Neal Stephenson

2008 Predictions

2 Comments / Movies, Neal Stephenson / /

I’ve never done this before, but let’s give it a shot. Here are some predictions for 2008:

  • Neal Stephenson will announce a new novel, and it will feature a portion set in the U.S. Civil War era. It’s been around 3-4 years since his last novel (if you want to call the 2700 page Baroque Cycle a novel), and he seems to be putting out a new novel at about that rate. It may or may not feature distant relatives from the Shaftoe and Waterhouse families (along with the other legacies like Enoch Root, the von Hacklhebers, etc…). I have a specific reason for predictiing the 1860s setting, but I could be wrong. If the book is a continuation of the Cryptonomicon/Baroque Cycle series, then I’m much more certain about the setting. However, I seem to remember reading an interview where Stephenson said his next book won’t be a part of that series because he just needed to get away from those characters and themes for a while, certainly an understandable sentiment when you consider that he’s probably spent somewhere on the order of 10 years (and 3600-4000 pages) writing about them. However, if that’s the case, then I’m considerably less confident about the setting, though it’s still a possibility.
  • The WGA strike will end or the writers will go back to work without a contract (this could happen if enough progress is made and the writers think it’s reasonable). Nevertheless, the strike will have lasted long enough that irreversable damage will be done to the industries affected. As a consumer, this probably won’t be so bad, as the vacuum will no doubt be filled with something interesting (probably something interactive, like video games or something like a real time internet video show. Or some combination of both.)
  • Much to my disappointment, Sony’s Blu Ray will continue to gain ground in the HD format war and despite last ditch, desperate attempts to salvage their business during the 2008 holiday season, HD-DVD will be all but dead by the end of the year. Cheap players will continue to sell (they’re not worthless, as a cheap HD-DVD player will still upconvert regular DVDs – and their prices are honestly rather comparable), but that won’t mean much if there are no movies to buy in that format. I hope I’m wrong with this one, but I’m not betting on it…
  • The use of DRM will decline in the music industry, but increase in the movie industry. This will be exacerbated by a decline in theater and DVD sales. Next year has a noticeable dearth of sure-fire blockbusters (the new Indy movie notwithstanding), and DVD sales will continue their slow decline (there are numerous reasons for this – people are becoming inured to the double dipping DVD release strategies, they already have their rainy day library built up enough, and a host of other reasons). As it stands now, Netflix isn’t able to do their watch online feature without using proprietary (MSIE only), annoying DRM, and other services are similarly hobbled. I agree with Fledge in that “The first company to let you click one button and download a movie – no frills, no subtitles, no disc extras, just the movie – directly to your DVD burner and stick that in your home theater DVD player is going to mint money, for themselves and for the movie studios.” Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening this year. I hope I’m wrong!
  • Barack Obama will win the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election. This is not an expression of my political preferences (i.e. it’s not a personal statement about Obama one way or the other), as I mostly burned myself out on politics a few months before the 2004 elections and haven’t paid much attention since. It’s just the vibe I’m getting.

Hmm, yeah, I really went out on a limb with these. I stink at this.

Stephen Bury

Neal Stephenson / /

Towards the beginning of his career, Neal Stephenson used the pseudonym Stephen Bury to publish straightforward thrillers. In an old interview, he comments thusly:

”I was writing Snow Crash about the same time my uncle, George Jewsbury, and I started talking about doing collaborations. The rationale behind that was, clearly, I may be able to limp along indefinitely, writing these little books that get bought by 5,000 people, but really it would be smart to try to get some kind of serious career going. We had heard somewhere that Tom Clancy had made like $17 million in a year. So we thought, ‘Let’s give this a try.’ The whole idea was that ‘Stephen Bury’ would be a successful thriller writer and subsidize my pathetic career under the name Neal Stephenson. It ended up going the other way. I would guess most of the people who have bought the Stephen Bury books have done so because they know I’ve written them. It just goes to show there’s no point in trying to plan your career.”

In any case, I’ve recently picked up both of the Bury books (which have now been published under Stephenson’s real name) and I’m about halfway through the second one. They’re actually better than I thought they would be, but not particularly great. Part of the reason I had low expectations for the books is that the little blurbs describing the stories on the back of the books sound stupid. So far, though, the execution of said absurd stories isn’t so bad. I think this has something to do with uncommon settings and characters, something Stephenson has a knack for. Nothing really approaches Stephenson’s popular works, but these are diverting enough thrillers.

As of right now, I prefer The Cobweb to Interface, though I’m only halfway through Interface. I actually quite enjoyed The Cobweb and would recommend it to Stephenson fans. The story follows a midwestern deputy sheriff named Clyde Banks who stumbles upon an Iraqi plot in his hometown to produce chemical weapons during the first Gulf War. Another plotline follows a low-level CIA analyst who “exceeds her task” and makes a lot of folks in Washington look bad by noticing some anomalies in funding. Both characters are somewhat unusual, as are the specifics of their arcs (one is running for sherrif, the other is constantly bewildered by bureaucratic excess, amateur wrestling is often brought up, etc…) – not your steriotypical thriller fare, which is precisely why it’s interesting. I can see a lot of Stephenson in the story, though there’s clearly something else here (these are collaborations, after all). For instance, the Dhont family bears a likeness to the Shaftoes from Stephenson’s recent works and Stephenson’s penchant for including actual historical figures into a fictional story comes into play (at one point, the CIA analyst ends up on a boat with George H.W. Bush in an encounter that very much resembles something out of Cryptonomicon or The Baroque Cycle).

