| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « Feb | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
Aaron Alexovich wrote a pretty cool story, didn't he?
(I tried entering the password and username from the story just to see what I could find on the net. That's where the title "USERNAME: TEMPEST; PASSWORD JYP5478″ for this post came from. Nothing came up, but now maybe it will bring someone who read the book here!)
You're Les Miserables!
by Victor Hugo
One of the best known people in your community, you have become
something of a phenomenon. People have sung about you, danced in your honor, created all
manner of art in your name. And yet your story is one of failure and despair, with a few
brief exceptions. A hopeless romantic, you'll never stop hoping that more good will come
from your failings than is ever possible. Beware detectives and prison guards bearing
vendettas.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
I found this meme at nothing of importance while reading through the Friday Feasts. I thought I'd try it. She got it from Kelli's blog .
If you are reading this, tag you're it! Let me know if you do it…
Looking at this list, you'd think I don't read.
You could see Persied Earthgrazers this Friday…as long as you're not in Pittsburgh.
When I was a young child, my parents got me the book Find the Constellations by H. A. Rey. Inside, there are star charts, with days and times that the stars would be in that position. I excitedly looked through the book and found the nearest day. I waited. When that day came, I ran outside at the right time, only to see nothing but clouds.
I complained to my father, who explained to me that, while they might know the stars' positions in advance, the weather was unpredictable. I was confused, since it always rained on my birthday, but my Dad finally got the point through to my childish mind.
So I started studying how scientists predicted the weather. After learning about weather fronts and isobars, I decided to study a science with a bit more scientific basis and reproduceability. I chose parapsychology instead.
Here's a NASA explanation of how to see Perseid Earthgrazers. With the moon bright in the sky, the meteor shower won't be easy to see, but the Earthgrazers (though rare) should be spectacular.
The WPXI 5 day forecast says it will be partially cloudy on Friday. Duh. Anytime I want to see something in the sky, the weather prevents it. Sigh. The clouds may break just enough to sucker me into laying outside someplace, getting eaten by mosquitos. Of course, any Earthgrazers will be hidden by clouds. Those watching 5 feet from me will probably see the Earthgrazers, due to the change in parallax.
BTW: If you have a child, I highly recommend the book Find the Constellations. I should probably write a post on how to use the book if you live in Pittsburgh. "First, consider moving somewhere else…"
Lately, Ann Coulter's book, "Godless" has been attacked because there are three clear (but small) instances of plagiarism. Far worse is the abuse she puts science through.
Plagiarism1
MSNBC's AP article has the segments of the book and the places they were stolen from side by side. Coulter clearly and obviously plagiarized. Such actions would get a college student thrown out of class, if not the university itself. Conservatives, though, have said that Coulter should be held to a lesser standard. I'm not clear why, but they seem to think that conservatives and women simply aren't as intelligent as liberals and men.
I'd disagree with that. I think a large amount of the blame should be heaped upon her editor and her publisher. Surely the due-dilligence would have forced them to run the book through a similar computer program to discover these small acts of plagiarism. Coulter made a mistake, one that any author ought to fear. Her mistakes couldn't be deliberate: footnoting the material or rewriting would have been trivial. Ann Coulter should simply admit that she made a rookie mistake, apologize, include the footnotes in a future book, and move on. Her career should not be over for something as trivial as this.
Why's everyone laughing when I suggest Ann Coulter should admit she made a mistake?
Science
Her career should not be over for plagiarism. What she does to science in the book demands she be sent off to obscurity. In defending Creationism and Intelligent Design, she can't even formulate her arguments coherently enough to design her way out of a paper bag. I'm not talking large paper sack here, folks. I mean, she can't find her way out of one of those bags for carrying lunch. You mean I spent time at the library to read this? At least I didn't pay for the book.
Media Matters (found via the SciAm Blog) does a far better review than I could on the material. I'd be making sarcastic comments and humorous asides, attempting to out-Douglas-Adams Douglas Adams. But you know what, Coulter? The secret really is to bang the rocks together. I suppose that may be too scientifically advanced for Ms. Coulter.
There are intelligent, capable conservative voices out there. Why, then, is the Right defending such a clueless hack as Ann Coulter? It's almost like the Right is putting up their own "straw (wo)man," enticing the liberals to attack nonsense, absurdity and hyperbole. The rank and file Conservatives then read what the liberals attack and think "But that's not what I believe!" and thus dismiss the liberals.
