Quotes from DARKNESS AND LIGHT by Olaf Stapledon.
This science fiction book was written in 1942. In his prologue, Stapledon is careful to announce that he is not writing prophecy, merely a fable of one possible future or, in this case, two. That was a wise caveat to add.
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A tree-living fungus that manufactures diesel fuel has been discovered in South America.
Experts believe the organism, Gliocladium roseum, could potentially be a completely new source of green energy.
The fungus, which lives inside the Ulmo tree in the Patagonian rainforest, naturally produces hydrocarbon fuel similar to the diesel usedin cars and trucks.
Myself, I like the fact that is was discovered in Patagonia, which is not only the land of the giants where Setebos is worshiped, but also the home of the weary second civilization of First Men once the Sino-American World-State returns to the stone ages due to aeroplane-induced racial degradation.
isaac_wilcott made a comment in my comments box I think bears repeating:
Love this song. As part of the joys of parenting, when I was playing this for my ten, eight and five year olds, I had to explain what was a flat, a mug, platinum fol-de-rol, a jug, not to mention Vitalis and Barbasol. I also had to explain gambling to them. Showtunes are quite an education.
My question is, the dame who sashays across the screen at around 2.17 in this clip, glittering and glamorous — am I the only guy who envies that Joe carrying her packages and lighting her smokes? I think she is drop-dead gorgeous, and well worth walking behind. Which sort of cuts against the whole point of the song, if you see my point. Especially if you get to tickle her pink on Saturday night.
Is glamor still in fashion? I see any number of actresses or models who are attractive, or sensual, but almost none who have that air of glamor that was once the sine qua non of the stage and screen.
This song delights my old-fashioned curmudgeonly heart, of course, since it is on the same theme as Dante and Beatrice: an ode to the redemptive power of feminine love to get a jerk to get a job.
Do women still provoke their menfolk to make something of themselves out there in the great unwashed postmodern wilderness of America? Or is that notion been dismissed as non-progressive?
Here I reprint without comment the whole text of an article by Daily Telegraph’s Christopher Booker
A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore’s chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.
This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to
So what explained the anomaly? GISS’s computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of
The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs – run by the
A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with.
This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen’s institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.
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To any of my readers in New York, I will be giving a short lecture on Null-A and Science Fiction, and speaking about my new book NULL-A CONTINUUM at the Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture and Creating the Future Symposium to be held this weekend.
It is free and open to the public, with the exception of the dinner preceding the AKML, which is $90. The information is available on the
Institute of General Semantics website at
http://www.generalsemantics.org/index.php/discov/alfred/memoir.html
Sunday, Nov. 16
8:30 AM Breakfast and Registration
9-10:15 Program: Media Futures
Moderator: Brian Cogan, Molloy College
Thom Gencarelli, Manhattan College, "The End of Intellectual Property"
Robert Blechman, St. George’s University, "Things Come in Fours"
Jessica K. Crowell, Fordham University, "The Umbilical Cord: Corrections,
Connections and the Role of Media in America’s Prisons"
10:30-12 Program: Science Fiction: Sequels and Adaptations
Moderator, Meir Ribalow, Fordham University
John C. Wright, Tor Books, "Null-A Continuum "
Marleen Barr, Fordham University, "Science Fiction Tells Us Why the Obama
Family is a Sequel to The Cosby Show"
Paul Levinson, Fordham University, "From the Page to the Screen"
First photographs of exosolar planets.
The firs three are in the system is HR 8799.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/081113-hubble-exoplanet.html
Astronomers have taken what they say are the first-ever direct images of planets outside of our solar system, including a visible-light snapshot of a single-planet system and an infrared picture of a multiple-planet system.
Earth-like worlds might also exist in the three-planet system, but if so they are too dim to photograph. The other newfound planet orbits a star called Fomalhaut, which is visible without the aid of a telescope. It is the 18th brightest star in the sky.
The massive worlds, each much heftier than Jupiter (at least for the three-planet system), could change how astronomers define the term "planet," one planet-hunter said.
Change how astronomers define the term planet, eh? Well, I for one have had enough of that! Now, before the scientific community gets a chance to pull a Pluto and say that they are not planets, because they don’t sweep out an atmospheric orbit or somesuch, I feel that we, the leaders of the New Space Princess speculative fiction movement, should intrude ourselves into the spotlight of world scientific affairs. Planets should be defined by science fiction writers, not by scientists!
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see http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,4504
I feel a rant a-coming on.
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ibookworm wonders
All I can report is that when I was an atheist, I believed in concepts, objective, abstract, universal, and so on. I called a concept objective if it did not depend on the observer for its properties. I called it abstract if it was an abstraction from particulars, and universal if it was independent rather than dependent on particulars.
As to where concepts come from, or why twice two is equal to four, was indeed a question I could not answer in my atheist days, since, being concepts, I did not think they "came from" anywhere.
To say "God made it so" is the same as saying "the unknown and unknowable made it so" is the same as saying "I don’t know what makes it so."
But I did not then contemplate how a concept can be ‘made so.’ I thought concepts were eternal, not part of the world of being and becoming. I did not think the legislature in Kansas could make pi equal to three, nor did I think Jove by his Olympian decree could make or change the value of pi. And the Christian God was just an inflated version of Jove.
As far as I know, relatively few people of any camp are true "metaphysical naturalists." (Or what Ayn Rand would call "Mystics of the Muscle") .
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Ads on buses have a girl dressed like Santa Claus asking riders the Question of Lucretius.
see http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,450445,00.html
In lifting lyrics from "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," the Washington-based group is wading into what has become a perennial debate over commercialism, religion in the public square and the meaning of Christmas.
"We are trying to reach our audience, and sometimes in order to reach an audience, everybody has to hear you," said Fred Edwords, spokesman for the humanist group. "Our reason for doing it during the holidays is there are an awful lot of agnostics, atheists and other types of non-theists who feel a little alone during the holidays because of its association with traditional religion."
To that end, the ads and posters will include a link to a Web site that will seek to connect and organize like-minded thinkers in the D.C. area, Edwords said.
Edwords said the purpose isn’t to argue that God doesn’t exist or change minds about a deity, although "we are trying to plant a seed of rational thought and critical thinking and questioning in people’s minds."
Someone just wrote as asked if I had de-friended him because I were mad at him.
In case someone out there is thinking the same thing, and did not write, let me explain.
I was doing routine maintenance on my friends page, trying to update my friends list (which I had not done in two or three years). I added some people from my friends list, but the livejournal application would not let me save my changes. So I went back in and de-friended some people at random, so see if I could get the list small enough to work. I was thinking I would add friends in segments. So far, the livejournal application has outsmarted me, and any corrections will be made slowly.
So, if I friended then de-friended or re-friended or un-re-de-friended you, nothing personal. Just a computer glitch: what we in the business call ‘Operator Error.’
An article worth reading on Veteran’s Day by the illustrious Andrew Klavan: My visit to Afghanistan, and the War on Terror movie that Hollywood would never make. http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_4_afghanistan.html
Remember on this day to thank those who serve. A visit to a VA hospital might be a kind gesture. Read the remainder of this entry »
Behold the trailer for "Up"!
and a shorter spot
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zCRytxL1Wlg&feature=related
