This list can now be viewed here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:54 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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"The slide rule, talisman until recently of the honorable profession of engineer, is in the electronic age as obsolete as any Bronze Age relic. An archaeologist of the future, finding a slide rule and wondering about it, might note that it is handy for drawing straight lines or for buttering bread. But to assume that either of these was its original purpose violates the economy assumption. A mere straight-edge or butter knife would not have needed a sliding member in the middle of the rule. Moreover, if you examine the spacing of the graticules you find precise logarithmic scales, too meticulously disposed to be accidental. It would dawn on the archaeologist that, in an age before electronic calculators, this pattern would constitute an ingenious trick for rapid multiplication and division. The mystery of the slide rule would be solved by reverse engineering, employing the assumption of intelligent and economical design." [p. 103]

(Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:17 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Chubby, brunette Eunice Kinnison sat in a rocker, reading the Sunday papers and listening to the radio. Her husband Ralph lay sprawled upon the davenport, smoking a cigarette and reading the current issue of EXTRAORDINARY STORIES against an unheard background of music. Mentally, he was far from Tellus, flitting in his super-dreadnaught through parsec after parsec of vacuous space.

E.E. "Doc" Smith, Triplanetary, Chapter 5: "1941"

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:11 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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"Look at the stars! Look, look up at the skies!
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!"

(Gerard Manley Hopkins)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:09 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I'm sure that this is one of those urban legend style quotes, but it came to mind. more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:05 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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(From Edge, via Positive Liberty).

Posted by: JohnL at 09:59 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Anybody who has owned a dog will realize the truth of this tale: Dogs know a lot more than they let on.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 05:57 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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List can now be found here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:48 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Just one of those FYI things. I'll be posting my old book reviews and book reading lists (1996 onwards) as well as doing reviews for my 2007 books (some stuff already up). So there will be a fairly rapid clip of posting until I get the archived materials up, then a more stately, regular process of blather. Just in case anybody is panicking over the volume...1996 list, with some comments, should be up later tonight.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 06:45 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Robbo has an interesting bit up today about the Bach Toccata and Fugue in d minor (not the far-superior Dorian one, mind you).

First, I have to disagree with Rob's reflexive dismissal of the Bach:Led Zeppelin analogy that Camille Paglia makes in the article he's initially discussing. I know it's a matter of taste, but I at least have experienced emotions inspired by the "heaviness" ("darkness"?) of the organ literature that are very similar to emotions prompted by hard rock and electric blues in the Zeppelin tradition. And I know plenty of rock musicians and metal fans who also like heavy baroque music.

Second, I share Rob's dislike for the Stokowski version of the T&F in d.

Finally, unlike Rob, for the reasons laid out in another article he cites (and which I cited about a year ago), I still believe that the T&F in d was not authored by Bach, at least not as an organ work. I had the privilege of attending a master class with Peter Williams back in 1999, and he delivered quite a persuasive argument that it was not a Bach organ work. Even when compared with other "youthful" Bach organ works, it just sticks out like a sore thumb. Williams then presented his compelling case that the T&F in d was most likely a transcription from a piece for solo violin.

For further reading, this article expands on Williams' core idea, but explains how the T&F can be "suspiciously" easy to re-transcribe for play on a 5-string cello.

Posted by: JohnL at 11:27 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Via BoingBoing, a link to a collection of videos from last year's Singularity Summit. See Ray Kurzweil, Eric Drexler, Cory Doctorow and Mr. GEB himself!

And they say that I am a strange loop!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:56 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Because there is nothing like the warm glow of CRT's, oscilloscopes with those wonderous green screens, analog tuning dials and more...may I present The Cathode Ray Tube Site!

I am still annoyed with my grandmother for dumping (dumping!) all of my grandfather's "ham radio" and "hi-fi" equipment without asking me if I was interested in it. I loved all that stuff as a kid and would have lept at the chance of even buying it from her and storing it until I could use it. Dang it, she even threw out his wooden sliderule!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:20 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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In the Department of Poorly Written Headlines Department, Methane May Allow Rockets to Go Beyond the Fringes of Space (!). Let's hope they don't run into...REEEEAAAVVVVEERRRRSSSS!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:47 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Speaking of Dyna-Soar, via Gravity Lens I recently discovered Deepcold, an interesting site featuring the Soviet and American cold-war-era space projects. Check out the Dyna-Soar renderings here.

Posted by: JohnL at 12:42 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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So far, therefore, as the public profession of magic has been one of the roads by which men have passed to supreme power, it has contributed to emancipate mankind from the thraldom of tradition and to elevate them into a larger, freer life, with a broader outlook on the world. This is no small service rendered to humanity. And when we remember further that in another direction magic has paved the way for science, we are forced to admit that if the black arts has done much evil, it has also been the source of much good; that if it is the child of error, it has been the mother of freedom and truth.

Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941). The Golden Bough. 1922.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:56 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The suns tumbled up into the mauve autumn sky like rollicking kittens.

(Jack Vance, The Anome, 1973)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:55 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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"Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?...As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells...and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower...both strange and familiar."

(Inkspell, by Cornelia Funke)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:53 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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"Sir, have you considered the converse of engineering? We fall into it so naturally, but in the end every project expires, and one way or another every team is dismantled, and that's something we're not wired to deal with. It saddens, even traumatizes us. That's where geniuses are needed, to engineer the conclusions of things."

(The Collapsium, Wil McCarthy)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:51 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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My boss likes to say about lawyers: "Ninety-nine percent of us give one percent of us a bad name..."

This picture proves supports that point:

(Original story here, via Agent Bedhead)

Posted by: JohnL at 10:10 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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John Scalzi interviews the ex-planet Pluto.

IÂ’m not going to sue. Who am I going to sue? You think the International Astronomical Union has any money to speak of? ThereÂ’s a reason the most popular event at an astronomerÂ’s conference is the free buffet.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:37 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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