Just finished Charles Sheffield’s Cold as Ice. Really, really, really good modern hard science fiction – highly recommended.
In a similar vein, I finished Planets of Adventure – old, almost antique science fiction by Murray Lienster. Definitely a little long in the tooth here and there, but the stories are pure gold.
Can’t find this book on Amazon.com, so it’s probably out of print. You can probably find or request a copy at your local library.
Was interesting to google my name and see a link to this page on egoSurf just 5-6 items down.
Looks like egoSurf is making all past searches part of their website content, probably in static spider-able pages. Very, very smart. Now amazingly, incredibly, their site’s content from a search engine’s point of view is growing by leaps and bounds, amazingly quickly.
Which makes egoSurf more discoverable, which increases their traffic, which …
You get the point: virtuous circle in action. And in fact, their home page is mostly exactly that: history of searches.
Like it!
Note:
This is not a review; this is an almost stream-of-consciousness pouring out of emotion that I wrote immediately after reading Night.
. . .
. . .
I just finished reading Night, by Elie Wiesel. It was, as Goethe says, like an axe to a frozen lake.
Not that I’ve never read about the Holocaust before. Quite the opposite.
But this simple, almost impersonal story written with the detachment of a boy/man who has seen too much, experienced too much, lived too long, and died too much, shredded my soul like a million tiny bullets.
We understand things in relation to ourselves, I think, and I often thought of my sons and my wife and daughter as I read the book. Would I give my life for my son? Would I put my body between his and the whips of the civilized savages?
But most of all I wept as I relived with Elie, as Elie, his first 15 years. The magic of the written word: I was Elie as I read each page of his words. The first years, the joy, the innocence, the almost untasted sweetness of life at home when young in a family of love!
All that was taken from him, ripped from him in the most cruel and vicious and unimaginably horrific way. Night replaced his day, never to be wholly withdrawn. Wasn’t it Rudyard Kipling who said that not all the love in the world could completely heal the heart of a child who has drunk too deeply the bitterness of hatred and rejection?
The worst parts, for me, were the death of the children, the toddlers and young ones burnt in the fiery ditches of Auschwitz: earthy temples of Molech aching for the blood of babes. And the hanging death of the child who helped the benevolent Dutch kapo who fought the Germans – the death that lasted 30 agonizing minutes since the boy was so light that his weight did not immediately cut of the flow of air to his lungs.
And the worst part of the worst parts was the terrible guillotine that sundered Wiesel from his God as he witnessed things too terrible to tell. It’s the question of evil in its starkest form: either God is good but powerless, or He is not good. My heart aches to tell the 15-year old skeleton in a German death camp that the dichotomy is false … but how can mere words counter the horrible evidence of his eyes?
This is a book that everyone needs to read. As Elie said later in his life, “to remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all.” And,
Let us remember, let us remember the heroes of Warsaw, the martyrs of Treblinka, the children of Auschwitz. They fought alone, they suffered alone, they lived alone, but they did not die alone, for something in all of us died with them.
Some things died in me too as I read. But to die is not the worst that can happen to a man.
I am getting a little envious. How can this guy be so good – virtually every single one of his posts is gold.
Here’s a piece of a recent one:
Judge others by their intentions and yourself by your results. If you want to be at peace with the world, here’s what you should do. When you judge others, look at what they intended to do. When you judge yourself, look at what you’ve actually accomplished. This attitude is bound to keep you humble. By contrast, if you judge others by their accomplishments (which are usually shortfalls) and yourself by your intentions (which are usually lofty), you will be an angry, despised little man.
Practicing this will make me humble. It’ll also make me a nicer person to be around.
The DEA and US Customs found a tunnel between Mexico and the US on Wednesday night. Thursday morning, it’s on the news.
Umm … not smart. Not smart at all.
Watch the tunnel. See who comes through it. Follow them. Contact Mexican police and do the same on the south side. Wrap up a whole ring and probably a few interconnected or semi-attached crime organizations. Be a hero, get your picture in the paper, and shake the governors hand. That’s what you do.
Don’t immediately charge into the tunnel and find a puny 2 tons of dope, some trash, and no culprits. Not smart. Not smart at all.
OK, everyone knows: Google is selling out.
China is big, China is profitable, China wants control over communication and transmission of ideas. Google is big. Google is profitable. Google, whose original purpose was to enable easy access to all the world’s information, is helping China censor communication and transmission of ideas.
And the rather idiotic “don’t be evil” slogan is now yesterday’s news, just like the “we don’t censor” statement in Google support (Try this link).
Just in case Brin and Page don’t get it, China’s government is evil. Here’s just 13 reasons why:
1) China’s government kills people that it disagrees with.
2) China’s government jails, tortures, and murders people, particularly Christians, who have religious beliefs that conflict with China’s government’s priorities.
3) China’s government jails, tortures, and murders people who don’t agree with its policies, or who want to reform the government, or – heaven forbid – change the government.
