* Journal tagline changed as obvious consequence of my last locked post.

* The fact that cats have developed a language dedicated exclusively to telling us things, and haven't bothered to achieve even a minimum understanding of our speech, tells us, I think, all we need to know about how they conceptualize this domestication thing.

* Batman #689 is love. Mind you, I'm still waiting for Bruce to show up in a few months or a year, but Dick is doing a great job. In a couple of panels Dick (cowl-less) was drawn a bit like early!Batman Bruce, which I think was a nice touch.

* If you like CS, this interview about the Google File System is quite interesting. If you like (mathematical) physics, this article is very cool; bits about graphene, but also quite enlightening about QM in general.

* A historical moment: I archived my old handmade RSS reader (which I have been working on for, gods of the depth, more than ten years), and switched to Google Reader. RSS reading is no longer a competitive advantage anyway. Time to move on.

* Secret Warriors #6: Nick Fury has always struck me as one of the unappreciated masterminds of the Marvel U... right until it turned out Hydra has been messing with him for decades. I hope what's going on now leads to a satisfying payback.

* rivkat linked to a Youtube video of the table reading of the 13th Middleman episode!

* Got Apocalypse Hotel accepted for the January 2010 issue of Antipodean SF.

* Sent away the latest issue of Frontier Economy. Nothing of much note there.

Another unintended consequence:

The story says the fruit taught them their nakedness and instructed them in shame, and their father in anger sent them away.

The story is wrong.

The only knowledge the tree had kept was of death and time. As they realized there had never been a garden, their father wept for them.

Also, if I ever become a cosmic villain it'll probably go somewhat like this:

Since we cannot stop time
Let us end it.

Frost/Nixon: Better than I thought it would be. (A note made mandatory by the movie's title and me being thirteen years old: you could write Frost/Nixon slash based on this movie. Yes, you could. I might even have a few ideas about that.)

Assuming that current legal symmetries render past historical asymmetries irrelevant: Wrong. Say what you want, but know that it means more than what you mean (which should be obvious to a writer!).

Outing fans: Wrong. Primum non nocere, people. It's not a difficult concept.

Order of the Stick: Really good.

Pi Day, 2009: Probably going to be really interesting!

Random note of Greater Depression daily trivia: Pro: Bought today a really comfy used office chair for about 20% of retail value. Con: It used to be my office chair, until we closed down the office and sold off the meager physical assets of my previous start-up.

Even more random the-tv-is-on-as-background question: (Some) actors have the ability to look intelligent and awesome. Why don't they use it during interviews? I realize part of it comes from the lack of scripting, photography, direction, etc, but I think they could do better.

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.
-- Mark Twain

I've been rereading "Shadows over Baker Street," the Holmes meets Lovecraft (as opposed to Doyle meets Lovecraft, which would have been a different thing) sci-fi anthology. It's, as always, great fun, although by far the best one of the lot is Gaiman's A Study in Emerald, which is almost as good as Stross' A Colder War (Tom Clancy meets Lovecraft?).

On that vein, I'd like to read

Asimov meets Lovecraft: Scientists build robots following ancient, unholy mathematics that imply terrible laws of cosmic significance.

Umberto Eco meets Lovecraft: A little-known Italian editorial plans to publish a modern edition of the Necronomicon. Wackyness ensues.

Stephen King meets Lovecraft: The Great Ones have taken over Earth. A ragtag band of survivors travel through North America, but the dreams of the kids traveling with them (oddly echoing those the protagonist had in his childhood? or were they dreams?) could point at even darker truths than the wasteland the planet has become.

Vernor Vinge meets Lovecraft: Both the Great Ones and the Elder Gods are non-human post-Singularity species. The Elder Gods are ok with humans making the jump, but the Great Ones have other plans...

Melville meets Lovecraft: To see Cthulhu is to go mad, and Captain Ahab was no exception. But now he is mad enough that he actually plans to kill it, and he doesn't care about damning his soul (and others') along the way.

Borges meets Lovecraft: The Necronomicon wasn't real until people started reading about it. Now it has always been real, and the past is changing accordingly.

Saki meets Lovecraft: The world of A Study in Emerald, but in a dark humor mood.

Carl Sagan meets Lovecraft: "There is no such thing as the Great On*ARGGHGHGHGHG*..."

Chesterton meets Lovecraft: Father Brown explains to a Great One that it doesn't exist and, more importantly, it shouldn't. Father Brown ends mad, solving crimes in a futile attempt not to think about The Great Crime Beyond The Stars (ok, so Chesterton would never write this one; I would).

Peter Watts meets Lovecraft: Building a FTL Solar System-spanning computer network using genetically engineered neural tissue from Great Ones remains as a substratum? Both mankind's best and worst idea ever.

Crowley (or Dee) meets Lovecraft: Talking with the Elder Gods-HOWTO.

Philip K. Dick meets Lovecraft: The Great Ones are real - you are the fiction. The Necronomicon (actually the world's oldest drug, now being sold again in street corners by unsuspecting pushers that believe it an hallucinogen) lets you see that. "Madness" is a sane adaptation to the world.

Too bad I have to go now, doing this is addictive...

(In not unrelated news, I think Doktor Sleepless #8 partly redeems the title; at least now it makes some amount of sense.)

As always, I had lots of fun with ringspells and not_sally. Our meetings are like three-person multifandom cons *g*.

Other Things Of Nice during the last week: Immortal Iron Fist, Robin, and the characters in The Middleman. Even when fighting a stupid MOTW, they manage to be interesting along the way.

* I want to play this game, very much.

* The amount of time you can spend going through old scans_daily posts is effectively unbounded. This poses a problem.

* QOTD, from Brad DeLong:

In the spring of 1994, I wiped the game Civilization off my office computer. I wiped it off my home PC. I wiped it off my laptop. I threw away the original disks on which it had come. It was clear to me that I had a choice: I could either have Civilization on my computers, or I could be a deputy assistant secretary of the US Treasury. I could not do both.

I can relate.

* Kung Fu Panda was formulaic, but funny.

* I don't mind Jack Black that much as a voice actor. (And I think he rocked in King Kong).

* There should be Tai Lung fic. Poor guy.

( Spoilers for the latest Batman issueCollapse )

To not_sally, ringspells, and ringspells' homies and family: Had a greater time yesterday than my rusty social skills could let on. *waves 'hey' to everybody*

To Sam and Dean: You are pretty and dorky. I approve.

To Roger Smith, Paradigm City's top negotiator: You are also dorky and pretty, and drive both a batmobile and a giant robot. I think Sam and Dean should hire you to negotiate with demons.

After the financial success of 300, what are the odds that WB will make The Dark Knight Returns? And you do realize that from that to The Dark Knight Strikes Again there's but a tiny, horrible distance, right?

* * *

Just to clear my mind from that idea, some vague and ill-formed thoughts about personhood in the UFP.

Warning: I'm not very knowledgeable about Federation laws and such - I'm just riffing on my superficial memories of the series, so this could be all wrong.

( So, what does it take for somebody to be considered a person in the Federation?Collapse )