1. 01 June 2008

    Interface

    96 days ago

    Neal Stephenson is awesome. His brand of special, pure, joyful absurdity shines through in this one as well as any of his others. It’s from back in 1994, a thriller dealing with a shadowy power structure and its exertion of power upon a presidential election. Brilliant, and yes you should read it. A few things that got me to tick the pages:

    “In the 1700s, politics was all about ideas. But Jefferson came up with all the good ideas. In the 1800s, it was all about character. But no one will ever have as mch character as Lincoln and Lee. For much of the 1900s it was about charisma. But we no longer trust charisma because Hitler used it to kill Jews and JFK used it to get laid and send us to Vietnam.”

    Ogle had broken a six-pack out of a junky old refrigerator behind the “Oval Office” and set up the cans on the presidential desk. Aaron had pulled up another chair and now both of them had their feet up on the desk and beers in their hands.

    “So what’s it about now?” Aaron said.

    “Scrutiny. We are in the age of Scrutiny. A public figure must withstand the scrutiny of the media,” Ogle said. “The President is the ultimate public figure and must stand up under ultimate scrutiny; he is like a man stretched out on a rack in the public square in some medieval shithole of a town, undergoing the rigors of the inquisition. Like the medieval trial by ordeal, the Age of Scrutiny sneers at rational inquiry and debate, and presumes that mere oaths and protestations are deceptions and lies. The only way to discover the real truth is by the rite of the ordeal, which exposes the subject to such inhuman strain that any defect in his character will cause him to crack wide open, like a flawed diamond. It is a mystical procedure that skirts rationality, which is seen as the work of the Devil, instead drawing down a higher, ineffable power. Like the Roman haruspex who foretold the outcome of a battle, not by analyzing the strengths of the opposing forces but by groping through the steaming guts of a slaughtered, we seek to establish a candidate’s fitness for office by pinning him under the lights of a television studio and counting the number of times he blinks his eyes in a minute, deconstructing his use of eye contact, monitoring his gesticulations—whether his hands are open or closed, toward or away from the camera, spread open forthcomingly or clenched like grasping claws.

    “I paint a depressing picture here. Be we, you and I, are like the literate monks who nurtured the flickering flame of Greek rationality through the Dark Ages, remaining underground, knowing each other by secret signs and code words, meeting in cellars and thickets to exchange our dangerous and subversive ideas. We do not have the strength to change the minds of the illiterate multitude. But we do have the wit to exploit their foolishness, to familiarize ourselves with their stunted thought patterns, and to use that knowledge to manipulate them toward the goals that we all know are, quote, right and true, unquote.” 92-92

    Anyone who adhered, at least nominally, to any religion that was invented millennia ago by people who ran around in burlap and believed that the Earth was built on the back of a turtle—that is, any of the major religions—ran into little dilemmas like this on a regular basis. 141

    “Positions change. People don’t. Earl Strong may or may not always be a so–called conservative populist. But he will definitely always be a pencil–neck Hitler wannabe with a face from Wal–Mart, as you pegged him.” 237

    Now there’s a political insult.

  2. 25 May 2008

    Distraction

    Bruce Sterling

    103 days ago

    Fits in nice with the last two books I’ve read, although this doesn’t touch San Francisco. First book I’ve read by Sterling, and he really fits in with Stephenson. Not that Sterling should be measured against Stephenson, but there’s a special, pure, unadulterated, joyful absurdity to everything I’ve read of Stephenson1 that I don’t feel in Distraction.

    I’m an impulse reader2, as you might have guessed from the above. I’ll get wind of a book—most often when I’m already at the computer3—then find it either on amazon.com or worldcat.org from whence I get a link straight to the Minneapolis Public Library’s record of the book and whether or not they have it. From there I click to have the item shipped to the library branch 7 blocks from my house, wait for it to show up on their hold shelves, zip over on my bike, walk into the library, return any finished books, grab my books marked with a convenient sticker featuring my name4, walk them back towards the doors where there are some neat new automatic checkout machines, spend a minute or so futzing with laser barcode scanners and the codes on the books and my library card, throw the books into my bag, and I’m out the door. It’s an awfully good system.

    1 All of them but Interface and Cobweb—jumpcut to me browsing worldcat.org and checking both of these out from the library. Long overdue.

    2 I picked this novel up off a post from Cory Doctorow.

    3 If I’m not on the internet when I get a notion to scrounge around for a book, I’ll oftentimes forget about it. Unfortunate. I’ve probably missed out on a lot of books this way, and it’s one of the chief reasons I wish that I’d walk around with paper and pen (or even a notebook!) more often. But I hate having things in my pockets. I always carry a pen, and sometimes I can manage a piece of 8.5“x11” folded in fourths slipped into my back pocket, but never habitually.

    4 Actually, the first 3 letters of my last name plus my other two initials followed by the first few digits of my birthday—who’d want the library to unwittingly out their salacious reading habits to their distant acquaintances! But in case you’re ever at the Washburn branch, look to the left of the third shelf from the bottom (I think) for OLSKA0111, that’s my tag.

    And sorry for the obscene use of footnotes, I’ve wanted for an awful long time now to correct the way the <sup> elements messed up my line–height—throwing four of ‘em into two paragraphs made the post ugly enough for me to fix it. Give the buggers line-height: 0px;. Now textpattern just needs the linkback feature that Gruber worked into his footnotes. Because footnotes are a pain in the ass.