4) China’s government has created a judicial system that often does not even pretend to protect the Chinese people’s rights, instead preferring to lick the hand that feeds it.
5) China’s government has endorsed and executed a strategy of territorial expansion and racial resettlement in Tibet.
6) China’s government has, in the name of good old-fashioned capitalist profit, allowed China’s environment to deteriorate in uncounted regions to poisonous, life-threatening levels.
7) China’s government executes more criminals (often for relatively minor crimes) than the rest of the world put together.
China’s government continually rattles sabers and flies warplanes and steams warships and fires rockets past a separate, sovereign, and democratic country (Taiwan, which the rest of the world is too cowardly to recognize as a country).
9) China’s government has the largest military on the planet, and spends billions and billions more than than it admits on weapons programs.
10) China’s government is not accountable to China’s people, and not democratically elected from China’s people.
11) China’s government survives by a continued reliance on armed force and lies, both directed against the Chinese people.
12) China’s government has killed millions upon millions of its own people in the 50 or so years of existence in its current incarnation, particularly in the first few years of Mao and the “cultural revolution.”
13) China’s government is engaged in large scale industrial, military, and political espionage against Western nations.
I could probably go on for a while. All of the above are just statements, but you can google or wikipedia them yourself and determine if you do or do not believe them. I’m fairly certain that all of them are reasonably non-controversial, accepted facts – at least in places where people are free to examine facts and data, and make their own conclusions. If someone credibly informs me otherwise, I’ll change them.
But the point is:
1) China’s government is evil. It was created by force, is maintained by force, and by force it seeks to grow.
2) Enabling that government to keep its population ignorant, and therefore subservient, and therefore enabling that government to maintain its position, is also evil.
3) Those who too often engage in evil, become evil. Which makes Google, if not evil, at least on the path to becoming evil.
Which also brings me to my point: am I participating in that evil? Am I metaphorically shaking hands with the devil?
I have signed up for Google’s AdWords campaign. You’ll see those ads in the right sidebar of this page, and right underneath this article. Perhaps, however, you should not. Perhaps I should cancel my AdWords account. Perhaps I should take those AdWords off this site.
And perhaps all of us in the blogging community should do the same … until Google stops censoring.
There is no question in my mind that we could do this. Google is a one-trick pony. Google is an advertising company, pure and simple.
Cut off the advertising, you cut off the revenue. Cut off the revenue, you starve the beast. Starve the beast, you’ll get some action.
So what do you say: should we do this?
I’ll decide for myself in a week’s time. And I’ll take into account others’ views. Please let me know what you think.
. . .
. . .
I should add the following:
Hopefully it is fairly obvious, but I have absolutely nothing against the Chinese people in general or specific. Quite the opposite.
I have hardly failed to be impressed when I have met Chinese people at university and in work (and by Chinese I don’t mean ethnic Chinese but national Chinese). I’ve been taught by grad students who are getting their degrees in Canada but will be returning to China when finished. And I’ve worked with Chinese business people as I’ve source products or services.
But the government of China is a separate thing altogether. And quite possibly the Chinese people’s worst enemy.
. . .
. . .
[ update, January 28 ]
Google has posted a response to all the negative comment around its move into China. It’s not compelling; it simply restates their position in more detail.
The thing that’s most disappointing to me is that they chose a lawyer to deliver it. This, frankly, is just B.S. Where’s Sergey? Where’s Larry? Google is a technology company, and one of the founders, who so proudly and self-righteously set “do no evil” as the corporate motto, should at least try to sell their point of view.
I’m sort of in the market for a design tool that will let me have some fun with home design and architecture, and there are two tools that appear interesting right now.
One is Microspot Interiors. Looks very cool – you see it in action via a demo movie. A bit pricy, perhaps, at about 120 Euros.
The other is much more an architectural imagineering app. Sketchup is an extremely powerful tool to create and manipulate incredibly detailed 3-D mock-ups. Once you’ve made it, you can fly through it in a QuickTime movie, see shadows at various times of the day, and much more. It’s also not cheap, but since I’m a student (getting my Master’s part-time) I can pick it up for $50.
As I try these two apps out, I’ll post more impressions.
So it wasn’t a stupid question after all.
So many of us have wanted to go with a digital SLR camera for better quality on fast-action shots, but hated to give up the live LCD preview that we’ve gotten used to.
Now we won’t have to ask why digital SLRs can’t do that anymore. Because they can.
Well, at least one can: the Olympus Evolt 330. This is very, very cool.
It’s not cheap – with a decent lense it’ll run a little north of $1000 … but this will force all the other digital SLR manufacturers to do some quick thinking. And prices will come down a bit.
I’m building another calendar and wanted something annoying out of a picture of my daughter Gabrielle.
Here’s what 30 minutes of photoshopping bought me:
Not too shabby, although far from professional.
As is usually the case, poor composition is the problem; I should never have taken the shot with that buoy in the background.
