@ Dr Mutex
" I feel I should offer further explanation for why I have only the barest idea where I might have seen the post I mentioned"
Bravo! Curiosity is a wonderful thing.
I'm actually banking on it reigniting my long dormant desire to blog (especially after I just put myself through the torture of upgrading Movable Type, ugh) so hopefully you will hear what I think about it, at length ;-)
I found myself staring at this book across the room as I was listening to the current debates over action and inaction and thought, why not reread Camus?
One out of a big stack of PKD I got at a kindle sale in October. Really enjoying this, like everything I've read by him.
Finished Game of Thrones a while ago. It certainly is gripping stuff. Got book 2 as a gift yesterday. Maybe if I take it slow he'll be done by the time I catch up.
Between the crazy amount of time it is taking me to get through my book about the Russian Revolution (which is fantastic, but it's going on two months with the same book, so I'm glad to finally have less than 100 pages left), and the about 15-20 books I just got added via Christmas, I'm in reading material for quite some time.
Included in the Christmas loot is my first PKD (Do Androids..., natch).
amclark2 - Good luck with that. Once you finish A Clash of Kings there is nothing standing between you and A Storm of Swords. You can't NOT read that one immediately.
Just finished a collection of short stories by Philip K. Dick - free download on Kindle - and am now half way through a chunky collection of the best science fiction stories of 1992 picked up for 50 cents at my local thrift store. I avoided books for Christmas this year - I have such a backlog already.
What better season to reexamine the roots of so much disagreement in our world - the whole series is quite good, and it's been quite a few since last look.
@Lowlife - I enjoyed that one, although it seemed to me there were a fair few historical inaccuracies in the section I knew some things about. Not totally wrong, just sloppy. That made me doubt the later history which was less well-known to me.
The marking guys put "readers of Umberto Eco will like this" on the cover, and I must say I do enjoy it.
The passing of Jake York, whom I'd never heard of that I can recall, keeps coming up in the local entertainment weekly. I can't find it online, but there's a letter to the editor in today's edition that gets absolutely maudlin. One story is at http://blogs.westword.com/showandtell/2012/12/jake_adam_york_the_copper_nick.php.
Finished the Doughty yesterday (it's quite good, even though he does spend a ridiculous amount of time badmouthing his former Soul Coughing band mates, whom he never once calls by their names, but are always "the drummer", "the bassist", and "the sampler"). Then also read the entirety of "Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age" by Bohumil Hrabal. It was a fun little read, but didn't really do anything for me.
Recently finished "The Discovery of the Future", a talk RAH gave in 1941 to the Third World Science Fiction Convention.
Currently reading
Waltzing With Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects by DeMarco and Lister, (physical copy - softcover)
Queue: Two slide decks on Kanban for Software Engineering by David Anderson. - probably reading on laptop since they're slides. Our PM says he wants to use Kanban, but I have yet to get a card from him with "Implement Kanban" scrawled on it. From this i conclude he's doesn't really understand the technique. Personally I have doubts about applying Kanban in our environment (contractual requirements to use a specific process and produce specified deliverables). I saw in the reading list some references to Critical Chain, which I do think will work, so I want to see what Anderson said about it. He's also got some material on when Kanban isn't applicable that I'll probably take a look at.
Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of Israel's Intelligence Community by Raviv and Melman.- (hardcover). Turns out to not be so complete due to those tenacious Israelis hanging around another 10 years. The follow-up book published last year is Spies Against Armageddon. I may get to that one later this year.
After all that I'll be ready for something more fun - Probably The Broom of the System by DFW.
Kind of disappointing that book isn't about dancing with actual bears, but kudos to the authors for not just calling the book "managing risk on software projects!
A Christmas present that I have just started. Great to have another Rebus story. it will be interesting to see how Ian Rankin brings in his latest detective, Malcolm Fox.
"I am going to write every single day and tell you about my life here in Spitalfields at the heart of London..."
