Cerebrate's Contemplations

Anyone else say "mishcrit"?

How about "abbrev"?

And behold, a revised version of the political compass graph, although not the quiz, which I find has enhanced explanatory power by throwing out the traditional right-left axis, and even the usual additional axis, altogether - and instead, denominating political alignments by the perceived personality defects of their adherents.

Thus (not to scale):

Naturally, given my own political views, absolutely everybody located below the X-axis on this graph has their very own permanently reserved spot on my political shit list.

Well, I haven't booklogged a non-fiction book for quite a while, and here is why; it's because it took me a good while to read through The Stuff of Thought.  Not because it's hard to read, but because it's well worth taking the time to read carefully and let inwardly ferment.

This is an excellent book, whether you're interested in thought, or interested in language, or just easily interested, period.  Within, Stephen Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard, takes us through what our use of language reveals about the way we think, and how therefore the structures of our language may reveal, and to what extent they may reflect, the hardwired cognitive concepts that we have.

In addressing these issues, he takes us through our languages assumptions on space, time and causality; our use of metaphor as a tool to illustrate and to think with, the generation of names, expletives, politeness, and language in relationships and as a social tool, delving into what each one can tell us about our minds, before closing with a look at language as a tool for exceeding our cognitive limits.  (And, of course, as others have said before me, the chapter on "The Seven Words You Can't Say On Television" is probably worth the price of the book itself...)

Highly recommended for anyone interested in thought, language, or the interface between the two, which since we all think, speak, and write, ought to be damn near everybody.

(Yes, yes, I know it isn't.  Meh.  Zombies, the lot of them.)

Warning, however: by the standards of most "popular science" books, this is meaty, and does not shy from expecting you to be able to handle complex ideas and think, dammit.  Not for the weak or hard of thinking.

Well, same location on the web.

But now running off an upgraded MySQL on our old-new 64-bit server and an upgraded Movable Type on a 32-bit VM on our new-new 64-bit server, all now under Windows 2008, if you follow me.

So a new location in those senses, anyway.

(The first couple of the books in this trilogy, The Joiner King and The Unseen Queen, I'd read before I started booklogging.)

Alas, something of a weak and anticlimactic end to not to the strongest series (or sub-series, if series would be more appropriately applied to the entire SW EU book collection).  While some of the sub-plots (especially those tied into long-term plot arcs, such as the changes in the Jedi Order, both internally and in the relationship with the government of the Galactic Alliance, Luke finally finding out some information about his family - from RotS-era recordings, and some of the set-up for Jacen's upcoming plotline) held interest, the conclusion to the Chiss-Killik war frankly didn't.  And I'm entirely unsure that some characters were behaving consistently with their established personalities, even if being assimilated into the Killik hive hive mind (something which's portrayal was at its best in the first book, unfortunately, and not so much later) can account for some of that.

Good enough for reading, especially since it sits on some significant continuity, certainly, but come on, Mr. Denning.  We've read your work in the past, and we expect better.  Please don't 'phone it in.

I'm just all about the Internet weirdness these days.

Well, unlike Amy (in her review, here), I had run across the notion of a transhuman/posthuman society that had regressed into neobarbarianism before; an odd conceit, in my general opinion, and one rarely (or never) done well enough to be worth doing at all.

Well, while that may still be my opinion in the general case, Dust was worth doing.  In this tale of a broken generation ship orbiting a dying star, Elizabeth Bear does a very good job of convincingly melding antique socioforms with the high level of technology - people do remember what they're making use of, and the engineers of Engine do retain a convincingly high level of technological knowledge.  While the truly picky might quibble with the way the remaining, squabbling fragments of the ship's AI seem to have internalized the angelic imagery applied to them, and with the evolution of various nanotech tools into bizarre mechanical lifeforms, this is made suitably plausible as the plot unfolds.  Likewise, the crippling of the AI in its fragmentation left these posthuman fragments able to play the situation among the merely transhuman to their own ends, but without rendering their choices and capacities irrelevant.