It makes sense in a paranoid "Rob's preparing to see 'A Scanner Darkly' tonight and write yet another two of his previews, one without spoilers, one with" sort of way.
I stayed up last night reading Pledged by Alexandra Robbins. Around 3 a.m., I forced myself to put the book down and crash out. Unfortunately, my sleep wasn't peaceful.
I dreamt about testifying before the Pittsburgh Human Relations Commission back in 1995. The room was a darkened set with spotlights on the people. Usually, I dream in excessively vivid colors, but this dream was in black and white. Clearly, I watched too much of the Sci Fi Channel's Twilight Zone Marathon yesterday.
All the people my testimony was against — the firefighters, my friends, paramedic co-workers, and my supervisors — were sitting in the gallery glaring at me with hatred. The firefighters at Engine 36 had sexually harassed a female paramedic, making her life a living hell at work. I had tried to stop the harassment and failed. No one else was willing to do anything, and so we wound up before the P.H.R.C.
The attorney for the City, still twirling her hair around her finger as she did in real life, stood up and asked me one question:
"What is wrong with you, that you betrayed your co-workers?"
This was not the City's attorney any more. This was someone effective and intimidating. In the dream, I said nothing. I just hung my head.
The female paramedic who had been harassed stood up next. Somehow, she was both herself and her attorney. She, too, had only one question:
"What is wrong with you, that you betrayed your co-workers?"
She asked the same question, but I knew she directed that question at the one person who was willing to do the right thing. She cracked that typical sarcastic smile she'd flash when someone was being stupid, turned, and sat down.
From somewhere in the courtroom, a cockatoo screamed. I woke up in panic mode and bolted out of bed. I found myself standing in the dim morning light, confused. Chauncey the Moluccan Cockatoo shrieked from the other end of the house. What exactly goes through Chauncey's mind every morning, I do not know. As I type this, I wonder for the first time if Chauncey is thanking God for making him a cockatoo. It makes as much sense as any other theory.
I gave up trying to sleep, but I left the book in the nightstand drawer. Instead, I started looking up some experiments Nancy refers to from time to time:
I'm only on page 78 of Pledged. That leaves 261 pages to go, not including footnotes. Maybe I'll take a break and read something else as I prepare to go to sleep. I wonder if I can find my copy of The Beaver Papers? Either that book, or perhaps I can find The Flying Sorcerers to read again. They really are the two funniest books I've ever read.
Update: I found a fascinating list of psychology experiments. There's also an article by a former marketer I suspect I'll comment on at some future time.
I stopped in at Barnes and Noble, a dangerous action for a shopaholic bookworm. There were four books I found:
I've finished the first and am working on the second. Expect reviews of each!
Kip Dawson was the luckiest man in the world, having one a place on American Space Adventure's orbital flight. When one passenger becomes ill and the other must return home for an emergency, he becomes the only passenger on a private three hour tour of Near Earth Orbit.
But Dawson's luck ended when a small piece of space debris rifles through the spaceship, the radios, and the pilot's brain. The spacecraft's self-sealing pressure hull prevents explosive decompression, but that only delays the inevitable.
Stranded, with no way to return the spaceship to Earth, Dawson turns to a laptop on board the spacecraft to record his thoughts and memories in the hope the laptop will be recovered decades in the future. Because he has only days until the scrubbers fail and he dies from carbon dioxide poisoning, Dawson feels free to be honest, to say the truth.
What Dawson doesn't realize is the laptop has a one-way connection to Earth, and two billion people are hanging on his every word. The things Dawson has to say make people feel, think, and question.
Dawson's words inspire efforts to rescue him, but with only a few days left, will it be in time to rescue him from Orbit?
My Thoughts
I almost left Orbit on the book table at the store. Micrometeorites hit science fiction spacecraft with amazing regularity. Near Earth Orbit is crapped up with human-created junk, so perhaps it's a bit more likely. Still, the cliche hits the spacecraft to cause Kip Dawson to be on his own. Still, if you let the author have this one bit, the rest holds together quite nicely. There are a few other minor problems with the book: the head of NASA twirls his moustache a bit too much, press secretary Diana Ross (no relation, doesn't sing) is a bit too two-dimensional, and I'm not sure I buy the ending.
But that doesn't matter. Freed from gravity and life, Kip Dawson says the truth, even when it's pure fantasy. Maybe I even wish this blog were a bit like Dawson's typings into the computer.
