What you’re looking at there is something called The Local Cavity–although in this case “local” takes on a meaning somewhat larger than in typical conversation. It’s essentially a 300-light-year in diameter hole in space. Maybe ‘hole’ is stretching it a bit, since it’s not so much that it’s empty, as that it’s WAY less full than the average across the galaxy.

These findings, and the 3D maps that come with them come from research done by a team at University of California, Berkeley. Their full paper (from which the image is taken) is freely available online if you want to see more about how they came to their findings, or see some of the other visuals generated from their map.

For a more popularized version of the really cool bit, let me quote the Discover.com article:

What is obvious in the maps is a white region in the center (where the sun is located), highlighting the Local Cavity. On the edges of the cavity is a “wall” of very dense, neutral gas interspersed with “interstellar tunnels.” These tunnels connect our cavity with other surrounding cavities.

Interestingly, by analyzing one particular absorption line (caused by doubly ionized calcium — CaII), it appears that the Local Cavity contains filamentary structures of partially ionized gas, creating a honeycomb-like pattern of smaller interstellar cells.

Although the cause of this cell-like structuring is unknown at present, it is thought that the Local Cavity was formed after a series of supernovae detonated nearby, blowing the cool, dense interstellar medium away and replacing it with a very tenuous volume of hot plasma, creating a ‘bubble.’

The idea that we live in the blast hollow of a series of supernovae is cool enough on its own, but for someone who’s done the sensawunda reading I’ve done, everything up there connects to all kinds of fantastical SF ideas.

The fact that we are in a pocket? The fact that there’s a dense wall around this pocket? The fact that even the Cavity itself is made up of a honeycomb of cells left from popping bubbles of post-supernova plasma? Every one of those things resonates with stuff I’ve been reading for years. The echos of science fiction just makes the awesome chorus of science sound even cooler.

That’s an image from the “Blood Falls”, a five-story, blood-red waterfall that pours very slowly–the falls are frozen, and so flow slowy–out of the Taylor Glacier in Antarctica’s McMurdo Dry Valleys. That multi-coloured bump in the lower left is a tent, if that helps you get an idea of scale

The falls were first observed around a hundred years ago, but it was some time after that before the real story of what the falls are, and why, came out.

So what is the real story? Well, let’s just quote from the Atlas Obscura entry on the thing:

Roughly 2 million years ago, the Taylor Glacier sealed beneath it a small body of water which contained an ancient community of microbes. Trapped below a thick layer of ice, they have remained there ever since, isolated inside a natural time capsule. Evolving independently of the rest of the living world, these microbes exist in a world with no light or free oxygen and little heat, and are essentially the definition of “primordial ooze.” The trapped lake has very high salinity and is rich in iron, which gives the waterfall its red color.

There are so many ways that could be the setup for a science fiction horror–and the visuals are already there! You could do the “ancient microbe that died out elsewhere is released from the millions-of-year time capsule with horrible results” story, or the “independent evolution results in dangerous and unique organism” story, or… well, so many stories, as I said.

I’d also be quite happy with it being the Fisher King-like unhealing wound of an Old One remaining from the Mountain of Madness days that has created a pocket of monster blood under the ice too…

Of course none of those horror stories are half as scary as the potential results of what’s being released from the ice at the other end of the world as we melt it off…

I noticed today that I seem to have missed International Pipe Smoking Day a couple of weeks back. I had meant to observe it this year, as an excuse to use the pipe I acquired a few years back, that’s been sitting unused ever since… but I guess I’m just not a pipe type guy (or possibly just not a “remember what I’m meant to do” type guy).

I was really amused by this bit, at the end of that post though:

As for fraternity – dude, you’re smoking a pipe. Unless your fraternity involves steampunk and sly witticisms involving Satre, you’re pretty much on your own.

I’m pretty much prepared to admit that smoking a pipe (at least, as the article contends, in people under 40) is pretty much always an affectation. I mean, that’s why I got a pipe–purely as an affectation. Sadly, I’ve never really had the chance to use it–I kept meaning to bring it out at a poker tournament, where affectations are welcomed and graded, but I never managed to organize it.

Still it is a pretty cool pipe, and I can use this as an excuse to show it to you, especially since that’s probably all the use I’ll ever get out of it.

At the time I decided that I should have the option of affecting a pipe, it seemed clear to me that what I wanted was a meerschaum pipe. I’m not sure what the source or sources of this bit of received wisdom was–I have a sense that I’ve read a number of things over the years that subtly created in me the impression that the pipe connoisseur would want one of them.

Of course I then had to do some research to determine what meerschaum actually is, and where one could get a pipe made of it.

What it is, was relatively easy to resolve: Wikipedia to the rescue.

Meerschaum is a soft white mineral sometimes found floating on the Black Sea, and rather suggestive of sea-foam, whence also the French name for the same substance, écume de mer.

Here you can see a pipe being carved from meerschaum:

That’s happening in Turkey, which apparently has a very-near monopoly on meerschaum; generally the pipes are made near the city of Eskisehir in the plains west of the capital city of Ankara.

My research also lead me to sites that sell the pipes, and which provide sales information about why meerschaum makes a good pipe–all stuff I didn’t find out until I was looking for one already, so my internal notion wasn’t developed from this kind of info. It must have been stuff I picked up from reading fiction.

