Thalamocortical Systems Out of Nowhere
Posted on | May 27, 2009 | No Comments
Though the article itself (2Mb PDF) is in itself fascinating reading, confirming a view of the issue that I have held for a while now, what I find really interesting is how these things just fly in under the radar. I mean, one moment you are reading science fiction about lobster gastrointestinal ganglion simulations, then all of a sudden you discover it’s all real, then people tell you real life brain simulations are ages off in the future if not outright impossible, then suddenly someone appears saying “meh, we’re doing it”.
Granted, it’s not a full simulation of the entire human brain, but I’d be willing to bet a dime or two that a pretty hefty section of our spongy grey squishable is, in fact, used to make the squishy meaty bit of us move around and stay alive, with but a tiny percent being actually responsible for the actual “us” inside. Methinks this has brought us closer to artificial consciousness than may be apparent at first.
Speaking of Fraks…
Posted on | May 5, 2009 | No Comments
This was the actual model used in the captain’s quarters. If it wasn’t so ugly, I’d be getting one just for the hell of it.
You have got to be…
Posted on | March 23, 2009 | No Comments
… frakkin’ kidding me. When I read the release info, I thought it was some kind of joke, but no, apparently Enrique Iglesias has apparently published a tune with someone called Sarah Connor. Quite audacious, naming yourself thusly. Yes, she named herself. It’s not her real name. No, I don’t listen to Enrique. Except in the shower.
Parallax the Sloppy Writing
Posted on | March 19, 2009 | 1 Comment
I am just a sucker for fancy packaging. In the case of novels, the packaging has traditionally been the book cover, with its blurbs and synopses and golden embossed type and scantily clad buxom lasses and phallic rocketguns and laserships and whatnot. However, in the digital era, all of these factors have taken a huge step back, yielding the top spot to the bow on top of the box – the book title.
Hominids – part one of the Neanderthal Parallax!
How’s that for a fancy package, eh? Hominids… just rolls off the tongue, with a distinct, yet soft rhythm, followed by Neanderthal – evoking slightly nostalgic tones of Martin Mistere’s Java – only to be punctuated by one of the coolest words, well, ever – PARALLAX! Sweet zombie Jesus, I wish that was my last name!
So, with all of that gloss and glitter, coupled with the plentiful praise peppered around the Intarwebs and the fact that this work has won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2003, I dug into it, only to be greeted by sloppy, make-it-up-as-you-go writing with cardboard characters and childishly naive attempts at serious drama.
I am having trouble understanding how the same people can find this, and, for example, Spin, to be of roughly equivalent quality. Or was 2003 just an unusually dry season for the Hugos? I don’t think so, what with Scar and The Years of Rice and Salt, both lightyears ahead of the sloppiness I’ve just waded through, being in the competition. Was it politics? Or was the voting done by a squad of resurrected precampbellians? Because this kind of writing sure whiffs of ye olden times, and not in a rosewood and ancient tomes way.
Sucked out the Marrow
Posted on | March 18, 2009 | No Comments
Okay, so what do I do with the bone now?
An interesting conundrum. I’ve read Marrow by one Robert Reed and thoroughly enjoyed it. The problem is, the Marrow I’ve linked to is not the one I’ve read. Rather, what I got my hands on was the novella that the novel is based on (funny… like the word novel is based on the word novella). The rough outline of the plot is there. The main characters are there. Most of the action is there. In the expanded edition, some things have been added, some things subtracted. A few twists were mushed up to produce a sufficiently different work to warrant it not being simply an LP version of a previous seven-inch.
What bugs me is whether the differences are sufficient to justify my reading the, well, the same story again, after I’ve been through the reader’s digest version. I’ll hazard a “no” on it, and use the almighty Intarwebs to tell me what the differences are, much in the same way that Wikipedia contributors helped me in staying up-to-date when discussions in my surroundings chanced to turn to the Harry Potter novels without my having to endure the arduous task of actually reading through the nauseating stories.
…
Yes. In a twisted way, the hermetic and unexplaining novella makes far more sense than the elaborate novel-length plot. I’m going, figuring.
Behind Closed Doors
Posted on | March 17, 2009 | No Comments
Well now.
I got kicked out of the Internet Veterans Club today. Implicitly. I just couldn’t resist commenting on a bit of news I ran across this morning. Lapsing into arguing with imaginary people on the Internet is a bad sign, especially after holding out for so long, but I fear my inner sixteen-year-old simply had to burst out after this horrible synchronicity flash.
Rambling randomly? No, I’m not.
