And Ye Shall Know Us By Our Trail of Web

DUFF

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 20:22:48 GMT

The DUFF ballot is now available. This years DUFF race is between Bill Wright, and Clare McDonald-Sims. PDF and RTF versions of the ballot are available - if you use the RTF version, please alter the last line to include your name rather than mine. The deadline for voting is June 10.

DUFF Ballot in PDF

DUFF Ballot in RTF

How to Vote

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 16:34:53 GMT

As we have an election tomorrow here…

I'm tired of the same 'how can you possibly vote for Gillard/Obama/flawed mainstream not-that-progressive party' arguments that I see again and again from passionate political friends (or the alternative 'why vote at all you are just supporting the evil system'). Many of you reading probably understand all this fine, but I feel the need to rant, so indulge me.
How to vote:

Understand that choosing the lesser evil of two evils is usually fundamental to voting. Not evil at all is seldom on the menu. And once it has got to the ballot stage, there probably isn't much you can do about it.
If you live in in a jurisdiction that has preferential, or optional preferential, voting (e.g. Australia) you should vote for the parties in order of preference, putting the ones you like the most at the top. But you should realistically assess which parties actually have a significant chance of winning, and the order you number those parties in probably makes more difference than anything else about your vote, so consider it carefully, even though you may dislike them all. .
If you live in a jurisdiction that has first past the post voting (e.g. US, UK, etc) you have my condolences for your poorly designed democracy. You should probably ignore the parties that you like, but that have no chance of winning at all. You should probably choose which among the parties that have a realistic chance of winning you hate the least, and vote for them.
And here is the important part, the crucial part. Realise that voting is about 1 hour, very roughly 1 day in a 1000 (may be up to roughly 1 in 1500). So, voting takes up very roughly about 0.01% of your time. And voting is a pretty effective form of political activity in terms of how to spend those few minutes every few years. If you are disappointed in having to choose between evil and eviler on the ballot, or annoyed that the act of voting gives you a very limited amount of engagement with the political system, recognise that you are free to engage with the political system in other ways in the remaining 99.99% of so of your life.
You can join a lobby group!. You can start a lobby group, or a campaign! You can join a political party, and campaign within it for better policies and better representatives! Write about issues in social media! Talk to people!

Addenum: If you are lucky enough to live in an area that has a voting system like Hare-Clark or other such sophisticated alternative, you are probably going to have to research individual candidates in some detail, and it is particularly worth your time to look at major party candidates that are not getting a huge amount of promotion from their party. And if you are voting in a multiple position/multiple candidate election (e.g. the Australian Senate or most Upper Houses) you should definitely put some thought into voting for relatively minor parties, because the preference system often throws up something unexpected for the last position on the ballot (e/g/ the DLP in the 21st century), and very few of the parties can be trusted to make sensible decisions. So it is worth having some idea who all those minor guys way down on the ballot are. Hope you enjoy it!

Where was Dave in 2012?

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 02:02:41 GMT

Places where I spent at least one night away from home in 2012:
Perth, Western Australia (a few different places)
San Jose, Costa Rica (two different hotels)
Prague, Czech Republic
Vienna, Austria (hotel)
Rottnest Island
Sydney, NSW (at least 2 different houses, one hotel)
Melbourne, VIC (at least 2 different houses, and a couple of hotels)
"Red Earth City", Matong State Forest, NSW
Toronto, Canada (one hotel, one house)
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Margaret River (a couple of different places, two separate trips)
Busselton
Adelaide, SA
Canberra, ACT

FFANZ ballot

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 11:23:00 GMT

I've released the 2012 FFANZ ballot.

Vote to send Edwina Harvey to the 2012 New Zealand Natcon! (or not, I guess)

The ballot form is attached below, or you can vote via email to dave@difference.com.au. Voting requires a minimum donation of $5.

PDF Ballot

FFANZ

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 23:34:39 GMT

I've received precisely no contact from anyone interested in running for FFANZ. I'm extending the eligibility period for a week.

2012 FFANZ race now open

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:24:41 GMT

FFANZ 2012

Nominations are now open for the 2012 Fan Fund of Australia and New Zealand (FFANZ). FFANZ in 2012 will send one Australian science fiction fan from Australia to the 2012 New Zealand Natcon, unCONventional, in Auckland from 1-4 June.