• Meerschaum is a light-weight stone; this gives you a very light pipe to hold in your mouth or in your hand. The weight difference is noticable when compared to similar sized briar pipes.
• Meerschaum is a porous material; this feature will give you a much cleaner smoke since tars and other undesireable by-products of burning tobacco leaves are absorbed by the stone.
• Meerschaum colors as it is used; as the tars and other byproducts are absorbed by the stone, they are drawn to the surface by the beeswax coating which colors the stone over time.
• Meerschaum imparts no flavor on your tobacco; if you are testing a new tobacco or want to really know what a particular blend tastes like, there is nothing like a Meerschaum pipe to “speak the truth” rather than adding it’s own taste and aroma to the mix like briar or other woods will
• Meerschaum won’t burn; since there is no chance of burning your pipe you don’t need to create a cake of carbon on the inside of the bowl to protect it. This allows you to smoke many types of tobaccos in your pipe without worry about “polluting the cake” and muddling the taste/aroma of your fine tobaccos.

Those reasons all come from the pitch at MeerschaumPipes.com, who also have a pretty good resources page.

I didn’t actually get mine from online–I arranged a private sale when I saw the one I knew was just right for my sense of amusement¹. If you’re interested, some photos after the jump.

That’s the custom case that holds the pipe. Since meerschaum is relatively soft, having a way to protect it when not in use (and in my case that means “all the time”) is pretty important. A custom fitted, protective case is pretty much a must.

Here you can see the pipe in the case. You can see some of the design work on the stem, and how the stone is beginning to colour.

Here you can see the bowl, and start to get a hint of how the bowl end of the pipe is carved.

Here you see the maker’s signature and dating on the bottom. If I hadn’t already told you these were mostly made in Turkey these days, you’d be able to tell from this.

And here you see the front of the bowl, and you know why I had to have this pipe when I saw it. Bacchus seems to me like a very appropriate god for a pipe, and this is a very fun Bacchus.

1. And actually, thinking about it now, I might have to get it out to play along with the “at my club” vibe I’m building with the chairs and birthday globe.

And what was that “big present” you may be asking–well, it’s the result of a collaboration between Dr. Wife and my best pal.

See, in the new house I’ve been working on a plan to fill various areas. Part of this plan has involved the acquisition of some very nice chairs. Not chairs that necessarily match each other, but chairs that eclectically coordinate, and that suit the particular feeling I want for this area–at least as far as my skewed tastes go.

The first of these I had actually acquired in Halifax. It’s a massive leather armchair. It looks like this:

On reflection I decided that while this is a wonderful chair it isn’t quite what I wanted for the particular area in question. The chair does function quite well in the armchair role in the “rec room” part of the basement, so we’ll use it for that. It will coordinate with the other chairs, but it’s just a bit too bulky for what I was thinking of.

After moving here we also acquired a second chair that will work. This one is also ridiculously big, but doesn’t have the same bulk–it has some… um… throne-like qualities:

The book is there for scale.

The new one is definitely destined for the “a couple of people sit and drink brandy or port near the fire” area. I will probably have to acquire another interesting chair for that area.

Anyway, this is all buildup–you see, in discussing just what kind of happily cheesy feel I wanted for this area with my wife, I uttered something like this: “you know, an overstuffed wingback with a very high back, a table with a decanter between the two chairs, maybe another table to hold the pipe–no wait, even better, one of those huge freestanding globes that you open and there’s a bar inside! Yeah, something like that.”

I honestly don’t think it ever occurred to me that those things were still being made somewhere. I certainly wasn’t expecting to get one for my birthday. But…

There you see my present, closed up, alongside the new throne.

And here you can see Pyjama Girl displaying the inside, where the old school loveliness on the inner surface can be seen:

And finally, here’s a shot into the thing, after I stuck in a decanter with some Woodford Reserve Masters Collection bourbon, and a couple of glasses. (Yes, at some point in the near future I’m going to have to get a heavy crystal decanter with that chunky cut crystal style–something like this, as well as a couple of slimmer ones.)

Trish set a pretty high bar for presents early on with Miles, but in my opinion she’s hit that mark again this time, if not surpassed it. (Although this time she does have to share the credit.)

I wish it were black, or at least something dark, but there is no denying the power of Bulgarkov and his book. And hey, good cause.

What you’re looking at there is the sad and beautiful story of the death of two stars, and the casting of two other survivors into the darkness.

I’ve been sitting here playing with the My Solar System gravity simulator since reading about it in Discovery–it’s a cool educational toy for modelling interaction of bodies under gravity. You can use it develop an understanding of how multiple bodies interact with each other under gravity, and just how sensitive to initial conditions the stable systems are.

Or, you know, you can just mess about with the parameters to make suns crash into each other. Moo hoo ha ha.

New Scientist also brings me news of a cool simulator of the effect of gravity, albeit not one where I get to blow up planets and suns.

This one simulates what you would see travelling in the vicinity of a black hole. You can download a Windows or Linux app, and real star data from Thomas Muller’s site. If you’re not motivated enough to do that, you can still watch some movies of the display at his site.

That’s a still from one of the movies–the cool one where you fall into a black hole.

Next time I reread Pohl’s Heechee books, I’m going to have a much better set of internal visuals.

As I talk to more and more single people who are roughly my age, it becomes apparent to me that the Internet dating scene has become both gigantic and socially acceptable in the time I’ve been off the market–whatever stigma there once was to dating services has apparently completely vanished in the Internet age. This is cool: certainly I know a lot of people who started out that way and have ended up happy, and almost every rational case makes the idea a good one–but I apparently have been off the dating scene, and not thinking about dating at all, for long enough that I haven’t internalized that social change¹. It’s just one of the signs that the world of dating has changed significantly since I was last in it.

