Linkblogging For 16/07/12
I’ve not been up to writing much the last few days (though I’m hoping at least to get the last Kinks post up this week, and contribute to part four of the Mindless League posts) so here’s a few links:
I forgot to link to it earlier, but Lawrence Burton has started a book blog, mostly looking at SF books, but not from the ‘within SF fandom’ perspective (although he used to be in Doctor Who fandom, but that’s not really the same thing). So far he’s come to the conclusions that Anathem by Neal Stephenson is great until the plot starts happening, that Simon Bucher-Jones is an horrifically underrated writer, and that steampunk is a load of wank, all of which will be familiar conclusions to readers of this blog. All of which suggests that given that he writes the first positive review of Twilight I’ve ever read, I might actually have to read that…
Pharyngula on the infeasibility of ‘whole-brain emulation’. In principle, I’m all in favour of the idea of transhumanism. In practice, it tends to express itself as a lot of extreme right-wing nerds who have been brought up with a fundamentalist eschatology but have decided that they’ve become more ‘rational’ than that, deciding that they’re going to live forever because of SCIENCE!!! (as opposed to science), and with a liberal application of handwavium. Sad, because I would genuinely *love* to see a benevolent technological singularity. I just haven’t ever seen any evidence that one is possible.
Maria Cole, wife of Nat “King” Cole and last surviving singer from the 1940s Ellington band, died recently. Orange Crate Art has a small tribute.
Werdsmiffery on how his opinion of Darwyn Cooke has changed since Before Watchmen
And Liberal Burblings argues (correctly in my view) that if the Tories won’t vote for Lords reform, we should break the coalition and form one with Labour for the rest of this Parliament.
For good and sufficient reasons, I’ve been copying out the tiny blurbs from a Capitol Records inner sleeve and one of the ones was for a Maria Cole LP, treating her choice of husband as being just about the only interesting thing about her.
“Capitol Records takes great pride and pleasure in presenting the talented and beautiful Mrs. Nat King Cole. 12 songs.”
It’s the curt little “12 songs” at the end that gets me.
Thanks for the plug, Andrew! Feel a bit guilty now as having backtracked I realise I bought Anathem on your recommendation. Anyway, whilst I’m here, sorry I haven’t replied due to being too wrapped up with the you-know-what, but excellent news about your own you-know-what. Good to see the future of you-know-who in such capable hands!
No need to apologise — I agreed with a lot of what you had to say. I think my review said something like “the kind of book where you want the ninja fights and spaceships to stop so they’ll get back to talking about maths.”
As for you-know-what, obviously nothing’s set in stone until you-know-who gets back from you-know-where and sends me more notes, but I’m extremely excited.