Pop Culture
drorzel | May 7, 2008Writing in Scientific American, Mark Alpert argues that we need more novels about science:
A good work of fiction can convey the smells of a laboratory, the colors of a dissected heart, the anxieties of a chemist and the joys of an astronomer--all the illuminating particulars that you won't find in a peer-reviewed article in Science or Nature. Novels such as Intuition, with their fully fleshed out characters and messy conflicts, can erase the ridiculously sinister Dr. No cartoons. And most important, these books can inspire readers to become scientists themselves.
As you might imagine, this…
drorzel | May 6, 2008The latest book by Iain M. Banks proudly proclaims itself to be a Culture novel-- part of a loosely connected series of novels and stories about humans living in a vast and utopian galactic civilization-- which makes its opening in a castles-and-kings milieu somewhat surprising. Well, all right, technically it opens with a prologue in which a woman called Djan Seriy Anaplian and her drone companion Turminder Xuss disrupt a medieval-level army with very little effort (she's an agent of the somewhat disreputable Special Circumstances, the group within the Culture that meddles in the affairs of…
drorzel | May 1, 2008Having suggested an on-line pro-science film festival a little while ago, I should report that there are discussions underway (or at least in the works) about trying to make something happen. If it goes anywhere, it may look different than the original suggestion, but I'm kind of curious about one aspect of the original idea.
If you recall, my original suggestion was that we could arrange a film festival using YouTube for the submission and distribution of entries, and basically passing the hat to get a prize pool. I still sort of like the idea of funding it via direct contributions rather…
drorzel | April 27, 2008Over at Shifting Baselines, Randy Olson posts a comment suggesting how to combat anti-science movies like Expelled:
You want to know how to start -- why doesn't somebody run a film festival for pro-evolution films? THAT is how you reach out to tap into new voices, new blood, new perspectives. THAT is what is desperately needed. Efforts to fan the fires of creativity and innovation. THAT was how I got started as a filmmaker -- winning awards at the New England Film and Video Festival while I was still a professor. That festival, and others, drew me into the world of filmmaking. But right now,…
drorzel | April 22, 2008The release of Expelled has generated all sorts of chatter, almost certainly more than it deserves on its merits as a film. It's also produced repeated mentions of the fact that it's the eight highest-grossing political documentary of all time-- most recently, Tara Smith writing at Correlations.
That claim reminds me of a long-ago student whose application for a summer program described him as a student at "the fifth best university in Florida." None of the people reading it could come up with four, let alone the fifth. And God knows, I would have a hard time naming seven high-grossing…
evolgen | April 21, 2008
The creationist movie that everyone* is talking about came out was released this weekend. Early reports have Expelled coming in 9th nationally in weekend gross, with about $3 million. That's a lot of money, and you can color Randy Olson freakin' impressed. However, put in the context of what the producers were expecting, it's not so good.
That doesn't stop Randy from pulling at Matt Nisbet and touting how awesome the creationists are and how shitty the "evolutionists" are. Fucking "evolutionists"! I'm gonna go off on a rant here, but, before I do, allow me to point out the beautiful irony…
drorzel | April 10, 2008I'm feeling pretty harried this week, because I'm teaching using a new curriculum, which requires all-new lecture slides and notes and homework assignments. I'm also going away this weekend, to Williamstown for the celebration marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of my college rugby club.
As a result, I've been losing more mental processor cycles than usual to thinking about my own college days, and remembering the lyrics to the dozens and dozens of songs I used to know. So, because it's on my mind anyway, and because the mixing of college sports and alcohol would really cheese off…
drorzel | April 10, 2008I'm not sure whether he's making some kind of obscure point, or just trolling, but John Scalzi gave a recent installment of his "Big Idea" series over to the witterings of "Vox Day," talking about his book The Irrational Atheist. Curse you, Scalzi, for getting me to even look at that.
And it's not just me-- John undoubtedly has readers who had never encountered Mr. "Day" before. Don't you know that exposing innocent people to "Vox Day" has been classified as a war crime, and earnes you ten thousand years in Purgatory?
Anyway, having spent a bunch of time recently complaining about a lack of…
jstemwedel | April 5, 2008Some screechy monkey or other tagged me on the song chart meme. The idea seems to be to come up with a visual/graphical representation of a song or some lyrical subset of it.
In other words, you can get your music-geek and your math-geek on at the same time.
I came very close to going through our entire record collection last night to pick the optimal song. But then I figured I'd just put up two suboptimal responses rather than laboring to determine what the optimal response would be. (Of course, because I'm a tremendous Luddite, both are hand drawn.)
First a histogram:
After which we…
drorzel | March 28, 2008Today's question come to us courtesy of Ivy League white-reggae band Vampire Weekend:
So, who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma, anyway? Well, John Scalzi, obviously, but the real question is: why? Why does this simple piece of punctuation engender such strong negative feelings in people who are otherwise mostly sensible?