There are some things about the change that would, I guess, work in my favour, had I not luckily found Dr. Wife. I mean, did you see that article about how women–despite what they may say–actually want stubbly geeks with chest hair? I have that locked down.

Or that study of online daters that “found that women put a premium on income and height when deciding which men to contact”–I run 6′ 2″ and I do pretty OK in the finance department. Apparently a shorter person would have to make a lot more money to get the same attention as me–according to the study, someone 5′ 9″ would have to make $150,000 more than I do in order to be seen as equally desirable. (This makes me wonder about my friend Jeff, who’s like 6′ 8″ or something, and a successful engineer/manager at a big telecom–he should have online dating women following him around town!)

Men, of course, are just as shallow, if not moreso. Partly this is because certain kinds of women actually affect us like a drug–we actually get stoned on the hourglass figure. I don’t know why, but I find that result more hilarious than almost any science I’ve read this year.

There’s also some research that says that the “sweet young thing” paranoia certain women feel is justified–men who are looking for dates think dating way young is OK, and will actually try to date even younger than they admit is OK.

Take a long at OKCupid’s blog about what men and women indicate as their acceptable age range. Men basically treat their own age (more-or-less) as their stated top acceptable range, and the bottom end of their acceptable range gets further from their age as they get older. That by itself is enough to confirm the “sweet young thing” idea. But then if you look at who the men actually contact on the site, things get interesting–they do follow their own stated maximum, but they actually contact women including many significantly lower than their stated acceptable minimum. In the chart it looks like 50-year old dudes have an average minimum around 30, but actually contact just as many women between 22 and 30 as in their stated range. Yikes.

Women also have a range that gets bigger as they age, but only slightly–nothing like the cone of the men’s data–and they tend to set the minimum close to their own age, and have an acceptable range that extends a few (6-8) years above their age. Quite a different pattern from the men. Who they contact is also much close to what they say is acceptable–they have some spillover on the older side, which men don’t have, and some on the younger side, but to a markedly smaller degree than men (and that’s spillover from a tighter range to start with.)

That’s all very interesting, and revealing, but you know what is depressing? When you read down far enough to see the How A Person’s Desirability Changes With Time chart. Yes, men have it better than women there, but still I’m well over the hill on that graph. Indeed, I’m actually at the “average” point–if I were single, from now on my age would cause me to be less desirable than the average man in the dating pool, and that would get worse every year.

(The counter for that depression, of course, is to remember that I may be getting older, but I have already locked down fortunately managed to marry a smart, funny, hot wife. This is the real meaning of the post title.)

You should read the rest of the post where they make a pretty impassioned case for single guys to date older women. There’s lots of interesting stuff in there.

Thinking about all of that makes me glad I’m out, not just from the “I found a great person to get out with” perspective but also from the “man, it’s just all too much” perspective–I want a story about how we met², not an explanation of how I used the statistics at my service to find someone who was likely to be interested in me.

And it will only get more different from what I remember. I mean I still haven’t really internalized net-dating, so how am I supposed to deal with a world where people are seriously test dating on private holodecks?

Say it with me: we’re living in science fiction.

1. This is probably just because I haven’t spent the same amount of time thinking about it. I know lots of people in from various online communities who started relationships there, etc, so “we met on the Internet” seems normal to me, but I haven’t actually spent a lot of time talking to people about dating services, etc. I’ll get past it–it’s just a matter of spending the effort to have reason beat down the social programming from my youth.
2. Good meeting story may not always mean good relationships, but you can’t dine out on “dating service” as the answer. Trish and I, incidentally, have a really good, if long, one that covers a lot of territory, including something like three years where we couldn’t stand each other.

