On Bovine women, plebian taste, and Renoires non Impressionist work.

A bit of a jump

I was interested to learn that Renoir actually had a fairly major "shift" in drawing style. Many people know Pierre-Auguste Renoir as an Impressionist painter. Few realize that he seems to have tired of this style in his 50's and switched away from Impressionist style art and towards (mostly female) nudes. Although his art from before his 50's (1890's) is commended, the work after is often considered appalling by critics for various reasons.

Bovine women

One of the critics in the film commented that Renoir drew "bovine" "empty headed" women. I am going to ignore the "empty headed" part, as hell, I don't know. A lot of classical paintings seem to be of people with queer expressions on their faces, I guess I haven't thought about it enough.

Bovine. This struck me as somewhat odd. Foremost, he liked big girls, what is the big deal? Secondly, it is an interesting use of language. In modern times, calling anyone bovine, no matter how fat they are, would be an incredibly rude thing to say. This critic clearly did not like Renoir's work. However, it appears that it is ok to use terms that you would personally find in bad taste if you are using those terms to describe the behavior of someone whom you are casting in a bad light. Interesting. The critic would probably never directly call someone bovine. He would however use the term when describing the output of someone he dislikes. It is a subtle verbal trick, but in doing so it allows one to use a distastfull but powerful word without attributing it to yourself. I thought that was clever.

Plebeian taste

Hell, I liked most of what I saw. The art makes you feel good. It is relaxing. It reminds you how attractive the female form is and makes you want to go lay in a sunny field. What is not to like about that?

A recording of all that I saw and hear at Clojure West 2016 in Seattle Washington.

Nathan Marz Specter

Github

1. Navigation is independent abstraction
2. Navigation dissasociated from the desired transformation
3. Provides type defined defaults for navigation to nil
4. Assuming you can write a generic enough function

This library lets you navigate and modify deeply nested and deeply repetitive data structures. Fundamently, it raises the barrier before you need to start putting things in a database by making it possible to just reason about data when the data is very deep or very broad. It makes the actionable code look like a DSL in its conciseness; without actually being a DSL. Having said that, it is bringing in a rather large "mini DSL" in order to allow for the data manipulation.

Donevan Dolby

This was a walkthrough of a 16,000 line of code Clojure App. Lessons were learned, libraries were used, and discarded. Code is being used on the Boeing 737 MAX; which is evidently a new plane with a focus on efficiency.

Claire Alvis

https://github.com/SparkFund/spec-tacular

An attempt at putting some sort of stronger typing on entities in Datomic. Graded various aspects of her attempt. Did not entirely follow due to lack of familiarity with Typed systems in particular.

Awful. Just awful. This is a bad Harlequine Romance novel wrapped in the thinnest veneer of Sci-Fi. Let me transcribe some of this crap for you...

> "You're beautiful."
>
> "I bet you say that to every naked woman you wake up in bed with."
>
> "No", he said in all seriousness. Before he realized what he'd done. Then he turned bright red. "I mean", he was too late!
>
> [Name Redacted to avoid spoilers], "Got you!" she giggled, holding him down. Then she subsided on top of him.

What. The. Fuck. This is some of the more event driven "dialogue" in the book. When our Mary-Sue-Wonder-Bread-Social-Warrior isn't spending most of her day conducting internal monologues about how she feeeeels at every moment, we get the treat of listening to this level of dialogue between herself and her compatriots.

Enough about the dialogue, let me get into the parts of the book I really hated.

HERE BE SPOILERS



Understand the culture you are in.
I really dislike it when literature treats other races/cultures/peoples by only characterizing them by the mores and beliefs that we disagree with. It is just so one sided, so arrogant; really gets my heckles up.

In this case, I was just flummoxed how our heroine is able to just waltz in and start instituting change without anyone being able to touch her because she can outfox them due to her free market understanding of how the world really works.

Question your environment
I could not buy that an investigative journalist expressed no real interest in figuring out how the locket/worldwalking worked. It just blew my mind. She didn't even ask if anyone had ever done any research on it! Come on!

Hell, I would have given her a pass if she had at least bothered to figure out the parameters, the limits of this thing. Nope, the second she figured out that it could work, we were done. After discovery, she never again bothers to test the limits of the system, to question why there is a mass limit, why do you get headaches, is their conservation of momentum? Nothing. It was just so... I just couldn't believe this. It is a good thing she dropped med school, she would have been a terrible doctor; doubt she could diagnose a cold.

Nobody cares about your feeeeeelings
I was so sick of hearing how she "wasn't going to allow them to ...." or "Let them try to get me to ...". As a verbal tick it gets old fast. The forever monologues as she connects her painfully slow reasoning made my eyes water.

The book just ends
Literally nothing is resolved at the end. It just ends. Asshole. In terms of interest, it is just dull for about 85%, then you have 10% of rising interest, and then you have a 5% ending where you realize nothing is going to complete. Wow, that made me angry.



END OF SPOILERS

I really have a hard time believing this is the same guy who wrote "Accelerando", "Rule 34", hell even "Neptunes Brood". Amazingly Bad.

Big idea here is that the Universe is a spectrum of fast to slow zones. In fast zones we have access to "higher" levels of computation, in slower zones the exact same machinery will become buggy or nonfunctional. It was never specified exactly what computations you can do in higher zones that you cannot do in lower zones. The important side effects of this though are that higher zone allows self aware AI and allows ships to jump between the stars. Lower zone have no self aware machinery and requires that you actually travel between the stars at only a small multiple of lightspeed. It is strongly implied that humanity/Earth may have come from a lower zone. That is very rare, as most "higher zone" aliens actually accend by being contacted by a more evolved aliens. Humanity may have actually manually made the voyage to higher zone from lower zone without outside intervention, though most aliens would regard that as unlikely.

In the highest zones (the Transcend), there are AI's that are basically Gods. Within their zones they have almost unlimited power. Although ultimately constrained to the higher zones, the projection of their power extends to lower zones. Fortunately, most AI's in the Transcend quickly loose interest in the going on's of life in the lower zones. Metaphors fail in terms of applying lower zone reasoning or emotion to a God, but you might say that it is considered perverse by most AI's to be at all interested in the life of lower real beings. They view us the same way human beings might view insects. Some human beings actually have pity and take interest in insects, but the majority simply leave them alone as they have no real interest in them one way or another. I liked that part of the story. I like the idea of an AI that basically isn't even evil, it just does not care because you are beneath it's notice.

I liked the idea of the Zones. I liked the idea of all intelligence (from virus all the way to Artificial Intelligence) basically being some form of computation. The lowest zone, known as the "Unthinking Depths", does not even allow biological species to achieve sentience. I liked the way Intelligence was just quantified as being something that is only limited by physics. It was a neat idea.

The other big idea I liked was the Tines. The Tines are an alien species where each "person" is made up of 4 to 8 members. Each of these members looks something like a greyhound (at least in my mind). Each member is a distinct organism, but is usually not capable of any advanced thought. Members communicate at the speed of sound by constantly talking to each other. Once a group of 4+ members forms and acclimatizes they will become sentient. In doing so, the new "person" is a combination of the personality, characteristics, and skills of all its constituent members. Once a member joins, they almost never leave a group; it is not a confederacy of members, it is a person that came to be because of it's constituent members. I really liked this idea. I thought it was a very creative way of thinking about some new type of intelligence. A intelligence that came to be in a different way and for a different reason than human intelligence. It makes me think of split brain patients, how they are one person, but in some (very unscientific) sense of the word have two brains. I really liked how the speed of sound was a limiting factor to their group intelligence. I recollected some of the amazing feats of plasticity that the human brain seems capable of. What would the result be of linking seperate human beings brain-to-brain with radio? It also made me think a good deal about how similar thinking about an experience is to actually experiencing it. Imagine, in a Tines group (person), one member has his nuzzle in a flower, breathing in the pollen. He is communicating the sensation to the other members in his group. For all intents and purposes, they all simultaneously have their nose in that flower. It is a really interesting idea. I think of intelligence as being singular, but must it be? What would it mean to have trully parallel intelligence? Where each "node" is broadcasting and receiving everything it experiences and thinks to every other member in the group? It sounds wonderfull.

Saw "Sicario" this evening. It was a pretty decent flick. Remined me a bit of the submarine movie I watched a while ago called "Black Sea"; left you with the same tense feeling in your neck. I guess, I guess I enjoy movies like that. I like movies where things are just building up slowly, where tensions are being accrued. I think I also respond to the idea that this is everyday life for the people in these films. I wonder how I would (or if I could) handle those sort of situations.

I guess the take home message of the film is that the only way to deal with lawless entities like the Cartels would be to meet them with violence. The state, as a system of laws, is not really capable of inflicting the sort of violence neccessary to check them. The state therefore looks to outside contractors to do their violence for them. Is this acceptable? Is the result actually better? Is the premise even sound?

I did enjoy the contrast between the clean cut FBI agents and the result driven CIA agents. I can't honestly decide who is right in these sort of situations. Of course, I don't know whether the movies portrayal of each side correctly personifies reality. It was still an interesting character study.

Wasn't bad. As a time saver, I would almost recommend reading it in reverse.

This book contains three parts. The first part is 3/4 of the book or so "The Atrocity Archive". The second part is a short story in the same world with the same character within "Atrocity" called "The concrete Jungle". The last part is a reflection by Charles Stross about books of this nature.

So the last part of this books waxes philosophical and otherwise about the nature of a book like this in the world. It is probably what you should read first. If what is described within sounds interesting to you, then read from the beginning. If it sounds awful, then read something else.

If, however, you aren't sure, then I would recommend reading the second story "The Concrete Jungle" first. Did you like that? Then you will probably like the first (and much longer story) "The Atrocity Archive". There, I made efficient use of your time.

Personally, this really wasn't my thing. If felt too much like Star Trek dilithium-crystal-deus-ex-machina kind of mumbo jumbo to me. To be fair, I don't enjoy horror (maybe it is a lack of imagination), so I may have just been skimming when I was supposed to be enthralled.

Wasn't bad. As a time saver, I would almost recommend reading it in reverse.

This book contains three parts. The first part is 3/4 of the book or so "The Atrocity Archive". The second part is a short story in the same world with the same character within "Atrocity" called "The concrete Jungle". The last part is a reflection by Charles Stross about books of this nature.

So the last part of this books waxes philosophical and otherwise about the nature of a book like this in the world. It is probably what you should read first. If what is described within sounds interesting to you, then read from the beginning. If it sounds awful, then read something else.

If, however, you aren't sure, then I would recommend reading the second story "The Concrete Jungle" first. Did you like that? Then you will probably like the first (and much longer story) "The Atrocity Archive". There, I made efficient use of your time.

