Jack let her pay off until the flurry was over, and then, as he began to bring her back, his hands strong on the spokes,so he came into direct contact with the living essence of the sloop: the vibration beneath his palm, something between a sound and a flow, came straight up from her rudder, and it joined with the innumerable rhythms, the creak and humming of her hull and rigging. The keen clear wind swept in on his left cheek, and as he bore on the helm so the Sophie answered, quicker and more nervous than he had expected. Closer and closer to the wind. The were all staring up and forward: at last, in spite of the fiddle-tight bowline, the foretopgallantsail shivered, and Jack eased off.

(Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:08 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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"Was bitten on the cheek by a spider. Do not appear to be able to climb walls or have any kind of extrasensory abilities yet. So far I've just got a spider bite on my cheek. Seems deeply unfair, really."

(Neil Gaiman)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:05 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Lobachevsky alone has looked on Beauty bare.
She curves in here, she curves in here.
She curves out there.

Her parallel clefts come together to tease
In un-callipygianous-wise;
With fewer than one hundred eighty degrees
Her glorious triangle lies.

Her double-trumpet symmetry Riemann did not court-
His tastes to simpler-curvedness, the buxom Teuton sort!
An ellipse is fine for as far as it goes,
But modesty, away!
If I'm going to see Beauty without her clothes
Give me hyperbolas any old day.

The world is curves, I've heard it said,
And straightway in it nothing lies.
This then my wish, before I'm dead:
To look through Lobachevsky's eyes.

(Roger Zelazny, Doorways in the Sand)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 11:08 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The New York Times has given up on its premium service and set vast amounts of information free. A vast number of articles are now available in the archives; no longer will you have to scrabble to find an article to link to because it is being locked behind a wall. What will you find? Here's one example, a review by Samuel R. Delany from 1968!

More ads, but they finally realized they were being left in the dust (no matter how they "officially" dress it up).

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:29 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Stephen had been put to sleep in his usual room, far from children and noise, away in that corner of the house which looked down to the orchard and the bowling-green, and in spite of his long absence it was so familiar to him that when he woke about three he made his way to the window almost as quickly as if dawn had already broken, opened it and walked out on to the balcony. The moon had set: there was barely a star to be seen. The still air was delightfully fresh with falling dew, and a late nightingale, in indifferent voice, was uttering a routine jug-jug far down in Jack's plantations; closer at hand, and more agreeable by far, nightjars churred in the orchard, two of them, or perhaps three, the sound rising and falling, intertwining so that the source could not be made out for sure. There were few birds he preferred to nightjars, but it was not that they had brought him out of bed: he stood leaning on the balcony rail and presently Jack Aubrey, in a summer-house by the bowling-green, began again, playing very gently in the darkness, improvising wholly for himself, dreaming away on his violin with a mastery that Stephen had never heard equalled, though they had played together for years and years. more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:12 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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When he came back he found Jack arranging the score of their next duet on their music stands. Like many other heavy men Jack could be as sensitive as a cat on occasion: he knew that he had touched on some painful area—that in any case Stephen hated questions—and he was particularly attentive in laying out the sheets, pouring Stephen another glass of wine, and when they began, in so playing that his violin helped the 'cello, yielding to it in those minute ways perceptible to those who are deep in their music if to few others.

(Patrick O'Brian, The Wine-Dark Sea)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:06 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The review can now be found here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:34 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Omnibus review can now be found here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 12:55 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Here's what I've read since my last report:

The Ghost Brigades, John Scalzi I love Scalzi's Colonial Union universe. I hope he is able to find a way to keep it interesting for himself, so that he will write more stories in this setting.

1776, David McCullough I don't know why I put this one off for so long. It was actually a pretty easy and informative read once I started.

Magician, Raymond E. Feist. I read this book many years ago and enjoyed it again as I was previewing it for my 13-year-old. I'm not much for swords-and-sorcery (I prefer hard SF), but this novel is set in a nicely-planned universe reflecting careful world-building and plotting. I may actually check out a few of the other stories set in this universe.

The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, Christopher Hitchens. A quick read, inspired by the recent Time Magazine article about Mother Teresa's crises of faith.

In progress:

Making up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World, Chris Frith. This is a good one so far, but needed some more careful editing (I've noticed several sloppy typos that aren't the kind to be caught by spell-check; they would require a human copyeditor).

Consciousness Explained, Daniel C. Dennett.

Amateur Telescope Making Book One, Albert G. Ingalls (editor)

On Deck:

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens. My Sunday School class may be discussing this one in the near future, so I'll be getting a head start.

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R. Hofstadter. Time to re-read this.

Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--and How it Changed the World, Carl Zimmer. I love Zimmer's science writing (check out his blog here). This is of a kind with all the other cognitive science reading I've been devouring this year. If I could find another way to pay for my 3 kids' college today, I would quit being a lawyer and go back to school for graduate work in CogSci. It's one of the most fertile areas of interdisciplinary study these days, and I have a very personal interest in learning more about how the brain works.

About eight months' worth of Analog magazine.

I am reading more than writing, still, and hope someday to condense some of my reading down into worthy blog posts. In the meantime, please continue to enjoy Planet Stories' excellent contributions around here.

Posted by: JohnL at 09:39 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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