Prospective candidates will have until March 1st 2012 to file the documents required to have one’s name placed in nomination and added to the ballot. The ballots will be published and distributed in early March, and voting will run from March 12-April 9th.

Candidates should file the following documents:

• A brief letter stating one’s intent to run for FFANZ 2012.
• A nominator and a seconder, preferably a nominator from Australia and a seconder from New Zealand.
• A 100 word or less platform statement specifying the candidate’s reasons for running and qualifications for becoming the 2012 FFANZ delegate.

Interested parties should contact the Australian administrator, David Cake, at dave@difference.com.au

The duties of the winning candidate will be as follows:

• Travel to New Zealand and attend unCONventional, the 33rd New Zealand Natcon, in Auckland from 1-4 June 2012 .
• Visit and get to know as many New Zealand Science Fiction fans as time will permit.
• Become the Australian FFANZ administrator until a replacement administrator is found, normally this happens when the administrator role is handed over to the succeeding eastbound delegate (in 2014 if a race is run every year).
• Raise funds and maintain an account to be used by the next eastbound delegate(s) in 2012.
• Promote connections between Australian and New Zealand fandom by a trip report or other means.

Please feel free to distribute this message to your fannish networks.

10 Apps

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:08:39 GMT

Months ago, a few people where listing the 10 apps they usually had open. I finally got around to it.

BBEdit - every geek needs a great text editor, and exactly which one people use is a very personal choice, but that tends to display ones personal geek history. BBEdit pretty clearly marks me as 'old school Mac guy'. FWIW, I'm definitely a vi not an emacs guy, but have never felt inclined to use vi when I have the choice of an editor with a real GUI.
I find being able to edit files on remote servers directly via SFTP is something essential to my normal workflow.

iTerm - every geek needs terminal access. I prefer iTerm to the built in Terminal. Actually, iTerm 2.

Echofon - desktop twitter client of choice. I'm always surprised whenever I discover anyone that regularly uses twitter via the web interface. I've tried about half a dozen desktop twitter clients, and seem to have settled on Echofon for now. I use Tweetbot on the phone, I actually like that even more. I tweet from more than one account, so that is an important feature for me.

Google Chrome - Safari comes across as a bit bloated to me. I'm pretty bad at closing tabs, so Safari eats memory fast. I'll probably switch browsers back eventually, though, Safari has a few features I really like (like easily enabling me to open a PDF in a suitable other app). I also use Firefox.

Preview - I find myself looking at PDF docs all the time, for both work and hobbies. I seem to be using Skim - a PDF viewer designed for annotation etc - more and more, and it may well end up replacing Preview for most PDF docs.

Word - I've found working in Universities in which everyone uses Word makes it so much easier than alternatives, despite it not being my favourite word processor. So it is always open.

Scrivener - going to be my tool of choice for serious writing from now on, I think. This is an amazing tool for writing complicated documents, the sort of document I previously would have started in an outliner. Still a bit unsure about reference manager integration, but otherwise amazing.

Skype - I'm involved with at least a couple of groups that seem to have settled on Skype as a regular communications tool, particularly the Burning Man Australia crew and ICANN NCUC gang, plus some friends that use it as preferred IM, so I keep it open most of the time. I don't think I have used its video features ever, but I use both IM and voice chat regularly.

Mail - I finally made the big shift to Apple Mail. Now I've shifted, I'm unlikely to shift again for a really long time, unless someone designs a good IMAP mail client for people that receive massive amounts of mail on multiple mailing lists and multiple accounts and need to filter it all. At the moment, I'm also reading one email account through Sparrow as an experiment, but the rest are all through Mail. I'm experimenting with some add-ons, but not really satisfied.

Powerpoint - I lecture, and I like to lecture with slides, and that usually means Powerpoint. I prefer Keynote if I can, and I've used Prezi and think it is pretty cool, but Powerpoint is the bread and butter choice, because the machines I lecture on have Powerpoint installed, so it is just easier.