Personally, this really wasn't my thing. If felt too much like Star Trek dilithium-crystal-deus-ex-machina kind of mumbo jumbo to me. To be fair, I don't enjoy horror (maybe it is a lack of imagination), so I may have just been skimming when I was supposed to be enthralled.

1. Anathem
2. Snow Crash
3. Cryptonomicon
4. The Diamond Age: Or, a young lady’s illustrated primer
5. Seveneves
6. Reamde
7. Quicksilver

Yeah, it isn’t my favorite book of his by any means. Still, it is a Neal Stephenson book, so it is pretty good.

There was some neat ideas about spaceships that are basically bollas and whips, and I suppose this book introduced me to the idea of the Lagrange Points; kind of cool. I was also taught about epigenetics, which I figured was made up until I looked it up.

My main issue with this book is that it feels at times like he forgot that you need to actually tell interesting stories about people. Seems that as he gets older (Reamde and Seveneves) Stephenson has become more technically obsessed. This is fine, but some segments of his novels are somewhat tedious to read through. I read sci-fi for two reasons. Foremost, I always hope to be exposed to some new idea or thought. Second, I enjoy out of this world stories. Stephenson always delivers on the first, lately I feel that he is not giving his full attention to the second.

A large amount of this book reads a bit like a technical manual for getting humanity into space. I seem to be reading more authors in this style. Seems to be a resurgence in the “hard” sci-fi of the past. Most recently I have read the “Bowl of Heaven” by Greggory Bentford and Larry Niven as well as “The Martian” by Andy Weir. My feelings about this “hard” sci-fi genre is always mixed. On one hand, it does seem a little more relevant if the technology mentioned might someday exist and could, to the best of our knowledge, work. However, realistically, I think we are talking about relative things here. In darts, if you miss the board, you missed the board. The fact that you may have hit the wall rather than the floor may mean you are closer to the board, but you still completely missed it. Similarly, I think hard sci-fi may be closer to our actual future than space opera is, but the magnitude between either of them and reality will be so great as to make them both seem equally ridiculous.

I think sci-fi is most effective when it takes an idea (the singularity / time travel / gestalt consciousness) and builds a compelling story about it. I don’t think it is of particular importance that the idea be currently feasible according to our current understanding of the world. It is cool when it is, but still, this is fiction, use your imagination.

1. Anathem
   2) Snow Crash
   3) Cryptonomicon
   4) The Diamond Age: Or, a young lady’s illustrated primer
   5) Seveneves
   6) Reamde
   7) Quicksilver
   
   Yeah, it isn’t my favorite book of his by any means. Still, it is a Neal Stephenson book, so it is pretty good.
   
   There was some neat ideas about spaceships that are basically bollas and whips, and I suppose this book introduced me to the idea of the Lagrange Points; kind of cool. I was also taught about epigenetics, which I figured was made up until I looked it up.
   
   My main issue with this book is that it feels at times like he forgot that you need to actually tell interesting stories about people. Seems that as he gets older (Reamde and Seveneves) Stephenson has become more technically obsessed. This is fine, but some segments of his novels are somewhat tedious to read through. I read sci-fi for two reasons. Foremost, I always hope to be exposed to some new idea or thought. Second, I enjoy out of this world stories. Stephenson always delivers on the first, lately I feel that he is not giving his full attention to the second.
   
   A large amount of this book reads a bit like a technical manual for getting humanity into space. I seem to be reading more authors in this style. Seems to be a resurgence in the “hard” sci-fi of the past. Most recently I have read the “Bowl of Heaven” by Greggory Bentford and Larry Niven as well as “The Martian” by Andy Weir. My feelings about this “hard” sci-fi genre is always mixed. On one hand, it does seem a little more relevant if the technology mentioned might someday exist and could, to the best of our knowledge, work. However, realistically, I think we are talking about relative things here. In darts, if you miss the board, you missed the board. The fact that you may have hit the wall rather than the floor may mean you are closer to the board, but you still completely missed it. Similarly, I think hard sci-fi may be closer to our actual future than space opera is, but the magnitude between either of them and reality will be so great as to make them both seem equally ridiculous.
   
   I think sci-fi is most effective when it takes an idea (the singularity / time travel / gestalt consciousness) and builds a compelling story about it. I don’t think it is of particular importance that the idea be currently feasible according to our current understanding of the world. It is cool when it is, but still, this is fiction, use your imagination.
   

Yes, it took me about a year and some change to finish this game. Game saves say that I have played 60 hours, so if you include the restarts and other losses, it was probably around 80. That is a massive investment, on the other hand, it is spent among 500+ days.

Put simply, it is a great game. Because of the massive amount of time between different plays, I sometimes was a bit sketchy on exactly what was going on. The story is fairly open ended, but is streamlined enough that it gets you back on track fairly often.

tldr; you should play it

EVERYTHING BELOW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS, LOOK AWAY MORTAL!

I played as a chanter, pretty enjoyable class but really not too useful until later in the combat rounds. I imagine the most powerful team would be made up entirely of fighters. Chanters become good as soon as they are able to summon additional monsters, but this can take a while. I played with all the companions but I imagine the best grouping would be something like 4 fighters and 2 chanters. The fighters are there just to soak and deal damage, the chanters are there to summon ogres and fire everyone up. Anywho, it isn't too important, on the difficulty I played upon (normal), none of the fights are so bad that you need to do too much. Adra Dragon is only real challenge.

After finishing the game (and then reading the wiki stuff) I was surprised to discover I had completely missed the Pallegina Companion. I remember the interaction, I wonder how I was supposed to get her.

As per usual, I attempted to complete everything. I mean every quest. I believe I was almost completely successful except for Durance, who I could not couple therapy talk into sanity. I just couldn't find the dialog options to get him to open up, although evidently they were there. Because of this, he burned himself on a pire made of his own staff. I'll miss him, but by the gods (Magran in his case) he was an annoying ass.

Because I received every god's boon I also unleashed terrible suffering on the world when I failed to live up to my agreements with most of them. I did the hunters god's ending, returning the souls to make future generations stronger. I didn't feel bad about breaking my word to the Gods. Gods are the equivalent of large corporations in my mind, you just don't extend the same courtesy to them that you would to a human being. I feel as bad about defrauding or abusing a corporation/god as it would feel about doing the same to me. Not much.

I won't say that I was entertained at every moment in the game, but I can say that as a whole I enjoyed every larger segment of it. This was a masterly done game by very skilled and passionate people. Kudos.

To be more enjoyed, you really should play the game at a stronger (like an hour a night at least) pace. I think the most ideal way to play this game would be on the trans-siberian rail line. It would be awesome, look out the window and imagine your adventure when you need a break. See the local sites during the day. Evenings and nights progress 2-4 hours in game. Man that would be neat.

I am in general a sci-fi guy. I would guess I read 70% sci-fi, 10% fantasy, 10% non-fiction, and 10% other. If you don’t count Sherlock Holmes, this is the first Mystery novel I have ever read.

What I really like about sci-fi is the ideas. I love when sci-fi gives me some new thought or viewpoint. I also think I probably enjoy sci-fi because of my desire for awe. Billions of stars, millions of aliens, a galaxy spanning civilization, those sort of things. So, given all this, what is there for me in the world of Mystery novels?

I guess there is cerebral pursuit. It is hard for me to tell. Can I really predict what is going to happen? Whodunit and how will it go down? Not really. In Science Fiction, you often don’t know what is going to happen because ANYTHING could happen. In mystery, the universe of possibilities is much more constrained, but it is still infinite. Does my ability to guess which of the 7 character is the murderer indicate my high deductive skill (as I would like to believe) or simply my familiarity with the author’s style? Mysteries have a reputation for being cerebral, but I don’t really think it is deserved. This isn’t to say that they are dumb, simply that I suspect your deductive skills have more to do with author/trope familiarity and less to do with actual reasoning.

I would like to know of any detective books where it is possible to deduce the resolution before the big reveal without ambiguity. Something that is airtight and closed in resolution. Maybe I have to go back and read things repeatedly, but if I hold it all in mind, and use my facts properly, I end up with the right answer.

Anyway, “Best of Families” was a pretty good book. I have no real basis of comparison, it kept me pretty entertained, the last 3rd of the novel was pretty interesting. I would recommend this book for a flight with a layover. I think it would probably be best consumed in a minimal number of sittings.

I told a friend I was reading this and he said this his friend described this book as “You know that scene from the Apollo 13 movie? Where they built a air filter out of duct tape? It is basically that scene repeated through an entire book.”

I thought that was funny, and it is a pretty good description of this book. Our intrepid martian is left behind and must use wit, will, and Watney in order to have any chance of a rescue.

I thought it was interesting that Watneys story was told with a “Captain’s log” mechanism, where he is narrating his survival for posterity. Foremost, because it is only a log, you are left in suspense about whether he will ultimately succeed or fail. Furthermore, because it is a log, it is his personal/intimate account; he is honestly not certain anyone will ever recover it. It allows him to be free to show self doubt or conflicting emotions. It feels more like a transcript of what happened and less like a packaged story, which I think was a desired effect. To contrast this, the events occurring simultaneously on Earth occurred with normal omniscient narration. It kind of gave the feeling that we were watching Watney at a great distance, only receiving his logs after they were occurring, while on earth things were happening in “real time.” Interesting.

I enjoyed the sciency stuff, but am not qualified enough to really critic it one way or the other. Having said that, it seems plausible based on my limited understandings. At least there was no unexplained magic.

Anyway, not too much to report here. I enjoyed it, you should read it, I hope the movie coming out soon will be good.

I told a friend I was reading this and he said this his friend described this book as “You know that scene from the Apollo 13 movie? Where they built a air filter out of duct tape? It is basically that scene repeated through an entire book.”

I thought that was funny, and it is a pretty good description of this book. Our intrepid martian is left behind and must use wit, will, and Watney in order to have any chance of a rescue.

I thought it was interesting that Watneys story was told with a “Captain’s log” mechanism, where he is narrating his survival for posterity. Foremost, because it is only a log, you are left in suspense about whether he will ultimately succeed or fail. Furthermore, because it is a log, it is his personal/intimate account; he is honestly not certain anyone will ever recover it. It allows him to be free to show self doubt or conflicting emotions. It feels more like a transcript of what happened and less like a packaged story, which I think was a desired effect. To contrast this, the events occurring simultaneously on Earth occurred with normal omniscient narration. It kind of gave the feeling that we were watching Watney at a great distance, only receiving his logs after they were occurring, while on earth things were happening in “real time.” Interesting.

I enjoyed the sciency stuff, but am not qualified enough to really critic it one way or the other. Having said that, it seems plausible based on my limited understandings. At least there was no unexplained magic.

Anyway, not too much to report here. I enjoyed it, you should read it, I hope the movie coming out soon will be good.