• Let’s start with Flogging Molly. I’ve been a fan of theirs for around a decade now, since Swagger found its way to me though my network of nefarious fellow travellers. Well, they have a new video, for your free streaming, to go along with a lovely new song, which they’ve made free to download, but it’s one that comes with some serious, and not a little gloomy, background. Check out both the song, and the information they’re trying to raise awareness of.
• Many long term questions about Los Angeles are suddenly rendered transparent by the revelation of the Lost City of the Lizard People, which has lived beneath LA for rather a long time, and which, one presumes, has exerted a dark and sinister influence over the city all this time.
• Speaking of dark and sinister influences, have you seen the trailer for The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulu? It looks like just the kind of cheese I could enjoy.
• I bet lots of Yanks who read Boing Boing were amused by the story of the NB MLA who gave another MLA the finger and then basically dared the entire assembly to go outside for a throwdown. Of course they might not be aware that there is a fine tradition of flipping the bird in Canadian politics–indeed we even have our own special slang to reflect this. (I do have to admit, though, that Pierre did it with a lot more elan and panache than this most recent example.)
• I have a closet full of board games that never get played, because they require multiple adults who want to play something with complex and detailed-oriented rules, and my board game audience is typically made up of a single 5-year old who, while sharp, is usually looking for a short and simple board game experience. My experience with Warhammer and the related milieu is limited to some general background absorbed via osmosis during my D&D days, and what I’ve seen in the video games. And yet, even considering those two points, this video review of Chaos In The Old World makes me want to buy another board-game (not appropriate for 5 year olds) and set in the Warhammer world. I think it’s a combination of the presentation style and the accent. (While writing this, I just fell down the WH40K wiki hole–man, there’s a huge amount of utterly insane backstory to that world.)
• Sarah and I recently took in the King Tut exhibit at the AGO. As part of that exhibit you can watch a 3-D movie about mummy history. The movie included a lot detail on the potential research benefits of modern DNA research using mummy samples¹. The exhibit also included a display and film loop about medical research into what Tut’s medical condition was like, and what he died of. Since both of those ideas are still primed in my head from the recent exposure, I was a receptive audience for National Geographic’s story King Tut Mysteries Solved, which hits both of those points.
• So it’s a nuclear power plant that comes in a sealed 4.5 by 7.5 box–i.e. smaller than the hot tub I owned in my party years–that provides enough power for 20,000 homes for 7-10 years? And it costs $50million? So what’s that work out to? Something between $250 and $350 per year per household. $20 or $30 a month for reliable power with no carbon footprint? Interesting. There are certainly by-product questions, but generally speaking I’m fine with trading off small amounts of long-lived radioactive waste for massive reductions in burning carbon for power, and the associated pollution. The security questions strike me as more relevant. Still interesting… interesting. I quite like the bit about being able to retrofit existing power generation sites with this as the source. Keep the all the infrastructure at the big old coal-burning power generation plant, just replace the burning coal with this box. That also leads to some interesting questions about the most efficient power generation using this as a power source in a new construction… hmmm.
• Top 10 lists are kind of inherently cheap, but they can still be both fun and useful if the content is right. Take this list of Top 10 Common Faults In Human Thought. All the individual items are things we’ve seen discussed before in all kinds of contexts, but it’s nice to have them all there in one place for a quick review. And it gives you an excuse to argue about the ordering as well–in this case I am astonished that someone could think that the number one spot (out of the items listed) shouldn’t go to either Escalation of Commitment or Herd Mentality, both of which are more severe failings at the level of Humanity than the listed first choice.
• Have you seen Worldometers? It’s a site that displays a number of global statistics, updating in real time. I’m sitting here watching the population count go up. It’s a little scary. But not as scary as some of them. The CO₂ count, for example. Or the “Oil left” one, which is scary kind of regardless of what the number beside it is. Or the count of people with no access to safe drinking water–shouldn’t that be going the other way in this century? Seriously? Same with the cigarette number–that’s some scary shit. And the “Deaths of children under 5 this year” number–I can’t even process that. Joe was right.
• One of the two things I concentrated on in the later part of my university education was Image Processing. I loved the math, and in this case it was math with readily displayed application. Given the chance I will bore you to death with discussions of the frequency domain, power spectra, the theory of the unsharp mask, and dozens of other things, even today–when I haven’t really done anything with that stuff for nigh unto 15 years. So, reading an article about how pretty much every piece of graphics software in the world screws up the math when doing image scaling is right up my alley. The pathological example of the Dalai Lama image is interesting enough as an illustration (and you’d better believe that I tried it out in Photoshop, Gimp, and PSP, as well as in-browser), but I think the other stuff under “Examples” really drives home how subtle, but important, error is introduced in scaled images. Neat.
• As the kind of weirdo who loves the Calculus++ that is signal theory, I am pretty much impervious to ‘math anxiety’. Even the stuff I can’t remember, or never learned, doesn’t scare me–I’m pretty sure I could knock off that whole group/field theory thing in a weekend if I had to². This means that I’m reading about a study at my alma mater with a definite feeling of distance–it’s a study into how math anxiety can have measurable effect even in cases where the task at hand is as simple as counting five to nine black squares. I’m actually pleased to see them doing research into the problem, and would like to be followed up by study in the surely connected area of computer anxiety. If fewer folks had math and computer fear, and the accompanying sense of incomprehensibility about those areas, I bet we could make a lot more rational decisions as a society–when you think something is utterly beyond understanding, “magic” for all intents and purposes, it’s easy to be irrational about it. Fear is the mindkiller, you know.
• Why you want to be an engineer. (I have a minor in , and penchant for, philosophy, which I think only made me smile wider.)
• And now from the I-can’t-satirize-this-it-comes-satire-proofed department, I direct you to the newspaper editor who fired a reported because, and I quote: “because he held on to the notion that there was an objective reality that could be reported objectively, despite the fact that that was not our editorial policy“. Seriously. I got nothing. I’d only be gilding refined gold.
• I guess I’m a pretty weak-ass SF fan, since I can look over this list of 18 upcoming SF shows and not get excited at all. The only one I have any real hope for is Tower Prep, which is definitely targeted at people younger than me, and that’s only because of Paul Dini’s track record with the DCAU. I’m a fan of both Martin’s Ice & Fire books, and Farmer’s Riverworld books, but I’m pretty pessimistic about adaptations generally–although it must be said I have a lot more hope for HBO’s effort than for Syfy’s. I also like Kirkman’s Walking Dead comic, but here I’m troubled both by adaptation issues and pacing issues–maybe I’ll be surprised, but I don’t think the pacing that took 2 years to get to making the title-theme explicit is going to translate to TV. Nothing else on the list even raises my interest a little.
• And finally, as a reward for those of you who made it this far, I give you the “That Guy” page, which has pictures and name for over 100 character actors you will recognize. You will mostly be amazed at how many of them you know from lots of places. Then you can argue about who is actually better than the list. (Cromwell, Ribisi, Chaykin, Rubinek, and Elliott(!!) at least should be people who you refer to by name, not as “That Guy”. In my circle this would also include GUZMAN, Frewer, and Ray Wise³ but I understand those are more debatable. Probably there’s someone going “come on, you didn’t know the name of the guy who played both Remo Williams and HP Lovecraft, the detective?”, someone else ranting about Mr, Gilmore, and someone else going on about Brisco County, Jr. villains.)

