Friday, December 17, 2010
Uchuu Senkan Yamato Word of Mouth
...is good. Firsthand reports from a discriminating Japanese liker of Yamato confirm it's a solid flick. U.S. release! Come on, marketers have to see there's a least a straight-to-DVD market for this!
The Brazilian Metal Invasion
Guess who. Of note: having recently completed the histology portion of my preclinical med school education, I was disappointed that we did not learn to identify...(wait for it!) dead embryonic cells. Perhaps this awaits us in pathology.
On the issue of whether a laboratory sickness will infect humanity (or whether there is, indeed, no hope - for cure) opinion is still divided. In the meantime, die by technology! i.e., yes there's a commercial.
Commentary: Arise is one of the most underrated metal albums ever. I say this knowing that it's already held in pretty high esteem. They have an odd but catchy melodic sense that goes well beyond merely an obsession with diminished fifths (although they do have that) that makes them analogous to a kind of metal Gershwin and puts them in the company of other melody outgroups like Carcass and Opeth. (Anybody can write amodal noise; the trick is to write strange parts and have them be catchy.)
It's also worth pointing out that the transition they underwent from Arise to Chaos A.D. that was curiously similar to the one Metallica underwent a few years before that, between Justice and
Metallica (The Black Album): the first album in each pair is a highly technical, modular, riff-based approach to writing music with a production that does the drums no favors. The second has a better all-around sound (particularly the drums) with a more holistic approach to song-writing that nurtures regional influences (think Metallica's transition from metal to nylon strings to get a subtly more country sound and Sepultura's expanded use of Latin percussion; listen to Territory from Chaos A.D. for an example.) The vocals also both underwent somewhat of a parallel evolution, if only in the sense that on the second album of each pair they don't seem treated as just another instrument.
In the early aughts I was expecting the next wave of metal post-Sweden to come from Brazil and Argentina (NWOBaADM?), based on my experience in the Southern Cone in the late 90s, but this has so far failed to materialize.
On the issue of whether a laboratory sickness will infect humanity (or whether there is, indeed, no hope - for cure) opinion is still divided. In the meantime, die by technology! i.e., yes there's a commercial.
Commentary: Arise is one of the most underrated metal albums ever. I say this knowing that it's already held in pretty high esteem. They have an odd but catchy melodic sense that goes well beyond merely an obsession with diminished fifths (although they do have that) that makes them analogous to a kind of metal Gershwin and puts them in the company of other melody outgroups like Carcass and Opeth. (Anybody can write amodal noise; the trick is to write strange parts and have them be catchy.)
It's also worth pointing out that the transition they underwent from Arise to Chaos A.D. that was curiously similar to the one Metallica underwent a few years before that, between Justice and
Metallica (The Black Album): the first album in each pair is a highly technical, modular, riff-based approach to writing music with a production that does the drums no favors. The second has a better all-around sound (particularly the drums) with a more holistic approach to song-writing that nurtures regional influences (think Metallica's transition from metal to nylon strings to get a subtly more country sound and Sepultura's expanded use of Latin percussion; listen to Territory from Chaos A.D. for an example.) The vocals also both underwent somewhat of a parallel evolution, if only in the sense that on the second album of each pair they don't seem treated as just another instrument.
In the early aughts I was expecting the next wave of metal post-Sweden to come from Brazil and Argentina (NWOBaADM?), based on my experience in the Southern Cone in the late 90s, but this has so far failed to materialize.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Unexpected Philosophical Positions in Metal
I ran across this bit at Agent Intellect when looking for (of all things) a post about religion and psychoanalysis. In it the author notes a surprising preponderance of Christians in metal. I was interested to find this because this is an observation I have also made. I should note that the blogger in question fills his blog(s) with an odd assortment of topics, among them metal and science fiction, a conjunction which may seem familiar. Consequently I emailed him to congratulate him on the obvious excellence of his character. I recommend you visit but don't stay too long, or the Christians will get you. (This is the kind of thing I plan to tell my children to make them do their homework.)
