I’ve been up to no good lately — if by “no good” we mean reading and watching science fiction. That bad behavior has been a constant all my life. It began in early grade school when I started picking my own reading material.
Prominent in the very first SF books I ever read is the Lucky Starr series, by Isaac Asimov (writing as “Paul French”). The books were written for a juvenile audience, and I was exactly that audience.
Just recently, two of the six novels showed up as e-books at my local library. Nicely, one of the two is the first of the series, and I’m reading it now.
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Leave a comment | tags: Andy Weir, Daniel Wilson, Isaac Asimov, John Scalzi, Lucky Starr, Matt Dinniman | posted in Books, Sci-Fi Saturday
Contrary to the saying, this old dog learned a new trick recently.
Or rather, this old dog learned he’d been doing the trick wrong all these years and finally learned how it’s supposed to be done.
Learning an error of my ways is good but here I lose a distinction I’ve long enjoyed making between a connoisseur and a gourmet.
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4 Comments | tags: definitions, geeks-nerds, parameter space, words | posted in Brain Bubble
This old gag caught my eye recently:
As usual in these cases, it’s a trick question.
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5 Comments | tags: fun with numbers, math fun | posted in Math
It occurs to me that the date format used in the title can be ambiguous. It’s certainly a local format. The longer form used for Friday Notes, (e.g. Oct 16, 2026), is specific but makes post titles longer than I like. I use the ambiguous form for brevity.
But for the record, throughout this blog, when used, I do mean month/day/year. Which I’ve long thought is an awful format because it doesn’t sort naturally, especially with no leading zeros on single digits. The sortable form is yyyy–mm–dd (with leading zeros on single digits).
But I digress (already!), so without further ado, here’s the local weather:
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8 Comments | tags: autumn leaves, Bentley, charts, dew point, trees, weather, Weather Notes | posted in Friday Notes
I’m off to a late start (it’s nearly noon) starting this early-in-the-month Friday Notes post. The delay is because I spent several hours this morning updating my Movies page (which lists my favorite movies as well as my rating system).
I’m not done updating it; I want to add some lists of films by favorite directors (Wes Anderson, Christopher Guest, Quentin Tarantino). Wikipedia has those lists, of course, but I like having a reference page with links I most care about.
But enough about movies. On to the Notes!
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13 Comments | tags: AI, Bentley, fantasy BS, FBS, grammar, Lee Smolin, markdown text, Microsoft Windows | posted in Friday Notes
It’s that time again:
The Autumnal Equinox, the gateway to the coming winter.
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6 Comments | tags: autumnal equinox, Bentley | posted in Life
For a bit over a year now, I’ve included various monthly weather charts and observations in the Friday Notes posts. In some cases, those sections were lengthy enough to call for their own posts. (Which would also keep those not caring about my local weather out of said weather.)
Therefore, as of today, a new Weather Notes subdivision of Friday Notes (similar to the Science Notes subdivision established two years ago). Easy now to ignore if so inclined.
And now, the weather…
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6 Comments | tags: dew point, Minnesota, rain, temperature, weather, Weather Notes, xkcd | posted in Friday Notes
Back in 2023, I happened to read Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011), by Yuval Noah Harari. I ended up not impressed by the book [see Sapiens: The Book] but did find two aspects of it compelling and memorable: the idea of our facility with fiction, and the idea of game-changing human Revolutions.
It is said: ‘Once you have an X hammer, everything becomes an X nail.’ (For whatever value of ‘X’.) Our mental concepts frame our worldview, and I’ve been considering human culture through the lens of these Revolutions.
Here I take a stab at just listing them.
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7 Comments | tags: history, homo sapiens, humanity | posted in Society
The last edition of Sci-Fi Saturday reported on the science fiction books I’ve read recently (for a rather generous definition of “recently”). This edition reports on the recent science fiction movies (and some TV shows, mostly animated).
Early warning: among the ones new to me, there is only one I’ll particularly recommend. Most were “just okay” (though one is worth a small rant). Others were re-watches, and those generally have higher scores — of course they do; I re-watched them because I liked them.
By the way, the definition of science fiction is also a little generous here.
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19 Comments | tags: Edgar Wright, Gore Verbinski, Project Hail Mary, Sam Rockwell, science fiction movies, Superman | posted in Movies, Sci-Fi Saturday
After putting the blog largely on hold this spring and summer, I’m trying to get back into it by doing a bit of catch-up. (Or at least discover if and how I really want to get back into it.)
Five posts so far this month (not counting this one) compared to five posts during the three summer months (June, July, August), so I’m off to a good start.
Didn’t manage even to post a Friday Notes in August, so there’s more than enough for (at least) a second edition this month.
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6 Comments | tags: 9-11, Bentley, blog, dogs, Field of Dreams, human consciousness, parachute, Science Notes, skydiving | posted in Friday Notes
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