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I'm back from spending the past week+ in Boston. Fun time! THe main goal was visiting Fanw, who I hadn't seen in *four years*. What was I thinking? Fortunately, while I've had various other friendships drift apart, I felt as comfortable with her as ever, after all this time. I'm grateful.
I didn't explore Boston nearly as much as I might have -- museums, seafood? MIT? natch -- but I don't feel bad about it. I've always gotten more out of travelling to people than to places, and I ran into a lot of sleep deprivation... some brought with me, some incurred by staying up a bit too late, but also incurred from housemates getting up ungodly early, downstairs neighbors starting a dance party at 1am, 50 mph winds making the house creak scarily, and so on. Basically I'm a noise-sensitive sleeper, and it was a noisy house, so past the weekend I semi-crashed until the evenings.
Which were fun too, as I roped in more people. The evening that I got in, she took me to a Caltech reception and talk from the current president. That was nicer than expected -- seems to appreciate the student culture. He also said a band or choir will be performing at Carnegie Hall, and amused me by saying "they probably won't be the best to ever perform there, but (stuff I forget)", which amused me, as it seemed a sign of engineer's honesty, saying things normal people shouldn't even patently true. But anyway, besides seeing Riiiiich! briefly, I met and chatted with an alum from around my time, and we got to talking about dancing, she said she had no coordination, I said it was probably just a matter of practice, and the next day I thought to try inviting her to a Monday swing dance that I'd noticed a post-it for on Fanw's fridge. We met first for Vietnamese -- my first pho -- and then went dancing, my tutoring bracketing a rather well-done lindy hop lesson from the organizers, where I thought she did decently well for a newbie with no confidence or experience, and she said it was more fun than she expected. Then the next night I lured her out again, for dinner with Mad (who has webcomic) and husband.
Wednesday I mostly did hide indoor, after a walk, but that moves us to linkage:
subvocalization tech approaches; moving the Earth is proposed via comet fly-bys, which is actually a rather slow and conservative method (format: ZIPfile of GIFs); Charlie "githyanki" Stross writes up the US Presidential candidates as D&D monsters; British Columbia starts a decently well done carbon tax (via![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
a_steep_hill); and someone fanwanks Palpatine's plots into making sense. Grey goo may not be such a big threat, if you run some numbers; an oil company in Chad is experimenting with being socially responsible; someone writes up Geoffrey Landis's Venusian aerostats for Transhuman Space.
Also, I read Steven Brust's Firefly fanfic novel, My Own Kind of Freedom, which I liked a lot. Slid into the mood of it in just a few pages, and had to remind myself later that it wasn't canon -- characters and lines felt very on the mark.
Fanw took me by a game store nearby, which compared to Bloomington's Game Preserve felt a lot more 'standard' -- dingy looks (something about all those bagged miniatures on the wall and lack of decor) and very male -- she was the only girl there, and it was pretty crowded at 10pm Saturday, with a couple of basement rooms filled with boys gaming. OTOH, it also had more *stuff* than Game Preserve -- well, possibly fewer board games, but a lot more RPG books, and more than just d20, Warhammer, and a smattering of White Wolf; more like full White Wolf and a lot of GURPS. And a box full of out of print on-sale books whose volume nearly matched everything the Game Preserve sells. I got Technocracy Assembled 2 and GURPS Space.
And today's special: Justus Möser, conservative concern troll from 1772. "On the Diminished Disgrace of Whores and Their Children in Our Day.
I didn't explore Boston nearly as much as I might have -- museums, seafood? MIT? natch -- but I don't feel bad about it. I've always gotten more out of travelling to people than to places, and I ran into a lot of sleep deprivation... some brought with me, some incurred by staying up a bit too late, but also incurred from housemates getting up ungodly early, downstairs neighbors starting a dance party at 1am, 50 mph winds making the house creak scarily, and so on. Basically I'm a noise-sensitive sleeper, and it was a noisy house, so past the weekend I semi-crashed until the evenings.
Which were fun too, as I roped in more people. The evening that I got in, she took me to a Caltech reception and talk from the current president. That was nicer than expected -- seems to appreciate the student culture. He also said a band or choir will be performing at Carnegie Hall, and amused me by saying "they probably won't be the best to ever perform there, but (stuff I forget)", which amused me, as it seemed a sign of engineer's honesty, saying things normal people shouldn't even patently true. But anyway, besides seeing Riiiiich! briefly, I met and chatted with an alum from around my time, and we got to talking about dancing, she said she had no coordination, I said it was probably just a matter of practice, and the next day I thought to try inviting her to a Monday swing dance that I'd noticed a post-it for on Fanw's fridge. We met first for Vietnamese -- my first pho -- and then went dancing, my tutoring bracketing a rather well-done lindy hop lesson from the organizers, where I thought she did decently well for a newbie with no confidence or experience, and she said it was more fun than she expected. Then the next night I lured her out again, for dinner with Mad (who has webcomic) and husband.
