Just Finished: Salt

While in Canada, I picked up a number of SF books by writers I’d never read before or, in some cases, even heard of. One of them was the novel Salt by Adam Roberts (who, it seems, has a web page here). I picked up this book used, and I did so mainly because it was published by Gollancz, which, if I recall correctly, put out work by Greg Egan. Salt, as Roberts himself describes on his page, is a novel about depression, about a psychological state that finds its correlative in the bleak landscape of the world, about a …

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Damned Canadians in Korea

The Marmot’s got a post up about yet another idiot Canadian in Korea. You know, Americans have a bad rap internationally, and though I wish I could agree with my friend Jessie that Canadians aren’t really as internationally beloved as they like to think they are, I do find a lot of Koreans more positive about Canada and Canadians than they are about the USA and American citizens. It’s sad, really. When I came over to Korea, I was surprised to find so many Canadians here. At first, I took shared nationality as a kind of sign that, well, I …

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Shika Asked…

Someone named Shika asked me for info about the blog blockage and ways around it. I should mention that some of the blog blockage, if not all of it, is over. Let’s see: Blogspot pages are loading. Livejournal pages are loading. Mu.nu pages are loading. I think the blog blockage is actually over. Of course, to quote a Chinese dissident I read somewhere once, “You know that when they ‘loosen up’ it only means they can ‘tighten-up’ again when it suits them…” But for now, it doesn’t look like any blog blockage workaround tech is needed. Still, in case there …

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Oh, Wouldn’t It Be Nice…?

In this week’s Friday Five, Laura picked out another big Green Booger, and on it was written the following question: I think the greatest tragedy of the world is that dragons don’t exist. What are the five things you really wish were true – and do you believe in them? Ah, there are so many answers to this that I have in my mind. I’ve been talking about it, actually, lately, as it comes up in political discussions and other chats around the camp, and so I have a few answers in mind. People pursue their own self-interests. Look around …

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