Seasons change, decades pass

Another couple months, another set of life experiences and retrospective thoughts about them, posted to the internet for all of noisy posterity to (send robots to read, process, glean, and) enjoy. The daylight is noticeably shorter now, we rolled our clocks back in the historically-inherited acknowledgement of centralized time-measuring standards, and tonight everyone dresses up as something else and begs strangers for carbohydrates.

Seems like a reasonable time to reflect on the past decade.

It involved me leaving a lot of things behind: several countries, my life as a student (never again!), relationships tried and broken, and between 10 and 20 pounds.* Oh! Also my original (birth) ACL, gone forever, consigned to history and oblivion (although its replacement's image is immortally online). Now I have a gauche unmatched pair of ACLs. Most of these changes require no special comment; I do reiterate, here as elsewhere, my strongly-held belief that knee injuries should be avoided and knee surgery is not a suitable pastime. (Exceptions possible for knee surgeons.)

Even my fellow crack-of-dawn gym women have commented on the kilograms, though ("Vous étiez ronde... vous avez maigri"). Two sides of the coin (as usual: ignore the metaphorically inconvenient edge). The nice: Of course it is always nice to receive compliments from humans. Robots, not so much. Second, the cool part about converting fat (voluminous) into muscle (dense) is that my skin nerves are closer to my muscles, so I can feel in my skin when I contract my muscles (as well as the normal nerve feedback from the muscles themselves). For some muscles in particular this sensation is novel and thrilling (intercostals!). The irritating: Buying all new clothes is a chore and so everything I've bought is stretchy, it'll fit me as long as I avoid supervillain shrink- or giganticize-rays. Also, now I am even less imposing, and so rush hour subway commutes are a continual struggle to evade crushing and obtain access to enough oxygen at my elevation. Maybe a subway snorkle? Then I could breathe, plus everyone would know there is definitely someone there in that spot-that-looks-like-it's-empty-space-between-tall-people.

I've retroblogged a little recently, but a lot is sliding because it is job-application season in academia.

• I cleaned some photos off my phone and reminisced about snowy winters past. Oh, Canada.
• Shaun the sheep is a clever and adorable schemer, but my true love for inventive scientist Gromit is unmatched.
• Japan trip: not a crêpe, burned down/fell over/sank into swamp.

I have a lot more photos from Japan, and the queue is full of all photos chronologically following that trip. Yes, I evilly withhold content from you while informing you of its existence. I am the gatekeeper of Lila-related ephemera, kneel before me! etc., etc.


This post's theme word is gloze, the transitive verb "to minimize or to explain away," the intransitive verb "to use flattery; to make an explanation; to shine brightly," or the noun "a comment; flattery; a pretense." His gloze glozes, but it is a gloze rather than glozing.

*As a theorist, I acknowledge that a factor-of-two approximation may dissatisfy others, but it depends if you measure from the maximum in the time interval or the average. High variance in the past decade, is my point. Yes, I have the data (much to my theorist shame).

Consider Phlebas

Consider Phlebas is Ian (M.) Banks' first science fiction novel, and his first set in the extended universe of interstellar civilizations, most prominently one called simply "the Culture." The book focuses on Bora Horza Gobuchul, a spy and agent for the Iridians, who are at war with the Culture. Borza is humanoid, and provides the narration with an accessible entrance-from-the-outside, introducing us readers to the Culture with a critical eye. (He is, after all, voluntarily fighting a war against them, even though he is not Iridian.)

The Culture are a utopia, a moneyless post-scarcity society of plenty dedicated to freedom, fairness, pleasure, and interesting problems; it is managed with a light touch by (sentient) superintelligent computers. Horza sees this as a dystopia, fears and hates the computer intelligences; he argues with his actions and words that the Iridians --- a warlike, three-legged species of keratin-plate-covered giants who are religious fanatics --- are better than, or at least not as bad as, the Culture. It's an interesting authorial approach, since obviously readers will sympathize with the humans in the Culture, and probably prefer their well-managed, worry-free utopia over the Iridians, who are pretty horrible.

The Iridians keep slaves, and are not sentimental, and view even useful humanoid allies like Horza as subordinate not-quite-people. ("What they must feel for the swarming biped tribes of humankind! ... We are nothing to them: mere biomatons" p. 304) But they prefer biological life to computational, and that is enough to motivate Horza through the many disasters, emergency decompressions, painful beatings, and existential crises that he undergoes in the course of the novel.

I like it. Banks is a phenomenal writer --- I read his very disturbing The Wasp Factory years ago and its vivid horrors are forever burned into my brain. The narrative picks a delicate path across interstellar civilizations, giving enough detail to really challenge the imagination without bogging down in endless exposition. Cool ideas that could be the focal point of entire novels are used as background dressing for chapters or even single scenes. The novel's title comes from T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, a line I've never understood and can't say I understand better after the novel. But I like both works, so their linkage at some fundamental level in the Banks' mind is like a savory nugget, that I can pleasantly return to musing about in my free time.

I unreservedly recommend this book, and will keep you updated with the joys of the rest of the Culture books as I methodically devour them during my commutes.


This post's theme word is noosphere, "the sum of human knowledge, thought, and culture." The Culture's noosphere is replete with curiosities, mysteries, and in-jokes.