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| Saturday, May 26th, 2012 | | 8:01 am |
43
David Nicholas forwarded this fascinating article – http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27827/?ref=rss -- that makes a broad definition of "autocatalytic set" which elaborates into an explanation for life, the universe, and everything. It turns out that the chicken crossed the road in order to lay an egg so that another chicken could cross another road. And so on, to the Apollo Program and beyond.
Joe | | Friday, May 25th, 2012 | | 4:29 pm |
fangs for the mammaries . . .
We went to see Dark Shadows last night, and came away unsmitten. I like Johnny Depp in any role, but this one is so thin and trite he couldn't rescue it. It's a bunch of vampire clichés rattling around in a shapeless container. A few good sight gags and groaner lines . . . the teenaged girl asks Barnabas Collins, "Are you stoned, or what?" He replies, "They tried stoning me once. It did not work." and this exchange . . . . Angelique Bouchard: What if I made you love me? Barnabas Collins: With what, a spell? Angelique Bouchard: [strips to her brassiere] With this! Barnabas Collins: I must admit, they have not aged a day... That's a high point. They should put this monster back in the box and bury it. Joe | | Saturday, May 19th, 2012 | | 8:23 am |
famous folks
Oops . . . Gay reminded me that I forgot to note that astronaut Fincke was a student of mine at MIT, back in 1987. Perhaps the only one who's actually been in space -- though I also had Peter Diamandis, a few years earlier, also in 21W.759, Writing Science Fiction. He's the founder and Chairman of the X-Prize Foundation. Joe | | 7:53 am |
Hanging around D.C,
Having fun hanging around with old friends at the Nebula Awards weekend here in Washington. Lots of sitting around in the bar and talking about people who aren't here. Strictly social so far, but today I'll be getting together with editor and agent, separately. So we'll move from milling and swilling to wheeling and dealing. Yesterday we played tourist with a trip to The Library of Congress (or Congreff, as they ufed to spell it). The tour was both interesting and a little sad, nostalgic. As I think I've mentioned here, I used to live in Bethesda, before I left for college, and have wonderful memories of the LoC. I was a chemistry nut back then, and I would sit for hours immersed in a 12-volume encyclopedia of chemical reactions, copying down equations that I could translate into experiments in my home laboratory. Sometimes with loud or noxious results. No kid can do what I used to do; take the trolley downtown and use the Library as a library. Want a book, no problem; just look up the catalog number and write it on a slip of paper, and the minions would send your request to the basement via pneumatic tube, and the book would be delivered to your desk in a few minutes by courier. The mechanism still exists, but only for members of Congress and their staffs, and other high government officials. There are probably twice as many books now, in three buildings, and delivery takes thirty or forty minutes, with computers as well as pneumatic tubes. And to be realistic, any kid with Google can access much more data much faster than I could, sitting at an oaken desk that might be two hundred years old. Why do I feel sorry for him? The most interesting exhibit, by far, was a reconstruction of Thomas Jefferson's library, which formed the nucleus of the new LoC after the British burned Washington in 1814. He had his own system of classification (based on one devised by Francis Bacon) to arrange 6,487 volumes, which he sold to the government for $23,950. There was another fire in 1851, which destroyed about two thirds of the volumes. The collection now has about two thousand of the original volumes and three thousand replacements, which carefully match the lost editions. John F. Kennedy famously told a party of Nobel Prize winners and other intellectuals, invited for lunch at the White House, "There has never been such a collection of talent and intellect gathered in this room since Thomas Jefferson dined here alone." Speaking of famous people, I've enjoyed talking with astronaut Mike Fincke, who will be the keynote speaker at the banquet. He's spent 48 hours in space-walk mode, more than any other human being. A very smart guy, who incidentally has read a lot of science fiction. Signed books for a couple of hours yesterday. One fan gave me a copy of The Bridge of San Luis Rey to read – I'd mentioned Thornton Wilder in my sffnet column – but then ran off without explaining why. It's been forty years since I read it, so I'll enjoy rereading it on the way home. There was a panel on writing humor which, as expected, didn't give me any killer tips. I guess the subject has a butterfly-like quality: if you can pin it down, it's dead. I remember reading an article in the Washington Post when I was in high school here, about literary cocktail parties – specifically about meeting Art Buchwald. The writer described Buchwald's scowling cigar-chomping public persona, and said it was generally true that humor writers are in person very grim, where serious writers tend to reach for the lampshade at parties. I'm in between, I think, though some people would roll their eyes at that assessment. "What, he thinks he's serious?" or "What, he thinks he's frivolous?" I am all things to all fen. Joe | | Tuesday, May 15th, 2012 | | 3:05 pm |
mad men + thrones = shakespeare?