Travel Meme

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 14:01:29 GMT

Places where I spent at least one night away from home in 2011:
San Francisco, California, USA (two different hotels)
Singapore (three different hotels)
Seattle, Washington, USA (Kent to be specific)
A highway rest stop in Oregon, USA
Reno, Nevada, USA (two different hotels, a couple of weeks apart)
Austin, Texas, USA
Black Rock City (Burning Man Festival), Nevada USA
Mountain View, California, USA
Toronto, Canada
Huntsvilla, Alabama, USA
Los Angeles, California
Dakkar, Senegal
Auckland, New Zealand (two different hotels)
Taupo, New Zealand
B&B near Koramandel, New Zealand
"Red Earth City" (Australian Burning Man/Burning Seed), Matong State Forest, New South Wales, Australia
Rutherglen, New South Wales, Australia
Melbourne, Australia (three different hotels at various times during the year)
Rottnest Island, Western Australia
Cervantes, Western Australia

My Worldcon schedule

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 19:59:13 GMT

My Worldcon Schedule

Thu 11:00 (A04) 1 hr
The Psychogeography of Ideals
- a serious intellectual one to get things started. And I'm on it with Cory Doctorow and Ian McDonald. I might be a little bit intimidated by this one.

Thu 13:00 (D04) 1 hr
The Moral Aesthetics of Steampunk
- slightly less intimidated by this one, should cover similar territory to the panel I did at Continuum.

Thu 17:00 (A03) 1 hr
The Works of Tim Powers
- I love Tim and his works.

Sat 14:00 (Hall 2 Fan Lounge) 1 hr
TAFF/DUFF Delegates Reception
- come and be sociable! John Coxon (TAFF) is a charming and funny guy, this should be fun.

Sat 15:00 (Hall 2 Stage) 2 hrs
Fan Fund Auction
- I have brought a bunch of stuff to auction.

Sat Night - I'm presenting a Hugo!
And then I'm going to the Hugo Losers party!
I'll be at the Pre-Hugo reception at 6pm

Sun 12:00 (A18) 1 hr
Whatever Happened to Cyberpunk? (Oh Wait, it is Still with Us...)
- one of my favourite topics

Sun 13:00 (A03) 1 hr
Computer War and Cyber Forensics: Stuxnet: Cyberwar and Cyber Terrorism?
- there are some good people on this. I'll be bringing my experience from Electronic Frontiers Australia, and my experience from the ICANN Security, Stability and Resiliency Review Team.

Sun 14:00 (A18) 1 hr
Off to Burning Man
- we'll be enthusing about that thing in the desert that often clashes with Worldcon (but not this one). I'll also be talking a bit about the Burning Man regional network, and the Australian Burn.

Still hoping if a room opens up, I'd like to do my crazy Real Occultists Using Fictional Magic talk, as previously seen at Aussiecon, but it needs a room and a projector, and these are apparently in short supply.

Sun, 29 May 2011 09:10:13 GMT

Last couple of days to vote for DUFF, the Down Under Fan Fund. I am a candidate. Voting closes on the 31st. Send in a ballot right now!
Am I a good candidate? Don't take my word for it, ask my nominators!

So...

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:42:32 GMT

It has been way too long since I posted here.
It hasn't been because I abandoned LJ, rather that I've been too busy to post anything longer than a twitter message or so.
So, important points of the last few months.
I started a PhD, currently part time, at Curtin. I'm studying Internet governance issues, mostly to do with ICANN. I also teach at Curtin a fair bit, which is keeping me busy.
Also, I went to San Francisco for ICANN. I was there for a week and a half, but spent most of it arguing about the Internet or watching other people arguing about the Internet. I did see a speech from Bill Clinton.
I am really pretty busy. But mostly in a good way.

strange aeons

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 15:08:34 GMT

Yesterday would have been H.P. Lovecrafts 120th birthday. He would have been astonished at the influence his horror stories have had. And even more astonished, and probably deeply disturbed, at the few people who take his work seriously (I'll be covering the influence of Lovecraft in the modern occult world in my 'Sorcerers and Storytellers' presentation at Worldcon, and truth be told I find of it pretty alarming too).
It is tempting to consider how he would react to the internet and fandom. He spent a lot of time writing to his various horror writer friends especially, and a lot of seemed to be a forerunner early fandom, which in turn seemed to be an early experiment with the social mechanisms that have exploded with the internet.
Of course, he was also an insane racist, a crazy racist even by the standards of his own era, so a black president would probably make his head explode. So he'd probably be a Tea Partier today or something. Probably for the best we are spared the spectacle.
Hmmm... now I want to write a story in which a crazy racist blogger inciting racist violence turns out to be H.P. Lovecrafts head in a Mi-Go brain jar.....
Which just goes to show how wonderfully inspiring mad old Howards stories can still be. I think the trick is that his unique brand of horror was based not just on dark fantasy and myth (ghosts, vampires and such) but features so many idea that are much more science fictional, aliens and other dimensions and the cold horror of a universe that is both vast and uncaring and often incomprehensible. Lovecraft's version of horror was not just about our irrational past, but taught us that science has plenty of its own horrors to reveal. He caught on the fundamental, and frightening, idea that just because something is theoretically explainable by some future science does not mean that it is comprehensible, or palatable, to the limited human mind. And for showing us that screaming horror is fully compatible with a scientific worldview, we must thank him.
Plus he taught me words like squamous, glabrous, and rugose. Long may he continue to inspire.