Orbit is an orbital speed near-term science fiction novel that made me think. "Making me think" is something I prize. The science fiction aspects are a setup to put the protagonist in an impossible situation, and yet it works. You may not agree with everything Kip Dawson's writes. You may wish that more of the book had been Dawson's writing and less the story on the ground. You will, no matter what, be glad you wrote it.
Playing around with Google enabled me to find the titles of the first science fiction books I ever read!
Third grade was a strange year for me. My parents worried that all I brought home from the grade school library were science books. By this time, I'd already decided adults were stupid but had to be obeyed. The librarian introduced me to science fiction, much to my glee. Here were books that I could bring home that my parents couldn't complain about! My parents were none too happy with this development but decided not to push the issue. I wonder if my mother was concerned and my Dad attempting to appease her. I clearly remember my Father watching the first episode of Star Trek; it was on too late for me to stay up to see, but I did briefly get out of bed long enough to see a snippet of Captain Kirk on the Bridge.
I remember some of the books rather clearly. The first was a book by Hugh Walters titled First on the Moon. It's a children's science fiction book, but would be classified as "hard" SF. Almost three years before Apollo 11 would land on the Moon, the book was a bit out of date but I didn't mind. As I devoured one book in the series, I'd seek out another from the library. Expedition Venus disturbed me. The gray mold from Venus devoured sections of the Earth. Only Chris Godfrey and friends could save the day! Mission to Mercury and Spaceship to Saturn had the telepathic twins, Gill and Gail, whom I crushed on more than a little. The best book, though was The Mohole Menace. Serge Smyslov, being the smallest, was sent in a spaceship 20 miles down a hole into the Earth to investigate a cavern. Due to the rubble pile below the hole and amazingly bad planning, his spaceship tipped over and he was stranded. Round hydrocarbon based life forms, stranger than anything seen to that point in outer space, would break open on contacting him. Chris Godfrey had to go to the rescue!
Another book from about that time was Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine by Raymond Abrashkin and Jay Williams. In the story, the computer needed to be kept at exactly 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Having actually seen real computers, the temperature struck me as way too hot! Still, it was a fun story, but not nearly as fun as the 1967 Danny Dunn and the Voice From Space. At the time, astronomers thought that a wiggle in the star 61 Cygnus indicated it had a planet. The planet was so many times the size of Jupiter, it would now be classified as a brown dwarf. Still, I already knew of the planet when I read the book.
Playing around with the Internet enabled me to find out about these books: their authors and their titles. I'd tried before to find the Walters books, but only remembered the titles were alliterative. Searching for "Voyage to Venus" didn't bring anything up when the actual title was "Expedition Venus."
I'm surprised at how much I remember from those stories I read so long ago. Finding the titles of the books was fun. Unfortunately, the books appear to be targets for collectors. There's no way I can afford to buy them!
Much is being made, both in the mainstream media and blogs about the autobiography of James Frey, A Million Little Pieces. Frey's book was selected for Oprah's Book Club. When the Smoking Gun discovered that parts of the book were grossly exaggerated, quite a bit of mockery ensued, much aimed at Oprah for having not known the book contained fraudulent materials.
I have no idea if Oprah did her "due dilligence." I wonder how many bloggers have done the same: witness the recent reporting about the man who threw a mouse into the fire, and the blazing mouse ran into the house and burned it down.
Instead, let me simply point to the Christian comedian Mike Warnke. Mike was popular in the 70s, back when I was in college. Mike had a comedy routine about his time as a high priest of Satan, with tales of drug use, sacrifices to the Devil, and an altar call for Jesus. The Word record label signed him, he toured churches and music halls and was quite popular with the Christian crowd. I listened to his records and never doubted what he said.
You're ahead of me already, aren't you? You know exactly where this is going. Well, you're right. Read the Cornerstone expose of Mike Warnke and his 20 year Christian career and understand that it's very easy to be conned.
Both men admitted to being drug addicts at one time. Given the typical problems that tend to go hand in hand with drug abuse, is anyone surprised that these men made stuff up?
So before you start doing the Iggy Shuffle in schadenfreude over Oprah, ask not for whom the gun smokes…it smokes for all of us!
I just bought J. Michael Straczynski's Babylon 5: The Scripts of J. Michael Straczynski Volume 3 book, and if I give them 2 e-mail addresses, those e-mail addresses and I get a $5 coupon. I've already got 1 address.
CafePress and J. Michael Straczynski have teamed up to publish a fifteen book series: all of jms' Babylon 5 scripts!