Archive for January, 2008

On H.P.L.

Friday, January 11th, 2008

Without any further commentary, I present Clark Ashton Smith, writing about H. P. Lovecraft:
To Howard Phillips Lovecraft
Lover of hills and fields and towns antique,
How hast thou wandered hence
On ways not found before,
Beyond the dawnward spires of Providence?
Hast thou gone forth to seek
Some older bourn than these–
Some Arkham of the prime and central wizardries?
Or with familiar [...]

Hmm

Friday, January 11th, 2008

Why do I alway leave my packing until the last minute?
Is it just that I enjoy the stress?
Airport, here I come.

Can Not Process Data

Tuesday, January 8th, 2008

You know those hoary old SF stories where the hero defeats the robot/intelligent energy matrix/computer/whatever by giving it information that can not be logically processed–isn’t “Is the following statement true? ‘This statement is false.’” the classic one?–and thus causing the super-powerful processing of the robot/intelligent energy matrix/computer/whatever to burn out, usually accompanied by a nice [...]

I’m Excited: Shadow Unit

Tuesday, January 8th, 2008

Well, this is certainly the best “online entertainment” news I’ve read in a while.

I’ll let one of the participants explain:
Shadow Unit is, more or less, the website for a serial drama in internet form. Or possibly it’s a fan site for a TV show that doesn’t exist.
Over the next couple of months, the site will [...]

Here We Go Again

Tuesday, January 8th, 2008

Yup. It’s around the world again.
Same route, same distance, slightly longer stay this time.

I checked it out this time, the straight-line distances between the airports are (I put the imperial numbers in for the Yanks, in the parentheses):
Outbound

Halifax - London (Heathrow) : 4589km (2852)
London (Heathrow) - Hong Kong : 9653km (5998)
Hong Kong - Melbourne: 7410km [...]

Quote Of The Day

Friday, January 4th, 2008

“People who have to apply rules like them because they eliminate the need to exercise judgment.”
-Ernie The Attorney
He goes on to suggest that some people don’t want to have to defend a judgment, but I suspect there are a really large number of people who are too lazy to get that far: they just don’t [...]

Exceeding Expectations: Republicans and The Crazy

Thursday, January 3rd, 2008

Seriously?
I mean, seriously?
Republicans picked Huckabee?
Even in crazy Jesusland, isn’t “I won’t sign this bill because calling a tornado an ‘act of God’ makes God look bad” crazy enough to make someone unelectable?
I expected some ludicrousness from Americans, especially Republicans, but my expectations have been exceeded.
And I thought the TSA facecrime thing would be the dumbest [...]

2008 And The Public Domain

Thursday, January 3rd, 2008

Well, it’s another year, and consequently there’s a bunch of new works falling into the public domain.

You can read all about it at copyrightwatch.ca.
Some highly relevant examples to me:

in life+50 countries (like Canada and most of the world) the published works of Dorothy Sayers, Lord Dunsany, Nikos Kazantzakis, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and lots of [...]

Even More Things I Did Not Know

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008

Science has brought us a permanent, but easily-removable, tattooing ink. Does this change the metatext of tattooing? I mean, the pain is still there, but if the permanence isn’t part of the subtext anymore, what does that mean for the story? Is it to obvious to predict the rise of a serial-tattooing culture, or a [...]

This is one of the things political commentary looks like…

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008

… in the postmodern/postirony/mashup/youtube generation.

I am not too old yet to appreciate it. (Admittedly, the song is 20 years old, which may help in bridging that gap.)