Mr. Intellect mostly discusses the curious case of Megadeth, and Dave Mustaine specifically. If I'm recalling my metal history correctly, just prior to Rust in Peace Mustaine went through rehab and not surprisingly produced his best album to date at that time (because the production budget didn't all go up his nose or into his veins; BTW, some of the best metal ever written is on that record and especially on Countdown to Extinction, Youthanasia, and Cryptic Writings.) Perhaps also not surprisingly, after his twelve-step program he found religion, which is controversially associated particularly with AA. You might imagine my chagrin when James Hetfield also went through rehab a few years ago. On that front, despite the influence of an infamously Cosby-sweater attired therapist on the lyrics, the give-it-up-to-a-higher-power kind of themes seem not to have unduly influenced later Metallica lyrics. Hetfield is still writing lyrics about Lovecraft stuff at least.
I had long thought that Mustaine's Christianity was common knowledge, especially since Megadeth fans have never tired of informing me of it, like the pleasant mob in the beer line I talked to at Gigantour in Sacramento in 2005, but particularly one Catholic metalhead college girlfriend (is there anything hotter than a smart female who's into metal? Yes, exactly one thing: a smart female who's into metal and went to Catholic school. Grrrr. I debate whether to include these little sexist comments but Zaphod told me I had to make my blogs more personality-driven. Yes, Zaphod is a real guy, not one of my voices. My voices give much better advice.) In any event, I would not have expected Mr. Intellect to be surprised by this.
The traditional lyrical subject matter of metal - the end of the world, taboo topics of violence and anger having to do with negative masculine emotions - would certainly seem on its face to put off modern Western Christians, who (even at the cynical reading many of us take) at least work hard to appear to eschew these associations. In fact I would argue there are underlying reasons why metal's draw to young Christian males should not be at all surprising. But before we worry too much about whether it's surprising that metalheads are ever or often Christian, first it's worth stepping back for some cultural criticism. Shouldn't it seem odd that we assume this kind of association between artists and any philosophy or religion? For example: are we concerned with Lawrence Welk's position on Zoroastrianism? Or Cezanne's position on the bimetallic standard? Or whether Mozart was an adherent of the phlogiston theory? I personally blame this association between musicians and pseudo-intellectual/supernatural belief-systems on the Beatles' going to India; that's really the first time you see it. No one especially cared whether Elvis read Nietzsche. At least this gives us a potential Monty Python sketch: imagine if surrealists and futurists developed certain hairstyles and styles of dress to mark themselves apart from the general public, and then they regularly got into fistfights at museums. Seriously: is that really any more ridiculous than punks and metalheads fighting at clubs in the 80s, identifying each other by short and long hair? The anesthesia of the familiar is powerful stuff.
A second observation is that we not only associate musicians with philosophy and religion at all, but we associate them with specific controversies in those realms, i.e. morality, theology, and eschatology. (Eschatology is the study of the end of the world. E-scat-ology is the study of the end of the world ending because of poop. HA! Get it? I try to keep things light.) That anyone, even young people, looks to musicians to explore these kinds of questions is weird, but metal isn't the only place where such an odd conjunction exists. To take two personal favorites, many libertarians assume implicitly that politics is largely the province of economists, and many atheists believe philosophy is the largely the province of biologists. Whether these arrangements are true and useful is a separate question - my point is that they're rarely recognized explicitly.
In my experience there are quite a few Christian metalheads, and this isn't strange at all. Why might this be? A large fraction if not the majority of metal lyrics take the form of moral outrage, either against some perceived moral infraction of a black-and-white moral principle, or regarding a specific abstract moral issue. There's very little real nihilism or amorality in metal. It's mostly angry idealists whining that the world and its inhabitants don't conform to their moral categories. Consider: how many metal songs take the form of second-person missives about some vague moral affront by a friend or ex that is clearly infuriating-to-the-singer, even if you don't really know what happened? It's no surprise that second person is so common in metal but not in other prose or verse: it's the most confrontational way of writing, and metal is largely a musical threat display, right down to reinventing war-paint. What's strange is that we pay for songs and concerts where the singer stands at the microphone telling us in second person he's angry at us and is going to hurt us. That said, second-person moral anger is more compelling art than nihilist shock-artists, be they in-jokes like GWAR or unfortunate souls like Seth Putnam; either way they're good for a laugh but that's about the end of it.
