Indeed

"Don't ever become a pessimist. A pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."
- Robert Heinlein

Sunday - all Fringe, all the time

Moo Shu Pork and we finished off the first season of Fringe, which is my favorite fictional show on television right now.



Over at I'd Offer You Some.

Fringe Season One Marathon

Made it through episode ten - a great show.

Geek Lit

21) A couple of summers ago I read the over 3000 pages of Neal Stephenson’s “Baroque Cycle”. It was the perfect blend for me of history, the Enlightenment, and fantastic fiction and it’s one of the best things I’ve ever read. Wikipedia, Review, Interview

hiding in plain sight

19) On my desk at school I have three cups – a Captain Kirk coffee mug, a Rules of Fight Club coffee mug, and a ‘beverage’ cup from the 1993 Alabama/Miami Sugar Bowl.

I am a geek, it's that simple.

13) I have read swords & sorcery fantasy novels for years, and in recent years I’ve been reading more science fiction, old and new, and listening to SF short stories & novels while I exercise.

Strange Audio from Tor.com

ERRATA
by Jeff VanderMeer
VanderMeer is a well known sci-fi editor/writer and Argosy Quarterly was a well-respected mag that went under recently.

I've found a lot of sci-fi subculture stuff searching for mp3's lately.

An Airing of Grievances

Over festivus I posted a rant on a column on the Daily Beast.
The column basically said that the Republicans lost because old white guys had to learn how to use computers to reach younger voters.

My response:
How does one write this column and comment on it and not mention Ron Paul? This is *exactly* what is wrong with the GOP. There was a massive internet-based movement of young people in the Republican Party that was completely ignored by the old men running the party (into the ground). Instead of even giving air to the ideas of limited government, the protection of individual rights, and a non-interventionist foreign policy - which should be the ideological basis of the Republican Party - they ignored this grassroots movement of several million largely young people who badly wanted to vote against the government expansion of both the Democrats and the mainstream Republicans. Simply put: the modern Republican Party has lost its way. True libertarian ideas are the only way to appeal to intelligent young Americans distinguish the Party from the government-expanding Democrats. Few young Americans favor the excesses of the Patriot Act, billions of dollars for a failed financial industry that does *not* operate in a free market on enlightened capitalist principles, nor do they favor torture and the Forever War. They will listen to reasonable arguments about the failure of the War on Drugs and the basic idea of Equal Rights and legal protections for everyone. The Democrats have gained a majority because the Republicans became the extreme caricature the opposition hung on them: religious extremist, war-mongering, fascists operating at the whim of big business and out of touch with the majority of Americans. The party got what they deserved. If the Republicans continue to cast aside libertarian principals and push intelligent people out of the party then they can try all the strategy and tactics they want but it won't do any good, we, the people they want, will already be gone.

How my day goes

From the facebook of one of my former AP History students:

And Now, A Day In Coach Ray's Class:
- Look, all I'm saying is at the end of the day the new 3 Star Wars movies suck.(him)
- What Did You Say Pace?(me)
- Those movies suck.
- Run that by me one more time.
- The Final 3 Star Wars films suck.
- You know, I thought you said that Star Wars sucked. And if that were the case, then I was going to fail you.
- Oh. Well I'm a die hard Star Wars fan, but I hate the Episodes 1-3.
- Guys! I love the enthusiasm but none of this will be on your test tomorrow. And even though the last three Star Wars moves were filmed like 20 years later, they are still okay movies...With that said, Jar-Jar Binx can die in hell.

List5 Books Part 2

II. Books I have suggested recently and tried to get people to read, often unsuccessfully.
1. I have to second American Gods. Traditional ideas vs. the technological age. And Gaiman is just so cool. It would be cool and frightening to be working for a Norse god, and hang out with Egyptian Gods and long forgotten deities of various cultures. I got CRL, who prefers horror & mystery to read Gods and some Gaiman short stories, like “October in the Chair”. She loved it. It’s well worth it.

2. Neal Stephenson, in particular the Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, the Confusion, and The System of the World.. I like books that make me go to the dictionary and Wikipedia to make sure I know what’s going on. The Cycle is about the Enlightenment and the growth of a monetary system in Europe, and is as much fun as that sounds boring. Issac Newton & Leibniz and the later Stuart Kings (I did my graduate History work on this period) and the Glorious Revolution and Barbary Pirates and…it’s just incredible, and they were all bestsellers. But I have trouble convincing those I hold near and dear to read it. It’s just 3,000 pages or so. C’mon. I think sometimes it was written for me and I should just accept that. But if you’ll just start with Quicksilver, I swear you’ll love it, just like I do…
It would be easier to read Snow Crash, which is incredible near-future neo-libertarian cyberpunk, or The Diamond Age, about neo-Victorians and nanotech, or Cryptonomicom, which is about cryptography, the nature of money, modern data havens,World War II and the Enigma machine. These are all by Stephenson, and great so I usually let people negotiate me down into suggesting these, which are all incredibly brain-expanding, (and not 3,000 pages.)

List5 - Books Part I

My friend Roach has a great site in which he asks friends to make lists of five things that answer his prompt - List5.