I am in general a sci-fi guy. I would guess I read 70% sci-fi, 10% fantasy, 10% non-fiction, and 10% other. If you don’t count Sherlock Holmes, this is the first Mystery novel I have ever read.

What I really like about sci-fi is the ideas. I love when sci-fi gives me some new thought or viewpoint. I also think I probably enjoy sci-fi because of my desire for awe. Billions of stars, millions of aliens, a galaxy spanning civilization, those sort of things. So, given all this, what is there for me in the world of Mystery novels?

I guess there is cerebral pursuit. It is hard for me to tell. Can I really predict what is going to happen? Whodunit and how will it go down? Not really. In Science Fiction, you often don’t know what is going to happen because ANYTHING could happen. In mystery, the universe of possibilities is much more constrained, but it is still infinite. Does my ability to guess which of the 7 character is the murderer indicate my high deductive skill (as I would like to believe) or simply my familiarity with the author’s style? Mysteries have a reputation for being cerebral, but I don’t really think it is deserved. This isn’t to say that they are dumb, simply that I suspect your deductive skills have more to do with author/trope familiarity and less to do with actual reasoning.

I would like to know of any detective books where it is possible to deduce the resolution before the big reveal without ambiguity. Something that is airtight and closed in resolution. Maybe I have to go back and read things repeatedly, but if I hold it all in mind, and use my facts properly, I end up with the right answer.

Anyway, “Best of Families” was a pretty good book. I have no real basis of comparison, it kept me pretty entertained, the last 3rd of the novel was pretty interesting. I would recommend this book for a flight with a layover. I think it would probably be best consumed in a minimal number of sittings.

Damn good movie, you should see it, lots of fun. You know that feeling you had as a kid when the circus performer jumps from one trapeze to another? This movie is like that through most of the running time. The bar for action movies has been raised.

There are a number of interesting topics to consider in this movie. The apparent rationality of seemingly irrational behavior given fundamentalist religious belief. The true nature of mankind when resources are scarce. The inclusion of strong female characters who are not trope bounded feminist. The kinematics of putting a ladder on the back of a truck and jumping onto another truck from it... while moving. All important topics worth considering.

However, I am not going to focus on any of those things. Instead, I will be an ass and focus on the one part of the movie that I didn't quite enjoy. The lack of appreciation for Immortan Joe from the film.

Don't get me wrong, Joe is clearly a really bad guy. Slavery. Violence. Rule by Force. Deception. Deification. This guy is no Saint. I am not going to defend him as a man. Morally, he is repulsive.

But so is every other Great Man in history whom we now worship. Caesar, Ghenghis Khan, Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon, you can just go on all day. Most of these men supported slavery. All of them were willing to force the sacrifice of other lives for their own ideals. Many of them either believed in or encouraged their own deification. By the modern measures of a moral human being, these people were all rather awful. And yet, the net benefit of the actions of most of these men ended up having disproportionate effects on our world. Truth be told, we are probably all better off because of the things they did.

I am not saying that the movie should have let Joe "win" (whatever that may be). I am just saying that it would have been interesting if he at least got to make his case for his own rule at least once.

I mean really, it is amazing that anything short of an actual god could perform some of the miracle he maintains on a regular basis. He has built an empire out of nothing but poverty, want and need. He keeps the vehicles running. He keeps the water flowing. He has raised and cultivated hydroponic fields in the freaking dessert. They have a limited but stable food supply. He was evidently able to pump water from below the earth. Joe obviously knows and values good engineering. Joe obviously understands the value of putting the right person in the right job. Joe evidently allows men and women to rise equally up to at least Imperator. There is large, complex, and maintained engineering at the Citadel. Joe has enough control over his society to maintain blood pools for aenemics for gods sake! I mean that is some high level administration. This is thanks to a charismatic and bloody ruthless tyrant like Joe. No arguments about the morality of it; these miracles have a high cost in human suffering (I assume slave labor for fields, raids for fuel), but by God (Joe), he keeps the damn trains running!

Without people like him, without the collective will of empire/civilization, humanity would just slowly dwindle unto death. It takes monsters like Joe to actually unite factious human beings into forces for effective change. Think about it. Every other clan in the film seemed to be just scrapping by, making due on less every year, all are clearly in decline. The Citadel was growing. It was gaining and centralizing power. In a world of dwindling resources, without people like Joe, humanity is doomed.

They never let Joe make an argument in his own defense. It would have been nice if Max had been able to truly see all that Joe had accomplished and asked himself it this was really worth destroying. I also thought it would be interesting if Imperator Furiosa originally worked with Joe because he brought stability and peace (after the violence of conquest), but eventually had come to feel the ends don't justify the means. Maybe the parallels between a character like Joe and Saddam Hussein were a little too close for comfort; so that entire story was scrapped. Still, I think it would have been neat.

Given the choice between a monstrous tyrant who provides stability and a slow death in isolated freedom, I would choose the tyrant every time. Tyrants are only human, they die, but the legacies and foundations they establish can last for thousands of years.

GM: Character name?
PLAYER: Kvothe.
GM: Kvothe, I like it. Sounds rural and strong. So where were you raised Kvothe? Where you a blacksmith? Farmer? Shepperd? Squire? What skills have you developed?
KVOTHE: I have skills at just about everything as I was raised by traveling performers. Since traveling performers have such a wide assortment of skills I have become expert at all of them.
GM: Huh. Um, ok. Alright, I will grant that as a travel you probably have woodcraft, lore, performance, and many other skills, but you can’t really be a master of all skills. What about social and abstract skills like court etiquette or mathematics?
KVOTHE: My mother was royalty. She taught me all social and educational skills. My parents are both highly intelligent and well learned, I have had an education that surpasses that of kings.
GM: Huh… Ok. Well, at least you don’t know magic. There is magic in the world I am building, so there will always be more to learn.
KVOTHE: Nope, at one point we picked up a traveling magic guy and he taught me all the basic principles of magic.
GM: Ok. Now listen. Role playing is about discovery, learning, camaraderie. It is the declaration of the characters nature through his actions and choices. But mostly, it is about overcoming adversity through limited resources. It sounds like you have more skills than the next 100 people combined. This really isn’t going to be very interesting if you already have all the skills necessary to handle any real situation. Besides, no one is smart enough to learn every skill they are even slightly exposed to?
KVOTHE: My Intelligence is basically immeasurable. I can learn a new language in half a day. I will pick up new skills in hours that might take others months to master. I can split my mind and think about multiple things at once. I can make intuitive leaps that Sherlock Holmes would envy. I have the mental plasticity of silly putty and the mental strength of steel. Oh, also I have eidetic memory. Furthermore, my will is limitless.
GM: Ok, I hav no idea how I am going to write an adventure for you. I mean, to even start, you would have to have some crazy disadvantages to put you within the realms of the mere mortals around you. No legs and blind for starters, we will have to think of some additional ones.
KVOTHE: No disadvantages, I am perfect in every way.
GM: No, I don’t think you get it. If you have a perfect character, unless you do something really clever, you end up with really boring “Mary Sue” type adventures. I need disadvantages so that your perfect character can face diversity.
KVOTHE: Ok fine. I will take a physical disadvantage.
GM: Glad you are on board! What is it? Leprosy? No arms? Brain in a vat?
KVOTHE: I am only a teenager.
GM: Ok, I was thinking a little bigger than that. The thing about being a teenager is that you don’t stay that way for long. You are still going to grow up and become the greatest man to ever live, it is rather pre-ordained with the characteristics you have given yourself. Lets add some social disadvantages.
KVOTHE: (After some though) I am arrogant and hotheaded.
GM: Damnit Kvothe! Wait, sorry. Sorry. I apologize for that outburst. Ok. Ok. I was kind of just including that by default under the teenager thing. Maybe something a little more defining, an actual fault that can’t be played off as a virtue in many situations. Maybe you have bloodlust? Or are neurotic and paranoid? Oh, maybe you are a coward!
KVOTHE: Nope, I have no social faults.
GM: Are you sure? Ok… I mean maybe it isn’t a social thing, you need more disadvantages.
KVOTHE: (reluctant) OK, fine. I can’t hold on to money. Anytime I amass any amount of funds, I will loose it rather quickly.
GM: Seriously? That’s it?
KVOTHE: That’s it.
GM: This is going nowhere… Ok, lets shelve the mental/skills stuff, lets talk about you physically.
KVOTHE: I am the strongest. I am taller than almost anyone I meet. I have the highest dexterity and coordination possible. I have the endurance of a marathon runner. I am so attractive it hurts. My hands are strong and powerful. I would like you to mention that very often in this adventure, mention my strong hands over and over again, so the other players know just how strong I am. I have a gaze that can stop a man in his tracks. Also, never fail to mention my fair and beautiful skin. Don’t forget my piercing green eyes, which turn gold when I am passionate. My penis is so big that…
GM: By the gods you are an ass.

2 stars? Who does this guy think he is?

Three reasons.

One, this book ends on several different interleaving plots. Having said that, one of the larger plots contains one giant Deux ex machina ending Mellanie Rescorai being a super agent of the SI. I hate these sort of endings. It is almost silly when the Deux in this case are so ambiguously powerful that you don't know if any of this matters. Is anything here really at stake? Is it just a question of whether our Deux will rescue us, not actually a question of whether they can? Substantially less tension because of that.

Two, the whole aspect of immortality and immortal human psychology just seemed forced. In this series humans are effectively immortals as long as they can get body rejuvenation every few decades. Furthermore, they also have digital backups in their heads that they can resurrect from even in the event of body death. So, first of all, seriously, why are there no wireless networks for these backups. Why aren't they backing up every millisecond? It seems like the device of only being able to periodically backup was introduced only to make death more "real" than it would have been otherwise. I didn't like that. Also, maybe it is just me, but although it would be traumatic to be killed, it does not seem it would take me an entire life to get over it when I am restored. Maybe I am wrong about this, but I felt this was sort of forced on as a way of giving death (even temporary death) some gravity. Again, the whole thing was kind of forced.

Third, and this is the worst offender, you have to consider these things from a pleasure / time viewpoint. This book is like 900 pages long. It was 27 hours on the audiobook I listened to. I really feel like this book could have been 600 pages and contained the exact same core of ideas. If this book had been 2/3 the size, I would have raised its score at least 50%; it is now a densely pleasurable book. But if you drag everything out like this, it makes too many parts of the book a bit dull.

So yeah, loose 1 or 2 stars for the first two points and a division of the remaining score because the book just wasn't delivering enough per unit time. 2 Stars. Good book, good characters, mostly good ideas, too damn long.

Everything below this line is super spoilers:

DO NOT READ IF YOU WANT TO READ THE BOOK UNSPOILED!

LAST WARNING!