For those of us who are hooked by both Game of Thrones and Mad Men -- here's a thing Gay found that will confirm your suspicions . . . . http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/11/mad-men-game-of-thrones_n_1500186.html?utm_source=Triggermail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Daily%20Brief&utm_campaign=daily_brief Joe | | Sunday, May 13th, 2012 | | 7:33 am |
The thing's the play.
Last night we went to a pair of well done plays. First was a 90-minute condensation of Hamlet , just a lean version of the classic. Then an intermission, and then the hour-long _The Prince Formerly Known as Hamlet_, a hard-boiled mystery narrated by "Justin Thyme." Some of the comedy was eye-rolling silly, but of course that doesn't bother me. The actors in the second did parodies of their roles in the first. Hamlet himself was especially funny, thrashing around refusing to die on cue. Ophelia in the first one was demure and understatedly sexy; in the second she was "Feelya," not at all demure, in a sexy dress that could rise and fall like Venetian blinds. The first line of the second play is also the catch-phrase on the advertising poster: "The problems of one Danish prince don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." Joe | | 5:31 am |
While you're up, get me a brain pill?
Should your brain hurt first thing in the morning? Of course! Here's why: (Background: Bell's Theorem, or Bell's Inequality, goes " No physical theory of local hidden variables can reproduce all of the predictions of quantum mechanics.") Terry Rudolph, . . . a physicist at Imperial College London. . . . gives the example of a die that can be prepared to give either even numbers, with a 1/3 probability of getting 2, 4 or 6; or prime numbers, with a 1/3 probability of getting 2, 3 or 5. The real state 2 can be produced by either preparation method, so the same reality underlies two different probabilistic models. The authors show, however, that the same reality cannot underpin different quantum states. Their theorem does, however, depend on a controversial assumption: that quantum systems have an objective underlying physical state. Christopher Fuchs, a physicist at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada, who has been working to develop an epistemic interpretation of quantum mechanics, says that he has avoided the interpretations that the authors exclude. The wavefunction may represent the experimenter’s ignorance about measurement outcomes, rather than the underlying physical reality, he says. The new theorem doesn’t rule that out. Still, Matt Leifer, a physicist at University College London who works on quantum information, says that the theorem tackles a big question in a simple and clean way. He also says that it could end up being as useful as Bell’s theorem, which turned out to have applications in quantum information theory and cryptography. “Nobody has thought if it has a practical use, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it did,” he says. Because it is incompatible with quantum mechanics, the theorem also raises a deeper question: could quantum mechanics be wrong? Everyone assumes that it reigns supreme, but there is always a possibility that it could be overturned. So Barrett is now working with experimentalists to check predictions that differ between the theory and the epistemic accounts it conflicts with. “We don’t expect quantum mechanics would fail this test, but we should still do it,” he says. Hurt yet? This gives me a once-familiar feeling, which I first got back in 1966-67, taking courses in general relativity and quantum theory. I think you can sum it up as "If this is so easy to say, why is it so hard to understand?" Joe | | Friday, May 11th, 2012 | | 7:26 pm |
How it didn't happen
I'm a year late on this, but I loved the alternate-history propaganda reel "Man Conquers Space," at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHJFbzipASo A reconstruction of a celebration of the conquest of space, if we had started back when Von Braun was a pup. Bittersweet but very good. Joe | | Thursday, May 10th, 2012 | | 11:12 pm |
Avengers - pretty cool.