A satisfying book in an unusual subgenre.  Recommended.

Seen in a footnote to what is actually an interesting and useful piece of information concerning DLL_PROCESS_DETACH notifications, at least if you're a Win32 programmer:

Footnote

¹I do not know what the behavior of Borland C++ version 5.5 is with respect to returning FALSE from DllMain. I didn't feel like doing the research to find a compiler whose behavior is different from Visual Studio 2008, so I just picked one at random. I have a 50/50 chance of being right.

It occured to me that I frequently need examples of such things in various explanations, and I had no idea of what I actually said.  So I looked back in my head over a few dozen examples, and it seems I actually have a metasyntactic standby for this particular role, in the form of Honest Bob's X, or Honest Bob's Friendly X.  (i.e. Honest Bob's Friendly C++ Compiler, in the example cited.)  I guess I should pat myself on the back for unconscious consistency.

(Long time Cerebrate-listeners may also have encountered the manufacturer of all these products in the form of  Honest Ivan's Friendly X and Steam Propelled Piroshki Manufactory, a tremendously wordy circumlocution for no readily apparent or useful reason.  Also, it's interesting to note that while Honest Bob seems to write all these products, his company appears to be owned by Honest Ivan.

There's also that old standby piece of metasyntactic software, Pro Classic, but that had depths of sarcasm in it that Honest Bob's Friendly X does not.)

No offense is intended to any readers actually named Bob or Ivan, irrespective of their state of personal or legal integrity.

I am almost disturbed that I got all the references in that...

"If you put that picture on the Internet, I will kill you in your sleep.  Just see if I don't."

Well, if the Old Man's War series (see here, here and here) were John Scalzi aiming for a mark that we might call "serious space opera", The Android's Dream is what appears to be him aiming for a mark that we might call "light space opera, with a side order of mild satire".

He hits it.

If you're looking for another Old Man's War, you'll probably hate it.  Hell, if you're looking for a book of great sophistication, nuance, and depth -- this one does, after all, open with an SFnal fart joke -- you'll also probably hate it.

If you want a light, fluffy, fun (but, alas, unmemorable) read, ideally suited for airplane journeys or long car trips, however, read this.

(See also Amy's review, here.)

And in their latest legislative agenda, the British government now wishes to repeal ancient laws preventing lunatics and idiots from becoming members of Parliament.  Yes, the current law actually says "lunatics and idiots".

...

...

...

...

...maybe they should try enforcing them, instead?

(But seriously, folks, when it comes to keeping the lunatics and idiots away from the power to legislate, coerce, wage war, and operate the nuclear button, that's a kind of "discrimination" which I can not only live with, but actually stipulate.)

On a rather more pleasing note, some enterprising chaps are Wikifying the classic 1911 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica here.

This is most unexpectedly pleasing.

Continuing here:

Also, I should mention that not everyone in SL can afford an up to date computer, the vision of SL was to bring the whole world in, A person in a third world country has as much right as you to use SL.

You're absolutely right; NONE WHATSOEVER.  Hell, the word "right" has become almost as devalued as the word "rage", these days, about which more later, especially given this goddamned commie appropriation of some supposed "right" to the use of goods and services provided by private organizations.

must be nice to be rich and uncaring

Yes.  It really is.

...since when are Europeans a race, for hell's sake?

Not that I should expect understanding the meanings of words particularly well from someone who can't even spell the damned things.

(Do I need a disclaimer that this does not apply to non-whiny-ass Europeans?  Probably.  The gentle art of reading comprehension is so very not what it was.)

If I have to read another piece of this purulent crud tacked on to some completely unrelated post every time I look at the Second Life blog, I swear, someone's getting a verbal evisceration.  Which whiny, purulent crud, I hear you cry?  Well, like today's entry from one "Taff Nouvelle":

on another poi8nt can someone tell me why LL wants all europeans out of SL??
Why do we have to pay more than non europeans so that we cannot earn enough to own the sims that we paid a lot of real money for, BEFORE LL changed the rules. IsLLO anto european, I believe that comes under racial discrimination.