Drawing comparisons with Pepys, Mayhew and Dickens, the gentle author of Spitalfields Life has gained an extraordinary following in recent years, by writing hundreds of lively pen portraits of the infinite variety of people who live and work in the East End of London.
Everything you seek in London can be found here - street life, street art, markets, diverse food, immigrant culture, ancient houses and history, pageants and parades, rituals and customs, traditional trades and old family businesses.
Spend a night in the bakery at St John, ride the rounds with the Spitalfields milkman, drop in to the Golden Heart for a pint, meet a fourth-generation paper bag seller, a mudlark who discovers treasure in the river Thames, a window cleaner who sees ghosts and a master bell-founder whose business started in 1570. Join the bunny girls for their annual reunion, visit the wax sellers of Wentworth Street and discover the site of Shakespeare's first theatre.
About half way through. So far a lot of exposition (pretty clearly done) of Foucault and Deleuze on power/desire and formations thereof, to set up the argument. Perhaps the most interesting bit to me so far was a tantalizingly incomplete (because used as an example, not the focus) discussion of Mardi Gras hedonism and how despite the subjective experience of it as a libertarian, individualist throwing off of the shackles it's connected to larger formations including virtual slave labor in China (bead manufacturing) and big commerce interests here.
What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry
"the utopian counterculture, psychedelic drugs, military hardware and antimilitary software were tangled together inextricably in the prehistory of the personal computer"
Just finished this, read it on my iPad in the Kindle App (a rare thing for me). It came as a part of a Humble Bundle and I saw it was up for some awards. Pretty decent dystopia, not too distant future type thing. It struck me as Cryptonomicon for beginners, I ended up enjoying the characters although there are a few spots that get a little preachy (in a "John Galt Speaks" sort of way).
The Fourth Science Fiction Megapack, 99 cents for a pile of older SF short stories, kindle versions. There are a bunch of these, search on "Science Fiction Megapack," this one has a PKD story (although not a favorite for me), one from Vonnegut, an Asimov, one from Harry Harrison, and it appears to have Anthem by Ayn Rand. That is a bit longer than a short story (good to read while listening to Rush, 2112).
Germanprof: Sounds tenuous. The very name of Mardi Gras tells you it's completely about hedonism. It isn't Mardi Socialement Responsables. As for the beads, if you don't hold out beads, the women leave their shirts down. That's not fun for anyone. The people handing out the beads couldn't care less about the source, other than that one finds oneself making a mental note to obtain a larger supply next year. Yes, the beads come from China, the plastic in them from petroleum pumped from the middle east's sub-basement. Lord knows where the string comes from. I never asked. I'm typing this on a keyboard made in China, so clearly emusers is connected to evil global companies and oppressed workers. Laissez les bons temps rouler.
MrV: I was there. That's not the way it happened. All these cool gadgets were created by and for nerds, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something. Sure DARPANET was funded out of the military budget. It's still the public's money. Moving information ("Intelligence" to the gentlemen with the weapons) is important to the military. DARPA was funding anything that might give us an edge, like teaching dolphins to attach explosives to other people's ships. The military itself is slow to pick up on technology: They want mature technology that works like gravity. The last thing you need when someone is shooting at you is to have to do a battery pull on your weapon and wait for it to reboot, and you sure as hell don't want to reset anything at 10,000 feet. Anyway, back in the 70's what we nerds lusted after, and some acquired, was an Altair 8080, one of the first microcomputers and acknowledged predecessor of all desktop boxen. At the time what the military was using (AN/UYK-20) was about the size of a dorm fridge and weighed over 200 lbs. It couldn't even boot itself, but if you had written the software carefully, once you got it into memory it would stay there even with the power off because it was magnetic core, so you could enter the starting address on the toggle switches and hit Run. I mention this to make the point that the technology flow is Nerds -> Military and Nerds -> Public, not Military -> Public. I presume the counterculture connection is Stewart Brand: Stanford graduate, mathematician, and card-carrying nerd. Brand's interest was transforming society by giving people the tools they need to transform it themselves, in other words using technology to empower people. The people most interested in what Brand was giving away (Whole Earth Catalog only covered its costs) were in the counterculture, but again it's Nerds -> Public. We nerds are a counterculture ourselves anyway so saying the counterculture shaped the PC industry is just saying the people who created the PC industry shaped it. Shocking, but there's more. Careful observers will note we have been quietly subverting the system for the last hundred years to produce more cool gadgets to play with. We liked the Star Trek Communicator. We made it so. Then we threw in the Tricorder on the same device, just because it's cool, and we can. If you're really paying attention, you've noticed that we've made sure that wherever you go, there's a dozen people with camera phones that can send live video to the internet. The revolution will not be televised. The revolution is streaming live, and the revolution is streaming now. "You're soaking in it".
