And I realize now that much of my impression of denseness in Anathem probably had to do with the language and with the rich history that the characters are always referring to. I had to keep referring to the glossary, the chronology, and the earlier chapters of the book for quite some time.

Here's a possibly dangerous analogy: the world in Anathem, in many ways, has a similar richness and complexity as in Tolkien. Just as in Lord of the Rings, you have the physical, cultural, and linguistic relics of thousands of years of history littering the landscape.

Of course, Anathem is nowhere near as accessible as Lord of the Rings, so the comparison isn't really fair. But as an act of worldbuilding, it's one of the best attempts I've seen lately.

I'm about halfway through the book. I'm enjoying it, but it's definitely not for everyone. Even by Stephenson's standards, it's dense. And it's one of those books that has a glossary in back, so it's really slow going for the first hundred pages or so until you get used to the terminology.

But it's fascinating; he's playing around with a host of philosophical, sociological, and linguistic ideas, by placing them in an independently evolved society. It's all recognizable, but slightly skewed from the world we know. I'm looking forward to seeing how it ends.

[www.theonion.com]

The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of, however, is brilliant.

I actually saw this in the theater when it first came out. I remember it being bad. I didn't remember it being quite this bad.

I think, though, that even then, we knew Molly Ringwald was in for great things.

No Moroder, though, please. The 2001 version had an excellent new recording of the original score. It worked beautifully. They need to keep that and expand it.

IMHO, Straczynski should have gone into comics from the beginning. His Spider-man work is by far the best thing he's ever done.

What I think is more important is this: whatever happened on Earth, it happened recently. Very recently.

The soil is still highly radioactive. Ambient radiation from a nuclear blast drops off pretty quickly--within a few weeks--outside of ground zero. Take Hiroshima and Nagasaki: they started rebuilding almost immediately. Yes, there have been highly elevated cancer rates among survivors who were there during the attack, but those who moved in afterward have been fine. They have monuments at the sites that are now major attractions; they're perfectly safe to visit.

And it also looks like there could be a nuclear winter happening (although it could just be a regular northern winter). A nuclear winter would clear up within a few years. It would completely wreck the biosphere, but afterward the weather would return to normal.

So, I think they've arrived in the immediate aftermath of the catastrophe. My theory? After the rebel Cylons joined the human fleet, the other Cylons jumped to Earth ahead of them and annihilated our civilization--possibly with the help of the last of the Five.

About the only way it might work, as far as I can tell, is if the entire series, from beginning to end, takes place in McGoohan's mind, and he is both Number Six and Number One. But that's not clear at all.

Oh, and we thought the missile was really stupid. We both busted out laughing.

Although I'd love to watch the dog and cat try to deal with this. Hee hee hee...

I looked long and hard at the iPhone, but in the end, I just couldn't justify paying that much for that little. Even with the 3G version--which, with AT&T hiking the price $10/month, turns out to be even more expensive than the first generation.

The Centro costs FAR less than the iPhone and uses the same $50/month Sprint plan I had before, and has a robust third-party software market that isn't in thrall to Apple (or constantly fighting against them). And the keyboard, while small, is fine with my thumbs, and I get fewer errors than with the iPhone's virtual keyboard. And I can edit Office documents on the fly.

About the only thing the Centro doesn't have that I would like is GPS, but I can deal.

Oh, and it can shoot video, which the new iPhone STILL can't do.

And, frankly, I'd be happy if they had an ending that made sense. I'd always heard about how bizarre the last episode was, and how people camped out on McGoohan's doorstep demanding explanations that he refused to give. Having seen it now, I completely understand. What the hell was he thinking?

"providers of an essential service joining together to collaboratively hike the price leaving consumers with no viable alternative." (emphasis added)

I think you've hit the nail on the head there. I smell an antitrust lawsuit.

The main reason we've been able to reach the technological level that we have is because of the cheap, convenient energy available from fossil fuels, mainly coal and oil. Much of this exists because of historical accidents, particularly mass extinctions--such as the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs.

These are probably fairly common occurrences, but we don't really know how often it will be that an emerging civilization will have such convenient energy sources available to exploit just when it needs them. And, since we're running out of them ourselves, we have no reason to think that they'll last very long where they do exist.

