{"id":1268,"date":"2008-06-17T15:55:26","date_gmt":"2008-06-17T19:55:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/?p=1268"},"modified":"2008-06-17T15:55:26","modified_gmt":"2008-06-17T19:55:26","slug":"the-tabs-they-must-be-closed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2008\/06\/17\/the-tabs-they-must-be-closed\/","title":{"rendered":"The tabs, they must be closed."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You know the drill&#8211;some things that I found worthy of some comment:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I quite liked Julie Rehmeyer&#8217;s short piece on the math scholars who <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/view\/generic\/id\/33082\/title\/Accidental_astrophysicists\">accidentally solved an astrophysics problem<\/a>. It&#8217;s got all the good stuff: pure math, astrophysics (come on, &#8220;gravity lensing&#8221; just sounds cool, even without any context), serendipity, and above all a good science journalist doing the writeup, and making the story clear for the layman. Ever since <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/James_Burke_(science_historian)\">James Burke<\/a> blew my mind back in the early 90s<footnote>Yeah, the series is from the 70s, but I didn&#8217;t see it until the 90s.<\/footnote> with <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Connections_%28TV_series%29\">Connections<\/a>, I&#8217;ve just loved the stories that highlight secret history (and the highly non-linear nature) of science. Sometime this week I&#8217;m going to dig through <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/view\/authored\/id\/43\/name\/Julie_Rehmeyer\">the rest of Rehmeyer&#8217;s &#8220;Math Trek&#8221; columns<\/a> and see what other jewels are lurking in there.<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of science, did you see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theage.com.au\/national\/bi-the-way-what-does-push-womens-buttons-20080614-2qo9.html?page=-1\">the article<\/a> where current research finds that heterosexual women find naked women more arousing than naked men? I&#8217;m sure it will be heavily covered in Maxim and other similar science magazines for intellectuals. (Jokes aside, the research in the article doesn&#8217;t surprise me, except for the bit about women getting turned on by monkeys.)<\/li>\n<li>One of the books currently sitting in my to be read queue is the limited edition of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lewisshiner.com\/\">Lewis Shiner<\/a>&#8216;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.subterraneanpress.com\/Merchant2\/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&#038;Product_Code=shiner02&#038;Category_Code=PRE&#038;Product_Count=41\">Black &#038; White<\/a>. You can beat me to reading this, even if you didn&#8217;t buy a copy, since Shiner has put it, along with a ridiculous amount of his short fiction, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lewisshiner.com\/liberation\/index.htm\">online for free<\/a>. Take a look at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lewisshiner.com\/liberation\/manifesto.html\">his manifesto<\/a> in which he explains why he&#8217;s doing this, and expresses his plan to eventually get <strong>all<\/strong> his short work up there. Hopefully this will get some people to buy his awesome-and-yet-somehow-under-the-radar books. Speaking of those books, in my opinion <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lewisshiner.com\/saygoodb.html\">Say Goodbye<\/a> was note perfect (in fact, I bought several copies to give to friends&#8211;both people working in music, and people who would understand what Shiner was saying about how hard work and excellence don&#8217;t necessarily suffice to &#8220;make it&#8221;, despite how those who do later construct their successes), and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lewisshiner.com\/slam.html\">Slam<\/a>, another fine book, has one of my favourite passages<footnote>It&#8217;s the bit near the beginning about travelling to find the important knowledge\/jigsaw puzzles\/how Greyhound goes to the other side; page 9 in my TPB edition<\/footnote>, from any book, in it. If you still need convincing, check out <a href=\"http:\/\/scalzi.com\/whatever\/?p=875\">Shiner talking about the book in one of Scalzi&#8217;s Big Idea posts<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>I would not be exaggerating if I said I have an entire drawer full of AC adapters for various devices. At some point along the way I got smart and started labelling the blocks so I would know what device they went with, which has saved me some pain. What I&#8217;d really like, though, is to be able to get rid of them all, and have my myriad devices start using standard plugs so I could use a single, standard adapter. Well, it seems like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thestandard.com\/news\/2008\/06\/13\/support-grows-universal-power-adapter\">Westinghouse is going to push for that now<\/a>. And they&#8217;re throwing in a few environmental bonuses, as well. Here&#8217;s hoping that gets done.