Finally went to see the new Avengers epic, and thought it was a good popcorn movie. Loved the sight gags, especially with the Hulk. Scarlett Johansen doesn't age! She caught me when she was the girl with the pearl, and I could happily watch her reading the phone book. The metal monster worm/s -- gorgeous. The hand-2-hand combat, eh. Given the context, there's not much to criticize. Nice last scene. I'll go to the next incarnation. Oh, the first ten minutes -- the first twenty million dollars -- was kind of overblown and unnecessary, I thought. Just cut to the chase. Joe | | Sunday, May 6th, 2012 | | 8:42 am |
pigging out again
We just spent a couple of days relaxing at Amelia Island, up on the Florida-Georgia border, where they were celebrating the annual Shrimp Festival, and we tried to cooperate by eating our weight in the little beasts. We played tourist with old friends Mike and Sharon Tackaberry, whom we met on a New Zealand tour about thirty-ump years ago. The main street of the island is a mile-long gift shop with occasional outbreaks of culture, which we sped past. There were occasional pretty girls zig-zagging in and out of the crowds of geriatric dinosaurs. They were going too fast to catch, but I was mostly watching. Got some writing done in the mornings and a couple of nice bike rides, to and from the only coffee place open early. Also took a three-hour boat ride, Amelia River Cruises, out to some of the outlying islands, which used to be hideaways for the super-rich, from about 1880 to post-WWII. Most of the big places are resort hotels now. Very pricy, like $400 per day and up. But you pay for a special combination of century-old charm and isolation, and if you like that you'll get your money's worth. I might go up there to finish a novel some day. Here is a picture that I think qualifies as Wretched Excess (Food Division) – on the way out of Amelia Island we stopped at the Doo Wop Café, all done up in 1950's bling, 45 records all over the walls, B&W celebrity pictures, even an ersatz 1957 Chevy with a plastic Elvis leaning out of the window. You sat in red-and-white Naugahyde bench seats at matching Formica tables with individual little juke boxes . . . and if you were brave, this is what you ate –
(The James Dean Special: Two hot dogs with chili, jalepenos, bacon, and chopped onions, accompanied by ersatz melted American cheese. Or was that turmeric-colored mustard? I left it alone. But the curly fries and cole slaw, yum. I have to admit that I adored most of it.) I think I'd better go out and get some exercise . . . Joe | | Friday, May 4th, 2012 | | 4:32 pm |
| | Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012 | | 3:00 pm |
more info about the Gatorbone Band . .