academic software tools

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 06:11:37 GMT

I see a fair bit of academic writing in my future. I basically live on my Mac, and even if I get an IPad etc it will have to be supplementary not primary. On some areas, I'm very seriously tooled up as far as software goes — geek stuff I need for computer consulting work, development tools, music and audio software, even some areas that I don't really need or use much but just happen to have acquired licenses for (through MacHeist, etc), such as image editing (I own licences for Graphic Converter, Pixelmater, Acorn, Intaglio, Vector Designer, plus LightZone for photos, plus open source ones, etc -- and maybe do some minor graphic editing once every couple of months).
But now I am thinking I should get tooled up as far software I am going to likely use for writing academic papers, and policy work, and keeping track of research. I'm probably going to be mostly looking at humanities based work, with relatively modest needs for graphs and maths, though this isn't 100%. And I'd like some suggestions and recommendations.
I think I basically want: an outliner; some sort of keep track of lots of bits and pieces database (what I'm calling an unstructured database, basically apps to keep track of relevant documents and snippets of data by project); a bibliography database app that integrates with Word. I am also thinking about changing away from Word as my primary word processor, but I know I won't be able to do this fully for work that involves interacting with other people. I have used, and been very happy with OmniOutliner as an outliner in the past. I have a licence for DEVONThink, which seems to be a very capable unstructured database app. Friends seem to love Scrivener, which includes both outlining and unstructured database capabilities, but seems to be far more directed at fiction writing than academic writing. I have licences for two bibliography database apps already, BookEnds and EndNote, but I haven't used either enough to yet have a clear preference, and I would appreciate hearing experiences with either.
So, any recommendations and experiences? Any other advice? Anything I am missing?
As far as my own preferences go: I dislike TeX/LaTeX based solutions (I have vaguely positive feelings about XML though, and would even contemplate a little XSLT hacking), I find iPad/iPhone integration to be a big plus (even though I don't have an iPad yet), I like Keynote and working with that is a plus, but I also have to use Powerpoint and Word somewhat.

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 08:37:29 GMT

I have learnt so much from watching The Wire, some of it potentially useful to know. For example, formal meeting procedure can be useful in coordinating any group activity, but the requirements for taking good minutes laid out in Roberts Rules of Order should be relaxed when engaging in criminal conspiracy.

Gillard and Rudd - thoughts for the future

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 07:11:34 GMT

I have a hope for Julia Gillard that she has the potential to be like Keating without the baggage and the bad timing. Competence, some wit and flair, and maybe a couple of big stands on some issues once she has won an election. She is witty and self-assured. Of course, she is currently very hemmed in on a lot of policy issues, and we won't see a lot of changes prior to the election, but lets hope she opens up a bit afterwards.
And I hope that post election, Kevin Rudd can become the new Gareth Evans. There isn't anywhere to go but down in Australian politics for him now, but it would be nice to see his talents used. He is often compassionate and passionate, smart and articulate. He turned out to be not great at a lot of things required of a national leader, but there is a lot to like about him. And foreign affairs is a great position for a talented and ambitious politician who can go no further domestically, opening up as it does many later opportunities on the world stage. I'd like to see Rudd represent Australia internationally, he is not just able and informed, but we might get to hear him call the Chinese ratfuckers again.
I love Keating! - The Musical. I've seen it twice, and doctor_k_ and I have the soundtrack and listen to it all the time. Probably unintelligible to those not having lived through Australian politics in the 90s, but captures the drama and big personalities of that memorable era brilliantly. I think the Tony vs Julia showdown is going to have plenty of that same sense of drama.