Anyway, here’s one quote regarding the aforementioned bureaucratic excess as a Washington insider talks to the deputy sheriff:

“You and I know that something is going on in Forks County, and we would like to do something about it,” Hennessey said, “but between the two of us are about ten thousand of these people who are too busy looking down their noses at us to actually grasp the problem and take action. You must know that taking action is looked down upon, Clyde. This is the postmodern era. When events come to a cusp, we’re supposed to screw our courage to the sticking place and launch a reanalysis of the eleventh draft of the working document. Actually going out and doing stuff in the physical world is simply beyond comprehension of these people. They’re never going to do anything about the Iraqis in Forks. Never.”

Again, the story is a bit… unlikely… but it’s entertaining and approached from a distinct angle that makes it feel fresh. Interface seems even more absurd, and so far it hasn’t quite overcome that absurdity, but it’s making a valiant effort and I’m enjoying it. Interface follows William Cozzano, a popular Illinois governor, and his run for President. That’s not unlikely, but when they start talking about putting biochips into his brain and hooking them up to a computerized polling system, well, I was a little worried. It hasn’t been as bad as it sounds so far, and they do a good job building up the technology behind this so that it perhaps doesn’t seem so unlikely. They also do a reasonable job setting up why Cozzano would consent to such a risky procedure. Again, I’m only a bout halfway through, so the jury is still out, but so far, it’s ok. Not as good as The Cobweb though, and it lacks the idiosyncratic bits that made me enjoy The Cobweb so much. Still, there are some interesting characters and concepts. For instance, the pollsters in the book are interesting. Here’s a quote from one of the pollsters, who speculates on what drives politics.

“In the 1700s, politics was all about ideas. But Jefferson came up with all the good ideas. In the 1800s, it was all about character. But no one will ever have as much character as Lincoln and Lee. For much of the 1900s it was about charisma. But we no longer trust charisma because Hitler used it to kill Jews and JFK used it to get laid and send us to Vietnam.” …

“So what’s it about now?” Aaron said.

“Scrutiny. We are in the Age of Scrutiny. A public figure must withstand the scrutiny of the media,” Ogle said. “The President is the ultimate public figure and must stand up under the ultimate scrutiny; he is like a man stretched out on a rack in the public square in some medieval shithole of a town, undergoing the rigors of the Inquisition. Like the medieval trial by ordeal, the Age of Scrutiny sneers at rational inquiry and debate, and presumes that mere oaths and protestations are deceptions and lies. The only way to discover the real truth is by the rite of the ordeal, which exposes the subject to such inhuman strain that any defect in his character will cause him to crack wide open, like a flawed diamond. It is a mystical procedure that skirts rationality, which is seen as the work of the Devil, instead drawing down a higher, ineffable power. Like the Roman haruspex who foretold the outcome of a battle, not by analyzing the strengths of the opposing forces, but by groping through the steaming guts of a slaughtered ram, we seek to establish a candidates fitness for office by pinning him under the lights of a television studio and constructing the use of eye contact, monitoring his gesticulations– whether his hands are held open or closed, toward or away from the camera, spread open forthcomingly or clenched like grasping claws.”

This seems appropriate, given the upcoming election. Interestingly, the same pollster speculates that HDTV will mark the next shift in politics, as people look different on HDTV than they do on regular TV. This may seem like a trivial point, but I guess the idea is that politics these days rely more on trivial stuff like how to position your eyes so that the whites don’t make it look like your eyes are bulging out of your head on TV.

I’d say that The Cobweb is definitely worth checking out for Stephenson fans, and probably anyone who likes techno-thrillers like Tom Clancy or Vince Flynn’s stuff (I’m not an authority on the genre though). So far, it seems like Interface would be worth reading for die hard Stephenson fans, and there might be a more limited mainstream audience for this one as well. They both seem a little better than your average thriller.