1. It also included a lot of half-naked buff dudes, and lovely ladies in tight white cotton dresses that were lovely in 3D. I guess the idea was the put some “sugar” in with the medicine?
2. No, I’m not. It’s a joke. Roll with it.
3. Only because he recently made such a good Devil. Before that show he was “That Guy”.

If you’re not from Halifax, the odds are you don’t know what this is all about. A capsule summary would be that there once was a community, called Africville, on the Halifax peninsula whose population was almost entirely black–the people came from a range of different origins¹, but the community was apparently originally created for Black Loyalists in the years after the American War of Independence, and running right up to the War of 1812. In the 1960s, the community was razed and the population forced to relocate. There are some different flavours of official story behind it–some stuff about public safety and the community being an eyesore²–but my read of the information I’ve seen on it suggests that it was essentially the growing city of Halifax wiping out a marginalized³ community in order to get room for commercial expansion, and to build a new bridge to Dartmouth. (During my time in Halifax, there was also substantial residential development within the loose boundaries of the area–lots of condo complexes with harbour views going up.)

From a recent article’s short background:

According to a collection of photographs assembled by the Government of Canada, Africville was “deemed an eyesore” by the city council of the day, and its residents were scattered to different parts of Halifax and the province.

It is commonly pointed out that while the residents of Africville paid full city taxes, they didn’t receive running water sewage or other city services.

Today it is generally acknowledged that racial discrimination was at the heart of Africville’s destruction.

For a less “capsule” take on the history, I refer you to CBC’s archives, specifically the Africville: Expropriating Black Nova Scotians topic, which has some good details, including a number of video clips from the times in question. The man-on-the-street racism question is particularly interesting.

Shortly after I arrived in Halifax–around 2002, I think–discussions started in earnest about some kind of reparation program.

And it looks like that process finally reached it’s head tonight with formal ratification of an agreement between the city and the community’s representatives⁴:

Halifax regional council has ratified a deal that will see former residents of Africville and their descendants receive an official apology — four decades after the City of Halifax razed the black community to make room for a bridge.

…

The society accepted the offer from the municipality on Saturday. Steed-Ross, one of the founding members of the society, wouldn’t reveal the details of the offer. According to one published report, it includes a $3-million payout and about one hectare of municipal land. There is no money for individuals or families.

On Sunday, the federal government announced $250,000 for the Africville Heritage Trust, which will help design a museum and a replica of the community’s church.

Read more

Apparently the Mayor will issue the apology tomorrow morning, along with details of the agreement. I think I’ll listen to the Halifax CBC Radio feed tomorrow.

1. The Nova Scotia Archives have a great site for a concise history of African Nova Scotians that covers this stuff, as well as interesting stories like the mass migration of Black Loyalists to Sierra Leone, and the story of The Book Of Negroes.
2. Yeah, no racist code there. And, of course, the slum conditions weren’t the result of an ongoing system of discrimination or anything. Sigh.
3. Actually my read is that the community wasn’t just marginalized, but that there was a sizeable slice of the population who were quite happy to break up and move the black community. It’s ugly to see stuff like this happening within a couple of decades of my lifetime; within my parents’ lifetimes.
4. Actually, there’s a whole other thing about whether or not the group legally represents the community, but I’m not going to get into that.

The old constraint of an essential bond
Hath linkt them in my mind: opposed they stare,
Twin silences, that through Time’s Otherwhere,
The ruinous past, thus each to each respond,
One with mysterious gaze that sees beyond
The straining suns, calm as the voidness there;
And one with eyes like deserts of despair,
Flameless as granite, clear as diamond.

They gaze across the past… Yet thought must see
That eve of time when man no longer yearns,
Grown deaf before Life’s Sphinx, whose lips are barred;
When from the spaces of Eternity,
Silence, a rigorous Medusa, turns
On the lost world the stress of her regard.

What’s a book you most want to read again for the first time?:

Oh, that’s a tough one. I’d probably want to pick something that changed my head in some significant way, which biases the field in favour of things I read earlier in my life–the structures in my head are getting pretty ossified now, so it sadly takes a lot more for a book to change the structure these days. Many of those books, of course, didn’t have their full effect on the first read, at the time, but reading them for the first time now would likely be a very different experience.

With that in mind, I’m going to have to go with Gene Wolfe’s Book Of The New Sun¹, which was a tremendously fun read the first time I read it, but which I think I would get a lot more out of reading for the first time now than I did when I actually read it for the first time.

Runners up: Mindplayers, Valis, Darker Than Amber, The Conquest Of Happiness

What was one of your favourite childhood books?:

This would depend, of course, on what age we’re talking about.

In the single-digit-age I think my favourite was probably A Wrinkle In Time. This was actually something I was assigned to read in school in Grade 3–well, technically in a kind of enrichment program I was in then–and I loved it. I still do, you know. I am barely holding back from reading it to my daughter, because I want her to be able to read it to herself the first time.

Runners-up: By my early teens I had already discovered John D. MacDonald and would have cited him as a favourite, but I suspect that the individual books I actually talked the most about were Jhereg, When The Sacred Ginmill Closes, Ora:cle, and The Last Coin.

What’s a book that you were assigned in school that you were expecting to be bad, but that turned out to be really good?:

I could have said the above, I guess, except at the time I didn’t really expect anything from it.