Boxing Clever

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 05:07:05 GMT

Just a little thinking out loud about thinking.
A common refrain in reporting about the internet, and other related social trends, is that it makes us stupider. Google makes us stupider, multi-tasking makes us stupider, using tiny text formats to communicate makes us stupider (or at least erodes our ability to write, etc).
At the same time we keep having computer demonstrations of things that we used to consider really clever. We used to think chess grandmasters were the heights of human cleverness, but computers are very good at chess now, and being a chess expert has lost a little sparkle. IBM has a computer that plays Jeopardy, which is pretty much a classic competition of human cleverness. Right now, this computer is huge and expensive — but we all expect that this decades huge and expensive is next decades affordable and the decade after thats cheap and ubiquitous (if it even takes that long). Once it is ubiquitous, well, it still might be kind of clever, but it is not a kind of clever we value. Multiplying two large in seconds was once considered astonishing, and highly valuable, now it is a curiousity as a human ability (but the foundation of much modern infrastructure as automation) — human being mimics $2 calculator.
In the medieval era, cleverness was all about the sheer amount of information you could keep in your head, and organising and accessing it. They developed intricate clever techniques for it, such as Memory Palaces. And in that era, a very smart man could theoretically master all academic knowledge. The last man reputed to have mastered all the worlds academic knowledge of his era died in 1680, and was already thought a little outdated then, and the idea is now absurd — but we all have wikipedia at our fingertips, and can find out an awful lot about almost anything fairly quickly, and the idea of cleverness being defined mostly by prodigious feats of memory now seems quaint and somewhat pointless. Great feats of memory are something we associated with autistic savants, not the worlds great thinkers.
It is not that the internet is making us smarter or dumber. But the internet is changing what it means to be clever, as each new set of cognitive skills is 'outsourcable' to machines, the cognitive skills that we value changes, our ideas about what is really clever are updated.

City music

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:28:47 GMT

Bruce Sterling (via Chris Arkenberg at boingboing) tells us why to think about cities (which I have been), and gives us his personal urban soundtrack (Ladytron). Here are some parts of my own personal urban soundtrack.

New York, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down, LCD Soundsystem
Dirty Old Town, The Pogues
Mmm... Skyscraper I Love You, Underworld
The Only Living Boy in New Cross, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine
I'll take New York, Tom Waits
Property is Condemned, The Triffids

Interesting it has two songs about New York, which I've only visited for a couple of weeks a decade ago. New York is one of the great archetypes of the city.
Broght Light, Big City a better choice on pure title/lyrics for Triffids track, but Property Is Condemned is a better song, and its powerful central metaphor both works for me personally and suits the theme.

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 04:10:33 GMT

I'm not going to make it back from Sydney in time to attend, unfortunately, but I urge all my Perth foodie friends, especially those who are interested in all the different aspects of the ethics around food (food miles, vegetarian/veganism, self-sufficiency and urban gardening, etc) to attend the Bluestocking Institutes workshop tonight. Info here, Facebook event page here

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 12:12:21 GMT

THE PERIODIC TABLE OF WOMEN IN SF MEME (stolen from that community).

Bold the women by whom you own books
Italicize those by whom you’ve read something (short stories count)
* Star those you don’t recognize

(accuracy not guaranteed, especially of what I own rather than have actually heard of)