I respond there a good bit and will post some of that here. His latest is very appealing to me, but I must grade papers. So I'll post what I've written so far.
Works of literature you suggest others read is the latest.
I. Great Topic. (This is in my wheelhouse.)
It also made me quickly realize that I am an evangelist for science fiction & fantasy. Not just from a geek point-of-view, which I clearly have, but because it deals with big ideas, things I euphemistically call “manly ideas”, like justice, loyalty, & responsibility that can seem pedantic or contrived in non-speculative fiction, but seem to make such good sense in science fiction. (I read a book reviewer recently who suggested that this is because mainstream novels have become more small & personal in recent years.) I recently read The Road and I’ve decided this is why Cormac McCarthy is so popular. He writes about manly themes and has used the western as a framework for putting those ideas in the mainstream in the past. I thought The Road was good but not great, but he took very traditional, almost trite, sci-fi ideas about an apocalypse and then used them to study a man struggling to make a better life for his son, while barely hanging on to his own humanity and life. And people love it because it is a “manly” story, but by using the science fiction framework, it was more acceptable than a straight-forward, modern story. But I digress… and I could be full of it.

My other blogs

At SpecFic: from Popular Mechanics The 10 Most Prophetic Sci-Fi Movies Ever

At "I'd offer you some...": The son of illegal immigrants, American wrestler hoists his (the American) flag with pride - link.

A sci-fi fix

io9 has turned out to be a good source, mostly of movie and tv stuff.
tor.com just arrived - a lot of great book and short story oriented stuff (they are a publisher, after all).

Mid-June Report

- Finally got the lawn tractor running and rolling properly (new belt/fix-a-flat) and mowed down by the road. Still have the pasture to go.
- Finished teaching the first two weeks of summer school and have begun to judiciously spend my hard-won lucre.
- Visited my Dad at the VA Hospital in Birmingham a couple of times. The heart/fluid issue seems to be getting resolved.
- I'm considering reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy, despite its popularity.
- We've added a couple of Greek Tortoises, who may well get a 'Turtle Table' today, while the Box Turtle & the Redfoot are enjoying the newly expanded 'Turtle Corral' outside.
- Started reading Naming the World and other exercises for the creative writer.
- Have continued to work out consistently - did 25 minutes on the hated elliptical trainer.
- Found an incredible Shatner spokenword/ST:TAS mashup video - Common People.

Tuesday already.

Teaching: Grinding toward the end of Reconstruction and then our exam.
Car Improvement: Flat tire on the Sentra yesterday evening. Got a tire instead of breakfast and put it on at lunch. Massive improvement.
Writing: I've been fiddling with the end of my latest story and think I'm done. I'll start submitting it very soon.
Reading: I've been working through the Sci-Fi collection I picked up.
TV & Movies: Watched the first two episodes of Season Four of Battlestar Galactica over the weekend.
Exercising: Put off Sunday's workout 'til yesterday, and then the flat tire. Must work out. Update: Had a great workout - sore & exhausted.

Monday 5/5

Teaching: Notes from Vicksburg to The Wilderness Campaign, with a great reading of the Gettysburg Address by Sam Waterston from Ken Burns Civil War
Home Improvement: Fixed the mower by removing the deck housings and repositioning the belt. Mowed the side & front up until dark.
Writing: I've started typing my short urban fantasy story, and will try to finish that in a bit.
Reading: finished up “In the House of the Seven Librarians” by Ellen Klages from The Best Science Fiction And Fantasy Of The Year Volume 1 (Spring 2007).
TV & Movies: Over the weekend I re-watched the first 13 episodes of Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica with Clyde Squid. The show is relentless. It rips you apart every episode, makes you cringe and makes you want to save the human race from the Cylons, all at the same time.
Internet: Mostly Civil War stuff for my notes - some cool stuff on the Unionist unit - 1st Alabama Cavalry, U.S. Volunteers
Animal Kingdom: Turtles, frogs, chameleons, snakes, dogs, cats all living the high life.
Exercising: Completed my fourth workout, did two 7-minute rides on the exercise bike and one set of eight exercises for 10 reps, but I'm nearing limit on weight and will move to two sets and then up weight and go for periodization. 175x10 on bench - easily done. Getting very close to actually working out.

Soon

Battlestar Galactica

Weds./Thurs. in Review

Teaching: Getting ready for next week - the week before spring break and after state testing - the kids will be soo focused - one more day of babysitting
Home Improvement: I've spent a lot of time on puppy toxic waste lately.
Writing, Reading: I've got to get off the couch & out from in front of the monitor
TV, Movies: Finished up Firefly with my captive kids during testing/babysitting and will finish Serenity today.
Internet: Another fine Gary Gygax tribute at xkcd.
Exercising: Fail

Monday Night Home Improvement

Teaching: No teaching (Grad Exams) but I did make a list of the most frequently used subs, which should be quite popular with the faculty.
Home Improvement: The hall bedroom is cleaned out and setup for visitors (and more storage).
Internet: Looked at the scifi trade journal Locus this evening. It led me to SFSite, which is largely book/story reviews. Also to FantasyBookSpot and the bookslut scifi column.
Exercising: Worked my butt off around the house.
Tobermory worked late - now off to bed.

Sunday Morning Coming Down

Had a good day.
- Tobermory's cellphone is up and running and I guess mine is to. The downside of teh 21st century - ubiquitous access to info means that people expect to be able to reach you too. ugh.
- We went to a reptile-oriented Pet store in Madison - Animal Trax.
- Followed up at the Booklegger and finished up collecting the Wheel of Time oeuvre with the New Spring prequel. Let's hope George RR Martin finishes his...
- Ate at Macaroni Grill. Certainly my favorite chain restaurant. Had a Guinness Draft.
- Dropped by Mamaw's (ma'am-aw) place yesterday to wish her a Happy 81st birthday. She was born in 1927.
- Fell asleep on the couch with the dogs...
- Continued to wrangle Thisbe & Ada. They are getting along better, but sleeping (for me) is still iffy.
- Walked a mile with Thisbe this morning.