I actually had this experience a lot of time in school. I think the most dramatic case was actually The Great Gatsby, which I not only expected to be bad, but actually thought was terrible for most of the time I was reading it. It was only in the last section of the book that things clicked into place for me, and I realized that I had been utterly wrong in my reactions to what I had been reading up to that point.

Runners up: Teahouse Of The Autumn Moon, Slaughterhouse 5, Walden

What’s your “guilty pleasure” read?:

I’m not going to admit to my actual most guilty pleasure reading–I would lose all my litcred immediately. Instead I’ll admit to number two: the works of Brian Lumley, particularly his Cthulhu mythos stuff and the “Necroscope” books. I have a disturbingly wide stretch of shelf full of his stuff, and have even splashed out for a fancy edition of the first Necroscope book.

I’m not defending this–I’ve enjoyed reading them all.

Runners up: All those really slim Barnum/Hellquad Ron Goulart space-pulp books, the thrillers of John Sandford

What’s a book you feel you should read, but haven’t yet?:

Right now the one I’m feeling the most peer pressure to read is probably The Windup Girl (which is on the shelf waiting), but since internal pressure is more important to me, I’m going to go with Hespira by Matthew Hughes, since I’ve loved all his previous books and I can’t figure out why I haven’t got around to reading this one yet.

1. Yeah, it’s kind of cheating to pick a series

Let’s start with a pleasantly gross story. You may know that throughout history both leeches and maggots have been used by different types of “physickers”. The historical idea of “bleeding” or “leeching” or blood-letting, whatever you want to call it is basically a bunch of bunk, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t cases where modern medicine can use leeches–like using them to promote circulation in tissue reattachment surgery. Using maggots to remove necrotic tissue was actually never that bad of an idea, and in fact it’s something that’s coming back to the medical mainstream, albeit with a lot more disinfecting throughout the process than in ye olde days. I kind of love that they have come up with more patient-friendly names for this than “maggot therapy“, like “biosurgery”, or my personal favourite “biodebridement”. If you have a strong stomach, you can see some video about this here–it does come with that lovely Australian accent.

Well, you say, that’s cool–gross, but cool–but it doesn’t really count as “we live in science fiction”; this is stuff that’s been around for centuries. And that’s a legitimate point, but I’m actually only pointing out the use of biological wormy things in modern medicine to provide some context for a link to the use of nanoworms to find and treat tumours.

“When attached to drugs, these nanoworms could offer physicians the ability to increase the efficacy of drugs by allowing them to deliver them directly to the tumors,” said Sangeeta Bhatia, a physician, bioengineer and a professor of Health Sciences and Technology at MIT who was part of the team. “They could decrease the side effects of toxic anti-cancer drugs by limiting their exposure of normal tissues and provide a better diagnosis of tumors and abnormal lymph nodes.”

The scientists constructed their nanoworms from spherical iron oxide nanoparticles that join together, like segments of an earthworm, to produce tiny gummy worm-like structures about 30 nanometers long—or about 3 million times smaller than an earthworm. Their iron-oxide composition allows the nanoworms to show up brightly in diagnostic devices, specifically the MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging, machines that are used to find tumors.

Now, to be fair, the “nanoworms” in the article aren’t worm in any biological sense–they are essentially very simple nano-machines, but I figure if they’re going to call them nanoworms, then that’s an excuse for me to do the gross but cool worm medicine stuff. Stepping away from that gag for a moment, think about what that nanoworm story is saying–actual manufacturing of targeted nanomedical materials (which could have serious ramifications for cancer treatment), and this manufacturing is actually being done–and that was years ago already. If you don’t think that developing the delivery system is huge until you hear about it’s use in actual medicine, then you didn’t pay enough attention when Mr. Burke was trying to teach you something about how science happens.

(Now take a moment to think about the scary potential of targeted nanomaterials in the bloodstream that are undetectable to the immune system–bet you a dollar there’s military application research going on right now.)

Using surrogates to actually perform certain medical operations–whether it’s leeches circulating blood, maggots debriding necrotic tissue, or nanoworms tagging and delivering drugs to tumors–isn’t limited to just these cases, of course. The use of medical robots as the surrogate is something dramatically on the rise–and again, this isn’t Jetsons stuff, this is right now.

Many urologists performing prostate surgery view the precise, tremor-free movements of a robot as the best way to spare nerves crucial to bladder control and sexual potency. A robot’s ability to deftly handle small tools may lead to a less invasive procedure and faster recovery for a patient. Robots also can protect surgeons from physical stress and exposure to X-rays that may force them into premature retirement.

A generation ago, the debate in medicine was whether robotics would ever play a role. Today, robots are a fast-growing, diversifying $1 billion segment of the medical device industry

I might be showing my age, but I remember when waldoes were science fiction¹

You should read that entire robot article, for the discussion of applications not just to precise control, but also to remote cyber-surgery that might allow surgeons to ‘operate’ via robot at a distance. Also the discussion of whether this technology is being disseminated prematurely.

Of course research into ways to improve these robo-surrogates also continues. Take for instance incorporation of not just manual control by a surgeon, but also automatic tracking of the surgeon’s eye movements and attention:

The team has added a device which tracks the surgeon’s eye movements. By working out precisely where each eye is looking, software can build up a 3D map of the area of tissue the surgeon is looking at. “What that does is it uses the surgeon’s brain as a way in to calculating the depth of the tissue,” said the surgeon Lord Darzi, who heads the centre and is a government health minister responsible for improving patient care.