Johanna Sinisalo
Andre Norton
C. L. Moore
* Evangeline Walton
Leigh Brackett
Judith Merril
Joanna Russ
* Margaret St. Clair
* Katherine MacLean
Carol Emshwiller
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Zenna Henderson
Madeline L’Engle
Angela Carter
Ursula LeGuin
Anne McCaffrey
Diana Wynne Jones
* Kit Reed
James Tiptree, Jr. (don't think I own an entire book, but certainly books with some of her stories)
Rachel Pollack
Jane Yolen
* Marta Randall
* Eleanor Arnason
Ellen Asher
Patricia A. McKillip
Suzy McKee Charnas
Lisa Tuttle
* Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Tanith Lee
Pamela Sargent
* Jayge Carr
Vonda McIntyre
Octavia E. Butler
Kate Wilhelm
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
* Sheila Finch
Mary Gentle
Jessica Amanda Salmonson (I haven't read the Tomoe Gozen books, but I want to, never been able to find copies)
C. J. Cherryh
Joan D. Vinge
Teresa Nielsen Hayden Of course, Teresa is an editor, and not a fiction writer. But I actually do have a book by her, her excellent book of fan writing Making Book.
Ellen Kushner
Ellen Datlow another editor. I definitely have books edited by her, though.
Nancy Kress
Pat Murphy
Lisa Goldstein
Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
* Mary Turzillo
Connie Willis
Barbara Hambly
* Nancy Holder
Sheri S. Tepper
Melissa Scott
Margaret Atwood
Lois McMaster Bujold
* Jeanne Cavelos
Karen Joy Fowler
* Leigh Kennedy
* Judith Moffett
* Rebecca Ore
Emma Bull
Pat Cadigan
Kathyrn Cramer
Laura Mixon
Eileen Gunn
Elizabeth Hand
* Kij Johnson
Delia Sherman
Elizabeth Moon
* Michaela Roessner
Terri Windling
Sharon Lee
* Sherwood Smith
Katherine Kurtz
Margo Lanagan
* Laura Resnick
Kristine Kathryn Rusch just finished a novel yesterday. I would like to read more of the Retrieval Artist series.
* Sheila Williams
Farah Mendlesohn
Gwyneth Jones
* Ardath Mayhar
Esther Friesner
* Debra Doyle
Nicola Griffith
* Amy Thomson
* Martha Wells
* Catherine Asaro
Kate Elliott
Kathleen Ann Goonan
* Shawna McCarthy
Caitlin R. Kiernan
Maureen McHugh
Cheryl Morgan
* Nisi Shawl
Mary Doria Russell
Kage Baker
Kelly Link
Nancy Springer
J. K. Rowling
Nalo Hopkinson
Ellen Klages
* Tanarive Due
* M. Rickert
* Theodora Goss
Mary Anne Mohanraj
* S. L. Viehl
Jo Walton
* Kristine Smith
* Deborah Layne
Cherie Priest
* Wen Spencer
K. J. Bishop
Catherynne M. Valente
Elizabeth Bear
* Ekaterina Sedia
Naomi Novik
Mary Robinette Kowal
Ann VanderMeer

What I've been reading and viewing

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 06:49:40 GMT

Just a bunch of random stuff I've read or watched lately.

Books

The Magicians, Lew Grossman
This is sort of Harry Potter done in the style of Donna Tartt's The Secret History. So, Hogwarts (in this book, a US college named Brakebills) through the eyes of anomie filled preppies who would otherwise be headed to Princeton, rather than jolly English schoolkids at a privileged psuedo-Eton. Very metatextual, obviously a book about books, about in particular Harry Potter and Narnia (here called Fillory), and in parts D&D and LOTR, and generally about escapist fantasy in general. I thought this was a wonderful, engrossing, but often somewhat miserable, book. It of course will appeal to literary inclined fantasy fans, especially those with a childhood love of the sources it references, but ultimately is fairly harsh in its assessment of why escapist fantasy holds its appeal to us. I liked its version of a magical education. I liked the way it was a fast moving book, covering years of the characters lives quickly, and I thought the characterisation was good if not cheerful. A general theme is that magic won't save us from angst, from addiction, from having to face adulthood, for our own personal failings — and it is a flaw to hope too much that it will. Highly recommended, but not necessarily a comfortable read.

Boneshaker, Cherie Priest
I'd heard a lot about this book, and it has got a lot of acclaim (it is up for a Hugo), and it seems to be the steampunk book getting the most attention of the current crop. I was actually really quite disappointed with it. It has a great setting (though most of the background information is delivered in a giant info-dump at the start, rather than revealed in a more natural way), but a great setting, even coupled with very solid prose, isn't enough for a great book. I didn't care much about the characters, none of whom were terribly likable or fascinating, and there didn't really seem anything more interesting to learn about the characters or the setting after about half way through the book — the big reveals of the climax and dénouement largely concern characters we don't care about or don't even meet, and were very hard to get enthused about. This book started with promise, and mostly failed to deliver on it. I'll be quite disappointed if this wins the Hugo (I've only read one of the other books on the Hugo ballot, The City and the City, but I liked that a lot more)