  3. 21 May 2008

    The Fifth Sacred Thing

    107 days ago

    Here’s the second sci–fi set in San Francisco I’ve read in as many books—completely by coincidence. This one’s set in 2050, 10 or so years after an extreme–right–wing–christian faction coupled with a mega–corporation has taken over much of the United States, Saint Frances having resisted and splintered off. The city and surrounding area has become an eco–haven. Something I’ve always wanted to do—tear out the cement streets and replace them gardens—was the spark in the initial resistance. (Really, if we just knocked out every other street both directions in the grid would it be that bad? I think it would be awesome. But sucks for the people who have to live on the street as opposed to the greenway.)

    I think I saw a quote from this book in Garbage Warrior, and so I called it up from the library. I was greatly skeptical when I saw it was written by a certain Starhawk—not that I knew who she was, my callousness judged her solely on the fact that she’d named herself Starhawk. But it was really a good book, judging by the fact that I read it pretty much straight through: 100 pages one night and the remaining 400 the next day. A few notes:

    Otherwise how could she sound so cheerful, tossing her flame–red hair and smiling as she talks of despair? 234

    This is my vision, she thought; if I believe it, if even a kernel of me believes it and trusts it, I must speak for it. “I support what Lily is saying Many years ago, the poet Diane di Prime wrote a line that comes back to me now: ‘The only war that counts is the war against the imagination.’ I often wondered what she meant by it, but now I think I understand. All war is first waged in the imagination, first conducted to limit our dreams and visions, to make us accept within ourselves its terms, to believe that our only choices are those that it lays before us. If we let the terms of force describe the terrain of our battle, we will lose. But if we hold to the power of our visions, our heartbeats, our imagination, we can fight on our own turf, which is the landscape of consciousness. There, the enemy cannot help but transform.” 238

    Here are two ideas mentioned that for all I know are completely fictional, a quick google isn’t turning up anything. But they’re just as likely real and I should look further into this.

    • Moraga’s Theory on the Limitations of Complexity? 273
    • Five Criteria of True Wealth (Latasha Burton): Usefulness. Sustainability—meaning that it must generate or save as much energy as it consumes and doesn’t depend on nonrenewable resources. Beauty. Healing for the earth, or at least not being destructive. Nurturing for the spirit. 275

    “Who says you cannot heal the past? Time is only a construct. Everything that ever was exists now.” Lily, 444

    …what she had always done: pull the tail of the beast, and when it growled, stand her ground. 483

  4. 07 May 2008

    Little Brother

    121 days ago

    New novel from Cory Doctorow (link). Definitely enjoyable, but there’s something about his novels that seems funny: it’s like reading blogs except it’s a long, coherent text. I do like this book, don’t get me wrong, but it bothers me how campy it is, sort of like a maelstrom of all the big ideas to have passed through the collective attention of blog-land. It’s just weird, makes me roll my eyes a lot. Might also have to do that this book is classed as young adult, but I don’t think so: put a 23 year old in place of a 17 year old as the main character and I don’t think that would change the book that much.

    I read it all through my web browser. I’ve taken to reading books on the laptop lately. It’s awkward to hold, and can be less comfortable than curling up with a book, but the sheer availability of books off the internet is very nice. You can crank up the text size (when reading lots I like the text at 20pts or so, which I hope doesn’t mean I’m going blind) and scroll through.

    You just leave the browser window open when not reading, at the proper spot. cmd-tab works great for finding where you just were if you lose your place, just pull two or three words out of your short term memory and in all likelihood they’ll take you back to the exact spot. Compare that with your page slipping away and having to slowly go through and try to find where your thumb ought to go.

    I’ve always felt I read slowly, but trying to read faster has never worked for me. I like to take my time really. I’ve had Rescue Time running for about a week now (more on the disturbing amount of time I spend on my computer if I ever get the guts to confront that topic), and it says I’ve spent 6 hours on craphound.com. My calculations are that the book (excluding pre– and post–ambles) is 110,062 words, so that by 6 by 60 (hours and minute) is 305 wpm.

    Wikipedia says this is on the high side of average, so I can’t be that slow, but also that people who train their speed–reading technique can get up to 800. But training my reading ability for speed seems questionable—reading is for fun, why mess with it and turn it into some kind of optimized algorithm? I wouldn’t want to turn it into something not fun for the ability to do lots more of it.

    I actually read all but the first few chapters of the book yesterday in a conscious effort at productive procrastination (I need to be doing schoolwork, semester ends next week and I’m not ahead by any means). But here I am writing this silly post and still not doing my stuff. Ouch.

  5. 14 September 2007

    Rainbows End

    Vernor Vinge

    358 days ago

    A nice scifi by Vernor Vinge, worth the read.

  6. 31 October 2005

    1040 days ago

    Teach a man to replicate

    Cory Doctorow’s newest is being serialized with Salon, and it’s really an excellent read.

    via Kjell Olsen1040 days ago

  7. 20 June 2005

    1173 days ago

    Lightsabers from the Big Yellow Box

    Build your own lightsaber. Six different base designs, and yes – they have emitters for the light part.

    Kjell Olsen1173 days ago

  8. Also somewhat recently

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