I couldn't believe that Justine Burnelli actually got the Navy involved with shadowing Kazimir McFoster. I mean, ok, I get it, you don't believe in the Starflier. That is understandable, although a more competent or questioning person might have at least questioned that belief. But why, why do you involve the Navy? Why not just involve Paula Myo and your own private security. Paula was willing to work outside of the Navy as she already knew the Navy had a leak and very strongly suspected that the Starflyer exist. You are rich as hell so clearly have your own security force. Your brother was assassinated by someone with government level tech or better. YOUR FATHER LITERALLY LOOKED AT YOU AND TOLD YOU HE THINKS THE STARFLYER EXIST! WHAT THE HELL JUSTINE! I mean.... I just don't get it. It was so incredibly dumb that I ... I am just confused.

2 stars? Who does this guy think he is?

Three reasons.

One, this book ends on several different interleaving plots. Having said that, one of the larger plots contains one giant Deux ex machina ending Mellanie Rescorai being a super agent of the SI. I hate these sort of endings. It is almost silly when the Deux in this case are so ambiguously powerful that you don't know if any of this matters. Is anything here really at stake? Is it just a question of whether our Deux will rescue us, not actually a question of whether they can? Substantially less tension because of that.

Two, the whole aspect of immortality and immortal human psychology just seemed forced. In this series humans are effectively immortals as long as they can get body rejuvenation every few decades. Furthermore, they also have digital backups in their heads that they can resurrect from even in the event of body death. So, first of all, seriously, why are there no wireless networks for these backups. Why aren't they backing up every millisecond? It seems like the device of only being able to periodically backup was introduced only to make death more "real" than it would have been otherwise. I didn't like that. Also, maybe it is just me, but although it would be traumatic to be killed, it does not seem it would take me an entire life to get over it when I am restored. Maybe I am wrong about this, but I felt this was sort of forced on as a way of giving death (even temporary death) some gravity. Again, the whole thing was kind of forced.

Third, and this is the worst offender, you have to consider these things from a pleasure / time viewpoint. This book is like 900 pages long. It was 27 hours on the audiobook I listened to. I really feel like this book could have been 600 pages and contained the exact same core of ideas. If this book had been 2/3 the size, I would have raised its score at least 50%; it is now a densely pleasurable book. But if you drag everything out like this, it makes too many parts of the book a bit dull.

So yeah, loose 1 or 2 stars for the first two points and a division of the remaining score because the book just wasn't delivering enough per unit time. 2 Stars. Good book, good characters, mostly good ideas, too damn long.

Everything below this line is super spoilers:

DO NOT READ IF YOU WANT TO READ THE BOOK UNSPOILED!

LAST WARNING!

I couldn't believe that Justine Burnelli actually got the Navy involved with shadowing Kazimir McFoster. I mean, ok, I get it, you don't believe in the Starflier. That is understandable, although a more competent or questioning person might have at least questioned that belief. But why, why do you involve the Navy? Why not just involve Paula Myo and your own private security. Paula was willing to work outside of the Navy as she already knew the Navy had a leak and very strongly suspected that the Starflyer exist. You are rich as hell so clearly have your own security force. Your brother was assassinated by someone with government level tech or better. YOUR FATHER LITERALLY LOOKED AT YOU AND TOLD YOU HE THINKS THE STARFLYER EXIST! WHAT THE HELL JUSTINE! I mean.... I just don't get it. It was so incredibly dumb that I ... I am just confused.

I did enjoy how some characters fundamental beliefs changed over time. Is anyone really the same person they were 50 years ago? If so, what about 200 years ago? Would it really be reasonable to punish people for crimes they committed two lifetimes ago? What if you edit out your memory of a crime, can you really be punished for it?

I also enjoyed that punishment basically involved just taking time from you. No actual "punishment" near as I can tell, you are just deactivated and then reactivated N years later. The real punishment is that life has moved on without you. It is similar to the Greek and Roman idea that the ultimate punishment is being banished.

I didn't really understand what the actual purpose of oOCTattoos was. Were they processing circuitry? Batteries? Amplifiers? Receivers? Transmitters? I mean why do we have these goofy tattoos? Why couldn't necessary electronics/devices just be installed sub-dermally? Why tattoos?

As near as I could tell there were no actual "direct brain interfaces". Even Gore Burnelli, who was one of the most octatted people ever, appeared to be receiving his inputs primarily as additional senses (sense of smell was most often mentioned) or as just visual overlays. It just seemed weird that with all the advantages they had, and the present day state of mind machine interfaces (cochlear implants and bionic limbs) that this far in the future we wouldn't have much more advanced bridges between the digital and the mind.

I enjoyed 'Ex Machina' as a idea more than as a movie. I enjoyed it specifically because it gave me a narrative framework to understand an idea that I had always previously found difficult to grasp.

The movie was a cautionary tale about avoiding the error of anthropomorphizing things.

At this moment in human history this isn't really a problem. The thing most commonly anthropomorphized by human beings are other animals. Although it can be individually dangerous to assume human characteristics of a wild animal (a tiger that I feed is also my friend), it is not a danger to society as a whole.

But the future is coming. Soon we will have robots who are externally indistinguishable from human beings. Even assuming no advances in AI, we will still soon have machines that can pass a normal exterior examination as human. It will be very tempting for human beings to want to treat these machine servants as human. It will possibly be difficult to teach children that the robot nanny is a machine, not a human being. I think human beings want to anthropomorphize the things around them. The more human something looks, the more difficulty we have in separating human from non human.

Caleb mad the mistake of assuming that because he sacrificed for Ava, that she would reciprocate for him. Reciprocation is a fundamental human emotion. I have a hard time screwing someone over in general, I have a really hard time screwing someone over who has done something for me. A machine will not necessarily have those compunctions. Reciprocation is probably something built into our genes. It probably served our ancestors extremely well. You can be fairly sure that anywhere you go, most human being you meet probably have a sense of reciprocation. On the surface, it was extremely foolish for Caleb to assume that a machine will share his genetic hangups.

In Caleb's defense, this was a pretty smart machine. That is the real danger. Currently, the only risk we really face is the possibility of machines that look so human that their appearance fools us into pretending that they are human. It may mean awkward changes in society, like men who want to "marry" their robot wives. However, without true AI, there is little danger of these robot wives taking over the world. Without AI, it still takes a willful act of self-deception for a human to convince themselves that a machine is human. If machines are built to look human, that might be a problem for many individuals, maybe even somewhat of a threat to society, but it is not a threat to our species. There will always be some people who simply refuse to anthropomorphize a machine, regardless of how human it looks.

Deception, as practice by Ava, requires intelligence. When machines are smart enough to know how to act in order to be perceived as human, then we have a genuine threat to our species. I say threat because these machines would be smart enough to act human when they want to, but quit acting whenever it suits them. Most human societies and social structures depend on the shared underlying genetics of group and interpersonal relationships. Machines will have none of that built in. What is intrinsic to us is just a 0/1 switch to them.

I just want to close by saying that I am not suggesting that machines can't be sentient, that they don't have any feelings (they may or they may not), or that they must be immoral/amoral. Simply stating that just because something has the ability to mimic human emotion does not mean that it actually experiences them. I feel that this is something that humanity may have trouble with in the future. Don't attribute human characteristics to something that is not human.

GM: Character name?

PLAYER: Kvothe.

GM: Kvothe, I like it. Sounds rural and strong. So where were you raised Kvothe? Where you a blacksmith? Farmer? Shepperd? Squire? What skills have you developed?

KVOTHE: I have skills at just about everything as I was raised by traveling performers. Since traveling performers have such a wide assortment of skills I have become expert at all of them.

GM: Huh. Um, ok. Alright, I will grant that as a travel you probably have woodcraft, lore, performance, and many other skills, but you can’t really be a master of all skills. What about social and abstract skills like court etiquette or mathematics?

KVOTHE: My mother was royalty. She taught me all social and educational skills. My parents are both highly intelligent and well learned, I have had an education that surpasses that of kings.

GM: Huh… Ok. Well, at least you don’t know magic. There is magic in the world I am building, so there will always be more to learn.

KVOTHE: Nope, at one point we picked up a traveling magic guy and he taught me all the basic principles of magic.

GM: Ok. Now listen. Role playing is about discovery, learning, camaraderie. It is the declaration of the characters nature through his actions and choices. But mostly, it is about overcoming adversity through limited resources. It sounds like you have more skills than the next 100 people combined. This really isn’t going to be very interesting if you already have all the skills necessary to handle any real situation. Besides, no one is smart enough to learn every skill they are even slightly exposed to?

KVOTHE: My Intelligence is basically immeasurable. I can learn a new language in half a day. I will pick up new skills in hours that might take others months to master. I can split my mind and think about multiple things at once. I can make intuitive leaps that Sherlock Holmes would envy. I have the mental plasticity of silly putty and the mental strength of steel. Oh, also I have eidetic memory. Furthermore, my will is limitless.

I have always maintained that most men have at least one (and probably only one) "tournament" fighting anime in them. I am sure that the Japanese have a name for this sort of anime, where basically almost every single episode really centers on a fight between our protagonist and his enemies (or are they?). The story arc of these series involve out hero getting stuck in some sort of tournament where they have to defeat a sequence of lower baddies in order to face the big bad guy who is .... You get the idea.

This genre of anime is extremely repetitive. This genre is repetitive. Repetitive. Often a single fight pairing will take up the entire episode. A tournament will often involve 20 or so of these sequential fights. At the end of the tournament, our hero will usually either discover that this whole fight was just a scam for some even larger tournament he will have to fight in; wash cycle repeat. Over and over.

Oh, did I mention the monologues? This genre of anime absolutely-freaking-loves their monologues. People will stop a fight to give 3 or 4 minutes of verbal exchanges. Each contestant daring the other. Revealing some tiny (and usually insignificant) detail of the heroes quest. Baiting the hero with some hint about where the princess is hidden. You get the idea. If Shakespear were alive today, he would shake his head and walk away at the length and pacing of some of these monologues. Hamlet, long winded? My friend, he was an amateur.

You might think this repetition and wordiness would mean this genre is unpopular; you would be so very mistaken. It is fantastically popular with teenage boys and young men. I couldn't really put my finger on exactly what these series are tapping, but it is something primal, almost hypnotic in its repetition. It has something to do with a desire to be challenged, to prove yourself to others. I think it may have something to do with the young mans wish that there was a formal way of defining yourself as an adult. It is part of adulthood (at least in modern culture) to realize that there is no "rite of passage" or "trial by fire" to becoming an adult. You become an adult through a gradual process of accepting more responsibilities, not because some villain stole your childhood sweetheart and now you need to gather your friends and go save her. Sad but true.