Buried Deep Kristine Kathryn Rusch
I sort of picked this one up super-cheap on a discount pile, and I'm quite glad I did. This is one in the Retrieval Artist series (it was obvious that it was part of a series -- I didn't need to read the others to understand the plot, though it might have helped with some of the characters), and I'm now interested in grabbing the others. A pretty solid blend of good SF with police procedural and legal and political drama. The basic themes of the books might be described as extreme multiculturalism, and social identity — it is set in an interstellar civilisation, in which various races can find themselves committing serious crimes by the standards of the others. Largely because of this humanity has reacted by creating a not-really-legal but tolerated (humans often find alien justice quite arbitrary and harsh) industry in changing identities and relocating to a new life, 'disappearing', and there are then professional experts (including the Retrieval Artists of the title) who specialise in finding those who have disappeared. The story in this one centred around aliens called the Disty, who have an incredibly strong cultural fear of death, and find simply being near a corpse terribly contaminating, sometimes to the point of inducing panic reactions, contamination that can only be cleansed with complex rituals that can seem barbaric (and can be fatal) to humans. I didn't think this was brilliant, but I thought it was very solid, and I enjoy police procedurals and political drama, so I quite liked it.

Pandora's Star Peter F. Hamilton
I kept having Hamilton recommended to me as another good space opera author to read, so I thought I'd try one. Not bad, but not great either. I found the biggest problem with this book was that it was just too big and sprawling, and seemed like it could have been written a lot shorter. Entire sub-plots occur, some that could have been spun out for an entire book, essentially just as character background, so that when the character(s) involved join in the main plot we know a bit more about them (which seems a very long winded and unnecessary way of accomplishing that). Few of these are engrossing enough, as the characterisation generally isn't great, to really make it interesting. It takes at least half the book before I really felt the main plot had started, and we had moved on from extended scene setting, and it was a nearly 900 page book. It's reasonable enough once the action really starts to happen, if you enjoy hard SF with a fair amount of explosions and violence and technology and action on a really big scale. It hasn't really convinced me that I should track down a lot more Hamilton, though I'll probably read the sequel just for closure.

Burning Man Live: 13 Years of Piss Clear, Black Rock City's alternative newspaper Adrian Roberts
This is a book that is mostly just what it says on the tin, all 13 years worth of (now defunct) Piss Clear, compiled by the editor. There is a little bit of comment for context, but its mostly the issues themselves, reproduce in full (issues usually around 6-8 pags, generally 2-4 issues a year), roughly full size (or for all I know, possible exactly). But as Adrian says in the introduction, its effectively an alternative cultural history of Burning Man, the stuff that the (quite controlling of its image) official Burning Man Organisation would really rather don't get talked about too much (like sex and drugs, or various controversies regarding censorship, or the often tense relationship with law enforcement). Plus plenty of details about what is cool and what isn't, and all the little details of what goes into a true sub-culture — slang dictionaries, fashion critiques, rants on what constitutes politeness in the extremely permissive culture of Burning Man. I really loved Piss Clear when I was on the playa. A really nifty companion to other (often quite starry eyed and laudatory) books about the Burning Man experience, and something I think would be great to give to people who really want an idea of what the big Burn is like. The title of newspaper comes from a valuable bit of survival advice for Burning Man — you know you are drinking enough to stave off dehydration when you piss clear.

Viewing

The Venture Brothers
I only discovered this show a few weeks ago, and I'm loving it. A parody of adventure cartoons (particularly Johnny Quest), and superhero culture. Funny in a cynical and often pretty savage way, but also quite sympathetic to its (generally quite broken) characters. I tend to like the characters from the 'villain' side of the show more, especially Dr. Girlfriend (smart, beautiful, very competent, with only one great problem in life — being in love with a guy that often acts like a complete idiot), and in later seasons the ongoing development of Henchman 21. A lot of the charm of the show is the contrast between the exciting life of superheroes and adventurers, and shiny optimism of 1960s fictional 'super science', and the ongoing theme of the show, which is according to the creators, "Beautiful sublime failure." The characters may be adventurers, super scientists, and often superpowered, but all are vulnerable to everyday human flaws and failure. An interesting aspect of the show (and one that mostly distinguishes it from its source material) is that the show is actually quite continuity heavy, a lot of episodes either leave lasting changes to the lives of the characters, or reference various ongoing minor characters and historical back story. This probably makes it a bit difficult to pick up later seasons, between the various in-jokes of the show and the many (often obscure) pop culture references (for example, one minor character is a combination of Henry Kissinger and Mary Poppins), this is a definitely a genuine cult show. The pop-culture parody bricollage style resembles The Tick (which one of the creators worked on) and The Middle Man, but the humour is a little more cynical. I'm loving it. Aging goth friends may be interested to note the music is supplied by J.G. Thirlwell, better known back in the day as Foetus/Clint Ruin/etc.