Wednesday I mostly did hide indoor, after a walk, but that moves us to linkage:
subvocalization tech approaches; moving the Earth is proposed via comet fly-bys, which is actually a rather slow and conservative method (format: ZIPfile of GIFs); Charlie "githyanki" Stross writes up the US Presidential candidates as D&D monsters; British Columbia starts a decently well done carbon tax (via
a_steep_hill); and someone fanwanks Palpatine's plots into making sense. Grey goo may not be such a big threat, if you run some numbers; an oil company in Chad is experimenting with being socially responsible; someone writes up Geoffrey Landis's Venusian aerostats for Transhuman Space.Also, I read Steven Brust's Firefly fanfic novel, My Own Kind of Freedom, which I liked a lot. Slid into the mood of it in just a few pages, and had to remind myself later that it wasn't canon -- characters and lines felt very on the mark.
Fanw took me by a game store nearby, which compared to Bloomington's Game Preserve felt a lot more 'standard' -- dingy looks (something about all those bagged miniatures on the wall and lack of decor) and very male -- she was the only girl there, and it was pretty crowded at 10pm Saturday, with a couple of basement rooms filled with boys gaming. OTOH, it also had more *stuff* than Game Preserve -- well, possibly fewer board games, but a lot more RPG books, and more than just d20, Warhammer, and a smattering of White Wolf; more like full White Wolf and a lot of GURPS. And a box full of out of print on-sale books whose volume nearly matched everything the Game Preserve sells. I got Technocracy Assembled 2 and GURPS Space.
And today's special: Justus Möser, conservative concern troll from 1772. "On the Diminished Disgrace of Whores and Their Children in Our Day.
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no subject
Date: 2008-03-15 20:54 (UTC)From:I'm not particularly worried about grey goo, both because of the waste heat problem (and other energy-related problems), and also because I have great faith in the ability of bacteria to evolve rapidly enough to make use of what could potentially be a marvelous new food source. I suspect that nanomachines that can survive in an unregulated environment for more than a few hours are going to be tough to create, because it will be too easy for them to become bacteria food.
The article on Africa is interesting, but I'm quite dubious about any results, both because of the history of vile actions by US oil companies in the third world, and because of the World Banks' utterly disgraceful record, especially in Africa. I hope the inhabitants of Chad end up better off than they are now (which is admittedly not difficult), but I honestly trust some of the recent Chinese investment efforts in Africa more than I do anything done by the World Bank or US oil companies, and I don't trust the Chinese very much.
The post about Venusian aerostats is THS is fascinating and cool. I also found the discussion absolutely fascinating. Phil Masters' (largely unfounded) critique of the idea IMO very much highlighted just how problematic the extent of off-Earth colonization is in THS. I like the setting, but I consider the tech to be slightly too conservative (although quite understandably so) and the degree of space colonization to be exceptionally silly. From my PoV, Venusian aerostats make perfect sense in that setting, because they are no sillier than a massive colonization of Mars or the asteroid belt.
In any case, the Justus Moser link is fascinating.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-15 21:10 (UTC)From:goo: depends what they're made up of. Little particles of pure carbon strike me as ripe for ignition, never mind bacteria. But something made of silicon or aluminum oxides (quartz, corundum) would be at the bottom of most chemical potential energy wells, and not a food source for anything. Of course, those would by nature be more interested in our dirt and infrastructure than in our flesh, but designed ones could do damage en passant.
THS space colonies: I don't know, I don't have a good sense of the historical path. The authors wrote when He3 lunar mining seemed like a good idea, so they got that, and later He3 extraction from Saturn. Possibly plausible. China and US are doing a prestige race on Mars. The Duncanites in the Belt basically stole Chinese equipment from Mars. I think the setting has self-reproducing industry in the form of robofacs (big and expensive but way smaller than a 2008 economy), and of course AI, and much of the spacers are about ideology and independence, not economics (beyond being able to survive at all.) Actual numbers are in the millions by 2100; Earth has no elevator or even space fountain yet, but laser launchers seem to fulfill a similar niche in getting off the planet. And to balance things out on "why don't they live in X?", Earth *has* some underseas colonies as well.
And seems to me profitability discussions often overlook something: there's profit to funders back home, but there's profit to the actual colonists, which needn't come from the same sources, and increasing tech for independence (robofacs to make stuff, limited AIs for labor) the colonists can wander off more away from funding... so it's all less obviously silly to me.
Oh,and for pompe: the catgirls seem to be constructed, biological robots, not genetically engineered citizens; not the same as people giving their children cat ears.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-15 22:29 (UTC)From:Good points aside, to me it is a slightly updated justification, tech-wise, of a solar system SF I think belongs solidly in the past, drenched in ever-present nanomemetic babble and technogadgetry (I'll not even mention the time scale for Martian terraforming). I'll take Blue Planet any day over THS.
Plus, seriously, they illustrate the future with fifty year old Draken aircraft. I couldn't stop laughing when I saw that. Hilarious.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-16 23:17 (UTC)From:i did a mass delete of voicemail because i had an unacceptable amount of messages i just allowed to pile up. I WILL CALL YOU. THIS WEEK. swear.