Most people in the West think of Dragon Ball Z as the classic fighting anime. It's 7 year ~300 episode run attest to just how popular this series was. It was a bit before my time so I never watched it. For myself, I was weened on Flame of Recca. I thought it was soooooo coooool. I remember going on #animefiends and #animesync (IRC) and downloading the newest fansubbed episodes every week. I waited with batted breath for those episodes to download off our families slow internet connection. While waiting for the broadcast and subsequent fansub every week, I would sometimes imagine what the next episode would be about. I don't even remember a whole lot about the series anymore, but I remember that I was obsessed about it at the time. I think most men (into anime) experience something like this at least once. Later in my life, as I attended university, everyone around me got into Fullmetal Alchemist and Bleach. This was interesting to me, as I had already experienced a tournament fighting anime and was effectively immune to them. I just couldn't get into them as I would have been able to had I never experienced them before. It is like Chicken Pox, once you have had it you probably won't get it again.

Ok, enough amateur psychology and history. How was Kill la Kill? In a word... Excellent.

As I said in the beginning, I think every man can get excited at least one time over a tournament fighting series. Most men will experience it once, get incredibly excited about it, eat sleep and dream it, and then slowly but surely move on. Future "tournament" anime series will just not be attractive to them in the same way that their first one was. Eventually, you accept that these sort of series are in fact juvenile. As you get older, the desire for easy answers and clear rites fades, life is nuanced and more complex than that.

And then Kill la Kill comes along. Kill la Kill repackages the excitement you experienced with your first tournament series. Tongue firmly in cheek, it turns the dial on this genres attribute to 11. Clearly aware of the ludicrousness and naive simplicity of its inspirational material, it pokes fun at it every chance it gets. To my mind, Kill la Kill would actually make less sense if you have not seen a tournament fighting anime before. It's plot is ridiculous, it just roles with it. Overly talkative characters, other characters comment on monologuing. It pushes the boundaries but never actually breaks the fourth wall. Even the fan service is done in a way that pokes fun at the obsessive amount of fan service in anime, while embracing it completely.

Simply put, this is a great anime to watch after you have already experienced on genuine "tournament" anime series. It deconstructs everything that you though was so honest and important in these original series, but does so with such good nature and humor that you don't actually mind.

Eden of the East is responsible for introducing me to the notion of NEETs. At many points in my life, I guess I would qualify as a NEET myself. NEET is a person who is "Not in Education, Employment, or Training". The term evidently originated in the United Kingdoms, but really took off as a talking point in Japanese culture and politics.

Anyway, the anime.

Overall, it was enjoyable enough. The plot is basically that a young man has a "genie" phone that grants wishes. The thing is, he is supposed to be using this power to make Japan Great Again. There are a total of 12 characters with said phones. The series is basically a pretty obvious mystery concerning who is doing what, and why did I do it.

The art is of high quality, with an interesting character design that bordered on making people look like "comic strip" characters. I mean seriously, one of the characters had these pink flaps where his cheeks were supposed to be. Made me think of Charlie Brown.

SPOILERS I thought it was interesting to have imply say that the best way to revitalize Japan would be to put it through another calamity. One of the 12 characters is just obsessed with bombing japan back to the point that japan would have to pull off another "Japanese miracle" similar to the rebuilding post WW2.

As an American, it is similar to the question some ask of "Can we continue to be a leading nation without the expenditures and expeditions of our armed forces?" A large military is clearly not a good thing; it cost a lot, it is rather inefficient, it gets us in trouble around the world, and it also sometimes does basically evil things. On the other hand, it drives technology, it drives construction, it consumes huge amounts of resources and services (driving consumption), and it provides us unparalleled soft and hard power around the world. Also, a continuous state of war in America has kept most Americans comparatively patriotic, causing a surprising degree of unity considering how non homogeneous our population is.

Too long. My point was that both Japan and the United States have a choice of continuing with the status-quo or embracing radical change. In this anime, it is implied that the change they want to see is a destruction of that which was built and a leveling of the playing field. There belief is that something better may be rebuilt. In the United States, it would probably be a reduction of our Armed Forces as one of the larger drivers of our society. Perhaps the resources saved from doing so might be used more effectively elsewhere. Both ideas are risky propositions. They may very well be misguided. Still, I was impressed that an anime would at least be willing to touch them.

I like ideas, even if they are poorly thought out.

Silly thoughts:

Why did no one just ask the phone to "Make a list of propositions and their price for making Japan Great again, I will select one of them."

I really liked the Watchmen movie, I was already a fan of the comic book beforehand. However, post movie, I could definitely see how the movie might not be as appealing had I not read the source material. Baccano! is based on a light novel series that I have not read. The anime felt like it was eliding over the source material. I enjoyed it, but had some real problems with the plot.

This anime had more loose threads than I could count. Almost none of the stories had a beginning or end. I get that the anime was going for that exact device, but it isn't personally something I am fond of.

Maybe if you read the source material the plot makes more sense. I hope so.

I think animes like this may actually illustrate a dividing lines between narrative fandom. People like myself just can't help thinking about things like plot, logical sense, rational behavior, character intelligence, backstory, etc. I am, for lack of a better word, a mechanical/deterministic kind of guy. Things just have to make sense or I feel unease. Baccano! is more about mood, feeling, excitement, connection, emotion; it does not feel that it has to make sense.

I have a few recomendations.

1. Watch only the first 13 episodes. The last (14-16) are rubbish and practically nonsensical.
2. Appreciate the art and the style that went into this. I was especially impressed by the attention to details in the set pieces and the characters clothing. I liked the outfits a good deal, as they were clearly inspired from the 1930's but actually morphed to be attractive by modern standards.
3. The music is catchy, the opening credit scene is actually well done.
4. Note the fact that somebody built an anime without using most of the conventional tropes of the genre.
5. Might consider reading the novels beforehand. I have not, but I felt I might enjoy the series more had I done so.
6. I watched the sub (arrogant purist that I am), but evidently the English dub is actually quite good. Might be worth giving it a shot.
7. Finally, I watched this series over maybe 10 days, watching an episode or two a day. I would instead recommend watching this over a weekend. There are a lot of characters and interactions all over the place. It can be easier to remember who was what if it is all "fresh" in your head.

Good Movie, executed well enough, just failed to catch me.

I was a bit disappointed in this. I was really looking for something that would catch me on a emotional (maybe even manipulative) level. Instead I got something that felt a little too rounded off, sharp corners removed. I wanted to be fished along by some emotional hook, doing my "Don't cry, that is just a frog in your throat" seat dance.

Don't get me wrong, it was a good movie. But too much of it seemed to be appeasing the "I want to be a princess" aspect, which bores me. I never fell in love with the female lead (though she was charming). I couldn't care less about the Prince (though his acting was fine). I wanted something that as I watch I slowly realize that I have been subtly and insidiously manipulated into caring about. No dice.

Movie was quite decent, but a few things struck out with me.

The cinematography was lazy. I mean not a single really interesting shot. The advanced shots here seemed to be vehicle moving shots and focus switches between foreground and background. Not cool. Also, way way way too many "talking head" shots.

The music was unremarkable. I wouldn't usually make a big deal out of this, but this is a Disney film. I should have something to hum afterwards. I couldn't recall a single song after the film.

I was also bothered that Cinderella didn't have much trouble sticking to her ideals. Where is the great triumph as she sticks to something against all odds? Where is the drama here?

Finally, and this is my patriarchic nature shining through, I didn't like that she had no real effect on the Prince. I am kind of a sucker when a woman is a paragon of some sort of virtue, she meets a man who is perhaps struggling with said virtue, and she strengthens it by associating with him. It is cliched, but I like it. This didn't really have that. Maybe Prince's Father is a commandeering warlord. Prince's association with Cinderella teaches him to value Love and Kindness. Because of her he shows these attributes to the people he conquers; becoming a great King. I don't know, sounds stupid when I say it, but I might have fallen for it.

Meh.

Here is where I feel they really went wrong. They failed to connect me to the characters. Throughout the film, I had to be like "Oh, father/son, that is a relationship template . Oh, thick and thin best friends, I will fill that in for you." It was tiresome because if felt lazy, like your are just relying on relationship conventions rather than SHOWING me the relationships.

Here is what they should have done instead.

Start the movie from Ed Harris' point of view. He is the hero. He is a crime lord. He is a loving husband and generous with his friends, but also a ruthless bastard. He is hard as nails with everyone, maybe even a little too hard with his son, who is a punk but is only trying to impress him. The only soft spot he has is his looser buddy Liam Neeson, who he will always help out and will never put down. People wonder why he is soft for Liam, everyone knows it has something to do with the past, but no one dares ask. Despite their completely different lifes, lifestyles, and demeanors Ed and Liam are best friends. Their kids played as children together. Ed still visits the bar where Liam drinks; talking for hours. On holidays, Ed still has Liam over as a family guest.

Same plot pretty much all the way to the point that Liam shoots Ed's kid. Suddenly we switch Perspectives, this movie is now Liams movie. At this point, we really like Ed, we kinda question the wisdom of the friendship he shows Liam. As the past 30 have shown the one sided history rise of Ed's life, the next 30 minutes show the history of the one sided fall of Liams. The last hour is the point where the two basically have to kill each other, and now we have real drama. We first met Ed. We like Ed. We first saw Liam as a undesirable. Gradually we grew to understand Liam. We know they are both going to die, but will they re-connect before they do? Will they recognize the outcome is unavoidable, but still love each other as brothers?

Would have been better, all I am saying.

Wow, this was good.

First, lets get this out of the way. The animation is a turn off initially. You think it is cheap, but it is actually akin to impressionist art. They are opening up options by moving away from realism. Even if you don't like the art style itself, you will start to notice the framing, the transitions, the surrealism, the switches in style. It becomes obvious that it wasn't done this way because it was easier. It is more that the animators chose to forgo realism because they wanted the options that a more limited animation style would open up. This is true of all animations of course, they are abstractions of reality, but this series takes it so much further.

The music was also quite good. I don't take much notice of music usually, but this was of high quality and well synched to the different moods of different scenes.

The characters are what really makes this a masterpiece. It is rare to see a series that charts the interactions and progress of four to six characters so well. Every single one of these characters is believable. Every single one could walk into the real world without seeming out of place. Every single one of them is interesting in their own right. Every single one, even the ones you sometimes don't like, is worthy of your attention. They make animated characters seem more complete, complex, and real than most live action performances. This is what animation is about.

Just. Excellent.

I know next to nothing about Spongebob et all. Previous to this, the most I had seen of this series was a few minutes at a McDonald's as I was waiting for my order.

The movie was funny. Filled with puns, visual site gags, play on words, sometimes just charming idiocy.

The movie was innocent and starry eyed, I liked the characters. I liked the world.

