, soup, paint, hand soap, etc. The object can likewise be anything: a tennis ball, a pen, a rodent (so long as you don’t piss off PETA), a golf ball, whatever. You can also use a ladder or even a skyscraper as a launching platform. Of course a golf ball thrown from the top of Sears Tower will pretty much obliterate whatever cup you choose. If you manage to even hit the cup. Anyway, the minor difficulties aside, this could be quite a challenge. Of course, the winner will be, year after year, some nerdlinger who ran simulations with a realistic physics model.
- In “Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne”, the titular character is a detective for the NYPD. Huh? In the first game Max killed some six hundred people. Nevermind that all of them were bad guys, with criminal records and such. A person kills that many people in just two days, there’s bound to be some long-lasting effects. And yet they give him a gun and say “go out there and be good”?
- According to Guy Rules, if Guy A knows Guy B for more than 5 minutes, Guy B’s girlfriends (current or ex) are forever off-limits. But, what if Guy A knows a girl first, and the only reason he even knowsGuy B is through the girl?
- “American Gods” by Neil Gaiman is a great book. I’m about a third of the way through, but it’s great so far. Though it reminds me of Niven’s “Rainbow Mars” and Heinlein’s “Number of the Beast”, it’s still incredibly enjoyable.
- Good night.
Post-'Accelerando'
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Books, Sci-Fi on 2007/09/03
While reading ‘Accelerando’, I continuously wondered if this wonderful novel would be the beginning of the end for me. Would I stop reading sci-fi after I’ve finished this book? It is not a question I want to ask myself, but one of the hard lessons ‘Accelerando’ taught is the fact that avoiding an issue is never the correct answer. One may hide from them, but sooner or later your problems will find you. So, I asked myself: will I stop reading sci-fi?
Why does this question come up? ‘Accelerando’ takes an approach that I have not yet encountered head-on in sci-fi: the Singularity. Sure, other books wet their toes in the concept, but ‘Accelerando’ does a cannon-ball dive. In the story, we hit the Singularity sometime in the next few decades. A short time after that, the solar system is devoid of what we might call human life. The planets are being converted into computronium (thinking matter) and the combined personalities of the last humans live inside a computational field a light-hour across. There is no notion of flying cars, robotic servants, interstellar travel or alien encounters (not in person, anyway). The concepts of all science fiction to date is just that, science fiction. Consider the popular movies: “Star Trek”, “Blade Runner”, “Alien”. Pick any future-set book from my Reading page: “Ringworld”, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, “2001: A Space Odyssey”, “Foundation”. The ideas in them suppose that the future is quite similar to the present, with the minor addition of aliens and a few tidbits of technological innovation. How can I ignore the fact that these concepts are out of date and incredibly short-sighted? Humanity will reach the Singularity without bothering to explore the galaxy in superluminal vessels; we will outlive the need of Ringworld-scale habitats long before we can manufacture them; civilization will not survive in its current form 12,000 years (“Foundation” series).
Have I reached an answer? Not yet.
'Accelerando'
Posted by FuzzyGamer in Books, Reviews, Sci-Fi on 2007/09/02
‘Accelerando’ is the scariest book I have ever read.
Not a lot of things can scare me, mentally. Sure, I’ll jump up just fine at a monster popping up in a scary movie, but that’s not scary. Not really. That’s just adrenaline.
This book is one of the things that scares me. The concepts it covers are terrifying to me. Death isn’t scary. The concepts of this book are. In it, characters start in an information age, precariously balanced on the very edge of the Singularity. The main character lives his life 30 seconds ahead of the curve: he is transformed, by implants and computer enhancements, into a walking server, collecting, parsing and cataloging information every second of the day. For example, this mention of being ‘slashdotted’ refers to an influx of internet traffic that is taxing him, slowing him down. The reason that the character is 30 seconds ahead is because of the massive amounts of information he processes. Here’s an example: when the character woke up in the morning, he was 6 hours behind, having missed out on 6 hours of news while he slept. How does this get you to 30 seconds ahead? By using all the information at his disposal to consider new concepts, invent something new, have an idea that no one else on the planet will have for at least 30 seconds.
What’s so scary about their world? The fact that I won’t be able to keep up. Technology is changing so rapidly, you have to spend a considerable amount of time each day to simply stay on par with the rest. I can’t do that. I’m just beginning to learn SharePoint. I don’t know C++ as well as I should. I’ve never hacked anything. I am not very up to date with the latest breakthroughs or programming concepts. I’ve never even really used Linux. I’m a bystander, stuck on the side of the road as the show rides past. I am left breathing dust. And I am afraid of this. This inability to follow the new. It’s so depressing.
There’s also the realization that entire countries will be destroyed by the oncoming Singularity. As the character says, dinosaur governments, such as the the United States, who are only after the bottom line, will not be able to see the true opportunity before them. They will continue to support the old-fashioned companies, lumbering beasts that can’t change or even consider changing. South Korea will soon overtake the United States in every way that really matters (maybe they won’t overtake us in illiteracy and unemployment, we can be proud of that fact, at least). Why? While we pour billions into bigger guns, subsidize failing corporations unable to swim in the 21st century, and vilify and obliterate thought, South Korea is becoming the most technologically advanced country in the world by actively funding its IT and robotics industries. Research scientists in the United States can only make money through corporate funding (inventing the next Viagra?) or through the Department of Defense (inventing a new and better missile).
The book consists of 9 stories that deal with the Macx family. The first three stories deal with a world just before the Singularity, the next three deal with the coming of the Singularity and its devastating (for some) effect, and the last three are about a world so far from our own or even the worlds within the previous stories. I can’t really describe it. The concepts Stross works with are enormous, sometimes unfathomable and always on the very edge of the technological tide. I think that anyone not familiar with the underlying technological concepts will be terrified or even disgusted by the ideas expressed in the book, but I found it simply jarring. It is a startling thought that the solar system can be disintegrated into smart matter within my lifetime. But that is a view that the novel presents. Are you scared of that? The idea that in a few years you will feel as out of touch as a 14th century peasant who had just been introduced to the information age. How alien will the now-accepted concepts like a global communications network, cell phones, the internet, smart cars and AI will seem to him.
I was scared of finishing one chapter and starting another: who knew what would be waiting for me just beyond the bend? If you can handle future-shock, give ‘Accelerando’ a try. I know it’s not for everyone: Taty will not be able to get past the first few pages. That’s perfectly understandable. [Rant on tech-phobia and cultural regression considered, vetoed and not written.] But for the rest of you, the brave souls not afraid to step, or at least peek, into the future, put ‘Accelerando’ on your list of books to read. It is one of the best novels I have ever experienced and it has earned a permanent place in my library. My electronic library.