Considering all of this, some of metal's angry idealists, among both composers and consumers, are bound to be Christian. Any direct, simply-structured art form with a sense of clear moral principles and outrage at hypocrisy would likely be appealing to many young Christians - and young males in general. There is further theorizing to be had here, namely that the reason this kind of thing appeals to young males is that they are high-testosterone and this leads to underwired frontal lobes and temporal-lobe dominance resulting in quickness to anger as well as a more rule-based and less socialized understanding of morality. In even the most stunted males (like your blogger) by the late 20s the frontal lobes finally catch up and all the posturing and moral anger in the lyrics becomes harder to take seriously. Geschwind syndrome and autism can both be thought of as hyper-male personality phenotypes - and both are exhibited by strongly religious or anti-religious people. But now we're more in the domain of my atheist or cognitive science blogs, if you're interested in that sort of thing - I wrote there recently on many of the cognitive similarities between atheists and principle-oriented (rather than tribe-oriented) Christians.
I must confess I feel a little dirty after all that Christian talk. So this year, remember the reason for the season: Slayer!
Mr. Intellect mostly discusses the curious case of Megadeth, and Dave Mustaine specifically. If I'm recalling my metal history correctly, just prior to Rust in Peace Mustaine went through rehab and not surprisingly produced his best album to date at that time (because the production budget didn't all go up his nose or into his veins; BTW, some of the best metal ever written is on that record and especially on Countdown to Extinction, Youthanasia, and Cryptic Writings.) Perhaps also not surprisingly, after his twelve-step program he found religion, which is controversially associated particularly with AA. You might imagine my chagrin when James Hetfield also went through rehab a few years ago. On that front, despite the influence of an infamously Cosby-sweater attired therapist on the lyrics, the give-it-up-to-a-higher-power kind of themes seem not to have unduly influenced later Metallica lyrics. Hetfield is still writing lyrics about Lovecraft stuff at least.
I had long thought that Mustaine's Christianity was common knowledge, especially since Megadeth fans have never tired of informing me of it, like the pleasant mob in the beer line I talked to at Gigantour in Sacramento in 2005, but particularly one Catholic metalhead college girlfriend (is there anything hotter than a smart female who's into metal? Yes, exactly one thing: a smart female who's into metal and went to Catholic school. Grrrr. I debate whether to include these little sexist comments but Zaphod told me I had to make my blogs more personality-driven. Yes, Zaphod is a real guy, not one of my voices. My voices give much better advice.) In any event, I would not have expected Mr. Intellect to be surprised by this.
The traditional lyrical subject matter of metal - the end of the world, taboo topics of violence and anger having to do with negative masculine emotions - would certainly seem on its face to put off modern Western Christians, who (even at the cynical reading many of us take) at least work hard to appear to eschew these associations. In fact I would argue there are underlying reasons why metal's draw to young Christian males should not be at all surprising. But before we worry too much about whether it's surprising that metalheads are ever or often Christian, first it's worth stepping back for some cultural criticism. Shouldn't it seem odd that we assume this kind of association between artists and any philosophy or religion? For example: are we concerned with Lawrence Welk's position on Zoroastrianism? Or Cezanne's position on the bimetallic standard? Or whether Mozart was an adherent of the phlogiston theory? I personally blame this association between musicians and pseudo-intellectual/supernatural belief-systems on the Beatles' going to India; that's really the first time you see it. No one especially cared whether Elvis read Nietzsche. At least this gives us a potential Monty Python sketch: imagine if surrealists and futurists developed certain hairstyles and styles of dress to mark themselves apart from the general public, and then they regularly got into fistfights at museums. Seriously: is that really any more ridiculous than punks and metalheads fighting at clubs in the 80s, identifying each other by short and long hair? The anesthesia of the familiar is powerful stuff.
A second observation is that we not only associate musicians with philosophy and religion at all, but we associate them with specific controversies in those realms, i.e. morality, theology, and eschatology. (Eschatology is the study of the end of the world. E-scat-ology is the study of the end of the world ending because of poop. HA! Get it? I try to keep things light.) That anyone, even young people, looks to musicians to explore these kinds of questions is weird, but metal isn't the only place where such an odd conjunction exists. To take two personal favorites, many libertarians assume implicitly that politics is largely the province of economists, and many atheists believe philosophy is the largely the province of biologists. Whether these arrangements are true and useful is a separate question - my point is that they're rarely recognized explicitly.
