Category: Not-politics

As promised, Scalzi goes after Star Trek’s design failures.

For a given value of ‘little.’ A taste:

V’Ger
In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, a Voyager space probe gets sucked into a black hole and survives (GAAAAH), and is discovered by denizens of a machine planet who think the logical thing to do is to take a bus-size machine with the processing power of a couple of Speak and Spells and upgrade it to a spaceship the size of small moon, wrap that in an energy field the size of a solar system, and then send it merrily on its way. This is like you assisting a brain-damaged raccoon trapped on a suburban traffic island by giving him Ecuador.

(Via Fark Geek) They get better. No discussion of modified tachyon bursts, but the Star Trek holodeck gets its nod.

You know, I liked Foucault’s Pendulum.

This is not the first time that I’ve seen the book casually criticized, and while I’m not actually upset or anything I’m also not exactly sure what was supposed to be the problem with it. You sort of have to assume a certain quirkiness from translations and Foucault’s Pendulum is probably one of the better correctives to conspiracy thinking anyway. Watching one of the characters… well, no spoilers.

Moe Lane

PS: If you’re wondering why nobody ever made a movie out of it, it’s because after The Name of the Rose Eco didn’t want his books turned into films. Which is kind of odd, because that was actually a pretty good adaptation.

Movie of the Week: Call of Cthulhu.

It being Wednesday, we say goodbye to Coraline as Movie of the Week. A judicious amount of luck, patience, and willingness to give a new Amazon bookseller a shot allowed me to acquire Thomas Harlan’s Land of the Dead at enough of a discount for me to actually afford it, so we’ll celebrate the occasion by declaring The Call of Cthulhu to replace it.

Yeah, Harlan’s writing Mythos books. I’m also starting to suspect that so is Charlie Stross, with his Merchant Princes series.

I suggest a radio collar.

It’s the only way to be sure.

Bolingbrook hiker rescued in Alaska — again — after journey into wild

[snip]

“If police see me (hiking) in the woods, they’re going to arrest me,” a rueful [Don] Carroll said during a cell phone interview Tuesday.

It was the second time this summer that Carroll had to be rescued. He got lost in June after climbing Mount Healy in Denali National Park.

“The chief ranger said he’s not going to come looking for me anymore,” Carroll said.

I don’t begrudge money to park rangers and/or rescue programs, but when you get lost in the woods for the second time through lack of planning you are, indeed, what @eddiebear said.  Hence the radio collar: because I don’t think that you can quite count on this kid to bring a GPS unit the next time he goes outside…

Moe Lane