Neal Stephenson is a Wiseass

3 Comments / Neal Stephenson / /

Time is short this week, so I just wanted to throw this out there. The author bios you normally find at the end of a book are usually pretty sparse. They’ll generally list out what previous books the author has written and if you’re lucky, you’ll get a little blurb about what they did before writing or where they’re from. Anyway, I was looking at my copy of Snow Crash and noticed that the author bio was really long, and had quite a strange tone:

Neal Stephenson issues from a clan of rootless, itinerant hard-science and engineering professors (mostly Pac 10, Big 10, and Big 8 with the occasional wild strain of Ivy). He began his higher education as a physics major, then switched to geography when it appeared that this would enable him to scam more free time on his university’s mainframe computer. When he graduated and discovered, to his perplexity, that there were no jobs for inexperienced physicist-geographers, he began to look into alternative pursuits such as working on cars, unimaginably stupid agricultural labor, and writing novels. His first novel, The Big U, was published in 1984 and vanished without a trace. His second novel, Zodiac: the Eco-thriller, came out in 1988 and quickly developed a cult following among water-pollution-control engineers. It was also enjoyed, though rarely bought, by many radical environmentalists. Snow Crash was written in the years 1988 through 1991 as the author listened to a great deal of loud, relentless, depressing music. The Diamond Age was his last novel.

Mr. Stephenson now resides in a comfortable home in the western hemisphere and spends all of his time trying to retrofit an office into its generally dark, unlevel, and asbestos-laden basement so that he can attempt to write more novels. Despite the tremendous amounts of time he devotes to writing, playing with computers, listening to speed metal, Rollerblading, and pounding nails, he is a flawless husband, parent, neighbor, and all-around human being.

He’s just screwing with us, isn’t he? Curiously, this sort of wiseass bio does not appear in any of the newer editions of his books…

The Diamond Age Miniseries

6 Comments / Movies, Neal Stephenson / /

It appears that Neal Stephenson’s neo-victorian nanotech novel The Diamond Age will be a miniseries on the Sci-Fi channel:

Based on Neal Stephenson’s best-selling novel The Diamond Age: Or a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, this six-hour miniseries is executive produced by George Clooney and Grant Heslov of Smokehouse Productions. A prominent member of a conservative futuristic society grows concerned that the culture stifles creativity, and commissions a controversial interactive book for his daughter, which serves as her guide through a surreal alternate world. When the primer’s provocative technology, which adapts to the reader’s responses, falls into the hands of a young innocent, the girl’s life is accidentally reprogrammed with dangerous results. Neal Stephenson will adapt his own novel for this project, the first time the Hugo and Nebula winning author has written for the small screen.

I have mixed feelings about this. Stephenson is probably my favorite author, so I’m thrilled that his work is being adapted. However, adaptations are tricky, and I think part of the reason Stephenson’s books haven’t been adapted is that they’re probably more difficult than most. The choice of The Diamond Age is a baffling one, given that it’s universally seen as having an awfully abrubt ending (and has given the author an unfair reputation of writing bad endings). That it’s a Sci-Fi Channel original series isn’t exactly comforting either. They did a decent enough job with the Dune miniseries I guess, but honestly, this is that channel that brought us masterpieces like Man-Thing and Basilisk: The Serpent King (I’m serious, those two movies were both playing tonight.)

Stephenson’s involvement is somewhat heartening, but also a mixed blessing. For one thing, nothing guarantees that a great novel-writer will turn out to be a great screenwriter. It’s a different medium and, as such, different conventions and language apply. Given that we’re talking about a Sci-Fi Channel original, I’m sure his involvement won’t be a negative, but that leaves one other consideration: If he’s busy working on the screenplay for this series, he’s probably not working on his next book. Gah! It’s been a few years, and I want me some new Stephenson.

If it turns out good, I’ll be elated, but I’m wary. Think of this post as tempering my expecatations so that it can’t possibly be that much of a dissapointment. Incidentally, I just ran across Ben Thompson’s beautiful rant about Sci-Fi Channel Original Movies:

Nothing makes me happier when I’m flipping through the channels on a rainy Saturday afternoon than stumbling upon whatever god-awful original home-grown suckfest-and-craptasm movie is playing on the Sci-Fi Channel. Nowhere else can you find such a clusterfuck of horrible plot contrivances and ill-conceived premises careening face-first into a brick wall of one-dimensional cardboard characters and banal, inane, poorly-delivered dialogue. While most television stations and movie production houses out there are attempting to retain some shred of dignity or at least a modicum of credibility, it’s nice to know that the Sci-Fi Channel has no qualms whatsoever about brazenly showing twenty minute-long fight scenes involving computer-generated dinosaurs, dragons, insects, aliens, sea monsters and Gary Bussey all shooting laser beams at each other and battling for control of a planet-destroying starship as the self-destruct mechanism slowly ticks down and the fate of a thousand parallel universes hangs in the balance. You really have to give the execs at Sci-Fi credit for basically just throwing their hands up in the air and saying, “well let’s just take all this crazy shit and mash it together into one giant ridiculous mess”. Nothing is off-limits for those folks; if you want to see American troops in Iraq battle a giant man-eating Chimaera, you’ve got it. A genetically-altered Orca Whale the eats seamen and icebergs? Check. A plane full of mutated pissed-off killer bees carrying the Hanta Virus? Check.

Brilliant. Ironically, I’m more excited for The Diamond Age miniseries now that I read that. Something’s wrong with me.

