Generating worlds, exploring them, losing the thread.
Collin Piprell The Peak Experience.
In a recent post, I reflected on the strange compulsion to record every iota of our individual and collective experience and then share it with everyone else, each of whom is trying to do the same. How can anyone enjoy an unmediated experience of night-time Hong Kong from Victoria Peak, for example? (“Colonialized: The Peak Experience”)
There I stood at the rail on the viewing platform, getting a many-elbowed massage from others who had mounted … Read more
Sometimes I like to work in coffee shops. Spending too much time alone in my office back home can leave me bushed. It’s also true that some cafés, at least, offer just the right type of distraction. The establishments I favor tend to have regular appearances of eye candy upon which I might rest my weary eyes — much like a nanny app that keeps me looking away from my computer the way I’m supposed to, warding off the dreaded … Read more
Government surveillance is a public service; E. Snowden is a self-serving traitor.
vs.
Government surveillance is evil; E. Snowden is a heroic champion of our individual freedoms and dignity.
Maybe we should adopt a perspective superior to either of those.
The truth may well lie somewhere between two poles. At least if you acknowledge that we conduct healthy societies and polities in the tension between ideals of perfect security and perfect freedom, perfect harmony and a Hobbesian state of … Read more
This is the longest I’ve neglected my blog since I started it about three years ago.
And right now I should be working on a novel, rather than poking at this post. Except I’ve lost the plot. The structure of my narrative escapes me just now.
Call it writer’s block, or simple lack of sleep. Or maybe this book is really a classic hobologoistic project that should be presented to the jury now, with a view to burning the ms. … Read more
According to the people who filmed these tilefish back in 2003, this species had till then remained undescribed by scientists. Once again I’ve been too slow off the mark, because I described this fish in 2001. I can’t find the original video with the associated claim, but here’s some excellent footage of tilefish and their mounds.
I’ve been known to brag about having already been there and done that, years ahead of my time way back when (e.g. see “… Read more
Save the whales; save the gibbons. Yeah, yeah. But here’s how to help save the whole world. Be the first on your block to start ranching sea squirts. It seems these leathery wee bags with two openings and way-kinky social lives might be just what the doctor ordered when it comes to clean energy.
Back in 1995, at the request of White Lotus Press, I collaborated with photographer Ashley J. Boyd on a natural history of Thailand’s coral reefs, … Read more
I’m sitting here like a prat in a coffee shop renowned throughout the modern world as the natural habitat of prats with laptops who, in their whole attitude and disposition, claim to be writers. I’m struggling to make sense of a world of my own design and construction. In fact, I grapple with an idea so arcane that previous science-fiction writers who entertained it had to be institutionalized.
I look up from my MacPro to gaze at the ceiling … Read more
Rude revision to one’s life plans: Florida man disappears with bedroom into sinkhole.
The news these days is enough to have us all hiding under our beds. Not that this strategem is foolproof, it seems.
Other network-newsworthy causes for alarm:
Near miss: asteroid.
Near miss: meteorite shower over Russia (largely spares pop. centers).
Near miss: fiscal cliff; sequester still plunging through atmosphere inspiring panic in many quarters.
Etc.
How many other near misses go unnoticed and unremarked? There’s … Read more
In my previous post I suggested that persons and cultures, our very realities, are narrative in structure. What happens when you interrupt such narratives?
Many of us are finding out, thanks to our increasingly ubiquitous and much-beloved digital communication technologies. There follow two especially obvious ways this is happening.
Applying a cell phone to the side of one’s head in public has the effect of disconnecting the brain. In this condition, cellphone users show characteristic signs of aimlessness, milling about … Read more
The big news du jour — after the colorful and convoluted transgressions of celebrity athletes — is the imminent Academy Awards. The three top contenders for Best Picture are Argo, Lincoln, and Zero Dark Thirty. These three have at least one thing in common: They all stand accused of playing fast and loose with the historical truth of matters.
But what is “objective” about history or, for that matter, about reporting? History is always written by the … Read more