Lost Nomad noted: In an attempt to prevent suicides among the military, guards in rear areas will be issued rubber bullets instead of real ones. And further noted that this doesn’t address the causes of the suicides. From what older students have told me of what they had to endure while doing their mandatory service, there’s a lot of crap like hazing and abuse by superiors that could drive some people to the ultimate attempt to escape. Unfortunately, as one commenter noted, rubber bullets can be quite damaging at close range, so I’m not sure what this will achieve. More …
Month: November 2006
I Love Geeks
I studied electronic music in University, but never devoted much time to the fascinating subject. But I am glad that some people are still fiddling and messing around with it, in new and weird ways. Like the guy on YouTube who’s experimenting with Max/MSP to use water as a control device for music: The guy’s webpage is here.
The Other Projects in My Folders…
My last post was about stories being tracked in my sidebar. But I have folders full of other stuff. Those other projects in my drafts box, I thought I’d mention just to keep myself honest, and to amuse those curious about what kinds of things I’m writing about. 4. Refugees (short story): A spooky response to the Fermi Paradox that starts with a sudden reception of a signal from a civilization about 1000 light years away, and gets compounded by the sudden, highly-visible, and (relatively) slow front of a wave of interstellar refugees through close visible space. 5. AI Ghost …
The Mouldering Projects
I keep a couple of project bars open on my sidebar to keep myself humble, but it’s been a few months for some of them, and the stories are still in draft mode. I thought I’d write notes on a couple of them, if for no other purpose than to roll them around in my head the way one mulls some homemade wine to decide whether it’s decent or swill. 1. The Egan Thief: This story concept is actually inspired by a true story, which I related to my classmates at Clarion West. I was working on the first novel …
Flandersland
To those Canadians and other Commonwealthers among you, you might remember that today is Remembrance Day. I was explaining this to a Korean friend I met today, and I said, “You know, when they commemorate all the young men being shipped off to Europe and the Pacific and North Africa to die. There are gymnasiums full of Canadian kids right now, listening to speeches and explanations of the War.” And I wondered, to myself, whether some of the kids are thinking that the teachers and old guys are talking about Iraq. I certainly had no real idea which war was …