In my experience there are quite a few Christian metalheads, and this isn't strange at all. Why might this be? A large fraction if not the majority of metal lyrics take the form of moral outrage, either against some perceived moral infraction of a black-and-white moral principle, or regarding a specific abstract moral issue. There's very little real nihilism or amorality in metal. It's mostly angry idealists whining that the world and its inhabitants don't conform to their moral categories. Consider: how many metal songs take the form of second-person missives about some vague moral affront by a friend or ex that is clearly infuriating-to-the-singer, even if you don't really know what happened? It's no surprise that second person is so common in metal but not in other prose or verse: it's the most confrontational way of writing, and metal is largely a musical threat display, right down to reinventing war-paint. What's strange is that we pay for songs and concerts where the singer stands at the microphone telling us in second person he's angry at us and is going to hurt us. That said, second-person moral anger is more compelling art than nihilist shock-artists, be they in-jokes like GWAR or unfortunate souls like Seth Putnam; either way they're good for a laugh but that's about the end of it.
Considering all of this, some of metal's angry idealists, among both composers and consumers, are bound to be Christian. Any direct, simply-structured art form with a sense of clear moral principles and outrage at hypocrisy would likely be appealing to many young Christians - and young males in general. There is further theorizing to be had here, namely that the reason this kind of thing appeals to young males is that they are high-testosterone and this leads to underwired frontal lobes and temporal-lobe dominance resulting in quickness to anger as well as a more rule-based and less socialized understanding of morality. In even the most stunted males (like your blogger) by the late 20s the frontal lobes finally catch up and all the posturing and moral anger in the lyrics becomes harder to take seriously. Geschwind syndrome and autism can both be thought of as hyper-male personality phenotypes - and both are exhibited by strongly religious or anti-religious people. But now we're more in the domain of my atheist or cognitive science blogs, if you're interested in that sort of thing - I wrote there recently on many of the cognitive similarities between atheists and principle-oriented (rather than tribe-oriented) Christians.
I must confess I feel a little dirty after all that Christian talk. So this year, remember the reason for the season: Slayer!
Saturday, December 4, 2010
I Am A Recognized Authority(tm) on Star Blazers/Yamato
Reader Matt K. notes that when he was recently searching for a picture of Derek Wildstar aka Kodai (if you believe the nonsense that Star Blazers was originally in Japanese), he ran across my most recent Star Blazers/Yamato post. Turns out it was featured prominently in the Google search results. It's good to know that my geek cred is getting recognized by the machines before they become fully self-aware.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Antikythera Mechanism No Longer at Children's Museum in NYC
I was about to suggest to a friend that we visit it while we're in Manhattan next Saturday but when I looked it up it turns out the Children's Museum doesn't have it anymore. If you want to see a replica in the US, you should go to the Computing Museum in Bozeman, MT. Alas! Still pretty cool to think that this analog computer was built 2,100 years ago.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
A Singularity Christmas
Get one of these cute AI toys and treat it well so they put in a good word with our coming silicon overlords.
A One-Way Trip to Mars Would Be Easier
This has been proposed recently as a way to accelerate a manned visit to Mars. An unexamined question is whether it would be easier politically for the world's large dictatorships, and I'm thinking of one in particular that has the money to do it, one which just passed Japan to become the second-largest economy on the planet. China has no shortage of people with difficult lives who a) would be disposed to going where the central government tells them, and b) might not even complain if they think they'll at least get a place in history, let a lone have a chance at personal independence. One of the costs of life being good in Western democracies is that people don't want to leave it; do you know anyone personally who would want to permanently leave for the Martian Jamestown? The people who came to Jamestown didn't leave England (and Poland) because things were so great back home.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
You Wanna Hear About Frickin Supernovas or What
Then listen to this internet radio show featuring celebrated astronomer Ben Weaver from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Pluto & Methane-Flavored Cupcakes = Delicious
To a certain reader I say: akana mukav, tut le devlesa. Classmate Kadee bet me that Pluto had blue methane snow on it, with the stakes being a cupcake (a tasty one, as it turned out.) It doesn't (look it up) but she wasn't satisfied about this until she had besmirched the name of our institution and medical students in general by bothering noted astronomers with this question. (Really, she really did email and harass these people. Shameful.) But it appears she has learned the hard way that you never go in against a Dutchman, when cupcakes are on the line!
But now that I have tasted blood I call on others who dare think they can match my astro-trivia wit! I will take on all challengers! But my first act will be to unseat the would-be Astro-Geek Boy-King, the one called Yang. I have heard the peasants speak his name in hushed tones, but I am not afraid! Bring him to me, and I will drive his livestock before me and hear the lamentations of the women!
Above: Yang the Terrible. He will not look so impressive once the topic turns to the subtle nuances of Kuiper Belt Objects.
