And the overall intelligence quotient just went up as well. Here’s why. You shouldn’t speak ill etc.
But good riddance.
Update: SomeWateryTart sums it up well.
Update 2: Christopher Hitchens tells it like it was, indeed is in the case of the other kooks he mentions. See YouTube video below:
Made a few minor changes to the WWDC schedule I posted previously. This is probably close to the final session list I’ll attend. Unless there are some late additions after the keynote for super secret stuff. Not long to go now 🙂
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Werner Heisenberg is scheduled to give a lecture at MIT. But he’s running late and so is speeding through town in his rental car on his way to the auditorium. A bike cop pulls him over and asks:
“Do you have any idea how fast you were going!”
Heisenberg replies brightly:
“No! But I know where I am!”
🙂
Adopted from the introduction to The Canon by Natalie Angier
Just finished Exultant by Stephen Baxter. This is the 2nd book in the Destiny’s Children series, and is nominally a sequel to Coalescent. As outlined in the comments to the previous post about the 1st book Exultant isn’t really a direct sequel. It has none of the characters from the first book in it, and it is set 25,000 years in the future. However it is a sequel in the sense that the ideas in the book about humanity and their relationships are core. Exultant outlines a story against a backdrop and history that has seen humanity near extinction after Earth was occupied by aliens; the overthrow of the occupation; and then the expansion of humans throughout the Galaxy over many millennia with wars against other aliens on the way. One war against the Xeelee aliens has been going on so long that it has become the norm and has been a stalemate at a front near the centre of the Galaxy for 3,000 years. Exultant tells the story of the humans engaged in the war on the front (and the appalling attrition they endure – 10 billion killed every year). There is a focus on a few individuals to carry the story forward. It also intertwines their story with the efforts of one of the ruling class from Earth to find a way to end the 3,000 year stalemate and find a way to end (win!!) the war. I really liked it. It’s a good hard sci-fi story that spans the galaxy, whilst at the same time getting down and dirty with the combat troops and spacecraft pilots engaged in battle.
Some of the themes that are developed in Coalescent are also in this book. Such as the way human communities can develop a goal orientated existence or as hive-like structures over time to help ensure the survival of the species as a whole. This is evident to a minor extent in the way the soldiers who are bred, born and die for the war deep in the heart of the Galaxy bond together in their fight for humanity (even though they have never, and will never visit Earth), and in a major way in the eusocial colonies that are glimpsed in the book (the archive on Mars).
No, not amongst us humans. But rather as a way for the small hive beetle (Aethina tumida) to infiltrate bees hives. It seams they carry a yeast with them that releases the alarm pheromone that European honeybees use. When the beetles enter the hive, the rising alarm signal disorientates the bees and allows the beetles to do their worst. i.e feed. More details at New Scientist and PNAS. I’m sure Dr. Hellstrom would find this interesting 🙂
Just finished Coalescent by Stephen Baxter. I’ve had this sitting on my bookshelf for a while *. After recently rereading the brilliant Hellstrom’s Hive by Frank Herbert, I was thinking about a sequel to the Herbert book. I’d love to read more about the human colony in HH. What did the Government do about the hive and Project 40? What happened when the first swarm left the hive? How did the Outsiders react to the swarm? What happened to the normal humans as the number of hives increased? Did the hives take over all the Earth? Were there conflicts between hives in the future? Did any hives raid others and make slaves of the drones (like insects do)? Did colonies spread out into space in the far future? And so on. There is a lot of scope to tell more stories in the Hellstrom Universe I think.
So I did a search to see if Frank Herbert had ever talked about a sequel. And turned up a Wikipedia page on Stephen Baxter’s Coalescent. The Wikipedia entry references HH in the See Also section of the page. By no means is Coalescent a sequel to HH. But it does have at its core a similar idea. Both focus on a colony of humans who have built habitats underground over time and as a result of selective breeding have adapted and evolved in a different way. HH is a harder edged sci-fi story than Coalescent. The latter has two stories that come together at the end. One of set in modern times and outlines a mans search for a twin-sister he only recently discovered existed. The other tells the story of a child, then women, who grew up in post-Roman Britain and of her fight to preserve her family. A fight that ends up in Rome itself and the founding of the underground colony when Rome is sacked. The 2 story lines do come together at the end. I really enjoyed it. Recommended. I’ve got the 3 follow-up books on order (in fact they tried to deliver them when i was out, so I’ll have to go collect them from the post office).
I also found an interview with Kevin Anderson, who is working on the Dune prequels and sequels with Brian Herbert, that he would like to explore the HH universe at some point. Can’t find it at present to link to it.
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* Actually I’ve got just over 60 (yes sixty!) books at present that I’ve bought over the last year that I want to read. There are 22 popular science books, 36 fiction and about 10 in business, atheism and stuff. That’s going to be my recreation over the summer. So expect a few posts in the Books section here!!
These videos by Pat Condell are good. I’ll let them speak for themselves.
At previous Apple WWDC conferences Apple bused the attendees out to the Cupertino campus on Thursday night for food, beer and music. The so called campus bash. I’m glad I went last year because the bash this year will be held in San Francisco. Probably be in the big ground floor hall of Moscone West. Should still be fun but going to the Apple campus was part of WWDC the long time attendees tell me. Still, I can say I was at the last one 🙂
What a shambles! Surely the world cup final should have 50 overs per side? Even if it has to be played over 2 days! The end of the rain affected final over the weekend was a farce.
Having said that , Adam Gilchrist’s 149 from 102 balls was stunning. Put the fielders in the stands to save time when he is in that sort of mood.