The thing is, a couple of weeks ago I read a non-fiction book. Now, this doesn’t happen often, I am a voracious reader with at least a book per week, but the ratio of fiction to non-fiction leans heavily towards, well, what Gabe terms the Holy Trinity. Lately I’ve slightly upset this balance, what with my current filling in the bits that were unintelligible in the previously poorly-scanned pirate e-book copy of Guns, Germs and Steel, and my reading through a mighty interesting book called Democracy and Regulation.
How and why I came to read this book, so remote from my usual fields of interest, is irrelevant, what is relevant is the bit of information that the English translation of this newspiece fails to note: negotiations to be conducted behind closed doors. Supposedly to stop “lobbies and interest groups” from interfering with the decision making. If there is one thing I’ve come away with from Democracy and Regulation (and there isn’t just one – the book is chock full of interesting details, provided you disregard the slightly kooky near-illuminati-ish chapter near the end) it’s that secrecy in government regulation, especially when dealing with the IMF or the conspiracy-kook favorite World Bank, never works. It did not work for Rio de Janeiro. It did not work for Johannesburg. It did not work for Ghana. It did not work for Dabhol. I will not even link to the shit that went down in California. The examples are, as it’s so fun to say, legion. Counterexamples are few. If any.
So, stupid or malicious?
Considering the player profiles, I’d say stupid is not the likely option.
A Free Beer Awaits…
Posted on | March 11, 2009 | No Comments
… this young lady, should our paths ever intersect:
Why Democracy, Indeed
Posted on | March 2, 2009 | No Comments
I have discovered that I seem to possess a cookie-shaped hole where my sense of worry over my own well-being should be.
It could be the consequence of a number of factors: my cool-headed analitical rationality that tells me nothing can happen, an overwhelming feeling of self-importance that tells me I’m not like other people and can’t get hurt, or the fact that I may simply be stupid.
Be that as it may, while there was some teeth-gnashing and anguish and general frettery among my family over the recent news that I will be visiting Kosovo, I couldn’t help but feel absolutely nothing regarding the fact that I will be crossing some imaginary line in the sand where “ours” and “theirs” get separated in two.
The guards almost jarred me back to some semblance of the idea that I was crossing a state border, though in fact, since the whole setup looks pretty much like some of the other pro-forma crossings, such as the bermudian triangle of Montenegro, Serbia and Bosnia, I might have even swung back a bit towards the attitude that this is, still, all just one land. The presence of concertina wire and the cross-welded beam segments used to hold them up gave me a bit of pause, as did the description of my travel-mates of the incessant practice of silly rituals stemming from ancient beliefs in the magical power of words and gestures, as if crossing out the new state’s stamp in the passport somehow made it all go away. People are touchy, tensions are, apparently, high. Still, I couldn’t help a general lapse towards a feeling of indifference, fuelled by the ultimate futility of it all, further compounded by the letter-track of quality fiction I’ve been enjoying lately. Yes, do take this to be a recommendation for the book, as well as the rest of the man’s opus. Truly an amazing author, masterfully combining human characters and storylines with big-idea hard scifi. But, let’s not venture too far and step back to the subject for a brief step or two more.
I’m guessing some things are just, well, human nature. Recurring behavioral patterns spontaneously emerging wherever the population pressure starts messing with our simian cognition, manifesting even in circumstances where no nurturial factors exist. Naught much to be done there. At least for us. We’ll see if our Vile Offspring fare any better. Or maybe not, cause you know what happens to the survival rate over a long enough timeline… yeah you do.
All right…
Posted on | February 10, 2009 | No Comments
The Mutating City
Posted on | January 8, 2009 | No Comments
I’m on to Them.
Finally, after years in the dark, playing the frog-to-be-boiled to their slow squeeze, I’ve realized what is going on: we’re getting boxed in.
They tell me that the situation has been like this, or even worse for quite a while now in places such as the US, where there are actual laws against “vagrancy”. This is different, however, this is not some overzealous public official decreeing that “hanging out” is a crime. No, far more nefarious things are afoot here with a subtle scheme robbing us slowly of public spaces where we can spend time outside boxes without paying for… things.
Public benches are disappearing. It is increasingly difficult to stand still in public places, with the constant jostling and shoving. Even the last remaining fortresses of open air idle dawdling are fading and the subliminal push to constant activity and economic flow encroaches in the form of joggers, organized art-exhibitions and the incessant need to drag a bottle of store-bought water along everywhere.
Well, I’ve had enough. I plan to fight back as best I can. You should, too. Resist that impulse to do something. Resist the urge to sit down in a coffee shop. Resist the pull of the engulfing flow of the masses. Take back the public spaces.
Loiter.
keep looking »