We saw a nice concert by a folksy-bluesy-jazzy group called the Gatorbone Band down at our local folk venue, the Sandhill Stage, seven or eight miles out of town. The complete name is The Sandhill Stage at Prairie Creek Lodge. A rich man bought a large piece of prairie and forest, someone said 125 acres, built a big lodge and gave it to the city. Facebook page at www.facebook.com/SandhillStage. The Gatorbone Band, which we sought out because of an enthusiastic endorsement by Jack Williams, was three men and one woman playing a generous assortment of acoustic instruments, notably an acoustic-electric bass that looks like a baby cello crossed with a Gibson electric, played by Lon Williamson (husband of the band's leader, Elisabeth Williamson, who also plays guitar). The lead guitar (Gabriel Valla) was amazingly fast with a flat-pick, his left hand a blur of lightning chord changes. The fiddle player (Jason Thomas) picked up a mandolin and joined Valla in a two-mandolin race that was amazing. For central and northern Floridians who like folk, this might be the best place outside of St. Augustine. Tickets are twenty bucks; beer and wine are whatever you want to tuck into the Mason Jar. (I guess they can't "sell" alcohol.) It's a comfortable venue with expert sound management by Bob McPeek. We've been there about a dozen times, often for bands we've never heard of, and have never been disappointed. Joe | | Tuesday, May 1st, 2012 | | 1:29 pm |
Gatorbones
We saw a neat musical group day before yesterday, the Gatorbone Trio, which mysteriously had four members. Nice folk/country/bluesy mix. http://www.reverbnation.com/thegatorbone trio. I did a silhouette sketch that I might use for a more interesting picture . . .  | | Sunday, April 22nd, 2012 | | 2:41 pm |
les chats gros
From Frederica Graham . . . Perhaps you don't have to like cats to like this French video . . . in fact, it might be better if you hate them . . . . www.wimp.com/catexistence/
Joe
| | Friday, April 20th, 2012 | | 6:47 am |
Never underestimate the power of a beer can
I've been immersed in a book for about a week, and sff.net has Topsy-ed while I was away . . . two things, David, more or less relevant to the ongoing ramble – Back in 1965 I wrote a program that could write World War I Flying Ace stories. Two nested programs, actually, one in COBOL inside one in MAD (Michigan Algorithmic Decoder, a sort of Poor Man's ALGOL.) The professor praised the programming and also said something on the order of "You oughta be a writer." Okay. Have you come across the model of the "beer-can starship"? Basically a kind of low-IQ space probe that uses stacked propulsion systems, essentially redefining v-naught through a dozen different regimes until you have something the size of a beer can screaming toward Alpha Centauri at a significant fraction of the speed of light. Do-able for less than the Apollo Project cost.
Joe | | Tuesday, April 17th, 2012 | | 8:31 am |
Wilder writing
I've never read the novels of Thornton Wilder, whose birthday is today, but I think I might check him out. According to the Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac's Poet's Corner (http://www.elabs7.com/functions/message_view.html?mid=1464185&mlid=499&siteid=20130&uid=63890cd4c3), he once said " My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate," a Rusty-Hevelinesque notion well expressed. It goes on to say his "father was a diplomat, so Wilder and his four brothers and sisters moved back and forth between Asia and the United States. His parents . . . dictated what Wilder did with his time, and made him work on farms in the summer so that he would be more well-rounded. They decided where he would go to college: to Oberlin, in Ohio, and then to Yale. "After some time in Rome, Wilder got a job teaching French at a boys' boarding school. In 1926, Wilder spent the summer at MacDowell Colony, a writers' retreat in New Hampshire, and he started work on his second novel. It was set in the Spanish colonial era of the 18th century — the story of a bridge that collapses in Lima, Peru, while five people are crossing it. The collapse is witnessed by a Franciscan monk, who becomes obsessed by the tragedy and tries to figure out why those five people had to die. Wilder finished it less than a year later and sent it off to his publisher, who almost turned it down, complaining that it was written "for a small over-cultivated circle of readers." But when The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) was published, it was an immediate success. It won the 1928 Pulitzer Prize, and by that time, it had sold nearly 300,000 copies and been through 17 printings. ". . . In 1962, Wilder was 65 years old, a famous writer. He was best known for his plays, like his Pulitzer-winning Our Town (1938) and The Matchmaker (1955), which was adapted into the musical Hello, Dolly!. He had not written a novel for almost 20 years. He was tired of being in the limelight, and he wanted to escape his comfortable life in Connecticut, so Wilder got in his Thunderbird convertible and headed southwest. The car broke down just outside of Douglas, Arizona, a town on the Mexican border, and that's where Wilder stayed for a year and a half. He was happy to be somewhere where nobody knew much about him or his writing. He rented an apartment with one bed for himself and one for all his papers. During the days he wrote, read, and took walks, and in the evenings he hung around the bar asking questions — so many questions that everyone called him "Doc" or "Professor." When he left Douglas at the end of 1963, he had a good start on a novel. In 1967 he published it as The Eighth Day, and it won a National Book Award. He said, "There's nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head." And: "The test of an adventure is that when you're in the middle of it, you say to yourself, 'Oh, now I've got myself into an awful mess; I wish I were sitting quietly at home.' And the sign that something's wrong with you is when you sit quietly at home wishing you were out having lots of adventure."