Not long to go until Apple WWDC 2007. Just done my preliminary schedule based on the published session info so far. See the picture below. Will probably change a bit as there are some slots in the published schedules on the WWDC site that are listed as TBA. These are likely placeholders for new stuff in MacOS X 10.5 Leopard or iPhone. The picture also doesn’t show any of the evening activities such as the Apple Design Awards, The Scientific Poster Session, The Apple Campus Bash and others. There is also a session entitled Mac OS X Scientific Computing State of the Union that is in the full listings but not on the calendar view. It’ll maybe a lunchtime session. I want to go to that. Many of the sessions I’m going to are IT technology related rather than developer related. This reflects that WWDC is taking on a more technical conference feel rather than a pure developer conference. The IT related sessions are of interest for the education technology job I’m doing at present.
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Flight to San Francisco on 9th June. 6 weeks to go. Can’t wait 🙂
Most people know my view about life and the Universe. We’ll all be dead a long time and therefore we should do what we want during our lives to make ourselves happy (as long as it doesn’t adversely effect others). Steve Jobs articulated this view well in his Commencement Speech to Stanford University graduates in 2005. You can read the whole speech at the link above or watch it via YouTube (see below). I quote the following from it:
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
For the last while I’ve been using a similar process myself in relation to my job. At the start of the year I switched jobs. I think that my answer to the question posed in Jobs’ speech above has been No far too many times recently. I’ll need to rectify that…
It’s 4 years since my first post on the subject of testicular cancer. Like last year, I forgot about the anniversary. Which is still a good thing! The only legacy of the TC are the yearly check ups. Next one due in November 2007.
Peter Olofsson has written an excellent satirical review of the latest Anne Coulter book. Check it out at the Richard Dawkins’ site. Coulter is to be pitied rather than engaged with. Satire is a good way of doing it. 🙂
Finally stepped into the High Definition television age. I got a Sony Bravia KDL-40W2000 LCD television and a Sony Playstation 3. The TV has a 1080p HD display and the PS3 has a Blu-Ray HD drive in it. As a bonus I get a games console in the Blu-Ray player for free 🙂 Here is a picture of the beasts in situ. The image on the screen is from a Mac mini that I use as my music centre with iTunes.
The quality of Blu-Ray movies via the PS3 and the TV is stunning. Very, very happy. I had to take the first PS3 back as the fans would come on and once they got to a high speed, whilst playing a game for example, they would stay at the high speed until the unit was switched off. This was irrespective of what the PS3 was doing after the fans speeded up. So if I left it idling the fans would never slow down again. This was annoying when using it to watch movies when in a quiet part of a film. You could hear the fans over the film sound. The replacement PS3 seems to be quieter but I’ve still to test it fully.
The game MotorStorm is stunning on the PS3. Really, really good fun as well. It outputs at 720p resolution and looks excellent on the Bravia. Here is a picture of a bike from the game. It has a bit of motion blur.
So I’ve cast my die into the Blu-Ray camp in the great HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray face off. Hopefully Apple will go down the Blu-Ray route with their HD optical drives in Macintosh machines. A Mac mini with a Blu-Ray drive and a version of DVD Player that allowed playback of Blu-Ray movie discs would make a very nice media hub indeed. It’d need to output 1080p via HDMI cable though.
The BBC programme “The Sky at Night” has been on air for 50 years. The special anniversary programme is online and worth watching. Includes Dr. Brian May amongst others.
I’ve got an iPod nano in my car that I listen to via a Kensington FM Transmitter. Now the iPod in question only has about 850 tracks on it, and as I hand picked them all, they are some of my favourite pieces of music. So it shouldn’t really be surprising when on random play the iPod throws up a song that I really, really like. Today it threw up Machinery of the Gods from The Franklin-Neumann Project. Been playing it a few times since then. Marvellous stuff.
This post was going to be about Ireland beating Pakistan in the Cricket World Cup. That is still unbelievable. Unfortunately it has been overshadowed by the news of the death of Bob Woolmer. Very sad news indeed. Bob Woolmer was one of the fixtures in the English cricket team when was growing up. I was shocked when I called up the BBC Sport page to see if England had beaten Canada and the headline was Woolmer’s death.
In a complete rip off of the question asked at the end of the BBC Radio 4 show Desert Island Discs, were the participant is asked what book they would take to the island with them, I’m going to post a few of my favourite books. Incidentally, on the programme they give The Bible and The Complete Works of Shakespeare for the island. At least they’ll be useful for kindling to get the fire going. [Update: See Note 1]
One book i would definitely want to take to the island with me would be Hellstrom’s Hive by Frank Herbert of Dune fame. I’ve just noticed when searching Amazon for a link to put in this post that there is a new edition being published on April 7th. Cool. My copy is about 20 years old and could do with being replaced. I’m a bit reluctant to put too much info here about the plot as it’ll be a spoiler for anyone who wants to read it. Suffice it to say it’s a brilliant story that deals with a human population that have decided to live separately from the rest of humanity and have a society that is modelled on social insects. Which is fine until the Government starts to take an interest…
Hellstrom’s Hive would be one of the books I’d take to the island. Others to follow. Feel free to say what books you would take in the comments.
Note 1: Andy Kershaw was on Desert Island Discs this week and he rejected the offer of The Bible and Complete Works of Shakespeare. Good man.
Why is it that in about 99% of cases were you get overtaken by other drivers, when you are going at the relevant speed limit for the road in question, that the car in question is either a –
1. Volkswagen Golf
2. Some model of BMW
3. A small hatchback with a really big stupid looking exhaust
Boy racers? I expect that the BMW drivers used to be Golf drivers and that the silly exhaust hatchback owners will be Golf and BMW drivers as they get older and get some disposable cash. Twats.