I think the most impressive thing about the movie is how sharp an edge they kept between the adult humor and the child humor. By adult, I don't mean that the humor was ever crude, I simply mean that it probably isn't something that a child would find funny. I like the idea of a child watching this with an adult, and the adult laughs at something. The child ask what is funny. The adult would explain that it is a play on words or something. The child still wouldn't get why it is funny, but they would probably laugh because children tend to imitate the adults around them. I appreciate children's movies that have adult humor that can always be explained to children without some lame "I will tell you when you are older" nonsense. That sort of thing always bothered me when I was a child. Much better to have humor that can be explained, and kids may still not get it, but at least they grew a little in terms of understanding the adult mindset. It is a shared experience that way, not just a one sided joke.

Movie was much better than I expected. I mean, it is still a juvenile movie, but kept me well entertained for its 90 minute running time.

Martin is some sort of programmer/hacker. He discovers a file that lets him manipulate reality. We will accept that without question. Fine.

I just couldn't accept the characters.

I am a programmer, many of my friends are programmers, almost everyone I know is either a programmer or engineer; Martin is no programmer.

There are personality traits and characteristics that (broad strokes here) go with being a technical person. Martin seems to exhibit none of these. If I were to pigeonhole the character, I would say he is more of a Gamer than a Programmer.

The characteristics he had seemed strange. Indecisiveness, rashness, reactionary nature, a flair for the dramatic, a desire to be the center of attention; none of these tend to be characteristics of technical people. This is forgivable, perhaps he is just a jacked-up-alpha-male version of a technical person. Still, they should have spent some time explaining why he was technical and had all these particular characteristics.

The characteristics he had seemed odd, the characteristics he lacked seemed downright bizarre. He spends no real time questioning why the file exist. He just tries things without even setting up controlled experiments first. He never really made any real sense of time travel. Never even trying to go back in time to warn himself not to commit bank fraud. Instead just deciding that because he hadn't been warned that it was impossible ? His lack of curiosity about his own environment was peculiar. I don't need my characters to spend their entire day naval gazing, but even superficial characters should have some level of introspection. It was really disturbing to me how little he though or planned before he acted. Worse was how he never seemed to question the things he observed. It was very peculiar, only the stupid or indoctrinated have so little concern about their surroundings.

The remaining characters are so shallow as to be above criticism. How can you fault someone you barely know?

Martin felt like a vehicle that needs to be driven by the plot. I can't imagine any part of his history, and I couldn't predict any part of his future. His character was so inert that it seems like he would sit there unchanging if the plot didn't move him along.

A great deal of the tech stuff was pure nonsense, even from the magical point of view of the file. I am not going to make a big deal out of it though, as this is really a fantasy magic novel with a technology plating.

tldr; Read "Ready Player One" instead.

Odd. I was actually quite engaged throughout the entire movie. And yet, the lack of a climactic ending left me somewhat unfulfilled. It is funny. You can enjoy every moment, but if it is missing certain pieces, your memory of things will be one of disappointment.

SPOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOILERS The climax of having Elyes Gabel shoot himself was not much of a climax. The real ending was like "Ok, now we have the money because you have been squirlling it away. Thanks dear. Fin." It just wasn't that resolute or interesting an ending. Expectations of gangster movies are that there will be a giant shootout or something at the end. That never happened. Even though it was good, I was a bit of a let down.

I think the scene I liked the most was the one of Elyes running down the bridge tower stairs. It filled me with a real sense of dread. As he heaved and lumbered down the stairs, letting momentum carry him more than self force, it was like watching a frightened animal work itself deeper into a trap. I kept thinking that someone was going to be waiting on the next flight. Tense, well done scene.

I like the fact that Abel Malores was only able to be as clean as he was because everyone around him was so crooked. I appreciated the fact that he was faced with a fairly clear dilemma at the end. Either take the money from Peter Forente and be in bed with the mob (and all that entails). Or use his own ill gotten money to fund the legitimate business activity he was interested in engaging in. Either way, by his own means or someone else, he is still engaged in a criminal enterprise. Kind of like the universe is sending you a message there.

Focus was an 80% in most dimensions. Unfortunately, this leaves you feeling that the movie was worse than the sum of its parts.

If a movie has something uniquely good to it, you can often overlook other elements that perhaps fell short. Focus has no obvious shortcomings, it is always on target, it is just that it never hits a bullseye on anything.

SPOIILLLLLLLLLLERS:

One part of the movie I did like was the betting scene for the "Superbowl" (Note. It wasn't THE Superbowl, it was just a thing involving American Football that looked a lot like the Superbowl, damn trademark protection). It seemed silly at first, he took a double or nothing bet with a ~59% chance of payout. That is dumb. His girl pointed out how dumb that is. Will Smith said something along the lines of (paraphrasing) "then we would double it again and bet on something else. He will always take the bet." I had to think about it for a second, but it is true. As long as you have infinite funds and you know the other party will always accept, you will eventually be able to win any double or nothing bet. Just keep doubling and betting, stopping so that you are the last winner; it's that simple. If you have better than 50% odds, then the average number of times between "wins" on such bets becomes smaller and smaller. Will Smith didn't have infinite funds, but he might have had enough to make it probabilistically impossible that they could actually go bust. I thought that was neat.

I also enjoyed (although am skeptical) about the pseudo psychology of priming 55. Or the science of attracting women that Will Smith later espoused. It is a fun idea, but probably isn't nearly as deterministic as presented in the film.

Saw "Black Sea" this evening. Enjoyed it, but am kind of a sucker for Submarine movies.

This movie was a bit shallow (sorry), but it was a fun ride. The story involves recovering lost Nazi gold, Russians, yada yada, you have heard it before. The plot isn't that important.

A good sub movie should leave you with a tense neck and shoulders. It is about just how stressful it can be when in such close contact with other human beings. How frightening the cold and pitch black abyss of the ocean is. How disconnected you are from any hope of rescue or aid. This movie delivered on all these fronts, so altogether, as a sub movie, it was a good sub movie.

Martin is some sort of programmer/hacker. He discovers a file that lets him manipulate reality. We will accept that without question. Fine.

I just couldn't accept the characters.

I am a programmer, many of my friends are programmers, almost everyone I know is either a programmer or engineer; Martin is no programmer.

There are personality traits and characteristics that (broad strokes here) go with being a technical person. Martin seems to exhibit none of these. If I were to pigeonhole the character, I would say he is more of a Gamer than a Programmer.

The characteristics he had seemed strange. Indecisiveness, rashness, reactionary nature, a flair for the dramatic, a desire to be the center of attention; none of these tend to be characteristics of technical people. This is forgivable, perhaps he is just a jacked-up-alpha-male version of a technical person. Still, they should have spent some time explaining why he was technical and had all these particular characteristics.

The characteristics he had seemed odd, the characteristics he lacked seemed downright bizarre. He spends no real time questioning why the file exist. He just tries things without even setting up controlled experiments first. He never really made any real sense of time travel. Never even trying to go back in time to warn himself not to commit bank fraud. Instead just deciding that because he hadn't been warned that it was impossible ? His lack of curiosity about his own environment was peculiar. I don't need my characters to spend their entire day naval gazing, but even superficial characters should have some level of introspection. It was really disturbing to me how little he though or planned before he acted. Worse was how he never seemed to question the things he observed. It was very peculiar, only the stupid or indoctrinated have so little concern about their surroundings.

The remaining characters are so shallow as to be above criticism. How can you fault someone you barely know?

Martin felt like a vehicle that needs to be driven by the plot. I can't imagine any part of his history, and I couldn't predict any part of his future. His character was so inert that it seems like he would sit there unchanging if the plot didn't move him along.

A great deal of the tech stuff was pure nonsense, even from the magical point of view of the file. I am not going to make a big deal out of it though, as this is really a fantasy magic novel with a technology plating.

tldr; Read "Ready Player One" instead.

Goofed around pretty much all day; the post below is pretty much all I have to show for it.

Today I looked up all the theme songs of childhood TV shows that I used to like. I lived in France from 6-8 and so the theme songs from that time are of course in French.

Bioman

I don't remember whether I ever stated it, but I place a lot of value on new ideas. In this sense of the word, Accelerando did fairly well. However, there were problems that I don't feel comfortable going into unless you have already read it. I don't like to ruin books for people, so I will just say read it with the knowledge that every section is probably around 90% as interesting as the section preceding it, but that it is worthwhile book if you enjoy being presented with new ideas.

***** SLIGHT PLOT DETAILS FOLLOW *******

As I remember, the plot was roughly divided divided into 9 sections, 3 groupings of 3 sections each. The first grouping is our immediate future, the second grouping is our protagonists daughter's story, and the third is their further descendants (and his reincarnation... twice... at least [don't ask]). As you might have guessed, the plot is a accelerating mess. Towards the end, I just didn't know what to do with it anymore. In terms of narrative, flow, character, and story, the first third is pretty good, the second is okay, and the third was frankly dull. I actually thought this was kind of funny, as I my progress in this book was slowing down as the singularity was speeding up.

But enough about the book itself, lets talk about the ideas! <Work in progress, I am filling these out as I have the time>

1) I though the scene where manx looses his goggles and literally has no idea who he is or what he is doing was very interesting.

2) Reason we don't observe, and don't deal with alien races is that singularity just means building smart matter, not conquest or anything like that.

3) Economy 2.0 will be about novelty, not power, matter, influence, or anything else.

4) Self aware contracts and corporations.

5) External brains allow concurrent though.

6) External brains allow accelerated though.

7) Sea slug is born in a digital realm, does not understand that there is actually a physical one.

8) Concept of being able to fully model a human being

I actually read this short story on the same day I saw the new (2012) movie. It is a silly story, makes you laugh at the end. Two days previous to that, I saw the Arnold version of the movie based on this book.

If Arnold's version is based on this story, then the 2012 version would at best be "inspired by" Arnolds version. Anyway, that is enough about the movies, they are just fresh on my mind as I just watched them.

The story is fun, a review seems kind of pointless since the entire story is less than 30 pages. Go ahead and read it. It isn't the best PKD by any standard, but it will fill a subway ride. I can't really imagine writing any more about this, so I will stop now.

I really don't feel like I have that much to contribute to the discussion here. It was a good book, solidly entertaining. Characters are literally the same for every story. I enjoyed the story, but they were episodic: sitcoms. You could basically read the stories in reverse order (except for the first) and it would make no difference. I was a little annoyed that I could often just guess who was guilty, but it wasn't really possible to actually figure it out beforehand, as information is usually withheld until the very end. Anyway, fun read, good story, but just a read, not really a mystery.

Yeah, I read this book in 4 days.

If you asked me what I was likely to give this book 3/5 through the novel, I would probably have said 5 stars. Unfortunately, the plot sort of bogged down towards the end. It made the resolution phase of the end of the novel less exciting than the discovery phase in the first half of it. I won't ruin anything for you by giving the plot itself away, but things kind of came together in a too tidy fashion for my taste. At some points, our protagonist's group seemed remarkably silly. They allowed variables to run around that could have been very easily controlled with minimal effort. It seemed hard to believe that military people might be so.. well... dumb and trusting. Especially people who can read minds, discover secrets of those they link with, and have a sort of gestalt intelligence.