A Spamtastic Mystery

Neal Stephenson, Weblogs / /

One of the joys of maintaining a website is dealing with spam. Over the years, I’ve had to deal with several different varieties of spam here, including comment spam, trackback spam, even my old forum got inundated with spam. As such, countermeasures were deployed with varying degrees of success. Movable Type has improved its spam blocking capabilities considerably, and I use a plugin to close comments on posts older than 60 days, so the blog has remained relatively spam free for a while now. I replaced my forum with a new system that requires registration (ironically, even the new forum was spammed with a bizzarely intriciate scheme to sell, no joke, biodynamic cheese).

This leaves referrer spam. I don’t know that there’s anything to really be done about that short of banning IP addresses and the like, but I never really used my site’s raw referral logs that extensively, so even though I’m sure I get a decent amount of referrer spam, I don’t really see it. Instead, I use sitemeter, a popular web stats application that uses an image and javascript to collect the appropriate info (you can see the little multicolored image towards the bottom of every page on Kaedrin). I’m not sure if sitemeter does something on their end to prevent referral spam, or if spambots simply ignore the technology they use, but I get next to no referrer spam there.

Until this morning.

I awoke to find my site had several hundred hits overnight (much more than usual). When I looked at the referrals, I noticed that I was getting a huge amount of traffic from a bunch of sites that were all variations of the same domain. A sampling includes:

http://qfm96.listenernetwork.com/SearchWeb.asp

http://wmvx.listenernetwork.com/SearchWeb.asp

http://973thebrew.listenernetwork.com/SearchWeb.asp

http://98online.listenernetwork.com/SearchWeb.asp

As you can see, all the referrs are coming from some sort of search application. Going to the various “listenernetwork.com” home pages, it became obvious that they were all radio station sites that were apparently all using some central application to produce cheap, easy sites for themselves (they all use the same template with content and styles tailored towards individual stations). The sites and referrals were distributed all throughout the country. At a glance, they seemed to be legit stations. How odd.

All of the referrals were going to my Neal Stephenson category archive page, which was strange. At first, I thought, hey, maybe Neal Stephenson announced a new book on the radio this morning! Of course, that doesn’t make much sense, but I’m a sucker for Stephenson and so I wanted to believe. In any case, it immediately became obvious that something else was going on (damn!).

The most frustrating thing about these referrals is that they’re obviously coming from these radio station sites’ built-in search engine, which apparently uses a HTTP POST request instead of a GET request. Most search engines use GET requests because then the search parameters are contained in the URL, which allows users to bookmark searches. POST requests hide search parameters, so users can’t bookmark their searches and referred sites can’t see what the search terms are. So not only was I getting all this traffic from a mysterious search engine, but I didn’t even know what people were searching for…

Back to the logs I go. After rooting around a bit, I found some other search engines like ask and google were referring to the same Neal Stephenson page… but they had the search terms in their URL:

what unit of length used in nuclear physics is named after a famed manhattan project scientist?

Allright, so I’m making progress. My Stephenson category page contains most of those terms, so that kinda makes sense. I went to one of the refferring sites and was quickly able to reproduce the search on their site and see my page come up in the results. But this question is rather odd, and there were many people searching with that exact question. What the heck is going on here?

Confused and a little intrigued, I started clicking around one of the referring radio station’s sites hunting for clues. Then I found it. Apparently, all these stations run some sort of big national contest, and the mysterious question above was today’s “Really Hard Trivia” question. The site even conveniently notes: “Don’t know the answer? Search the web below.” Bingo.

So it appears that these are all indeed legitimate referrals, though I can’t imagine anyone becoming a reader, as they didn’t find the answer on my page. However, in the off chance that someone is still looking, the answer appears to be the Bohr Radius, named after Neils Bohr.

It turns out that I probably could have saved myself a good deal of effort by simply googling “listenernetwork referrer spam,” as this issue has apparently struck others before. Still, it was somewhat intriguing and I’m glad it didn’t turn out to be referrer spam…

Blogroll Call

2 Comments / Anime, Humor, Neal Stephenson, Weblogs / /

Everyone loves to be on a bunch of blogrolls, but just because you’re there doesn’t mean you’ll get a lot of visitors. This becomes more true as the blogroll gets larger. Blogrolls are subject to an inverse network effect; the more blogs in the blogroll, the less valuable the link. Kaedrin gets a small amount of traffic, so even though I have a short blogroll, I’m guessing most of those blogs don’t get a ton of visitors coming from here. So I just figured I’d throw some additional links their way:

  • Transit of Mercury, Photoblogged: Jay Manifold takes some nice pics of the planet Mercury, as well as an amusing comparison of Manifold Observatory and Powell Observatory.
  • Team of Rivals: Andrew Olmsted reviews a recent book that chronicles Abraham Lincoln’s rise to the presidency, as well as the coalition he formed and maintained to fight the civil war:

    Lincoln’s ability to hold together a coalition of abolitionists, conservative Republicans, and war Democrats during the American Civil War stands as a signal feat of political dexterity that seems yet more impressive in light of more recent American history. … the book really hits its stride once Lincoln is elected and he assembles his Cabinet, beginning with his three rivals for the nomination. The contrast is particularly stark with modern politics, where Cabinets are formed from the victor’s circle of political allies. Lincoln, on the other hand, selected men who not only wanted the job he held, but who viewed him poorly at best in some cases. It’s hard to imagine a modern politician selecting men who viewed him with the kind of contempt Edwin Stanton viewed Lincoln, let alone getting the kind of results Lincoln did. Lincoln’s ability to get results from such disparate men is an impressive primer in leadership.