Joe | | Sunday, April 15th, 2012 | | 8:23 am |
Arts Fair
Met Gay at the Spring Arts Fair, where we wandered and munched. As usual, some of the art was good, but none was arresting. Most of it more craft than art, which is okay. We bought a clever little optical-illusion disc that shows a bicycle pedaling along. Have a little bit of a cold in nose and throat. Slight cough that may be a reaction to smoke from a large grass fire to the north – it's bothering a lot of people. Also have a headache and slight bit of kleptomania and god complex. However, if I steal a Bible and don't find myself in it, both maladies may be cured. Here's an interesting little video from Sherry Gottlieb – a bunch of dolphins came aground on a beach in Brazil, evidently disoriented. The spectators hauled them back into water deep enough for swimming and they swam off. Kind of mysterious; why did they beach themselves and then why did they not return to the beach? http://elcomercio.pe/player/1384898
Joe | | Saturday, April 14th, 2012 | | 8:31 am |
Lookout warning
We went to the movies with Bob and Patience Mason yesterday and saw the earnestly bad sf movie "Lockout." Science and logic are nonexistent – they take all the worst murderers and rapists on Earth and put them in a prison in orbit and send the President's beautiful daughter up to, what, taunt them? And of course someone pushes a button and all of the prisoners are set free – what genius put that design feature in place? – and they kill the guards and go nutso. Joseph Gilgun is a cringe-inducing delight as an eye-rolling drooling monstrosity who is second-in-command of the psycho set. It's basically a chase scene with Guy Pearce and Maggie Grace delivering wisecracks (well-scripted) while staying one second ahead of an army of lobotomized sex maniacs with submachine guns – I mean, if that ain't entertainment, I don't know what is. In fact, it was so fucking bad that in the lobby afterward I almost had a stroke from laughing so hard as Bob and I detailed the lunacies. I should have a macro that types this out: With exactly the same talent and resources, they could have made a movie as intelligent and durable as "2001." But some combination of failure of imagination and failure of nerve – and perhaps the dislocation of taste that is the result of too many cooks pissing in the broth – prevented the movie from being good. | | Thursday, April 5th, 2012 | | 10:28 am |
Wild pigs couldn't drag me away - or could they?
In case you're thinking about moving to Florida because the bicycle riding is so good here, let me pass on a communication I just got from the local bicycle club . . . We did the night-ride at San Felasco last night... and during the ride the ride-leader (Barry) was runover by a herd of wild pigs. There must have been 7-10 of them and they all appeared to weigh about 100 lbs. Eight of us were riding down along powerline road and heard some noise off to the right. All of sudden the pigs charged out of the thicket and across the road, hitting the bike and knocking Barry to the ground in a crumple. He's okay, but what an experience. (1st time in his riding career). Just thought some of you would be interested.. Jere Steele "Life has no remote. Get up and change it yourself !" (I do like that tagline) Joe | | 10:10 am |
a thorny problem
You don't often encounter humor in the vegetable section of the grocery store. But yesterday Gay brought home a couple of artichokes that looked a little the worse for wear, which were decorated with a plastic insert that declared them to be "Frost Kissed ™ To Delicious," and went on – in the artichoke's own voice! – to explain "Once cooked, I transform into a perfect green Artichoke with an enhanced, nutty flavor." On the other side it points out that "Artichokes become 'Frost Kissed' at temperatures below 32°. The outer layer turns brown, flakes and peels, much like a sunburn. Once cooked, the flakes disappear, revealing a delicious, green Artichoke." I want to hire that guy for flap copy . . . Joe (P.S. The artichokes were pretty good, actually; a little bitter in the outer leaves.) |
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