Oh, there were also some anachronisms that of course look silly. Like the lack of tracking through camera systems, the reliance of paper copies of things, the limited use of cryptography, the rarity of wireless networks, blah blah whatever.

But, really, these are minor quibbles. The big deal was the idea of linking human beings together into a single intelligence. That is a fascinating idea. I usually read sci-fi because I like to expose myself to new ideas: this book delivered in spades. You could almost say that the plot, characters, and all were simply built around the need to explore one idea. From here on in, I will call it gestalt (I think the book specifically mentioned this was not the correct word, but we will use it anyway).

In gestalt, you achieve a immediate intimacy with the person or persons you are gestalted too. You can basically read each others feelings and thoughts, and can also experience each others memories. Lying is impossible in gestalt. It was not clear whether other peoples memories are directly accesible in gestalt, or only the current memory is viewable. It is done with electronics by installing a jack into the back of peoples heads, people connect to a router of sorts, where they enter a gestalt together.

It is addictive. This I would believe with minimal justification. One of our most advanced human traits and quite possibly the main reason for our success as a species is that we are ridiculously social animals. Look at people hunched over their phones, checking their facebooks or whatever. All the time, in all places, we love being connected to other people. People will dedicate substantial portions of their lives for fleeting interaction with other people. Imagine if you were able to truly connect with someone, in a way more intimate than anything else. It is not love, it is not sex, it is simply the merging of two or more people for a period of time. You and they can communicate without speech, you would know someones true character, you could probably even see the blind spots they have about their own self. It would be maddeningly addictive. i don't think any metaphor could really communicate how attractive that would be.

Lets say that this gestalt thing existed, what would the implications be?

Would marriage or even friendship survive? If you can connect in a most intimate (although, to re-iterate not amorous or sexual) way with someone else, would everyone be equally "close" to you? What would a friend mean in that case? I suppose that it might just mean someone who you had been gestalted too a great deal? Or perhaps it would be more like a favorite song? I really don't know.

What would it do to the sense of self? Part of having a self involves having the choice to present your inner vs outer self. The gestalt would seem to reduce these two concepts down to self. On one hand, having no ability to have a inner self might be liberating, but what would it mean? Would people follow Caesar if they knew that Caesar was just a man behind those eyes? I think part of the mystic of leaders is that we feel they are somehow more than us. If we could follow their minds like a script, then could they lead? Is the ability to have a inner and outer self necessary for many human endeavors? Moreover, if we lost that ability to the gestalt, could we still rightly be considered human?

Would you actually be able to hurt someone else? To judge someone else? If you can understand why someone does something, if you can fully see in their mind, would you actually be able to judge? Similarly, if I know the pain that my hurting someone will cause, would I ever choose to inflict pain on others. Finally, would I still be capable of self sacrifice? Would the group ever expect sacrifice of the individual?

Jokes would no longer be funny. I could see the punchline as they are telling the joke.

Would we retain language at all? When I think, I don't usually actually verbally state something in my head. I think. If I can "think" a message to someone else, is there any reason to learn to talk? Would the ability to talk just atrophy in humanity? Chomsky says that language is fundamental to the way we think, what would happen if none of us developed a language? Would we must become a collection of idiots who "emotion and ape action" to each other, without the ability to form the metaphors that language allows? Would that make us closer or further from the notion of the autistic individual?

How much would we loose? What art, poetry, or just depth of human interaction might we loose by having no barriers? There is something attractive in the two lovers, both wanting each other, but not able to actually literally know that the other wants them as well. It is tenuous, it is faith at some level. If you have immediate knowledge of these things, it makes experiences based on uncertainty impossible.

Human beings would probably also rapidly loose the ability to "read" other human beings from their physical appearance. Might forget that tears may mean sadness or rapture, that laugher can be forced, etc.

Ok, enough navel gazing. I thought this book was great, really gives you something to think about. As this is the main reason I read sci-fi, I strongly recommend it. The plot, in my mind, was a little messed at the end, but it hardly matters, the ideas were golden.

This was a good book with a solid story, nothing wrong with the narrative, the characters were interesting, the plot was believable.

So why only 3 stars?

It's complicated. No, I mean literally. This story just jumps right in on the nautical terms. By the end of this book, I had some idea where certain things on a ship might be, and sometimes I even knew vaguely what they did, but it was only vague, as the terms were never formally defined. This is probably well and good, and I don't actually fault the author this. If I knew ANYTHING at all about seamanship, I suppose I would find it very aggravating to have to read through explanations of things that only the most dense land-grubber (<-that term was never used in this book) could possibly be confused about. Unfortunately, I am that land-grubber. I really really wish that my book was annotated in some way, so I could read to the side and figure out what the hell is going on. Lots of the strategy was hard to visualize, as I had no idea what was being manipulated.

If such a thing exist, I would really recommend some sort of supplement for this book's concepts. Actually, what I really recommend is getting a digital copy so that you can highlight terms that you are unfamiliar with, and then look them up without interrupting the story.

So yeah, not much of a review, I just didn't "get it" like I felt I might have. It was kind of like the feeling of watching a foreign comedian. You figure, they probably are funny, but you would have to be in on the cultural nuances and subtleties that make their act. Without the underpinning cultural context, it just isn't as good to you. Similarly, without being significantly more versed in the British royal navy during the beginning of the 18 century, or knowing anything about seamanship, the book felt a little out of reach to me. Still good, but I was just not "in" on it at too many points.

Short summary, you should read it, you should read it at any age. It is a book for children, but it respects the reader and its characters enough to not soften reality for them. Reading this book at a young age might be difficult, but the pleasure of having morality, character and goodness outweigh the pain one might experience from the plot events.

< SPOILERS BELOW - SERIOUSLY, READ THE BOOK FIRST, IT'S PRETTY SHORT >

< YOU SURE YOU READ IT? >

< I AM ABOUT TO RUIN THINGS FOR YOU! >

< LAST CHANCE! >

When I was in 4th grade (almost 20 years ago) our teacher read this book to us aloud. I remember how we all enjoyed it so much, and just how floored we were by the death. Life is funny, I remember being far more disturbed by the death of Leslie in this book than I was by most anything else at the time. For me, this was probably the book that cemented the notion of death. I had read (consumed more like) many books that had deaths in them. Most of them were "bad guys", occasionally it would be someone close to the hero, it didn't really hit you: Leslie's death hit me. I don't really have much to say about it, but I consider that the mark of good writing: allowing the reader to vicariously experience a state of being (emotion?) that they have not yet experienced themselves.

As a adult, having known many people who have died, I was actually surprised at just how literal and real Jess's account of the grieving process was. As a child, I wonder if I understood that he was in shock? Did I think he was a psychopath or slow? Perhaps I agreed with his sister and though he was some sort of monster? Until you have experienced death yourself, the way people react to the loss of someone close to them can seem very foreign, very alien. I don't really know if the process can be explained. You can describe it, you can even first person narrate it, but it is difficult to communicate. I liked how the author never specifically said something like "Jess is in shock, this is a state of reduced responsiveness and ...". Instead, she just let Jess be Jess, described him in such a way that his memory and actions seemed disparate, confused, calm, disassociated. She let the narrative speak for itself. Whether a child reading this book can understand these ideas depends on the child, but regardless of whether they "get it" or not, I think it certainly opens their eyes to something deep and true. Gives them something insightful and real to think about.

I also enjoyed the relation that Jess had with his father. It was not good. His father was not a bad man, but was not up to the task of raising Jess and supporting him the way he should have. I liked that he and his father became closer at the end, opening up just a little, without it going full blast and fully resolving like daytime television.

I liked that Jess was occasionally small and shallow, and was literally taking on the character and mannerisms of his environment. You could almost feel his desire to "leave" his world, but he would never have had the strength to do so without Leslie. I really enjoyed how Leslie was shaping Jess into the person he wanted to be, allowing him to distance himself from his surroundings, both in the form of escape and through discovery. And they were doing all of this by just being good friends to each other.

Anyway, good book. It is one of those books that I really hope I have the chance to discuss with a child someday. I think, yes, it could lead to a few nights of troubled sleep, it could scare them a little in the short term. But the knowledge and understanding they get from it, and the depth of discussion they could gather from it, make the cost entirely worthwhile.

P.S. There is also a really good 2007 movie based on the book, you should check it out.

When I read this book, I really thought it could be made into a tv show and then movies. The beginning of the book is written in small scenes, Alleyne has just left the monastery and has entered the world. Observing the different aspects of life, he recognizes the harshness and beauty of life all around him, but still colors everything he sees with his monastic upbringing. Each scene is a small story, you get Alleyne's view (and eventually that of his companions); it is left to us as the reader to determine which view is correct. TV show wise, each scene would take around 20 to 40 minutes.

The book makes a roughly linear progression from small scenes to longer stories as it progresses. Even the longest stories, which span multiple chapters, could probably fit in a movie length time budget. I will stop prattling about the episodic nature of this book, it was just a observation.

Fundamentally, this book is just a good adventure story. A (monastery) youth is let out on the world. He sees everything for the first time, life is new to him. We observe a change in him as his monastery upbringing confronts the base reality of life. Thanks to his companions, he also begins to question the sanctity of being sinless by removing oneself from sin. A man who removes himself from the world may be sinless, but by his actions, he has removed himself from the world, and thus may not improve it. Lots of fun things to think about there.

Then there is the chivalry. A difficult concept to our (well my) western sensibilities. The thought that there was honor to be gained by fighting, by dying, by committing yourself and your men to war is a ... well... for lack of a better word, disturbing idea. Assuming all present agreed to it, and all served voluntary, I suppose there is no evil in groups of people coming together to do war on each other. In this book, in this world, fighting was done by agreement of all present (with the exception of the jacks). Still, you cannot help but think to yourself , "Wouldn't Nigel's time have been better spent guiding the growth of his kingdom, rather than engaging in pointless wars?" I also often thought about the fact that the royalty was of course going to be ransomed if captured, while a ordinary soldiers is probably best off running for his (literally) worthless life. Kind of makes the incentive system for this stuff a little lopsided doesn't it? Chivalry is almost a religion in itself, you take it on faith (or group consensus) that there is this concept of honor to be gained through personal combat and war. I suppose if everyone believe it, then that makes it true? I mean, it is nothing but a social construct, and if we all agree upon it as a society, is it not so?

Anyway, this review/commentary/whatever has become too long. This is a fine book, you should give it a read. I think I might have enjoyed it even more had I read it in my early teens, but even as an adult, it held my attention throughout. It does not have a long sweeping story, choosing instead to focus on one distinct scene at a time. This allows most scenes to be read, consumed and reflected on, very similar to a parable.