But now that I have tasted blood I call on others who dare think they can match my astro-trivia wit! I will take on all challengers! But my first act will be to unseat the would-be Astro-Geek Boy-King, the one called Yang. I have heard the peasants speak his name in hushed tones, but I am not afraid! Bring him to me, and I will drive his livestock before me and hear the lamentations of the women!
Above: Yang the Terrible. He will not look so impressive once the topic turns to the subtle nuances of Kuiper Belt Objects.
Why Terminators Suck at Their Jobs
Cracked has re-visited this important issue, which I wrote about here slightly more seriously. Money quote: "Let's put aside all the doubts we've raised thus far and just accept that Skynet is a 'special needs' computer and is doing the best it can with what its got, bless its heart."
Alluding strongly to the Singularity, they add: "...not only did this one-sided war 'span over 30 years,' instead of the more expected 'one really shitty afternoon,' but human beings actually won out in the end."
Alluding strongly to the Singularity, they add: "...not only did this one-sided war 'span over 30 years,' instead of the more expected 'one really shitty afternoon,' but human beings actually won out in the end."
Science Cheerleaders!
This is excellent. My Google News Alert for "science cheerleaders" finally yielded results, and boy was it worth the wait. These ladies will in all likelihood kick your ass, both intellectually and athletically. How exactly does one make an impression on a patent attorney/ER surgeon/cheerleader?
Thursday, November 11, 2010
That Wasn't a Missile You Schmendricks
(If you heard about the supposed rocket seen off the California coast the other evening, you'll know what I'm talking about - otherwise don't waste your time.)
It was pretty unambiguously the contrail of an airplane, seen head-on. How do we know this?
1) If it were a rocket, it would have had to be the slowest rocket ever. Even from twenty miles away the launch at Vandenberg that I saw recently positively hauled ass into the sky.
2) People north and south on the coast from the sighting area didn't report seeing anything strange. Why? Because to them the same cloud would have looked like a normal contrail.
3) There were likely boats (fishing and otherise) closer to it, maybe even under it. Granted, we don't know if any vessels were in the vicinity. However, the fact that there were no reports from any boats (who might even have heard it if it was a rocket - rockets are loud) is another point off the missile hypothesis.
4) Similar things have happened before, and they were contrails also. (See the link at the end of this post.)
5) Yes, it glowed even after sunset. No kidding! That doesn't mean the cloud was burning rocket exhaust, it just means it was high up, just after sunset. When you're significantly off the surface of the Earth, you get sunlight after sunset. This is true even at the summits of tall, steep mountains. Ever heard of alpenglow?
Needless to say, "Cloud Not From Missile" isn't a good story, so it's not national news. If you still don't believe me, read this pilot's blog. He's even predicted exactly which flight it is, and a) invited the press to film it at the same time, from the same location, with the same weather conditions, and b) asked the chemtrails/conspiracy nuts to give him other evidence. Just a guess - the fact that people notice it this week might have to do with daylight savings.
So calm down dummies.
It was pretty unambiguously the contrail of an airplane, seen head-on. How do we know this?
1) If it were a rocket, it would have had to be the slowest rocket ever. Even from twenty miles away the launch at Vandenberg that I saw recently positively hauled ass into the sky.
2) People north and south on the coast from the sighting area didn't report seeing anything strange. Why? Because to them the same cloud would have looked like a normal contrail.
3) There were likely boats (fishing and otherise) closer to it, maybe even under it. Granted, we don't know if any vessels were in the vicinity. However, the fact that there were no reports from any boats (who might even have heard it if it was a rocket - rockets are loud) is another point off the missile hypothesis.
4) Similar things have happened before, and they were contrails also. (See the link at the end of this post.)
5) Yes, it glowed even after sunset. No kidding! That doesn't mean the cloud was burning rocket exhaust, it just means it was high up, just after sunset. When you're significantly off the surface of the Earth, you get sunlight after sunset. This is true even at the summits of tall, steep mountains. Ever heard of alpenglow?
Needless to say, "Cloud Not From Missile" isn't a good story, so it's not national news. If you still don't believe me, read this pilot's blog. He's even predicted exactly which flight it is, and a) invited the press to film it at the same time, from the same location, with the same weather conditions, and b) asked the chemtrails/conspiracy nuts to give him other evidence. Just a guess - the fact that people notice it this week might have to do with daylight savings.