This 3D map is allows the software to stabilise the image of moving tissues such as a beating heart to make surgery easier. It means that what the surgeon sees in the viewer is stationary, while his or her instruments are in fact moving up and down in train with the organ.

Or the incorporation of augmented reality techniques into the surgeon’s display:

This allows the surgeons to see beyond the surface of the tissue to the structure they are operating on, for example a tumour or a blood vessel. The software does this by combining the image from the live tissue with scans taken before the operation of the area. The system’s computer graphics give the illusion of see-through live tissue, with the position of the tumour beneath.

“It shows you the tumour in relation to its anatomical structure,” Darzi said. That means the surgeon can be more precise and avoid cutting out large amounts of healthy tissue. “

(Now stop for a moment and think about all those augmented reality iPhone apps. In a few years does something like your personal pocket computer have the ability to do this kind of display? Hello medical tricorder.)

And, of course, the robot can also be used to reduce operator error:

The team is also working on setting up virtual “no-go zones” such as a healthy blood vessel, which the robot will not allow a surgeon to cut by mistake.

Some of the ideas here probably do seem science-fictiony–if your visual is a tiny robot doing heart surgery at the direction of a doctor working with a crazy 3D movie interface–but if you think about something like laser eye surgery, the notion of machine-surrogate delicate procedures suddenly seems very work-a-day. And that surgery might be the best example of just how much we live in science fiction and take it for granted. Robots fire precision LASERS into your eye! And it’s an outpatient procedure that miraculously fixes your vision. Think for a moment about how mad that really is.

1. Note: I am not in the least interested in arguing about whether or not that story is science fiction.or fantasy or some other genre label.

Here’s a quote from an IM chat I was having with a Boston pal last week:

(9:15:32 AM) Chris: Friday  7pm
The Singularity: An Appraisal
Alastair Reynolds
Karl Schroeder
Charles Stross
Vernor Vinge

Arguably the idea of the Singularity — a period where change happens so quickly that life afterwards is incomprehensible to people who lived before it — is one of the few entirely fresh ideas in SF in the last forty years.  Perhaps it is time for an appraisal. Has the idea of the Singularity been a good thing for SF, providing fresh ideas and stimulating great writing or has the notion that the comprehensibility of the future has a sharp (and near-term) limit diminished possibilities?  Has it been a good thing for *your* writing?  How about the Singularity in reality — after twenty years does it look more or less plausible that it is lurking in our own real-world future?  Discuss the interplay between the idea of the Singularity in SF and actual scientific research.  Where are the really exotic ideas coming from?

(9:16:13 AM) Chris: I am jealous that you can attend that this weekend.Man, I hope that panel ends up on YouTube

Well, it didn’t.

It ended up on Vimeo.

If you’re finding the sound a little low there… well, so did I.

So I did a little computer magic to pull out the audio and crank up the volume about 800%. Of course, at that point the audience laughter was annoyingly loud, so I did a bit of manual twiddling to turn down the most significant blocks of that laughter, and threw the whole thing through a bit of filtering to neaten it up.

What resulted was a nice little MP3 where the panel discussion is easily audible, which is suitable to listening to during your commute, or whatever.

• Let’s start off this list with Jo Walton costing me a pile of money. I’ve mentioned before enjoying her Tor.com reviews, and finding significant alignment between her tastes and mine… so when she reviews a series of spy novels that I somehow have never even heard of, and makes them sound very interesting indeed, that’s going to get me interested in reading the books. Then when the comments support this almost universally, and include the fact that I’ll have to have read these in order to get all the in-jokes in the next of Charles Stross’ Laundry books… well, let’s just say I’m going to have to track down a set of these books. Fortunately a mission like that, which once would have been a noticeable effort, has been reduced to the work of but a few minutes at the keyboard. Although I might just wait, since it looks like Phoenix is starting to reprint them in July. (And how is it that I’ve not previously heard of Price–it seems rather unlikely.)
• Generally speaking, I prefer print interviews and transcripts to video and/or audio–I find I can take in the material faster, and in most cases that’s the key point. For some authors though, I like to try and get a better sense of their personality through the additional information you get via those other channels. This is generally why I enjoy Rick Kleffel’s interviews. Another example would be Peter Straub’s Youtube Q&A session. Or Lawrence Block doing a reading. I’ll take the time to watch those.
• I believe I have made my feelings on Fred Phelps and his brood pretty clear, so you can imagine how pleased I was to find a whole book on them, free online. There’s some interesting back-story to why the book is currently public domain, but since it is, you can have a look at Addicted To Hate. You know, if you have a strong stomach. If you’re more of a video guy, I’m still recommending the piece Louis Theroux did–you can find it on youtube by searching for “The Most Hated Family In America“.
• I have distinct memories of reading The Merchant of Venice in high school English–and unlike rather a lot of Shakespeare I haven’t revisited it, or had chance to interact with it as an adult. Even given that, I did find this piece about how teaching the play has changed over 30 years for a particular instructor very insightful.
• In one of those weird bits of synchronicity, the link to that last article was immediately preceded in my RSS reader by a link to this. Gifted Toronto artist Eric Kim has been doing two panel versions of The Bard’s works (“Thespian Thursdays”), and that’s his take on The Merchant. You should absolutely also check out Eric’s online web comic Streta. It starts off looking like it’s going to be a relationship story, and then right around page 5 things get nuts! Great fun so far, check it out.
• I’m not too impressed with the it’s-not-plaigarism-it’s-remix-culture-you-don’t-understand-because-you’re-a-dinosaur argument. First off, I have Negativland albums that I’ve been regularly listening to since before the person making the argument was conceived, and I am–right now, as I type this–listening to the Kleptones, so don’t tell me I don’t get remix culture. Secondly, you know what one of the key characteristics of a remix is: that you don’t start by claiming it’s entirely an original work until you get caught sampling. Bah. Get off my lawn.
• Yeah, so they’re going to do a trilogy of movies adapting Asimov’s Foundation trilogy… as 3D motion capture movies. Yes, that’s right–you will be able to see the predictably behaviour of statistically significant sets of humanity over time IN 3D. I predict a lot less talking than in the books, and many, many more exciting space battles.
• Hey look–a free electronic version of one of John D. MacDonald’s pulp novels. Have I mentioned my contention that JDM is the single finest storyteller produced by America in the last century?
• Hmmm. Harry Stephen Keeler seems to be tweeting from beyond the grave. You know about Keeler, right? Gaiman calls him “one of my very favourite authors in the world. Greatest bad writer, or worst great writer, of 20th century.” I wouldn’t go that far, but he’s sure fun to read–even in 140 character chunks.
• And finally, you writing process junkies–and you know who you are–might want to watch Graham Joyce’s feed closely for the next little while.

