Since my last post about readings was February/March, this one is March, Part 1.5. It’s been a busy month, and I’ve also been switching back and forth between a lot of different things, so I hardly read as much as I would like to be able to say I had. However, it’s been a month of very good, worthwhile reading. Picking up from where I left off, I tore through Small Beer Press’ LCRW No. 11, which was sent to me by the lovely and (enviably) talented Tina Connolly. My suspicion that it might be a worthwhile zine to subscribe …
Category: WTF
Accelerando, by Charles Stross
Dear Mr. Stross, You are a godlike being, though the ending left me a little disappointed. However, you are still a freaking godlike being. That is all. Sincerely, Mr. Gord
Hunger by Lan Samantha Chang
This book of short stories and a novella is excellent, mainstream fiction about Chinese-Americans, Chinese in America, America in Chinese, Chinese in China (a little), Chinese in Taiwan (a little)… Chang’s introduction for discussion groups suggests it’s a book full of stories about types of hunger and how they consume families, which makes sense given the title, but to me, it felt more like a book full of oblique (and not-so-oblique) ghost stories. At times it felt a little bit, oh, I don’t know, too skillful, but there was definitely something very respectable about how Chang wrote these stories… definitely …
Not So Bad, For Sometime Tired
Twenty-some minutes on the treadmill and varying paces; some weights for the upper body; about five minutes on the exercycle (I couldn’t handle any more of it); and a bunch of situps. I’ve been havinf aches and pains since, from the weights, but they good aches and pains, not bad ones.
Much better
Finally got back to the gym, and started out with a pretty serious, but not too painful, cardio workout. It came to 25 minutes of variable paces (averaging likely at 7.2 km/hr, but ranging from 4km/hr to 10 km/hr), and about 10 minutes of 20km/hr on the stationary bicycle. Not a bad start for having not gone to the gym for a couple of weeks!
Alarums&c.
After a week of grading, and a week sick, I thought I’d ease myself back into exercise. Well, even so, it was rough. My heart was beating so hard after only ten minutes each on the treadmill and the stationary bicycle that the pounding in my chest was distorting my vision. That seems like a very bad sign to me, but anyway, it must be related to having been sick lately, as I didn’t push myself anywhere near as hard as I did last time. But I did take the hint, and call it a day. I shall go very …
Only the Surface of Things
So my mother and I have this off-and-on discussion–it’s been going for years, and usually it works out to my main criticisms of New Age conceptions of the world being, well, arbitrarily descriptive without any rigorous demands for evidence, and my mom’s criticism of science is that it “only looks at the surface of things, and not the deeper levels”. Much as I love my Mom, this really frustrates me.
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 …
THANK GOODNESS! by Daniel C Dennett
Here’s an excellent little piece by Dennett on why he thanks goodness, and not God, for his survival of a medical emergency. Quite worthwhile to athiests out there. Here’s a snippet: One thing in particular struck me when I compared the medical world on which my life now depended with the religious institutions I have been studying so intensively in recent years. One of the gentler, more supportive themes to be found in every religion (so far as I know) is the idea that what really matters is what is in your heart: if you have good intentions, and are …
Die, Spammer, Die!!!
Spam. I know, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, but… This letter may come to you as a surprise due to the fact that we have not yet met. No, I’m quite used to spam. I have to say that I have no intentions of causing you any pains so i decided to contact you through this medium. But now that I’ve received spam from you, I’ve decided that I have an intention of causing you pains. As you read this, I don’t want you to feel sorry for me, because, I believe everyone will die someday. That’s very …