the way the future was
Who is this Bill Walker?
Fortunately, real life is too chaotic to predict via linear extrapolation. If Nero had tried to predict history with linear extrapolation, his picture of 2003 would have included: Imperial legions from the only world superpower carrying eagle emblems, marching into wars against minor nations in the Middle East, in order to build up the political careers of the powerful and unscrupulous. He would have predicted the Middle Easterners forming terrorist groups to retaliate in protest against the Imperial images and unveiled women defiling the Holy Lands. Nero could never have foreseen the modern world, with our ocean farms, Mars terraforming, and asteroid cities.
Smash and Blaze
A Small Victory: protest porn. Some of the less naughty bits:
As all around them entwined and cheered, forming an orgy of peaceful feelings, Smash and Blaze came together in a frenzy of lust, passion and a desire to rid the world of capitalist pigs.
“Let’s do it for anarchy,” Blaze whispered breathlessly.
“Let’s do it for the children of Iraq,” Smash mumbled in Blaze’s ear.
Their breath was heavy, their chests heaving up and down as they explored each other’s tender skin and unwashed hair.
yeah, I said that already
Strolling through my mail archives (outgoing), I find the occasional bon mot worth repeating.
1998 March 12:
Mind you, being a bit of a romantic (former member of the Society for Creative Anachronism), I confess I do find “High-Tech-Middle Ages” rather appealing. Everyone a noble, with machines for peasants; every [household] a semiautonomous fief, with [its own] banner flying . . .
1998 March 14:
Everyone participates [in a free market], even if we cannot all participate equally. I’d like to participate equally with Martin Cradick or Donald Knuth, but I haven’t got the talent; who will correct that maldistribution?
2001 May:
A few weeks ago there was a “botball” tournament at Ames [a NASA facility in Mountain View, California]. I got as far as the gate. A sign said that visitors had to show papers, on account of “heightened security”; and I had neglected to add my DL to my wallet that day. (Normally I carry it only when renting a car; that day I was on borrowed wheels.)
Terrorists, of course, can’t get driving licenses. <sheesh>
2001 September 11:
Why, just think, if the great powers had not intervened after the Sarajevo assassination, the Southern Slavs could have been in turmoil for months; and if the British and French governments had not stood up to Hitler, Poland might have suffered under foreign domination for thirty years.
2001 October 23:
Conjugation:
- “I take a moment for sober reflection on the big picture”
- “You shamelessly exploit disaster to advance your agenda”
home, free to good kitten
We’ve been thinking that a companion of her own species might do Fluffie some good – if she could be induced to make peace with a nonhuman. She had kittens before she was fixed, and we sometimes get the impression that she misses them. So we want to try a kitten on her: one young enough (though weaned) that Fluffie will be obviously the boss. Got any?
fun with deltahedra
I got a new toy: 94 rods with a magnet at each end, and 36 steel balls. (This kit is called Mega Magz, but I think I’ve seen similar kits under other names.) With these balls and rods, I build selected examples from my catalog of fullerenes, or rather their duals: what you get if you exchange vertices with faces. I wish I could show you my latest construction, which uses 28 balls and 78 sticks in tetrahedral symmetry (but chiral); I even managed to arrange it so that each of the seven colors is used only for symmetry-equivalent edges.