Sometimes you can see this coming, so you know not to start reading something if it’s late. I was smart enough not to start that new(ish) Tibor Fischer book too late in the evening, or that latest Justina Robson romp, or… well, there’s a lot of traps out there, and sometimes I manage to start them at a decent hour and sometimes they trick me, and I start reading them in the wee hours, and end up finishing them in the hmm-is-that-false-dawn-over-there hours¹.

One thing always seems to get me though: new episodes of Shadow Unit. They never seem as dangerous to sleep as they actually are.

“What’s a Shadow Unit?” you ask? Well, I could point you to what I’ve said about it here before, or I could point you to the official Getting Started, but I think perhaps the best description of what it is was included in a post by one of the main creators:

It’s the latest chapter in a thing we have variously referred to as a virtual television show, an interactive semi-real-time hyperfiction evnvironment, and fanfic for a TV show that doesn’t exist.

What it is when we’re not failing at marketing is a serial shared-world narrative optimized for the internet. Imagine Wild Cards if you could talk to the characters as events play out, and occasionally influence the course of events. The setting is somewhere between Millennium, The X-Files, and Criminal Minds, with touches of The Man from UNCLE. Which is to say it’s about a group of unrealistically sexy, ubercompetent FBI agents attempting to protect the innocent from the worst monsters imaginable, with hints of evil conspiracy.

Maybe.

Unless that’s not what’s going on at all.

So, you can view it as an online series, each episode a novella or novelette (or, in a couple of cases “novel” might be more accurate) that is a complete story, but with an ongoing arc story behind the episodes. The stories are released regularly to the web, arranged in “seasons”, with short breaks between them. The first story of the third season just went live recently, and a schedule was recently announced showing that there will be a total of four seasons before the planned finish of the story.

Oh, and these stories–the people who are writing them? Emma Bull, Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Monette, Will Shetterly, Holly Black, Amanda Downum, Leah Bobet, Chelsea Polk? Recognize any of those? Yeah, I thought so. And if you look at that schedule, there’s clues that a few more people will be playing.

So, lots of free–but donate if you’re enjoying it!–stories, by great authors. Over a million words already in the main storyline! That’s several novels worth of story.

But that main storyline isn’t the whole story. See, many of the characters in the story keep Livejournals, and you’re allowed to interact with them, so long as you don’t break the fourth wall. That’s pretty much a web-only thing–you can’t do that with “normal” novels.

So, you just want to read the stories, you can. They’re great, and you don’t need anything else, and the only things you have to worry about are that you might stay up to late reading or the fact that the creators will put you through an emotional wringer. If you look a little more closely you can find secrets and easter eggs. You don’t need to, but it’s fun. And if you want even more, then you can follow (or even interact with) some of the characters. Pick your level of investment. You can also, of course, interact with the creators and a community of fans on the forum, as well.

I started just reading the stories, but after a while I had to follow the character LJs as well, because the stories were making the people real for me.

(Actually, I whipped up a couple of tools to help with this: a Google gadget to follow the Shadow Unit feed, and Yahoo pipes to follow the character LJs, and creator LJ mentions of Shadow Unit–these get a mention on the Shadow Unit home page, albeit with my name misspelled.)

Most of the content is also available in e-book form, if you prefer to read that way. And there is a suggested timeline of things to read at the wiki if finding the reading order through the hyperlinks seems daunting.

So that’s what it is. Why should you read it?

Well, I’ve said this before, but mostly you should read it because it’s good–because you will come to care about the characters, because you will be interested in the plot arc, because it’s the kind of thing that will keep you up reading long after you should have gone to bed². But you don’t have to take my word for it, or even just trust the reputations of the writers involved–I just told you how to find out for yourself whether it’s your cup of tea or not. (And if it is, then you should also hit that donate button–this is a gigantic work that they’re giving us for free, so throwing something into the hat should be a no-brainer if you like the show.)

1. Fortunately I lead a highly-caffeinated life. Do not try this at home.
2. That last episode–around 53,000 words. If you printed that Courier, single-spaced, that would run to 140 or so letter-sized pages. That’s not an “episode”, that’s a short novel. And you will not stop in the middle of it.