I know I'm very late to this show, as friends like sorscha and squasher have been sporting their membership of the Team Venture T-shirt club for years, but now I've caught up with it, it's a firm favourite.

The Inbetweeners
This UK comedy series is about a group of high school kids that aren't cool, but aren't nerds, just in-between. It is a sort of British comedy that I often find hard to watch, with a lot of the humour coming from the lead characters put in situations of extreme embarrassment. This one is funny and clever enough I'm watching it anyway. Very sex obsessed —which certainly accords with my memories of what it was like to be a high school aged boy. The dialogue is both funny, and appropriately high school.

Dog spelled sideways is Gdo.

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 07:09:10 GMT

We saw Waiting for Godot last night. Ian McKellen sure can turn it on when wants. Not sure if the play was well served by him out-acting everyone, but it sure was neat to watch.

But it reminded me of one of Sesame Street's greatest moments ever, and I feel the need to share.

Feminist anger

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 07:03:28 GMT

"We would gladly have listened to her (they said) if only she had spoken like a lady. But they are liars, and the truth is not in them." - Joanna Russ, in The Female Man, 1986

"Lady militants are always like Joanna, hitting you with their umbrella, smashing your bottle of whisky — because if they are not, WE WILL NOT LISTEN." - Phillip K. Dick, 1974

(quotes via the great book by Helen Merrick, The Secret Feminist Cabal, which I am reading at the moment)

girliejones and cassiphone, among others, have been getting criticised this week for comments made about the Before They Were Giants anthology, a reprint anthology notably lacking in women. The argument has been roughly that because the anthology selection wasn't a deliberate act of misogyny (and indeed, the editor James Sutter has been quite reasonable and apologetic in his response) that the complains should have been made far more politely — that they should have been made directly, not publicly, been made only in a most mild and reasonable way that no one could possibly be offended by, in short, that perhaps they were right, but they shouldn't have said it, or at least not loudly enough that people heard.

And we are still having this conversation in the SF field after at least 35 years. If just politely helping people become aware of the issue worked, we wouldn't still be talking about it. And yet, it keeps happening, again and again. People are still putting together anthologies without even thinking about gender as an issue — and the only way to make them think about the issue is to make sure it isn't thought of as just a nicety, just another thing to try and improve that fellow editors will give you hints about (like font choice, or cover layout), but rather as something that is a major mistake if you get it wrong, something that will attract not mild criticism but anger. Anger is entirely appropriate. No one should expect not to get publicly called on their big mistakes, rather we should all endeavour not to make them, and learn to handle them gracefully when we do (as, to his credit, Sutter largely has).

While this is a post about a controversy in the SF world, of course I can't make a post about how to handle sexism this week without people thinking about EFA and the controversy over its handling of sexism allegations. Certainly some of the issues are the same. I know I want to respond as an individual, because the board/chair response does not represent the opinions of this individual board member at all, and I'm thinking about how best to do that (and I don't think this journal is the place for a public comment on that issue). But I do want to say that I have enormous love for alexmoon right now, and I'm personally terribly apologetic for the way the organisation has disappointed her, and so many others, this week. More on this later.

I would appreciate it if no one smashes my bottle of whisky this week, though. It's cold, and I have a cold, and it has been rather a difficult week, and I've been finding a little Talisker in the evenings makes it a little more bearable. girliejones, cassiphone, alexmoon? Sláinte!

Here comes the spider goat!

Mon, 31 May 2010 04:31:48 GMT

All hail the transgenic spidergoats ! I like living in a world where scientists are investigating issues like 'is it easiest to get our spider silk from goat milk, or alfalfa sprouts?'
I'd heard of the spider goat idea years ago, but not seen actual video of the goats and silk production.
Spider goat! spider goat!
does whatever a spider goat does!
can he swing, from a web?
No he can't,
He's a goat!
Lookout! Here comes the spider goat!

Sun, 30 May 2010 21:05:57 GMT

OK, I've heard of the idea of small robots that you swallow before. But check this out - a robot that you swallow in several separate parts, it self-assembles inside your stomach, etc - then it performs surgery on you, then disassembles itself again.

Sat, 29 May 2010 05:53:43 GMT

Future SwanCon Iron Brain competitions and similar 'read the unreadable' type events in search of reading material need look no further than Topless Robots fan fiction friday selections. Keep that brain bleach handy before reading.