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.antipope.org\/charlie\/blog-static\/2008\/06\/the_future_today_maybe.html\">Charlie Stross<\/a> pointed out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=D99NHb6B03s\">this video<\/a> showing how <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Digital_fabricator\">fabricator<\/a> technology can be used in some very dystopian ways. Even more than the device created and the implications of fabricators that Charlie is interested in, I thought the way this item was presented was indicative of something. Something that spooks me. I think I&#8217;m <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wniGFm_jgRI\">with Bowie<\/a> now.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/quizfarm.com\/test.php?q_id=2549N\">The philosophy quiz<\/a> Will <a href=\"http:\/\/shetterly.wordpress.com\/2008\/06\/15\/my-philosophy-yes-little-quiz-youre-right\/\">pointed to<\/a> a couple of days ago tells me that I am 100% an existentialist. I wouldn&#8217;t describe myself that way&#8211;although I absolutely would say that I believe it is up to us to imbue life with meaning&#8211;but it&#8217;s probably the closest of the available choices. When I have to pigeonhole myself, I always like to chose &#8220;erisian zen metadramatic humanist&#8221;<footnote>You know, quite a bit of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Memory-Whiteness-Scientific-Romance\/dp\/0312861435\">KSR<\/a>, a little bit of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Zen-without-Masters-Camden-Benares\/dp\/1561840734\">Cam Benares<\/a>, and a touch of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cs.cmu.edu\/~tilt\/principia\/\">Malacylpse the Younger<\/a>.<\/footnote> but that never seems to show up on the lists.<\/li>\n<li>This seems to be the month of entertaining reviews of wretched books. It&#8217;s no <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2008\/06\/06\/friday-night-book-links\/#Ringo\">OH JOHN RINGO NO<\/a>, but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/review\/R1LPA5YOND6TGD\/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm\">this one<\/a> is also pretty good. Of course, this is essentially self-published, so it&#8217;s less shocking than a book from a decently-sized publisher.<\/li>\n<li>Now, don&#8217;t hold back <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thomas_M._Disch\">Mr. Disch<\/a>&#8230; <a href=\"http:\/\/tomsdisch.livejournal.com\/199097.html\">tell us how you really feel<\/a> about the passing of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Algis_Budrys\">Algis Budrys<\/a>. I love this kind of stuff. I always thought the whole &#8220;don&#8217;t speak ill of the dead&#8221; thing was overplayed in our society&#8211;yes, I should keep my mouth shut when I&#8217;m around people who are hurting from loss&#8211;that&#8217;s just simple courtesy, but it definitely stops at the point of keeping my mouth shut. I don&#8217;t have to lie&#8211;I never really bought that whole &#8220;pretend I liked or respected him because he&#8217;s dead now&#8221; thing. Whether or not there&#8217;s any point in speaking the negative truth of your opinions in places where you assume people won&#8217;t be hurt is debatable, but it is certainly refreshing to see someone do it.<\/li>\n<li>It will not surprise you to know that I hold the whole idea of &#8220;teach the controversy&#8221; for evolution vs creation in utter, utter disdain. Therefore, you won&#8217;t be surprised that I am quite amused by <a href=\"http:\/\/controversy.wearscience.com\/\">the teach the controversy t-shirts<\/a>. I think the <a href=\"http:\/\/controversy.wearscience.com\/design\/elements\/\">periodic table one<\/a> is my favourite.<\/li>\n<li>I have been secretly hoping, for a while now, that the rising price of gas would mean less required business travel for me. It appears my logic was sound&#8211;or at least <a href=\"http:\/\/krugman.dblogs.nytimes.com\/?s=&#038;search.x=34&#038;search.y=2&#038;search=Search\">one prominent economist<\/a> thinks so.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">You know the drill&#8211;some things that I found worthy of some comment: I quite liked Julie Rehmeyer&#8217;s short piece on the math scholars who accidentally solved an astrophysics problem. It&#8217;s got all the good stuff: pure math, astrophysics (come on, &#8220;gravity lensing&#8221; just sounds cool, even without any context), serendipity, and above all a good science journalist doing the writeup,&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2008\/06\/17\/the-tabs-they-must-be-closed\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[257,458,95,195,72,238,107,67,288,33,126],"class_list":["post-1268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linkapalooza","tag-authors","tag-books","tag-cultural-differences","tag-evolution","tag-free","tag-philosophy","tag-religion","tag-science","tag-serendipity","tag-sex","tag-something-great","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-ks","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}