    Interesting stuff, and I think I’ll pick up the book at some point, as this seems to be an impressive example of compromise and tradeoffs (subjects that interest me) in action.

  • Ars Technica 2006 holiday gift guide: Make shopping for the geek in your family a little easier with this guide (sheesh, that sounded like advertising copy *shudders*). Most of the hardware and gadget gifts are pretty good, though expensive. However, they also include lots of interesting books and smaller gifts as well. Ars always has interesting articles though. I’ve already mentioned the Ars System Guide on the blog recently, but they also have reviews of the Wii and PS3 that are worth reading.
  • Casino Royale: Subtitle: Die almost never � nearly forever! Heh. Alexander Doenau’s take on the latest Bond flick is roughly in line with my own feelings, though one of these days I’ll get around to talking more about it on the blog.

    Which may beg the question of some audiences: where is the fun when there�s nary an insane scheme to be seen, and no psychedelically decorated gyrocopters? (thank you, Roald Dahl). The answer lies partly in Bond himself. Without the scary misogyny that Ian Fleming endowed Bond with 50 years ago, Daniel Craig plays Bond as an excellent bastard. This is a Bond so confident in his own skills that he doesn�t give a care who sees him because he has a licence to kill. This is probably the only Craig film we�ll see in which Bond is able to cut as loose as he did in Uganda, because part of the story involves developing a marginally more sensible and responsible MI6 agent, but he takes the sorts of risks that make the movie fun without being stupidly unbelievable.

    I love the description of James Bond as an “excellent bastard.”

  • Steven Den Beste has an interesting rating system (another subject I’ll tackle on the blog at some point). He uses a 4 star scale, but also includes a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” graphic (for obvious reasons). This is interesting because it allows him to recognize a technical accomplishment without actually recommending the film (for instance, I would give Grave of the Fireflies **** with a thumbs down because it is masterfully produced, but so heartbreaking that I can’t actually recommend it). In any case, if you scroll down on the link above (no permalinks there), you’ll see that Steven has started rating individual anime episodes for a series called Kamichu. For episode 6, he rated it zero stars with six thumbs down. I wonder if he liked it?
  • A collection of Jonathan Swift’s journalistic texts: Ralf Goergens over at Chicago Boyz makes an Jonathan Swift-related annotation to Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle:

    Attentive readers of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle will remember Daniel Waterhouse reading a a number of astonishingly vile newspapers. Some of the most acrimonious articles were from Jonathan Swift, writing for Tory papers. Stephenson didn’t make that part up, the articles can be found here.

    I didn’t have time to do more than a bit of browsing, but some of the historical characters from the Baroque Cycle are mentioned, like Marlborough, Bolingbroke, Harley and of course Queen Anne. There also are extensive footnotes explaining the concrete circumstances under which the articles appeared.

  • Weblog Awards: Kevin Murphy notes that since he was inexplicably passed over for the Weblog Awards, he might as well add a bunch of categories and simply declare winners. Normally, this would seem like the actions of a snarky blogger, but since Kaedrin won a Koveted Kevy, I’ll say it was the result of long-standing multifaceted research project considering nearly 2 billion blogs. Also, Kevin apparently knows something I don’t: Kaedrin won the Best Blog With A Japanese Word As Its Title. Hmmm. It would be pretty funny if it actually was a Japanese word (anyone know what it means?)
  • The New Threats: John Robb continues his incisive commentary on global guerillas:

    As the debate over the value of the Iraq study group’s report rumbles on, it’s important to reflect on larger frame within which this debate is taking place. This frame, little discussed, encapsulates nature of the threat we face in Iraq and will be increasingly likely to face in the future. With Iraq, we can catch a glimpse of the new class of threat that will increasingly define our future (and given that even a glimpse is enough to stump the establishment should be a dire warning). This new class of threat is characterized by its bottoms up pattern of growth rather than the familiar competition between nation-states. It percolates upwards through catalyzed organic growth until it overwhelms our ability to respond to it.

    My general reaction to Robb’s theories is that he is usually too pessimistic and that there must be a better way to fight these global guerillas, but he always makes for interesting and worthwhile reading.

