jmcgready’s misc universe

“The Zenith Angle” (Bruce Sterling)

Technorati Tags: books, Bruce Sterling, Literary

Technorati Tags: observations, tags

Link:

Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms.

No government in history has been known to evade this pattern.

And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class –

whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.

Politics as Repeat Phenomenon:

Bene Gesserit Training Manual

Children of Dune

{tags, observations, Politics, stuff}

Technorati Tags: bene gesserit, congress, corruption, miserable failure, politics, oligarchy

Technorati Tags: observations, Politics, tags

Essay Essay Essay | Essays and then some:

We have collected high quality Free Essays, Term Papers & Book Reports from thousands of students all over the world.

Our dedication to helping students in their quest of higher education has been a fun and exciting experience.

EssayEssayEssay.com provides a Free service that allows students to have access to a large resource of information on many topics.

Please view our Acceptable Use Policy.

We Only ask that if you use our resources that you also contribute a paper or two from your collection to help build our community.

{strange stuff, life, Literary, tags}

Technorati Tags: books, term paper

Technorati Tags: books, life, Literary, strange stuff, tags, term paper

Technorati Tags: books, life, Literary, strange stuff, tags, term paper

Technorati Tags: tags

pretty straightforward, really

William Blake died on this day in 1827

From Wikipedia:

Viewing Blake’s accomplishments in either poetry or in the visual arts separately is to do him a disservice;

Blake himself saw these two disciplines as being companions in a unified spiritual endeavour, and they are inseparable in a proper appreciation of his work.

His life is, perhaps, summed up by his statement that

“The imagination is not a State: it is the Human existence itself”;

though this alone may not do justice to his thought.

“The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake” (William Blake, William Golding)

Thomas Mann died on this day in 1955

From Wikipedia:

Paul Thomas Mann (June 6, 1875 – August 12, 1955) was a German novelist, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate,

lauded principally for a series of highly symbolic and often ironic epic novels and mid-length stories,

noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and intellectual.

He is noted for his analysis and critique of the European and German soul in the beginning of the 20th century,

using modernized German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer.

“The Magic Mountain (Vintage International)” (Thomas Mann)

{tags, art, Literary}

Technorati Tags: fearful symmetry, thomas mann, william blake

Technorati Tags: tags

Alex Haley was born on this day in 1921

From Wikipedia:

One of Haley’s most famous interviews was a 1963 interview with Malcolm X for Playboy, which led to collaboration on the activist’s autobiography.

Haley later ghostwrote The Autobiography of Malcolm X, based on interviews conducted shortly before Malcolm’s death (and with an epilogue).

The book was published in 1965 and was a huge success, being later named by Time magazine one of the ten most important nonfiction books of the 20th century.

“The Autobiography of Malcolm X : As Told to Alex Haley” (Ballantine Books)

In 1976 Haley published Roots: The Saga of an American Family, a fictionalized account of his family’s history, starting with the story of Kunta Kinte,

kidnapped in Gambia in 1767 to be sold as a slave in the United States. This work involved ten years of research, intercontinental travel and writing.

Haley went to the village of Juffure where Kunta Kinte grew up, which was still in existence, and listened to a tribal historian tell the story of Kinte’s capture.

He was also able to trace records of the ship, The Lord Ligonier, which carried his ancestor to America.

“Roots” (Alex Haley)

He also has a Coast Guard Cutter named after him

{tags, Literary, stuff}

Technorati Tags: alex haley, malcolm x, us coast guard, roots

Technorati Tags: tags

For those really last minute term papers..

Emergency Term Paper Template:

“How To Write Term Papers & Reports 2nd Ed” (McGraw-Hill)

{life, Literary, strange stuff, tags}

Technorati Tags: google, hacks, feel like crap, term paper, stupid human tricks, books, templates

Technorati Tags: books, feel like crap, google, hacks, life, Literary, strange stuff, stupid human tricks, tags, templates, term paper

Technorati Tags: tags

all last weekend, up to (and including) today, Ive been comment spam bombed

by a cadre of scum of the earth, total waste of sperm eastern european poker bots -

Fortunately, I moderate my comments, use the Akismet filter (which learns their spammy ways),

and use some referrer spam countermeasures as well.

such is the dark side of fame (1100+ unique visitors/month)

“Inside the Spam Cartel: Trade Secrets from the Dark Side” (Spammer-X)

{tags, life, Tech Stuff}

Technorati Tags: comment spam, akismet, referrer spam, corruption, hacks, strange stuff, Tech Stuff, annoying

Technorati Tags: tags

I’ve been obsessed with Blogshares as of late -

I’ve even signed up as a premium member….

But what is Blogshares?

BlogShares is a fantasy stock market for weblogs.

Players get to invest a fictional $500, and blogs are valued by incoming links.