Personally, I lean toward using it, to avoid the "my parents, Ayn Rand and God" problem, but I can't say I feel strongly enough about that to go through an entire book manuscript "STET"-ing removed serial commas. So what gives?
drorzel | March 21, 2008The Hugo Award nominees for this year have been released. The category I care most about is Best Novel, where we have:
The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins, Fourth Estate)Brasyl by Ian McDonald (Gollancz; Pyr)Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer (Tor; Analog Oct. 2006-Jan/Feb. 2007)The Last Colony by John Scalzi (Tor)Halting State by Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit)
Does Robert J. Sawyer have secret mind control powers, or something? The Chabon is a fantastic book, Scalzi's book is the best thing he's written, the Stross is very good and he's a buzz-worthy author, and I've…
drorzel | March 20, 2008Over at Making Light, Abi has proposed a parlour game using books as Tarot cards. As always for Making Light, the resulting comment thread is full of dizzyingly erudite responses, and clever literary in-jokes.
But it strikes me that there's a fundamental flaw in the game-- Abi's examples all involve selected works, chosen to be appropriate for the subject of the reading. For true divination, though, you need an element of randomness, whether it be yarrow stalks tossed in the air, or the iTunes randomizer. Fortunately, we have LibraryThing: if you look at our library, you'll see a "Random…
drorzel | March 19, 2008As approximately six billion other blogs have noted, Arthur C. Clarke is dead. His obit in the Times runs to three pages, which is a good indicator of just how long and distinguished his life was.
My initial reaction is similar to Matt McIrvin's: it feels like the passing of an age. Bradbury and Pohl are of the same generation, but they don't feel like the same sort of writers as Clarke and Asimov and Heinlein, the ruling triumvirate of old-school SF.
I was never a huge fan of his fiction-- I went through Asimov and Heinlein phases, back in the day, but didn't get as deeply into Clarke. I'm…
drorzel | March 18, 2008Joshua Palmatier, whose first two books I enjoyed, and probably ought to booklog, has organized the "Plot Synopsis Project," in which a bunch of published SF authors post copies of the plot synopses they sent with their successful novel pitches, and talk about the writing process. Most of them have lists of the participants posted, but here's a link to Tobias Buckell's post because he has just the list, independent of his plot summary, so you don't need to worry about accidentally reading spoilers.
This is a terrific idea, as the plot synopsis thing is one of the more mysterious and…
evolgen | March 6, 2008Apparently, ScienceBlogs is loaded with white people. Hell, the whitest person I know blogs in this very domain. That got me thinking. Sure, we may look white. But are we really white? I mean, really white. So white that we like the stuff white people like.
We do have someone who really likes graduate school:
And we've got a Canadian:
And someone who likes to study abroad:
We look pretty white, huh? Well, it gets whiter. We've got a lawyer:
A dog owner:
Guys who like living by the water:
And marathon runner:
Man, we're the whitest group of whities I've ever been blinded by when the sun…
drorzel | March 2, 2008Little Brother is Cory Doctorow's bid for a place on this year's list of banned books. It's a book that not only encourages kids to hack computers, commit vandalism, and thwart law enforcement, it gives them detailed instructions on the best ways to do those things. It even comes with two afterwords and a bibliography pointing them to even more resources on how best to subvert the political order.
If-- oh, who am I kidding, when Little Brother is challenged and banned from school libraries, it will richly deserve it.
And when that happens, you should go buy five copies and hand them out to…
drorzel | March 1, 2008The Science Fiction class for which I agreed to guest lecture is an 8am class, which is earlier than I like to be up and about. Knowing this, I went to bed early on Thursday night. Of course, being a bookaholic of long standing, I needed something to read to put me to sleep. Genius that I am, I grabbed the ARC of Cory Doctorow's upcoming YA novel Little Brother...
So, I hadn't really had enough sleep when I got to campus for the class on Friday. Still, adrenaline can make up for a lot...
I was introduced as "Not only a physics professor, but also a world famous blogger," though I suggested…
drorzel | February 27, 2008Say you were offered the chance to be introduced to the great love of your life, your absolute perfect soul mate. The two of you will be perfect together-- compatible personalities, the same taste in movies and books, sex so good you'll temporarily lose the power of speech-- but you'll only be together for five years. At the end of five years, your partner will die, absolutely and inevitably-- you'll be told the time, place, and manner of their death, and nothing you do can stop it.
This person is perfect for you, but there is absolutely no way you will ever meet by chance. The only chance…
drorzel | February 27, 2008Scott McLemee writes about the shelving of books, spinning off Matt Selman's list of rules for shelving books
RULE #1: THE PRIME DIRECTIVE -- It is unacceptable to display any book in a public space of your home if you have not read it. Therefore, to be placed on Matt Selman's living room bookshelves, a book must have been read cover to cover, every word, by Matt Selman. If you are in the home of Matt Selman and see a book on the living room shelves, you know FOR SURE it has been read by Matt Selman.
(has anyone ever seen Selman and Mike Kozlowski in the same place?) and Ezra Klein's…
drorzel | February 22, 2008A reader writes in with a literary query:
I was asked to teach a 400-level course on Nanotechnology at my U. In addition to the usual technical content, I would like to include a critical view of how nanotechnology is portrayed in popular culture. So I am looking for suitable works that can be examined. Naturally, Stephenson's Diamond Age and Crichton's Prey come to mind. You know of other examples that would make for meaty discussion by a bunch of engineers? [...] I want to stress that most of the course will focus on technical content, so whatever work we pick has to have *some* basis…