  • Depressing Anime: Fledgling Otaku’s thoughts on Grave of the Fireflies are a little harsher than my own, but I have to say that he’s justified in calling it anime for emotional masochists. Don’t miss the comment threads on that post, the follow up post, and the recent post (in which he mentions my review). Like me, the more he learns of the context, the more he says he can appreciate its value as a work of art.
  • Tax Law Is Complicated, But Is It Vague? : James Edward Maule reads about a Judge who “struck down a portion of the Patriot Act on the ground that despite amendments to the provisions they remain ‘too vague’ to be understood by ‘a person of average intelligence’ and thus are unconstitutional.” As a professor of tax law, he wonders if the Internal Revenue Code is actually vague, and asks some interesting questions:

    If everything that could not be understood by a “person of average intelligence” were to be declared unconstitutional and removed from the planet, what would remain? Is there something wrong when a patient cannot understand a medical procedure used by a surgeon? Is there something wrong when a driver does not understand the engineering formulae used in designing the bridge over which the vehicle is crossing? Is there something wrong when someone enjoying a fine meal cannot understand the recipe?

  • Take my advice, or I�ll spank you without pants.: Johno over at the The Ministry of Minor Perfidy takes note of the glorious Chingrish of actual English Subtitles used in films made in Hong Kong. Some of my favorites:

    9. Quiet or I’ll blow your throat up.

    11. I�ll fire aimlessly if you don�t come out!

    18. How can you use my intestines as a gift?

    18. How can you use my intestines as a gift?

    19. This will be of fine service for you, you bag of the scum. I am sure you will not mind that I remove your manhoods and leave them out on the dessert flour for your aunts to eat. [sic, of course]

    20. Yah-hah, evil spider woman! I have captured you by the short rabbits and can now deliver you violently to your gynecologist for a thorough examination.

    21. Greetings, large black person. Let us not forget to form a team up together and go into the country to inflict the pain of our karate feets on some ass of the giant lizard person.

    This sort of thing is funny, but bad translations are also responsible for ruining a lot of decent foreign movies.

  • Extremely Cool: Indeed it is:

    The Antikythera Mechanism is a 2000-year-old device, somewhat resembling a clock, found in 1902 by sponge divers in the waters off a Greek island. It has long been believed that it was a form of analog computer, used for astronomical calculations, but its precise operating mechanism was not well-understood.

    Interesting stuff.

  • Not the intended market, but still fun: Fritz Schranck has been sucked into What Not To Wear (one of those smug reality shows that berate people for having bad style, then attempt to help them out). While I’ve never seen this show, similar reality shows do have that sorta “I can’t look away from this trainwreck” quality that makes them entertaining.
  • DM of the Rings: In terms of link love, I’ve been woefully neglectful of Shamus’s brilliant DM of the Rings comic, which somehow manages to be both humorous and insightful (well, in terms of RPG gaming anyway). Using screenshots from the movies, it’s essentially what the Lord of the Rings would have been like if it were played as a D&D game.

Holy crap, that took a while. I just realized that I would have probably been better off if I’d just done one or two a day. That way I’d have had posts every day for at least a week! In any case, stay tuned for the weekly Animation Marathon review (This week, it’s Akira. Review should be up Tuesday or Wednesday).

Travelling Link Dump

Arts & Letters, Movies, Music, Neal Stephenson, Security & Intelligence / /

I’ll be on vacation this week, so Kaedrin compatriots Samael and DyRE will be posting in my stead, though they may not be able to post tomorrow. In any case, here are some links to chew on while I’m gone.

  • Bruce Schneier Facts: In the style of the infamous Chuck Norris Facts, some enterprising folks have come up with facts for security expert Bruce Schneier. “Bruce Schneier only smiles when he finds an unbreakable cryptosystem. Of course, Bruce Schneier never smiles.” and “There is an otherwise featureless big black computer in Ft. Meade that has a single dial with three settings: Off, Standby, and Schneier.” Heh, Cryptonerd humor.
  • Khaaan! [via the Ministry]
  • Neal Stephenson Q&A (.ram Real Video): I hate Real Player too, but it’s worth it to see the man in action. It’s from a few years ago, but it’s great stuff.
  • I Smell a Mash-Up: James Grimmelmann notes the irony of Weird Al Yankovic’s new song entitled Don’t Download This Song (available for free download, naturally) that parodies the RIAA’s anti-downloading efforts.
  • How to read: Nick Hornby tells us to read what we like:

    It’s set in stone, apparently: books must be hard work, otherwise they’re a waste of time. And so we grind our way through serious, and sometimes seriously dull, novels, or enormous biographies of political figures, and every time we do so, books come to seem a little more like a duty, and Pop Idol starts to look a little more attractive. Please, please, put it down.

    And please, please stop patronising those who are reading a book – The Da Vinci Code, maybe – because they are enjoying it.

    For a start, none of us knows what kind of an effort this represents for the individual reader. It could be his or her first full-length adult novel; it might be the book that finally reveals the purpose and joy of reading to someone who has hitherto been mystified by the attraction that books exert on others. And anyway, reading for enjoyment is what we should all be doing.

    …The regrettable thing about the culture war we still seem to be fighting is that it divides books into two camps, the trashy and the worthwhile. No one who is paid to talk about books for a living seems to be able to convey the message that this isn’t how it works, that ‘good’ books can provide every bit as much pleasure as ‘trashy’ ones.