Let me explain this to you in simple words.  You pay more because your countries charge a VAT of 17.5%, or 18%, or 25%, or 33%, on sales of goods and services.  The European Union, hallowed be its name, has a law that requires foreign companies which sell said goods or services inside the EU to charge the due VAT upon such sales, and remit it to the European Union, hallowed be its name.  And since Linden Lab have at least one office in Europe that I am aware of, they are essentially obliged to charge y'all said VAT unless they feel like being bent over the table by the EU's lovely regulatory people.

(This is why Amazon.com, for example, charges VAT to EU customers; because they don't want the regulatory people getting all pissy and taking it out on the EU Amazonlets.  The only US businesses that don't are the ones that have no EU branches, have no intention of obtaining them, and so can feel comfortable giving the regulators the finger in the fairly certain knowledge that the courts hereabouts will tell 'em where to shove it.)

And, with all due respect, you people are the ones who elected the governments that decided value-added taxes of 17.5%, or 18%, or 25%, or 33% were a jolly good idea, so suck it the hell up and deal.  And no, to the benighted individual who suggested that Linden Lab eat the differential in the net in the name of equality, those of us who live under lighter tax regimes are not willing to subsidise you.

You wanted them, you implemented them, so pay up like good little serfs and quit your damned whining.

Have a nice day.

...new-style, requires that I post this widget.

I mean, hell, none of my readers actually need graphical evidence of my views on the real views of progressive-leftist-socialist retrogressive hesperophobic soft-authoritarian bastards, now do you?

No, the point of this post is that, should you be a campaign webmaster, and should you put a handy-dandy image-making tool on the campaign web site to let people make their very own posters with your campaign artwork and a choice of supporting text, then the drop-down list box is your friend, and the text box is MOST DEFINITELY not.

(Because, really, the above is mild and moderate compared to the average to be seen around the place.)

Didn't we have someone make this same cock-up in the last election, too?  Or was it back in 2000?

As this morning's random side note, I shall just mention that I have intensely disliked the term "Real Life"/"RL", with its implicit value judgement, since long before I ever used any virtual worlds - since no-one has yet been able to explain to me satisfactorily just precisely what is unreal about them.

Nothing but baryon chauvinism, that is.

See Amy's review of this book, also.

Well, I am - I think it is fair to say - rather less of a fan of the post-apocalyptic genre as a whole than my lovely wife is.  Such fondness for it as I have is generally attached to the points after the world stops falling apart and the rebuilding of civilization begins, which is why, I imagine, I thoroughly enjoyed S. M. Stirling's Island in the Sea of Time, et. seq., but have yet to bother picking up Dies the Fire, et. seq.

That said, I did rather enjoy this book.  Mr. Brooks presents a well-crafted apocalypse from the point of view of the survivors some time hence, in the form of interviews by the reporter who, within the subcreational world, is writing the book.

There is a limit, of course, to the plausibility one can squeeze into any book which involves the reanimated dead, insofar as they start by violating the First Law of Thermodynamics and work their way down from there.  And further plausibility-wise, I might quibble somewhat with the optimality of some of the military and economic choices made by various in-world authorities (Especially, at the Battle of Yonkers, with his portrayal of a scenario which requires the Pentagon to have found the single stupidest, most ignorant, most impenetrably half-witted, cretinous, time-server of a general in the entire history of American warfare, and handed him plenipotentiary authority, to see that battle fought in that way.  But that's a minor part of the book as a whole and one which, I imagine, can be readily skimmed by people who aren't quite so militarily picky -- but I digress.), but that's armchair generalism, not a flaw in the book.  However, if one accepts the existence and nature of the zombies, rather necessary suspension of disbelief under the circumstances, then the world is excellently put together, covering far more than usual zombie works with respect to responses to and consequences of the situation individual, societal, political, military, economic, and otherwise, woven into a consistent future history.  I adore coherent worldbuilding, and this delivers it aplenty, along with a thumping good plot.

