Jo Walton's Tor.com article on cheating death in SFF. Some interesting thoughts. My favorite of this meme (the death and return on major characters) is how Neil Gaiman handles it in American Gods. And I disagree with Jo on the Gandalf thing. It's not Gandalf that returns, it is the spirit which was Gandalf (He's an Aesir? It's been a while and I'm forgetting a lot of the cosmology of LotR). The manifestations of the wizards as humans is merely as a benefit to the other humans, as the wizards are not humans. When his spirit is returned to Middle Earth (that is, he doesn't come back willingly, but is sent by the Valar(?)) he needs to relearn what it was to be Gandalf. And he is now the White, because Saruman has defected to the dark side and part of Gandalf's mission is to take Saruman's power. An interesting article on the reader's perspective of something that will happen in the next book I write. In fact, my working title for act III is "Orpheus in the Underword."
Ray Kurzweil responds to Paul Allen's opinion article about the singularity. He has several points, however, I'll point out, when he talks about the wetware (the biological systems), he's largely pulling it out of his ass. Not about the research, but in his basic premise of "it's just a matter of scale and redundancy." I will also point out that the brain is not a computer, no matter how we like to pretend it is (or compare it to each other). And Watson's performance is spotty at best. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
A lego Rubiks Cube solving machine. It's these kinds of things that get my geek gravy flowing. (Pointed to by Dan)
Talking Carl fights Talking Carl. It's like Rockem Sockem Robots meets the "I know you are, but what am I?" game. But more annoying. (Pointed to by John)
Because it's wrong when any side does it, one of the fuck'tards of OWS. Reminds me of the "open source boobs" movement. (Grokked from Janiece)
What happens when you believe you're right and divid people into "right" and "wrong." Things like stealing babies become acts of civic responsibility. The Catholic Church is also thrown in for good measure. Say, is there a party in the US that defines "true" citizens and wants to bring God back into politics? Because, that would be bad. (See earlier links to how the "right" people get government help and have a right to have an abortion, and the rest of the heathens can go stick it) (Grokked from Jay Lake)
Eric's inspired piece of lunacy about an uninspiring piece of lunacy, the orange standard.
Who are OWS?
So, I wonder what Lubbock, Texas did to invoke God's wrath? Good thing the climate isn't changing, at least in Texas. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
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