Plong42: Cory doesn't write about the future at all. He calls what he does "predicting the present". The phrase isn't original with him, but I couldn't track down the source in a reasonable amount of time. The book seems preachy in places because it's a cleverly-disguised manual for subverting the system, as is all of his Young Adult stuff. Please see my remarks above to MrV about revolution .
Comments
" I feel I should offer further explanation for why I have only the barest idea where I might have seen the post I mentioned"
Bravo! Curiosity is a wonderful thing.
This is a lot of fun. Starts out not unlike a Donald Westlake story but - I'm about halfway through - moves into stranger territory.
I found myself staring at this book across the room as I was listening to the current debates over action and inaction and thought, why not reread Camus?
One out of a big stack of PKD I got at a kindle sale in October. Really enjoying this, like everything I've read by him.
Finished Game of Thrones a while ago. It certainly is gripping stuff. Got book 2 as a gift yesterday. Maybe if I take it slow he'll be done by the time I catch up.
Included in the Christmas loot is my first PKD (Do Androids..., natch).
amclark2 - Good luck with that. Once you finish A Clash of Kings there is nothing standing between you and A Storm of Swords. You can't NOT read that one immediately.
Craig
The marking guys put "readers of Umberto Eco will like this" on the cover, and I must say I do enjoy it.
And now for something completely different:
That is assuming, of course, that Mike Doughty doesn't have a period of requisitioning grain from peasants of which I'm unaware.
Craig
And only $2.51 for the Kindle version. Makes my shoveling 14 inches of snow pale in comparison - I'm not complaining.
Now I'm starting:
Craig
Currently reading
Waltzing With Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects by DeMarco and Lister, (physical copy - softcover)
Queue:
Two slide decks on Kanban for Software Engineering by David Anderson. - probably reading on laptop since they're slides. Our PM says he wants to use Kanban, but I have yet to get a card from him with "Implement Kanban" scrawled on it. From this i conclude he's doesn't really understand the technique. Personally I have doubts about applying Kanban in our environment (contractual requirements to use a specific process and produce specified deliverables). I saw in the reading list some references to Critical Chain, which I do think will work, so I want to see what Anderson said about it. He's also got some material on when Kanban isn't applicable that I'll probably take a look at.
Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of Israel's Intelligence Community by Raviv and Melman.- (hardcover). Turns out to not be so complete due to those tenacious Israelis hanging around another 10 years. The follow-up book published last year is Spies Against Armageddon. I may get to that one later this year.
After all that I'll be ready for something more fun - Probably The Broom of the System by DFW.
A Christmas present that I have just started. Great to have another Rebus story. it will be interesting to see how Ian Rankin brings in his latest detective, Malcolm Fox.
"I am going to write every single day and tell you about my life here in Spitalfields at the heart of London..."
Drawing comparisons with Pepys, Mayhew and Dickens, the gentle author of Spitalfields Life has gained an extraordinary following in recent years, by writing hundreds of lively pen portraits of the infinite variety of people who live and work in the East End of London.
Everything you seek in London can be found here - street life, street art, markets, diverse food, immigrant culture, ancient houses and history, pageants and parades, rituals and customs, traditional trades and old family businesses.
