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A DIVERSION FROM THE USUAL SUBJECT MATTER

Over at Chicago Boyz.

A DIVERSION FROM THE USUAL SUBJECT MATTER

A DIVERSION FROM THE USUAL SUBJECT MATTER

A DIVERSION FROM THE USUAL SUBJECT MATTER

A DIVERSION FROM THE USUAL SUBJECT MATTER

DINNER WITH THE NEW MAPMAKER

Last night, I enjoyed a delicious meal at Fogo de Chao in the company of Dr. Barnett, his very bright and spirited daughter, Emily, fellow Chicago Boyz blogger Lexington Green and his gracious wife…umm…”Mrs. Green“. As Brazilian cuisine is basically a salad followed by about seven pounds of meat, we may all still be in the process of digestion even as I write this post (Special thanks to Sean ” Jack Bauer” Meade and Mrs. Zenpundit for facilitating the communication logistics of this get-together).

This was my first occasion meeting Tom and he was pretty much as I had expected him to be, except taller. An interesting aspect of the discussion was that if you have seen Dr. Barnett’s televised brief, that represents a modulated pacing, of his sometimes rapid-fire conversational delivery, highly energized by ideas and their prospective implementation. The discussion was wide-ranging and intriguing, though some elements of it have been or will be posted on Tom’s blog as they related to his recent Central Asian tour with Admiral Fallon, chief of CENTCOM, but good books, politics, Japanese anime, various public intellectuals and writing all came up as topics of conversation.

The food was excellent, as was the company. I’d like to thank Dr. Barnett for taking the time out of a very busy travel schedule with Emily for a social engagement with the Greens and myself, as well as for dinner. The generous gesture is much appreciated. It was also a pleasure to see Lex and his wife again. Hopefully, we can all sit down again sometime in the future.

BEOWULF

John Malkovich, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie. Hmmmmmmmmm…….

READING GIBSON

A while back, while sitting around an alcohol -laden table with Dan of tdaxp, Shlok and Isaac and listening to an evolving debate (primarily between Dan and Isaac) over the probable nature of AI, references to William Gibson’s first novel, Neuromancer were made. I then chimed in that I had never read the book – a statement that was greeted with surprise and some degree of mock horror. This had happened to me once before with Dave Schuler and Lexington Green, except that in that instance the author was Philip K. Dick and the book then was The Man in the High Castle. Evidently, something about having drinks with fellow bloggers is a spur to my reading classic science fiction.

Admittedly, I am not a great reader of fiction, at least if ” great” means ” broadly read”. As a youth, I did dive deeply into J.R.R. Tolkien, Ayn Rand and George Orwell – I’ve probably read every word ever published by the first two authors and much by the third. Russian lit figures prominently, especially Dostoyevskii and Solzhenitsyn. Of American writers, I’ve read a scattering of Mark Twain, Sinclair Lewis, J.D. Salinger, John Steinbeck and a few others, but none systematically or deeply.

I’ve meant to read Quo Vadis, Don Quixote and Blood Meridian for years and have yet to do so. I have only a few works of Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Koestler, Balzac and Victor Hugo under my belt. The reason being that for me, the siren call of non-fiction is all too strong. There are too many important books that ” must” be read ASAP, piled on top of others that ” should” be read; picking up good fiction under those conditions almost feels like shirking a responsibility.

I say this as a preface to acknowledging how much I enjoyed reading Neuromancer. While the book is old hat to sci-fi fans, it came as a fresh voice to me, mixed with an unfolding appreciation of how Gibson’s fictional efforts have influenced or anticipated the evolution of the culture. Movies, TV shows, references, characters all flashed through my mind as I read it and Gibson’s economy of explanation allowed my mind the freedom to engage the text and fill in the blanks. Reticence is a vital skill that few authors ever manage to master but Gibson has it. I’m sorry that I didn’t read the book back in the early 1980’s when the novelty of the book’s imaginative scenario were at peak.

Isaac has pointed me toward Pattern Recognition and I now have an itch for Spook Country as well. If you have read Gibson’s books, what do you think of them and what titles do you favor ?

ON THE FRONTIERS OF WEB 2.0

PC World magazine has named their ” 25 Websites to Watch” ( hat tip to Mrs. Zenpundit) though how many will still exist in 2 years is an open question. Some of these, I have immediate use for; others, I’m not sure how anyone outside of an undergraduate munching cheetos in a dorm room will have the time. I suggest you read the article, as my opinion on tech matters is of negligible weight.

Here are the sites they have chosen by category and see for yourselves. Epistles from the tecno-geek blog set, on the merits of any of these sites, are welcomed.

Mashups, Maps, and More:

Popfly, Yahoo Pipes, BuzzDash, Wayfaring, CircleUp .

Organizers, Searchers and Optimizers:

Pageflakes, Spock, Swivel, Clipmarks, OpenDNS .

Real Estate, Bookmarks and Blogs:

Trulia, PopURLs, Groowy, BlogBackupOnline, Ma.gnolia .

Five ways to Create and Share:

Yodio, Meebo Rooms, Squidoo, SpashCast, Eyespot .

Sites for Collaborative Work and Play:

Approver, Pbwiki, MyPunchBowl, Picnik, Quintura .