This happens to be at Steveston beach in Richmond, BC.
I recently posted a tribute to Henk Berends, the retiring chairman of our company.
Today I actually delivered the speech, after making some changes, and I’m really, really, really relieved to say it went over extremely well.
The difficult thing about this particular speech is that I wanted to imitate his fairly inimitable speaking style, and so had to actually act out the delivery, rather than just doing it naturally. Which is what … surprisingly … comes most naturally to me.
In any case, it was extremely well-received, and I’m grateful.
We’ll miss you, Henk!
I just found out via drupal.org that there’s an open source content management system summit in Vancouver, BC, February 9-10.
Very cool!
They’ll be talking about Wordpress and Drupal (see my recent article comparing them on a very shallow level) among other things.
And it looks like Rasmus Lerdorf is going to be there. Rasmus, of course, is the original creator of PHP … probably the most common website development platform in existence right now.
They’ll also be talking about online identity, and Sxip will be presenting. Hopefully they get Dick Hardt, as he’s a great presenter.
I’ll have to put this on my calendar, as there should be some interesting people in town.
I’m looking for a way to manage several blogs at once, so I’ve been investigating Drupal just a little.
I wouldn’t need to manage the blogs within Drupal, although that could be done, but I would like to aggregate their posts on one page, which would then become my home online.
Since my web host has a control panel thingamabob that can automatically install about a million different content management systems, stores, scripts, you name it, at the touch of a button, checking out Drupal was easy.
I only have first impressions to report, but I have to say my first impressions are not very impressive.
Drupal is light-years behind Wordpress in terms of site administration and management.
Maybe the problem is that Wordpress is just too easy, but I find Drupal disorganized, piecemeal, and confusing. By contrast, Wordpress is clear, direct, and vastly more elegant:
My perception is that Drupal is powerful, and can do many things, but the reality I encountered is that even changing elements on a theme is 2 or 3 times harder than in Wordpress. Understanding which modules are activated, and when their permissions are correct, and ensuring they show in a particular place on a particular page is a challenge.
I’m glad for the brief glimpse, but unless I see or hear something fairly different fairly quickly, Drupal will not be in my future web plans.
We had an election today and nobody came.
Sorry, I just wanted to use that line for no particular reason. That’s what you can do when you have your own blog.
Actually, what happened, of course, is that we elected a lame-duck minority Conservative government that will have to battle every step of the way to get what it wants … and can be outvoted at any particular time by a combination of the Liberals and any one of the other two parties.
However, that’s not what this blog post is about.
When I voted today, there was a guy from the Marxist-Leninist party, David S. MacKay, who I had never heard of before, on the ballot. More astonishly, he actually managed to convince 85 wackos to vote for him.
I don’t say this because I’m particularly prejudiced again Communism. Or even against Marxism. (I do think they’re very foolish answers for humanity’s problems.)
But Leninism?
Who on earth in their right mind (and having any knowledge of history whatsoever) would found a party (in Canada!) with the name Marxist-Leninist Party … and actually have the gall to run in an election?
Leninism, if it stands for anything, stands for a betrayal of Communism/Marxism. A betrayal because he called for and began the practice of creating essentially a ruling class over ordinary people (proletariat in Marxist terminology). This ruling class, of course, was the Communist Party, and the organs of state control: police, secret police, and army.
And this ruling class that Lenin created and fostered was eventually to consume Russia, causing the deaths of millions during Lenin’s own lifetime, and tens of millions during the lifetime of the ruler whose path Lenin paved: Stalin.
Coming back to the point of this post – it does have a point, you can see that, right? – how could anyone in their right mind call their party Leninist, knowing, as we know now, that Lenin was in effect a mass murderer, a turncoat, and a betrayer of all he ostensibly originally believed.
We know this, because know history, but also because Lenin himself knew this.
Near of the end of his life he had several strokes, and lived in de facto retirement, slowly but surely getting divorced from the reins of power, as his successor, the brutal Georgian, gathered them into his own hands.
And, as I mentioned in my mini-review of a history of Lenin’s life, he awkwardly apologized to the proletariate he had betrayed.
Lenin ushered in a century of Russian suffering. And it has not yet ended.
Which is why no party that understands history in any realistic sense should title itself Leninist.
Vancouver Web 2.0 forum has started a weekly blogger interview series … all featuring bloggers from Vancouver, of course.
This week, they’re featuring Jeffery Simpson, who writes at a variety of personal and multi-author blogs. Jeffery needs a new pic for his site and should apparently never venture into another elevator ever again. (Well, at least not 10 minutes before a hot date.)
Why am I following the blogger interview series?
Well, first off I’m trying to be more aware of local bloggers here in Vancouver. And secondly (the selfish reason) I’m going to be interviewed 2nd or 3rd in the series. A very happy confluence of public and private interest, no?
Welcome to Sparkplug 9, John Koetsier's blog on technology and social media.
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