Sagebrush

From our reading journal:

8/27/07
Legacy (Sharing Knife 2)
Lois McMaster Bujold

Lakewalkers keep separate from other peoples, keep few possessions and live in camps near the lakes, traveling among farmers on occasion in pursuit of Malices, powerful malevolent beings that is their mission to keep from destroying mankind. Lakewalkers are forbidden to marry outside their group, so when Dag brings young Fawn Bluefield to the Hickory Lake Camp, it is a difficult homecoming. Fawn lacks the low-level magic sensing ability of all Lakewalkers, and must learn how to fit in this society so different from farmers. Her presence is especially resented by Dag’s brother Dar and mother Cumbria, who plot to anul the marital binding. Fawn’s character is especially well rendered here, showing a firm and respectful resolve in the face of widespread resentment. Meanwhile, a strangely powerful form of Malice appears, and Dag’s fighting skill and Fawn’s unorthodox way of approaching problems will both be challenged to the utmost.

8/23/07
The Mobius Strip
Clifford Pickover

Explores the Mobius strip in mathematics, technology, arts, and literature, along with related subjects suck as the Klien bottle and trefoil knot, stepping off into discussions in topology, number theory, and chemistry, but also spending time in unexpected realms, such as plot twists in literature, or puzzles and Legos. Stimulating and often light-hearted, presenting such wealth of material that many ideas must be presented briefly, but with pointers to further information on the web.

8/20/07
The Outback Stars
Sandra McDonald

Lt Jodenny Scott gets assigned to the troubled Aral Sea after the destruction of her last ship Yangtze. Heading Underway Stores, she encounters incompetence and conspiracies at every turn in her efforts to reform her department. She must also deal with a forbidden attraction to Sergeant Myell, as they jointly encounter a mystery with the alien artifact space warp used by Space Team to travel between stars, curiously tied to aborigine Australian mythology back on old Earth.

Resembles some of Elizabeth Moon’s Serrano novels in focusing on minutiae of command. The plot only works if an advanced space-faring military ship has negligible internal surveillance, which this reader finds unlikely.

8/16/07
Thirteen
Richard K Morgan

Carl Marsalis is a 13, a genetic construct reviving the alpha-male ruthless loner super-warriors gradually bred out of civilization by the graybeards. Humanity is terrified of 13s and have exiled them to Mars or the tracts, but Carl makes a living as a consultant to UN security, tracking down other 13s.

Another 13 has escaped from Mars, and Carl must team up with ex-cop Sevgi Ertekin and partner Norton to track him down and undercover the conspiracy responsible for a trail of murder.

Worthy cyber-noir thriller.

8/11/07
Three Bags Full
Leonie Swann

George used to read to his flock, from books of mystery, poetry, and sometimes diseases of sheep. Now George is dead, murdered, and the sheep, lead by clever Miss Maple, are determined to crack the mystery and find the killer. Each sheep has special abilities– Mopple has good memory, Maude a good sense of smell, Lane is fastest. Together they strive to understand humans in the nearby village of Glennkill, and discover the tangled relationships that caused the passing of their shepherd.

Highly original.

8/3/07
I am a Strange Loop
Douglas Hofstadter

The writer explores his concept of “strange loops”, explained briefly as feedback with shifting levels of abstraction that can cause emergent behavior, and presents several examples. The author of “Gödel, Escher, and Bach” characteristically uses pun-filled analogies and thought experiments to take us through the complexity. A key paradigm used throughout the text is a camera connected to a video screen which points at the video screen. Even without level-shifting, unexpected behavior emerges. Imagine the visual systems of mobile robots recently developed that can navigate a desert, and such systems must perceive and categorize objects such as “road”, “rock” and “other robot”.

Gödel ’s theorem is presented as a strange loop. Bertrand Russell carefully presented a formal mathematical system that could not refer to itself, attempting to avoid paradoxes found in set theory with sets that contain themselves. Gödel showed that the system could still refer to itself, and proved that the system was incomplete, in effect an unexpected emergent behavior.

What is consciousness? What causes the sensation and feeling of “I-ness” that I experience? H posits that consciousness is a strange loop, that I-ness is in effect a shared illusion, and gives the example of value of paper money as an illusion we all share by mutual agreement. While I am not a dualist, positing a non-physical-law explanation for consciousness, I am intrigued by the not entirely convinced that strange loops are sufficient explanation. I want humans to build machines that learn with sufficient complexity in categorization and perception, and see if these machines report a similar sensation of I-ness.

Although not the lyrical celebration of thought of his earlier work, this is an important and challenging text that should be experienced by any consciousness that enjoyed GEB.

8/1/07
Mars Needs Moms
Berke Breathed

Martians are abducting Moms, in this delightful children’s picture book. Breathed deftly combines humor and a heart-warming ending.

The Owl Project at MIT Media Lab, collaborating with Maine Audubon, uses cell phones for owl census, producing owl calls and recording response. Low night-time phone rates are an advantage. Sample recordings may be found here.

(kudos BoingBoing)

previously: Nature Sounds for Leopards

Low(er) Carb Bread

1 cup warm water
1/4 stick of butter
2 egg whites (left over from here)

1 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour
1/2 cup wheat gluten
2 TBS flax meal
1 TBS spoonable Splenda
1 1/2 tsp yeast
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp molasses

Add liquid ingredients to bread maker, then dry ingredients. Process on dough cycle. (If too wet, add a little more flour. We want a firm dough.)

When finished, form into loaf, place in floured loaf pan, let rise, and bake in preheated oven at 375F for 30 minutes. Serve hot out of the oven, with butter.

Twelve years ago today Windows 95 was introduced. Following Windows 3.1, this was the big move to 32 bits (we ignore the Win32s fork), including a better selection of native controls and improved usability. Business for independent Windows software developers began to take off.

Our company’s first product was introduced earlier that year for Win31. The particular software tools we used were a little slow to support Win95, but when finally ready included emulation of the new controls on Win31, so we could compile the same source code for 32bit and 16bit versions. Microsoft’s tools, while faster to market, reduced support of Win31, preferring to move developers to 32-bit land.

Our first Win95 product was introduced in February 1996, released at the same time as the 16 bit version. In May of that year we introduced another product for both Win31 and Win95, and released a Win95 version of our first product in August.

Any of our registered customers still running Windows 95 or Windows 3.1 can still request earlier versions of our programs that should work on these operating system versions. We do not have any computer currently running Win95 to test against, so we suspect our current product versions no longer work.

Electronic music pioneer Robert Moog passed to the ethereal plane two years ago today. Check out this recent post for his life and times, including popularizing the theremin.