That’s all from now. I hope everyone has a great week. I now leave you in the capable hands of the guest bloggers, Sam & DyRE….

The Big U and Journalists

3 Comments / Neal Stephenson / /

I finished reading The Big U (Neal Stephenson’s first novel) tonight. Stephenson himself describes this as “a juvenile work,” and now that I have finished it, I can see where he’s coming from. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed it, but the story becomes a bit unhinged towards the end. At the beginning of the book, it’s obviously a satire, but as the story progresses things begin to slow down a bit and Stephenson starts to take the satire over-the-top in an attempt to compensate. Each chapter in the book corresponds to a month of the school year, starting in September and ending in May. By the time you get to November/December, things slow down a bit, and in March things begin to get a bit more absurd… this leads to a sudden (absurd) explosion of events in April, followed by the conclusion in May. Again, I enjoyed it, but I can see how some people would be turned off by the sudden turn of events. Sure, it’s ridiculous, but if you can get past that, there are still a few gems along the same lines as the ones I wrote about a few weeks ago…

Spoilers ahoy, if you care…

So at the beginning of April, an all out war breaks out in the Plex (for those who don’t know what the plex is, see my last entry). By “all out war,” I mean a literal war, with guns and bombs and plenty of deaths. Various groups of students, administration officials, and the bizzarre Crotobaltislavonians (yet another of Stephenson’s fictional nationalities) have fought it out and carved up their own spheres of influence. Things have calmed down a bit, and the narrarator is making a trek towards the library to recover a fellow professor’s research notes (this is an absurd motive, but everything is so surreal at this point that I was willing to let it ride). To reach the library, they must cross several “stable academic blocs” including the journalism bloc. The journalists have negotiated several treaties with various other blocs in exchange for safe passage and weapons for their guards. In exchange for an interview and allowing a camera crew to follow them, our narrarator’s group is able to make it through the journalism zone. The narrarator has some questions:

“You’ve got a hell of a lot of firepower. You guys are the most powerful force in the Plex. How are you using it?”

The student shrugged. “What do you mean? We protect our crews and equipment. All the barbarians are afraid of us.”

“Right, obviously,” I said. “But I noticed recently that a lot of people around here are starving, being raped, murdered — you know, a lot of bum out stuff. Do those guards try to help out? You can spare a few.”

“Well, I don’t know,” he said uncomfortably. That’s kind of network-level policy. It goes against the agreement. We can go anywhere as long as we don’t interfere. If we interfere, no agreement.”

“But if you’ve already negotiated one agreement, can’t you do more? Get some doctors into the building maybe?”

“No way, man. No fucking way. We journalists have ethics.”

Heh. Again, this book was published in 1984. Was that considered over-the-top satire at the time? Seems rather tame by today’s standards.

Stephenson has a reputation for bad endings that just sort of happen without warning, but that doesn’t really happen here. To be sure, it’s not a great ending (like the rest of the book, it’s slightly absurd as it hinges off of one of the groups’ fanatical religious devotion to a giant neon sign), but it was better than expected. Overall, I’d say the book is worth reading for die-hard Stephenson fans and maybe geeky folks who don’t mind that he goes off the deep end about 200 pages in…

Megaversity

3 Comments / Neal Stephenson / /

In an effort to exhaust the novelty of my current favorite author, Neal Stephenson, I’ve been reading his first novel, The Big U (I think I’ve covered everything else but his pseudonymous work). Stephenson himself describes this as “a juvenile work,” but I’m greatly enjoying myself. Filled with geeks pursuing… geeky pursuits, I’m reminded of the latter day portions of Cryptonomicon (though when you compare those two, I can see why The Big U would be called juvenile). It’s quite entertaining so far, though there does seem to be a lack of traditional plot points and I’m not expecting a particularly revelatory ending. The book is probably best described by it’s setting (American Megaversity) and characters (geeks). Some choice quotes are below:

Most of the facilities of the Big U are contained within a group of buildings refered to as the Plex:

The Plex’s environmental control system was designed so that anyone could spend four years wearing only a jockstrap and a pair of welding goggles and yet never feel chilly or find the place too dimly lit.

Sounds like a fun place, and it seems that Stephenson’s humor was fully in place when he started his writing career. I’ve also noticed that he seems to have a fascination with how smart people find one another in the throngs of normal people. For instance, two of the characters get lost in the Plex’s labyrinthine stairway system and end up exiting at the back of the building:

Later I was to think it remarkable that Casimir and I should emerge from those fire doors at nearly the same moment, and meet. On reflection, I have changed my mind. The Big U was an unnatural environment, a work of the human mind, not of God or plate tectonics. If two strangers met in the rarely used stairways, it was not unreasonable that they should turn out to be similar, and become friends. I thought of it as an immense vending machine, cautiously crafted so that any denomination too ancient or foreign or irregular would rattle about randomly for a while, find its way into the stairway system, and inevitably be deposited in the reject tray on the barren back side. Meanwhile, brightly colored graduates with attractively packaged degrees were dispensed out front every June, swept up by traffic on the Parkway and carried away for leisurly consumption…

Much the same situation brought Daniel Waterhouse and Isaac Newton together in Quicksilver. Other similar scenarios populate his various other books as well.

