WebliminalBlog

Philip K. Dick has left us with several good reads. I had read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and The Man in the High Castle last year. The former deals with the future, empathy, and how humans handle the situation of very human-like androids and the destruction of wildness. The other puts us in the mind of a person living in San Francisco who has stumbled into an alternate history- with the Axis powers  having won the second world war of the twentieth century.

His works, though seem always to be form the mind of the narrator. This seems to be most evident in A Scanner Darkly where the narrator’s mind splits and is almost destroyed. The book has a poignant Author’s Note at it’s end. The note is more significant after reading the book, but it is worth recording here. It serves as a memorial and a warning.

” This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but hey were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed - run over, maimed, destroyed - but they continued to play anyhow.

…

If there was any “sin,” it was that these people wanted to go on having a good time forever, and were punished for that, but, as I say, I feel that, if so, the punishment was far too great, and I prefer to think of it only in a Greek or morally neutral way, as mere science, as deterministic impartial cause-and-effect. I loved them all.

…

the “enemy was their mistake in playing. Let them all play again , in some other way, and let them be happy.”

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DoD Confirmation ListLatest Coalition Fatality: Dec 20, 2007

Source: Iraqi Coalition Casualty Count

When you find a dragon in your house, do you kill it or set it free? That’s the question John Moody is faced with in Skylight Confessions: A Novel by Alice Hoffman. The story is about a family that’s trapped in their feelings and their surroundings. Hoffman tells the story using fantasy, allegory, and stark realism.

The book is an enjoyable to read, Hoffman’s style and prose is engaging and moves with  rhythm that keeps the story going.  Touching on what we all have experienced, but likely to a lesser extent, Hoffman involves the reader through that identification.

Here’s a quote that reflects the style and substance of the novel:

” A red map isn’t easy to follow. Any document made of blood and bones is tricky. Wrong turns are easily made, and there are often piles of stones in the road. A person has to disregard time and sorrow and all the damage done. If you follow, if you dare, the thread always leads to whomever or whatever you’ve forgotten: the little girl lost in the woods, the hedgehog, the strand of pearls, the ferryboat, your own father.”

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DoD Confirmation List Latest Coalition Fatality: May 31, 2007

Source: Iraqi Coalition Casualty Count

I recently read Seeking Whom He May Devour: Chief Inspector Adamsberg Investigates (Chief Inspector Adamsberg Mysteries) a thoroughly enjoyable book. The setting for much of the story is a section of France a little north of Nice. WE had the pleasure of spending some days in and near Nice a few years ago, and also the pleasure of spending several weeks planning our trip to that part of France, so reading a mystery set in that region was all the more enjoyable.

The author takes you through several characters as the story develops. She builds a complete description of each. The way she tells, develops the story keeps the reader interested and wanting more. Not because the mystery is so inscrutable that it can’t be figured out, but because you want her to keep telling and weaving a story. Soon I hope to read another by her.

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U.S. Deaths Confirmed By The DoD: 3172
Reported U.S. Deaths Pending DoD Confirmation: 16
Total 3188
DoD Confirmation List
Latest Coalition Fatality: Mar 07, 2007

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Rudy Rucker writes and spins another great tale of mathematics, computing, and science fiction. He does a great job of capturing the blend of the love for the intellectual, carnal, romantic, and fantastic lives that we experience through our own lives. He takes it further than most of us go in terms of our own successes and so we can revel in it. Of course, he takes it further than we can go - into other worlds - and so we can take the reality of our lives and enjot the fantasy that Rucker gives us.

A quote: “In a sense mathematics is quite objective: the same deductions can become known to everyone who starts with the same axioms and definitions; the same abstract forms can be universally perceived.. This said, there’s also a sense in which mathematics is subjective. If your language is unknown to me, I find you books unreadable; if you paint in colors invisible to me, I avoid your museums; if you travel by carriers I can’t board, your journeys don’t engage me; if your mathematical definitions and axioms seem arbitrary to me, I have little appreciation for your theorems.”

One more: “Number theory is as cowardly as studying fish names instead of swimming in the sea.” (Lynn says it’s either “think or thwim.”)

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U.S. Deaths Confirmed By The DoD: 3151
Reported U.S. Deaths Pending DoD Confirmation: 4
Total 3155
DoD Confirmation List
Latest Coalition Fatality: Feb 24, 2007

I am really liking AJAX and PHP, by Cristian Daire, Filip Chereches-Tosa, Bogdan Brinzarea, and Mihai Bucica. I’ve only read the first chapter and browsed the book, and it seems very clear and well-written.

I’ll be the instructor in a course titled Building Web Applications With AJAX this coming semester. I’ll be recommending this book to my students.

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U.S. Deaths Confirmed By The DoD: 2982
Reported U.S. Deaths Pending DoD Confirmation: 9
Total 2991
DoD Confirmation List
Latest Coalition Fatality: Dec 28, 2006 - http://icasualties.org/oif/

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Hugh Hewitt a successful commentator and blogger put this book together in 2004-2005 to explain the relation of blogs to main steam media (MSM) and to advise readers about the need to create and manage blogs. The book is a quick read and informative regardless of whether the reader is familiar with the effect and nature of blogs.

I don’t agree with his political beliefs and preferences, he lacks an appreciation of and doesn’t demonstrate an understanding of the underlying technology, and he writes Internet with a lower case i (even when including quotations where it is properly written with an upper case I), but you can’t argue with his points of views developed through substantial experience and influence. Here are some memorable quotes:

“The old information monopoly has an enormous ability to decide where and when news would be “news.” That gatekeeping function is gone, and blogs have rushed in to decide for themselves what matters. The episodes detailed earlier were the first few rounds of conflict between MSM and bloggers. What is coming soon — perhaps even in the summer of 2005 — are clashes between competing blog camps. The perfect interblog storm is brewing and will break when the next Supreme Court nominee is sent from the White House to the presidency.” (Isn’t this a typo? Shouldn’t that last word be Congress?)

“If you are a leader , then you ought to be blogging, and the folks you lead ought to be reading that blog.”

“The key rules of blogging success and significance are these:

• Post often
• Link freely
• Be generous in praise and attribution
• Don’t be long-winded too often, if at all. Brevity is the soul of blogging when you are getting started
• Paragraphs are your friend
• Profanity loses audiences
• Avoid feuds and flame wars
• At least at the start, skip the comments sections. You end up with the problems of nuts if you are any good
• Keep the title short and easy to remember so that it is easy to recall and type into the space at the top of the page.

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Oracle Night : A Novel (Auster, Paul)
Paul Auster has the talent to wed ordinary, fantastic, impossible, and tragic events into the fabric of a story. He demonstrates this to varying degrees in a number of his books, some more fantastic and impossible than others. Oracle Night has fantastic elements but also contains, for me, a good measure of ordinary and believable events and scenarios. As you become more involved with the protagonist and are hoping for his success and triumph, Auster adds tragic and disturbing events. Another example of his mastery of story telling and writing.