December 28, 2004 – 12:00 am
Updated: the book has been re-listed in a fashion that doesn’t get eBay’s TOS and lawyers upset. The charity is now the American Friends Service Committee because Oxfam America was not available through missionfish.
I have a first edition of Rudy Rucker’s short story collection The 57th Franz Kafka that I found in a tiny bookstore [...]
December 17, 2004 – 12:00 am
The Christmas 2004 issue of The Economist.
At last, a week late, my notes.
Bruce Sterling does not worry about a Vingean Singularity that renders humankind a powerless annoyance to transcendent artificial intelligences. Instead he worries about plain old human-driven technological change and nasty WMDs.
Cynthia and I drove up to the City to hear Bruce Sterling’s lecture for the Long Now Foundation at [...]
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Posted under books, science-fiction, technology
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So first, The Economist:
YOU are fighting against international terrorists in a battle that both they and you describe as being one about values. You fight a war against Saddam Hussein at your initiative, not his, and you say that it is a war about law, democracy, freedom and honesty. A big metaphorical banner hangs above [...]
February 1, 2004 – 12:00 am
I think you could do no worse on this anniversary of the loss of the Columbia than to pour a finger’s worth from that bottle of scotch you hid behind the fridge, and watch Cowboy Bebop Session 19, Wild Horses.
October 27, 2003 – 12:00 am
Mark Davis, author of City of Quartz, on the Southern California wildfires:
Fire, as a result, is politically ironic. Right now, as I watch San Diego’s wealthiest new suburb, Scripps Ranch, in flames, I recall the Schwarzenegger fund-raising parties hosted there a few weeks ago. This was an epicenter of the recent recall and gilded voices [...]
From a mailing list, a recommendation for a book on failures in complex systems:
Normal Accidents analyzes the social side of technological risk. Charles Perrow argues that the conventional engineering approach to ensuring safety–building in more warnings and safeguards–fails because systems complexity makes failures inevitable. He asserts that typical precautions, by adding to complexity, may help [...]
March 20, 2003 – 12:00 am
[ via Idle Words ] A harrowing return from space as told by a former Cosmonaut.
As the spaceship fell back into the atmosphere, he heard grinding as the deceleration stresses built up. The ship was slowly tumbling end over end, exposing all of its surface to the growing fireball. Then it stabilized with its nose [...]
March 19, 2003 – 12:00 am
Robert Wright thinks it’s the long term and second order stuff that we’ll need to worry about now that Geo. W. Bush has invaded Iraq.
March 19, 2003 – 12:00 am
For the sake of argument, suppose the next Chicxulub is about to strike the Earth, and bring an end the age of mammals (just so you’re clear on this, we’re mammals,) so do you bother to let the public know? From a discussion lead by NASA’s Ames Research Center.
March 18, 2003 – 12:00 am
[ via Dan Hon ] Break out the hard stuff because it’s almost time for the Gulf War Drinking Game.
March 14, 2003 – 12:00 am
You see, this really sucks, since the first part, where you drink a staggering amount of tequila, is no longer needed:
At the moment, really, the most rational possible reaction to the Bush administration’s national-security policy is to light one’s hair on fire and run down the street screaming about Jesus.
And I’d scream about 50′ tall [...]
February 1, 2003 – 12:00 am
Writing from the Starbucks down the street from my dad’s in Dallas. We heard the sonic boom around 8am. It shook the windows. WFAA had a crew out to shoot the reentry for the morning newscast, and they caught the whole sad incident on tape. Ironically, some of the debris fell in the town of [...]
January 27, 2003 – 12:00 am
Over at TomDispatch, a sensational advisory to Americans abroad. However, the current version of the State Department’s warning has been toned down from Sunday’s.
Also, how the War may start, and an introduction to Howard Ullman, who plans to deliver “shock and awe” onto Iraq. It’ll win the war, but like Galadriel, we would be beautiful [...]
December 1, 2002 – 12:00 am
Today is World AIDS Day, two decades and folks are still looking for a cure. Brad has coordinated Weblog observances of World AIDS Day for the past few years, so please check out the sites participating in this year’s Link and Think.
This week’s Economist carried a story about a prediction that AIDS will orphan over [...]