Spend a night in the bakery at St John, ride the rounds with the Spitalfields milkman, drop in to the Golden Heart for a pint, meet a fourth-generation paper bag seller, a mudlark who discovers treasure in the river Thames, a window cleaner who sees ghosts and a master bell-founder whose business started in 1570. Join the bunny girls for their annual reunion, visit the wax sellers of Wentworth Street and discover the site of Shakespeare's first theatre.
All of human life is here in Spitalfields Life.
Last night I started:
Craig
About half way through. So far a lot of exposition (pretty clearly done) of Foucault and Deleuze on power/desire and formations thereof, to set up the argument. Perhaps the most interesting bit to me so far was a tantalizingly incomplete (because used as an example, not the focus) discussion of Mardi Gras hedonism and how despite the subjective experience of it as a libertarian, individualist throwing off of the shackles it's connected to larger formations including virtual slave labor in China (bead manufacturing) and big commerce interests here.
What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry
"the utopian counterculture, psychedelic drugs, military hardware and antimilitary software were tangled together inextricably in the prehistory of the personal computer"
Just finished this, read it on my iPad in the Kindle App (a rare thing for me). It came as a part of a Humble Bundle and I saw it was up for some awards. Pretty decent dystopia, not too distant future type thing. It struck me as Cryptonomicon for beginners, I ended up enjoying the characters although there are a few spots that get a little preachy (in a "John Galt Speaks" sort of way).
The Fourth Science Fiction Megapack, 99 cents for a pile of older SF short stories, kindle versions. There are a bunch of these, search on "Science Fiction Megapack," this one has a PKD story (although not a favorite for me), one from Vonnegut, an Asimov, one from Harry Harrison, and it appears to have Anthem by Ayn Rand. That is a bit longer than a short story (good to read while listening to Rush, 2112).
MrV: I was there. That's not the way it happened. All these cool gadgets were created by and for nerds, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something. Sure DARPANET was funded out of the military budget. It's still the public's money. Moving information ("Intelligence" to the gentlemen with the weapons) is important to the military. DARPA was funding anything that might give us an edge, like teaching dolphins to attach explosives to other people's ships. The military itself is slow to pick up on technology: They want mature technology that works like gravity. The last thing you need when someone is shooting at you is to have to do a battery pull on your weapon and wait for it to reboot, and you sure as hell don't want to reset anything at 10,000 feet. Anyway, back in the 70's what we nerds lusted after, and some acquired, was an Altair 8080, one of the first microcomputers and acknowledged predecessor of all desktop boxen. At the time what the military was using (AN/UYK-20) was about the size of a dorm fridge and weighed over 200 lbs. It couldn't even boot itself, but if you had written the software carefully, once you got it into memory it would stay there even with the power off because it was magnetic core, so you could enter the starting address on the toggle switches and hit Run. I mention this to make the point that the technology flow is Nerds -> Military and Nerds -> Public, not Military -> Public. I presume the counterculture connection is Stewart Brand: Stanford graduate, mathematician, and card-carrying nerd. Brand's interest was transforming society by giving people the tools they need to transform it themselves, in other words using technology to empower people. The people most interested in what Brand was giving away (Whole Earth Catalog only covered its costs) were in the counterculture, but again it's Nerds -> Public. We nerds are a counterculture ourselves anyway so saying the counterculture shaped the PC industry is just saying the people who created the PC industry shaped it. Shocking, but there's more. Careful observers will note we have been quietly subverting the system for the last hundred years to produce more cool gadgets to play with. We liked the Star Trek Communicator. We made it so. Then we threw in the Tricorder on the same device, just because it's cool, and we can. If you're really paying attention, you've noticed that we've made sure that wherever you go, there's a dozen people with camera phones that can send live video to the internet. The revolution will not be televised. The revolution is streaming live, and the revolution is streaming now. "You're soaking in it".
Plong42: Cory doesn't write about the future at all. He calls what he does "predicting the present". The phrase isn't original with him, but I couldn't track down the source in a reasonable amount of time. The book seems preachy in places because it's a cleverly-disguised manual for subverting the system, as is all of his Young Adult stuff. Please see my remarks above to MrV about revolution .