Add to that the fact that much of our technical infrastructure would have been difficult or impossible to build without petroleum (think rubber, plastics, etc.). Also, it's unclear at best whether we'll be able to maintain our current technological level without fossil fuels.

Given all that, it looks like we may have been pretty damn lucky in being able to advance to where we are in the first place, and there's no telling if we can stay here.

Combine that with distance, timing, and all the other uncertainties in the Drake Equation, and I'm not surprised at all that we haven't found anybody. I'm sure they're out there, but we may never be able to talk to them.

Amazingly, the Pong controllers were better.

I want a higher-rez video, a print of the final product, and a good MP3 of the soundtrack.

But for Eris' sake, NOBODY should be made to read Darwin. As important as his ideas were, the man is an absolutely awful writer. "On the Origin of Species" is one of the most boring books ever written. Stick with his popularizers, like Stephen Jay Gould.

Microsoft has so much money to hire people with actual talent. So why don't they? Why?

I have to go have an acid bath now. Only way to get the smell off.

When my spouse and I went out on our first date, one of the first things we discovered about each other was that we both loved her. This was a major bonding issue.

For geeks with an artistic bent, she's an absolute goddess.

And Bruce Willis can be pretty damn good, if he has good material to work with. Done right, this could be a really great movie.

And Bruce Willis can be pretty damn good if he has good material to work with. Done right, this could be a really great movie.

But questions remain. Will they keep the caste system? The endless sex? Who to play Bernard Marx? Lenina Crowne? Mustapha Mond? And--most of all--what about the worship of Henry Ford?

Am I going to be able to shoot video?

Since Apple doesn't give that option by default, somebody else is going to have to do it, if it's possible. Whether or not it's possible will decide whether I get the iPhone.

Makes sense in many ways; lots of energy, no problems with heat dissipation. But the latency issues always bugged me. If they're orbiting 1 AU from the Sun, round-trip travel time for a signal is at least 33 minutes. Methinks this would be too much of an annoyance.

I actually asked Stross himself about this, and he didn't seem to think it was a problem. But I know it'd bug me.

And while I haven't seen the Pegasus crash yet--waiting on the DVD--I loved the nuking of Cloud 9. I know it's not a crash, but still.

I hate the idea of moving it to New York, though. If you're going to have it anywhere but San Francisco, then why not London? Then you wouldn't have to explain how Wells travels into the future and ends up in a different city. (Which the movie glossed over anyway.)

By the way, laughingacademy, Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen fell in love for real while they were making the movie, and married shortly afterward. Apparently Meyer didn't figure it out until the movie was done. But it explains a lot about their chemistry!

And, while my fellow Blue Blaze Irregulars will lynch me, I wouldn't mind seeing a big-budget Buckaroo Banzai remake. I'd much rather have the promised sequel, though.

About a year ago, I got tired of coming up with nicknames to use online, and I'd been wanting to change my last name for most of my life, so I decided to start using my spouse's name, Eisley. I use the name everywhere online now, and I'm making plans to change it legally this year--and it looks like I'll be the only one.

I've owned brianeisley.com for a while now, and it goes to my LiveJournal blog (which has links to all my profiles). But I'm planning to buy hosting for it when I make the legal change, and I'll set up a nameplate at that time.

Seriously... I've loved Trek since the late seventies, and pretty much stuck with it through all its incarnations (well, until Enterprise). But I honestly couldn't care less about this. It's gotten so damn tired.

Part of me keeps saying, "if they could redo Battlestar Galactica and have it be not only good, but fantastic, then they can redo Trek." But for the most part, I just don't give a damn anymore. I'd much rather have a sequel to Serenity.

But oh well. The new Trek will come out, and it'll probably suck, and they'll try again a few years later, and so on, and so on, until it finally sinks into their collective heads that they need to come up with something NEW. We might even live long enough to see it.

Look at 9/11. All it took was for a bit of the WTC's metal frame to be compromised, and the upper floors began to sink. As soon as that started, it quickly became a runaway collapse. (Assuming you believe the mainstream theory of what happened, which I do.)