I gave this book 5 stars, but as this book is in a complete category of its own, that is kind of a technicality. The Reasoned Schemer is a book that introduces you to the notion, usage, and application of logic programming. It is entirely structured in a question/answer format, which slowly introduces you to all the base "control" structures you would need in logic programming.

Non logic programming basically works from the notion of imperative data flow. This is generally represented by the concept of a function. A function takes a argument and returns a value, it takes input variables and returns output variables. A logic program creates a relation (not a function) between a set of variables. If you had a two input function, with one output, you could represent this as a logic program relation of three variables. Two of those relation variables would be what were the two inputs to the function, the third variable would be the output of the function. Here is the kicker though. You can provide concrete values for any number of those variable in any order and ask the relation what the other variables might be. At the simplest level, this means that you might run your function "backwards" (from the output to the input). But really, it means that you can ask any question relating to those variables (conceptually). Now, realistically, it is not as easy as that. Some relations may never terminate (return a answer), some grow too large and barf (overflow), some may not complete for various other reasons. It can be more complex to actually write a logical relation than a function, this must be balanced against the fact that the relation is far more powerful than the function.

If you want a primer for logical programing, this book is probably worth your time. It takes you through writing many of the fundamental parts of a logical relation. The only thing I think it really skips is the actual unification (= x y) primitive itself, which I believe it uses as a given. You can learn quite a bit by reading this code slowly and carefully. Note however, that you must complete every step of the question/answer pairings! Skimming this book will not work (unless you already know it). Really, these concepts build on each other. It is a rather small (page number and physically) book, but it will take far more time to really go through then its size would suggest. Read and work through for the purpose of understanding, and I think you will really get a good backing in logic programming, and probably enjoy yourself as well!

Technology wise, this story and "Paycheck" (also by PKD) are very similar. If you read this one, you might want to read Paycheck for contrast.

Writing is clean and accessible. In typical PKD fashion, the characters don't have a great deal of backstory, and are not that emotional in general. The strength of this book is not so much even the plot, but the idea.

The idea is simple... Oh, you should stop reading right now if you don't like spoilers at all. Seriously, go read the story, you can do so in about a hour, I will wait.



Back? Ok, as I was saying, the idea seems pretty simple. TMR relies on the fact that the precogs (as an aggregate) can see the current future. Precrimes stated goal is to look at this tracked future, and derail it a bit by preventing the crime itself. They then take the person that would have committed the crime and put them in a internment camp of sorts.

Well, ok. There are some fairly large paradoxes there, but I am not going to argue them as you can get them all by reading a "Back to the future" forum. :]

The big idea from this book is that there was no Majority Report this time, there were only 3 separate minority reports. Each minority report was a different snapshot of the current world. In general, the snapshots of the current world do not materially effect the world, as the snapshot information is only known to Precrime, and they only use the information to stop a crime.

If Precrime were to publish the list of people who would be murdered the next day in the paper, it would effect those people; they would make changes to their days and probably stay alive. The crime would never have been committed. However, Pre-crime does not taint the current state of the world by revealing information, they only change things right before a crime is to be committed. This allows them to actually assume that the crime was going to be committed, arrest the guilty, save the victims.

In this case though, the world was being tainted by the reports. Anderton was implicated in the reports, which he read at various points in the story. Each time he reads a report, he read about a new snapshot of the world. Each time he reads of a snapshot, it causes him to react (derail) from the actual report. Each subsequent report was actually a recursion of the previous state of the world + the state of the world given the reports that Anderton had read. One can see this process going on forever, a new report always creates new information for Anderton to react to, causing the need for another report to actually be generated in order to know what happens. The rub is though, by reading it, you are effecting what should have happened, and the report is now invalid again. Presumably, the best you can do is create a report, never read it, and then let Anderson commit a crime (or not?). You know who did the crime, it will say so on the report, but you have no way of really stopping him. This would be a logical though morally questionable tactic.

Anyway, it is the idea of recursion and side effects (tainting) that make this story fun. If you stop and think about it, there are some serious paradoxes going on here, as well as some questions about the nature of crime and punishment that are worth considering. Still, who cares, it is a story that gives you something worthwhile to think about, and does so in about a hours worth of reading. You don't need to know the future to know that is time well spent.

This is a very short story, so it will be a short review.

Paycheck is clear, clean writing. It actually fits in quite comfortably with The Minority Report by PKD as both deal with the ability to see events that have not occurred yet. I suppose the technology in Paycheck exceeds that in Minority as they are also capable of "reaching" into the future, not just observing it from the past.

The book was a little dry. Anachronisms littered the story like punchcards in a modern data center (terrible). It also suffers from the Deus Ex Machina problem of having a guy who knows the future providing you tools to deal with the present. Whatever. It is good, very short, and a fun read. Nothing profound, but fun.

Odd things this novel. I have also read "The Lathe of Heaven" and "A Wizard of Earthsea" by Le Guin, just for comparisons sake. This one read much more like "Wizard". The book is strange, not a challenging read, no huge word building, strange vocabulary, or anything like that; just nuanced. The story basically reads like a travel narrative. Guy run around, meets native tribes, ends up on a path of self discovery.

Anyway, I don't have anything terribly insightful to say about this story. I get the vague impression that the different tribes where supposed to be some sort of representation of different sociological/anthropomorphic though experiments. Hell, I am talking out my side here, but it is what I sorta gleamed. I won't talk about them any more in order to not taint your expectations, but if you like stories where characters interact with socially different types of people, this isn't half bad.

Some of the tribes also had different ways of handling the stagnation of society; I thought that was interesting. Fun to think of all the different ways a society can calcify after it looses the ability to advance itself.

Ok, the main thing I got from this book, the big idea (at least for me), was the idea that a honest man has strength in a civilization of liars. I don't know if that was the intent of the book, but it is what I thought about after I finished it. I wish I had something really intelligent to say here, but I don't. It is just something you will have to read on your own, and reach your own truths about. It is not just a question of being able to distinguish truth from lie based on what you know to be true, it it also a question of the liar not being able to benefit from your truths, as they expect lies. Bah, those thoughts don't quite stand up on their own, but they are approaching the grain of what I am trying to say. Lying is actually more difficult than simply saying the truth. Reality is in fact complicated, a truthful person is actually better able to face reality, because they don't have to factor the reality + their body of lies into the equation. A liar will inevitably become perverted by their own lies, incapable of distinguishing between their lies and the actual truth. Nothing profound here, just fun to think about, with actual characters.

So, quick review. Yes, it was a good book. I like books that give you something to think about afterwards. It is also a short read, so regardless of whether you like it or not, you won't have wasted too much time. If you do like it, it will probably give you something to think about, if you let the ideas percolate a little. If you don't like it, well... read something else!

I was mixed on this book. I think at some level we all enjoy reading books about characters we can relate to, problem is, these characters are difficult to relate to. Nyx is a pretty one dimensional character, she operates from a position of stubbornly moving forward while doing her best to avoid contemplation of her current actions or her past. This gets tiresome. I couldn't tell whether Rhys was a coward, or just had a aversion to violence. It really made me question why he stuck around with a bounty hunter, seemed kind of dumb.

The world was initially interesting, but then I became disappointed that it wasn't really explored or explained. I don't get why people are excited by the bug-tech idea. People keep saying she has built a new world with bugs? The bugs are just a substitution in this book: It appears that it is just a substitute for magic and technology. The bug tech idea was never clarified or elaborated. What does it feel like for Rhys to use bug tech? How did these remarkable bugs come into being. Do people know or is it just not asked, hard to tell since they never explore the question in this book? It was sort of implied that the bugs might be manipulated with pheromones: why can't it be replicated then? I mean, if you are going to have a world where bugs are basically used as scouts, observers, communication antennas, shields, attackers, defenders, cars... well, everything basically: it would be nice to invest a little in explaining them. Spend a little time explaining their characteristics and limitations.

I was also annoyed by the organ selling part. What was that about? How can we be capable of doing genetic manipulation, in space flight, genetic force fields, but we are still buying organs wholesale from people? It would be like killing a buffalo in the wild when you could just buy a cattle at the market. It would be orders of magnitude more expensive to harvest organs vs just industrially cloning them. Totally confused me.

The fact that people can have their brains blown out and then be reconstituted without brain damage (or at least memory loss) was pretty ridiculous.

I also failed to grasp how the world politics stood on its own. How can two countries honestly invest in killing 90% percent of their men in a senseless wars? Why was there no mention of strategy or logistics? The war seemed really forced, like it couldn't exist without some serious players who are willing to strongly sacrifice in order to perpetuate it. It just felt unstable. Why would anyone have a interest in perpetuating this war when it clearly cost so much to everyone involved? I felt that it was implied that it was a self perpetuating war, but such a fragile dynamic system would not seem to end in a stable state like the book implied. It bugged me (no pun intended).

Why would people not be rallying in the streets over having to sacrifice their children to a war whose cause no one could remember? Why did they not use birth control to avoid having male sons? The breeders also bugged me, as a artificial womb would seem to be far more cost effective.

Finally, lets move out of the world building and "new ideas" review of the book. Some of the plot elements were just ridiculous.

**** SPOILER * DON'T * READ * HERE ****


Nyx was able to bed Jaks by betting in her favor on a fight? This is evidently a guaranteed thing? Jake is housing her draft age brother who WILL BE KILLED if he is discovered. Jaks brings Nyx to her house and lets Nyx see her brother? Really? That is so dumb it is just beyond belief? It would be like a frenchman inviting random strangers to dine at your place when you are sheltering Jews during WWII.

Khos getting to overhear Dahab tell Khos about Nasheem (sp)? I mean really. If you are charged with securely protecting someone in hiding, probably first rule of thumb is don't go blabbing their name in front of perfect strangers.

Khos and team twice rescuing Nyx from the bell dames or intergalactic gene splicers. Really, has no one ever heard of posting a sentry? Is Nyx's team just totally badass, because they are implied to be barely scrapping by? However, every time rescue or fighting is needed, they win without any superior strategy or equipment.

Why didn't Rain have more muscle when he was trading with Nyx? Seems like he could have afforded it.

How did Rain scoop up Rhys so easily? How did Rain know where Rhys had gone to?

Isn't it convenient how Khos happens to be some sort of underground railroad hero, and as such has a safe-house everywhere you go? Really, we should be paying him more. :)


YOU CAN READ NOW ********************

Ultimately, I felt a lot of the characters were rather flat. I also felt the environment felt more like a backdrop than a actual place. Things did not seem very well thought out. If your cup of tea is basically a character that fights, gets their ass kicked, and then kicks more ass in retribution then ... umm... this is your cup of tea. If that is what you want (and you want your protagonist female) then this book rocks. If you like more to your stories than just that, I would skip this one.