Players make money by trading stocks and and doing other things.

well today, my portfolio just reached the $1B BS$(Blogshares$) mark….

I’ve played an eccentric billionaire on stage,

now I’m a Blogshares billlionaire (definitely eccentric),

in real life, I’m not there yet….

{tags, life, money, stuff}

Technorati Tags: fantasy stock trading, blogshares, life, strange stuff, tags, Tech Stuff

Technorati Tags: tags

I like it so far, and I assume I’ll like it all, as I do most of what he writes.

“Distraction” (Bruce Sterling)

It’s 2044 A.D. and America has gone to the dogs. The federal government is broke and, with 16 political parties fighting for power, things aren’t likely to improve soon.

The Air Force, short on funding, is setting up roadblocks to shake down citizens and disguising its tactics as a bake sale.

The governor of Louisiana, Green Huey, is engaging in illegal genetic research and has set up his own private biker army.

The newly elected president of the U.S., Leonard Two Feathers, is considering a declaration of war against the Netherlands,

a country that finds itself half under water due to global warming.

Trying desperately to hold things together is Oscar Valparaiso, political consultant and spin doctor extraordinaire,

who has just engineered the election of a new liberal senator for the state of Massachusetts,

only to discover that his boss suffers from severe bipolar disorder.

Looking for a new challenge, Oscar takes a job with the U.S. Senate Science Committee.

His first assignment is to investigate the scandal-ridden Collaboratory, a gigantic, spaceshiplike federal lab in East Texas.

Oscar, himself the result of an illegal Colombian cloning experiment, immediately falls head over heels for a gawky but brilliant young Nobel laureate,

with whom he sets out to save both the lab and the nation from Green Huey.

In his latest novel (after Holy Fire), Sterling once again proves himself the reigning master of near-future political SF.

This is a powerful and, at times, very funny novel that should add significantly to Sterling’s already considerable reputation.

Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

{tags, Literary, observations}

Technorati Tags: Bruce Sterling, politics, science fiction

Technorati Tags: observations, tags

Turkey City Lexicon:

From Bruce Sterling’s foreword:

We now come to the core of this piece, the SF Workshop Lexicon. This lexicon was compiled by Mr Lewis Shiner and myself

from the work of many writers and critics over many years of genre history, and it contains buzzwords, notions and critical terms of direct use to SF workshops.

The first version, known as the “Turkey City Lexicon” after the Austin, Texas writers’ workshop that was a cradle of cyberpunk, appeared in 1988.

In proper ideologically-correct cyberpunk fashion, the Turkey City Lexicon was distributed unCopyrighted and free-of-charge:

a decommodified, photocopied chunk of free literary software.

Lewis Shiner still thinks that this was the best deployment of an effort of this sort, and thinks I should stop fooling around with this fait accompli.

After all, the original Lexicon remains unCopyrighted, and it has been floating around in fanzines, prozines and computer networks for seven years now.

I respect Lew’s opinion, and in fact I kind of agree with him. But I’m an ideologue, congenitally unable to leave well-enough alone.

In September 1990 I re-wrote the Lexicon as an installment in my critical column for the British magazine INTERZONE.

When Robin Wilson asked me to refurbish the Lexicon yet again for PARAGONS, I couldn’t resist the temptation.

I’m always open to improvements and amendments for the Lexicon.

It seems to me that if a document of this sort fails to grow it will surely become a literary monument, and, well, heaven forbid.

For what it’s worth, I plan to re-release this latest edition to the Internet at the first opportunity.

You can email me about it: I’m “mailto:bruces@well.com”.

Some Lexicon terms are attributed to their originators, when I could find them; others are not, and I apologize for my ignorance.

Science fiction boasts many specialized critical terms.

You can find a passel of these in Gary K Wolfe’s CRITICAL TERMS FOR SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY: A GLOSSARY AND GUIDE TO SCHOLARSHIP

(Greenwood Press, 1986). But you won’t find them in here.

This lexicon is not a guide to scholarship. The Workshop Lexicon is a guide (of sorts) for down-and-dirty hairy-knuckled sci-fi writers,

the kind of ambitious subliterate guttersnipes who actually write and sell professional genre material.

It’s rough, rollicking, rule-of-thumb stuff suitable for shouting aloud while pounding the table.

sample entries:

And plot

Picaresque plot in which this happens, and then that happens, and then something else happens, and it all adds up to nothing in particular

Plot Coupons

The basic building blocks of the quest-type fantasy plot. The “hero” collects sufficient plot coupons (magic sword, magic book, magic cat)

to send off to the author for the ending. Note that “the author” can be substituted for “the Gods” in such a work:

“The Gods decreed he would pursue this quest.”

Right, mate. The author decreed he would pursue this quest until sufficient pages were filled to procure an advance. (Dave Langford)

{tags, life, Literary}

Technorati Tags: Bruce Sterling, essays

Technorati Tags: tags