Recommended.

On sale now underneath the Skytower Residence: flag pins, fully US Flag Code compliant flagpoles, and the return of the Rat's Ass T-shirt line.

Been playing around with camera controls, snapshots, and tools for machinima today - mostly in the service of a notion to provide video help for one of my applications without having to put my non-photogenic primary self on the screen - instead, I'd build a nice appropriate set on a backlot somewhere, construct an appropriate avatar, project the software screen up behind me, and record a virtual help presentation.  And presto, video help!

All that's in the future, of course.  For now, the only tangible result of the experimentation is this nice framed picture of me and... me.

"Relax.  Don't worry.  Have a homebrew."

When we started making beer, Amy handed me this to read - while I have had some experience of the wonders of fermentation, in the past I'd always concentrated on wine rather than beer.

And Papazian's is a very good book.  His laid-back style offers pleasant, easy reading, but the meat of the book offers all the solid information you need to get started homebrewing (along with the background on such things as the actual chemistry of brewing), and to go quite a ways before you need another reference.  In addition to the information on the basics and technique in general, it also offers a good few recipes - enough to keep the beginning homebrewer going for quite some time even if their tastes in beer styles are limited - and plenty of useful information to modify them or design your own from scratch.

Interesting to read; completely informative - I think even for people starting from nothing -; and useful for a reference even once you're done.  Very much recommend for anyone considering getting into homebrewing.

As a minarchist libertarian, it's almost never that anyone in government, be it this present administration with their big-government conservatism or any of the damn commies I used to have, says anything even remotely pleasing.  On the other hand, these Presidential remarks on why he's not going to demand conservation pretty much fits the bill:

"They're smart enough to figure out whether they're going to drive less or not. I mean, you know, it's interesting what the price of gasoline has done," Bush said at a news conference in the White House press room, "is it caused people to drive less. That's why they want smaller cars: They want to conserve. But the consumer's plenty bright. The marketplace works."

"You noticed my statement yesterday, I talked about good conservation and — you know, people can figure out whether they need to drive more or less," he said. "They can balance their own checkbooks." 

"It's a little presumptuous on my part to dictate how consumers live their own lives," the president added. "I've got faith in the American people."

Rare commodity among politicians, that last.

So there's a short title-length limit on blog posts that get shipped to LiveJournal.

Who knew?

Even though it pretty much figures.

That is all.

Oh, my.

The newest in the Temeraire series is out.  Continuing from where we left off at the end of Empire of Ivory, with just time for the English and French dragons to recover from the plague, Laurence is imprisoned for his treason until time shall prove right for an execution, and Temeraire sent to the breeding grounds, among dragons whose society is little to his liking. And then Napoleon invades England...

I missed a lot of sleep devouring this book.  "Good" is veritable understatement.  Try out "Excellent" for size.

(Also, a particular note for the characterization of the Iron Duke.  Very well done, methinks.)

Buy it.  Read it.  If you haven't already read the others (and here), do that first, but then do this.

I am really most amused that I find I just have to have high-quality underwear for all my avatars, despite the fact that - not being into v-sex - no-one will ever see it.

(For those unfamiliar with the way this works, I should probably clarify that functional underwear, such as supports and flattens and uplifts and does goodness knows what in the Real World, is not so functional when applied virtually - body shape is derived entirely from the avatar mesh, and whatever you wear on top of that is purely cosmetic.  And so, unless you plan to take the overlying clothes at some point, serves no function whatsoever other than to slightly bump up the avatar rendering cost as the rendering engine figures out that it doesn't need to render that.

Well, okay.  If you're wearing a skirt, one piece of it has some function, given that perverts can manipulate their camera viewpoint as well as the rest of us.  But not much, and the rest lacks that excuse.)

We just bought a Roomba.

And named it 'Pierre'.