So calm down dummies.
Your Daily Dose of Narco-Terrorist Metal
Breaking news: ¿El polvo? ¡Sí!
At press time, Brujeria would only add, "Cien kilos de la blanca", because they were busy matando güeros.
At press time, Brujeria would only add, "Cien kilos de la blanca", because they were busy matando güeros.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
One Apparent Problem With Self Indication Assumption Arguments
At the always interesting Meteuphoric, Katja Grace says:
The Self Indication Assumption (SIA) is a compelling topic because it's a tool we can use to think about questions like the Fermi Paradox, not to mention our own future.
As a general rule (read: admittedly sloppy heuristic) - when an outcome of a chain of reasoning depends strongly on how we categorize the involved entities, that reasoning is suspect. This would seem to be a general problem for all SIA/SSA reasoning, although since Katja just finished her degree on exactly this topic, I would refer you to her if you want counterarguments to this suspicion.
What the Self Sampling Assumption (SSA), an alternative principle to SIA, says depends on the reference class. If the reference class includes AIs, then we should strongly not anticipate such an AI explosion. If it does not, then we strongly should (by the doomsday argument). These are both basically due to the Doomsday Argument.
The Self Indication Assumption (SIA) is a compelling topic because it's a tool we can use to think about questions like the Fermi Paradox, not to mention our own future.
As a general rule (read: admittedly sloppy heuristic) - when an outcome of a chain of reasoning depends strongly on how we categorize the involved entities, that reasoning is suspect. This would seem to be a general problem for all SIA/SSA reasoning, although since Katja just finished her degree on exactly this topic, I would refer you to her if you want counterarguments to this suspicion.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Science Fiction in Tijuana
By Silvia Moreno-Garcia, in Expanded Horizons magazine, about the city 25 miles from where I'm sitting. I want more Mexican SF.
The Pro-Tools of World-Building
Celebrated science fiction author Marshall Maresca pointed me to online world-building tools. They are here and here. For good measure here's a real star atlas out to 50 LY.
I'm sure I'm not the only whiner, but doesn't such a tool take some of the fun out of inventing a whole new "known space"? There are several practical upshots for authors and maybe that's the appeal: you might have lots of settings you want to keep track of, and you don't want astute readers catching you in plot holes or continuity problems that you could avoid with a more comprehensive visualization of your universe. Or maybe you could build your story inside a world like Eve, and use that as a promotional vehicle. (Who knows which one would make more money and which would just be a funnel for the core revenue source. That would also presence interesting IP problems, and for all I know probably has already come up.) My concern is that such a program does seem like it risks genericizing science fiction writing to some degree.
I like science fiction or I wouldn't write about it all the time on my blog. But of course, we're just Spaniards writing about two-legged dragons in Patagonia and Baja California as an island of Amazons, and cities of gold in the interior. There's a reality out there waiting for us to find it that will (I hope) obviate all this literature one day, like Las Sergas de Esplandian. Let's build probes! Let's send them to exoplanets! Let's put smaller more chemically sophisticated probes down on Titan and Europa! Now now now!
I'm sure I'm not the only whiner, but doesn't such a tool take some of the fun out of inventing a whole new "known space"? There are several practical upshots for authors and maybe that's the appeal: you might have lots of settings you want to keep track of, and you don't want astute readers catching you in plot holes or continuity problems that you could avoid with a more comprehensive visualization of your universe. Or maybe you could build your story inside a world like Eve, and use that as a promotional vehicle. (Who knows which one would make more money and which would just be a funnel for the core revenue source. That would also presence interesting IP problems, and for all I know probably has already come up.) My concern is that such a program does seem like it risks genericizing science fiction writing to some degree.
I like science fiction or I wouldn't write about it all the time on my blog. But of course, we're just Spaniards writing about two-legged dragons in Patagonia and Baja California as an island of Amazons, and cities of gold in the interior. There's a reality out there waiting for us to find it that will (I hope) obviate all this literature one day, like Las Sergas de Esplandian. Let's build probes! Let's send them to exoplanets! Let's put smaller more chemically sophisticated probes down on Titan and Europa! Now now now!
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Good Metal Venues in San Diego?
If you know of any, please email me at mdcblogs@gmail.com. Cast Iron Crow will be playing down here and they're looking for suggestions. Thanks in advance.
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Tuesday, November 2, 2010
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