newnumber6

This week I got two books:

NYX: No Way Home #6 (of 6) (a bit of a mess, a conclusion that doesn't conclude)
Runaways #7 (a bit weak, maybe it's best Moore's leaving)

Full reviews as usual at my comic reviews site for anyone interested.

Also picked up at the bookstore, Queen of Candensce, by Karl Schroeder (Book 2 of Virga), and The Century of Science Fiction, a short story collection (it was in the 'books we want to get rid of so we'll price them really cheap' bin.

Work was okay, but it arrived just about the same time I did, and I had to do more, not only because we're in the busy season, but because one guy wasn't there and they asked me to do his part too.

I hate Roll Up the Rim.

And just heard that Philip Jose Farmer passed away at the age of 91. Enjoy the River, man.

I promised the story about how, on Monday, at 5:30 am I found myself helping a homeless woman steal back a bag of clothes. So, here it is! (It's not as entertaining as it sounds). ( Read more... )

Just a little thought experiment.

Premise 1: Multiple Universes exist from every possibility. This is like you see in SF shows all the time - for every choice (either personal or right down to particle interactions), the universe branches out into two (or more) possibilities, creating a new timeline for every possible choice.

Premise 2: Identity (for people) is a combination of two one-way operators (was and will be) which are continuous from any moment X to and moment Y in the future for will be, or past for was, where the state of the object in the earlier (or later) moment is directly dependant on the earlier moment. That is, I was me at 5 if the state of me now is a result of a continuous set of changes from me at 5 until now, in my universe. I will be me at +5years if the state of the character 5 years from now in any one universe is a result of a continuous set of changes over 5 years in that particular universe. This allows there to 'will be' multiple mes at +5 years, but they cannot claim to have identity to each other, because although they share a was connection, they don't share a will be .

Premise 3: There is no afterlife of a supernatural nature.

Under premise 2, it is theoretically possible that there is a non-supernatural afterlife (after death, some advanced entity is able to look back in time to the moment of death and register the mental states, and recreate it), but we will not consider it at first to simplify matters.

Premise 4: Life is awareness
That is, you have to have some level of present or future awareness of your condition to be considered alive. If you've been braindead and in a coma with no awareness for 30 years and then die, technically, for the purposes of the argument, you've been dead 30 years. If you're in a coma with no awareness for 30 years, wake up, and die 5 minutes later, you were alive the whole time. What counts as a level of awareness we can leave somewhat vague. It may well include reduce mental states, dreamlike comas, or extreme brain damage that leaves you functional, or it may exclude those after a point. It doesn't strictly matter which one you choose, so long as you're consistent about it. (Where necessary, we will use 'technical survival' or 'technical life' to talk about moments where the body is alive but there is no awareness)

Arguement: Take a suicidal person. Let's call him Gil ( Read more... )

Here's a heaping helping of randomness.

One of my fingers has been bothering me lately. ( Read more... )

Monday was Thanksgiving. ( Read more... )

Recently found on BoingBoing this bit about a CBC radio program where they discuss the idea that certain things classified as 'disorders', including autism and psychopathy aren't really such, but in fact 'different ways of being human', and particularly as (perhaps first steps towards) human speciation. I'm mainly just including this here to store the link so I don't have to dig through BoingBoing's archives to find the links when I have time to actually listen. But there is something in the BoingBoing article itself that appeals to me. ( Read more... )

Some TV thoughts. Lost, Jericho, Heroes, Veronica Mars, Grey's Anatomy, Battlestar Galactica, LOST. All talking about recent episodes, but I'm going to be relatively spoiler lite (by which I mean no 'big' revelations, but some incidental minor things, though), so it should be safe even if you haven't seen them, since I'm mostly talking about my own impressions. Oh, wait, there is _one_ icon from Veronica Mars behind the cut, and it's a little spoilery for S3, episode 2. But it was just too funny not to do. ( Read more... )

And now onto Book foo!
Finished: Dies the Fire, by S.M. Stirling (reread)
Thoughts and quote behind cut: ( Read more... )

Also finished: Swan Songs: The complete Hooded Swan Collection, by Brian Stableford (reread)

Since this is really five books in one, I'm going to do a quote or two from each. And there will be some spoilers, but let's face it... I've only talked to one person online who's even heard of it, and no one who's read it, so I'm not under any delusions any of you are going to read it. Hell, I doubt most people'll even be reading the quotes. So I'm just amusing myself with bits of it I liked. But hell, I'm still leaving out any big spoilers, just in case.( Read more... )

Started: The Protector's War, by S.M. Stirling (Fridays and Sundays)
Appleseed, by John Clute (Wednesdays)

TPW is the sequel to DTF, and the reason I reread DTF. Appleseed is a book I got for $2 in the 'last call' bin at a bookstore. Haven't really gotten far enough into them to give any more thoughts than that. Oh and I was wandering through the bookstore and looked again at Ilium, by Dan Simmons. Anyone on my flist read it and have any (non-spoilery) thoughts? I liked the Hyperion series by the same author, but too much mythological content (particularly when it's 'indistinguishable from fantasy') sometimes turns me off for some reason, and I fear Ilium might tread on that.

Anyway, this concludes another edition of HUGE RANDOM POST.

Dream Foo! What happens when you're a comic geek and you watch Prison Break a few hours before going to sleep? Find out behind the cut!
( Read more... )
Oh, and, although it wasn't _Technically_ a dream, at some point in the middle of night while half asleep I came up with 2 lines of PHP code I could use to block out probably about 90% of spammers signing up for the forums on The Unreachable Star. Haven't actually implemented it yet, but my conscious mind thinks it should work as well. Now, granted, it's not the most inventive thing in the world and I could have thought about it while awake if I ever seriously considered it, but I'm still impressed that I came up with it while, essentially, sleeping.
Edit: Implemented it, looks like it works, have to see how well though, only a simple dodge hopefully enough to scare off the laziest spambots.

Also, irish_star and angelophile already posted some of this but I wanted to pass it along too. Group of improvers do crazy stunts in public. Like sending about 50 people into a Best Buy dressed in clothes that are almost exactly the same as the uniform of the people who work there. Or stage a 5 minute time loop in a Starbucks, repeated over and over again (12 times) over the course of about an hour, or holding a surprise party in a subway car. And that's just the first handful I looked at, there's plenty more. I wish stuff this cool happened in TO. Probably be looking through it the next few hours.

Playing with the Facial Transformer posted by angelophile. Used my glowy-eye grad picture, came up with some interesting results.

My favorites:
( Read more... )

Sadly many of the transforms look better than actual me. ;)

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http://www.eathufu.com/