The book is obviously a satire, but I still can’t help but find a grain of truth in some of the absurdly bureaucratic obstacles that pop up for various students.

“I’m an English major. I know this stuff. Why are you putting me in Freshman English?”

The General Curriculum Advisor consulted little codes printed by the computer, and looked them up in a huge computer-printed book. “Ah,” he said, “was one of your parents a foreign national?”

“My stepmother is from Wales.”

“That explains it. You see.” The official had swung around toward her and assumed a frank, open body-language posture. “Statistical analysis shows that children of one or more foreign nationals are often gifted with Special Challenges.”

Sarah’s spine arched back and she set her jaw. “You’re saying I can’t speak English because my stepmother was Welsh?”

“Special Challenges are likely in your case. You were mistakenly exempted from Freshmen English because of your high test scores. This exemption option has now been retroactively waived for your convenience.”

“I don’t want it waived. It’s not convenient.”

“To ensure maintenance of high academic standards, the waiver is avolitional.”

Nothing that bad has ever happened to me, but there was that time the university lost my enrollment (in which I had very carefully picked what classes and professors I wanted) and, for my convienience, enrolled me in the remaining open courses that fulfilled my needs (at this point, though, everyone else had already registered, so the only classes that were open were the ones no one wanted to take). That was a fun semester.

It turns out that Freshmen English is being taught by a lunatic The student from the above excerpt gets a bad grade and decides to speak with the professor because other barely literate students got a better grade than her:

He took a long draw on his pipe. “What is a grade? That is the question.” He chuckled, but apparently she didn’t get it. “Some teachers grade on curves. You have to be a math major to understand the grade! But forget those fake excuses. A grade is actually a form of poetry. It is a subjective reaction to a learner’s work, distilled and reduced down to its purest essence-not a sonnet, not a haiku, but a single letter. That’s remarkable, isn’t it?”

Oh, but he’s not done yet. He actually goes on to describe how the barely readible grammar of a competing paper is better than Sarah’s:

“You aren’t necessarily a better writer. You called some of them functional illiterates. Well those illiterates, as you called them, happen to have very expressive prose voices. Remember that in each person’s own dialect he or she is perfectly literate. So in the sense of having escaped orthodoxy to be truly creative, they are highly advanced wordsmiths, while you are still struggling to break free of grammatical rules systems. They express themselves to me and I react with little one-letter poems of my own – the essence of grading! Poetry! And being a poet I’m particularly well suited for it. Your idea of tearing down these little proto-artists because they aren’t just like you smacks of a kind of absolutism which is very disturbing in a temple of academic freedom.”

They sat there silent for a while.

“You really said that, didn’t you?” she finally asked.

“I did.”

I think he perfectly captured the futility of Sarah’s quest in this scene. It’s masterful, really. The book was published in 1984, so it seems that this sort of PC lit-crit babbled newspeak was just as common and annoying then as it is now. It’s kind of reassuring, in a dejected way. When I hear about crazy professors going on about this or that these days, it’s always tempting to assume that the sky is falling and that we’re all doomed. But it appears that this has been going on for quite some time now, and while I don’t like it and it may be harmful, it probably doesn’t mean the end of the world either. Anyway, I’m only halfway through the book, but I thought I’d share my impressions, because I was expecting a lot worse…

Unintended Customers

Neal Stephenson, Science & Technology / /

The Art of Rainmaking by Guy Kawasaki: An interesting article about salesmanship and what is referred to as “rainmaking.” Kawasaki lists out several ways to practice the art of rainmaking, but this first one caught my eye because it immediately reminded me of Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, and regular readers (all 5 of you) know I can’t resist a Stephenson reference.

“Let a hundred flowers blossom.” I stole this from Chairman Mao although I’m not sure how he implemented it. In the context of capitalism (Chairman Mao must be turning over in his grave), the dictum means that you sow seeds in many markets, see what takes root, and harvest what blooms. Many companies freak out when unintended customers buy their product. Many companies also freak out when intended customers buy their product but use it in unintended ways. Don’t be proud. Take the money.

This immediately reminded me of the data haven (a secure computer system that is protected by it’s lack of governmental oversight as well as technical means like encryption) in the “modern-day” segments of Cryptonomicon. Randy Waterhouse works for the company that’s attempting to sett up a data haven, and he finds that the most of his customers want to use the data haven to store money. Pretty straightforward, right? Well, most of the people who want to store their money their are criminals of the worst sort. I guess in that particular case, there is reason to freak out at these unexpected customers, but I thought the reference was interesting because while there may be lots of legitimate uses for a data haven, the criminal element would almost certainly be attracted to a way to store their drug money (or whatever) with impugnity (that and probably spam, pornography, and gambling). Like all advances in technology, the data haven could be used for good or for ill…