Weird Proof
The proof is in the pudding.
Make brains! Make Brains! or, The Laser of Life and Thought
Aug 26th
Planetary atmosphere are entropy pumps. The surface of a atmosphere-clad planet is out of thermodynamic equilibrium, providing an inversion of available free energy, in the same way that a laser works through pumping a population inversion of metastable states. Life can be approximated as a classical refrigerator, using the locally available disequilibrium to pump out excess entropy.
Brains, too, it turns out, are entropy pumps, also creating a disequilibrium that can be exploited. Any calculation–any thought–is also a miniature refrigerator, locally lowering the entropy through differences in the local free energy.
From this one can not only estimate the biomass any planet More >
Incredible Adventure Stories
Aug 23rd
Michael Dukakis bestrode the deck of the Alejandro Jodorowsky, his washboard abs rippling. The mighty battleship cut through the turbulent seas, and cold, salty spray crashed over the bow. “Maybe I should put a shirt on,” Dukakis mused.
On the bridge, surveying the horizon with steely gray eyes, Dukakis pulled a crisp white tunic over his latissimi dorsi. “Bring my hot coco,” he commanded peremptorily. Dukakis regarded the picture on the mug, of a clown in bright primary colors filling out a W-2, and chuckled.
“The World Controller is on the wireless, sir.”
Dukakis took the handset. “What is More >
Fictive Dream: Disease
Aug 20th
I had invited the personification of Disease to meet with me in my castle, which was partly in the physical realm and partly in a sort of dataspace. When she arrived, she looked like a woman in a robe of ragged lace, with long, tangled hair and solid white eyes. (more…)
Exposé
Aug 15th
Not long ago I found myself sitting in a secluded booth toward the back of a Washington, DC-area steakhouse with a man whose name I can’t reveal, because he is one of this country’s leading psi-warriors. “X-men, Jedi, whatever you want to call them,” he told me, “are real, and they live among us.”
In the suburbs of northern Virginia there are an estimated ten psi-warriors in government employ, who spend their weekends barbecuing and playing touch football, and their weekdays inside a secret facility, learning to use mental powers that some would call occult.
“The program was started More >
With Melissa Forethought
Aug 13th
Fuzzy pink handcuffs binding his wrists to the chrome armrests of the Barcelona chair, Michael Dukakis reviewed the events that led him here with mathematical precision.
Sometimes it was easy to believe the dwarf’s prophecy was true: that he would never become a real boy. But always within him there was a powerful voice that said, “Wouldn’t you really rather have a Buick?” Also there was a fainter voice, further in the back, that said, “You must believe in yourself.”
But who was he? The sleekly handsome millionaire playboy? The self-abnegating doctor who ministered to the poor in the jungles of Epsilon More >
Mrs. Antioch’s Shadow
Aug 12th
Mrs. Antioch had never read Jung or any of his disciples, and remained quite innocent of any knowledge of the Shadow. (more…)
Table of Contents
Aug 9th
- Neo/Beckett. “The Lost Ones” by Samuel Beckett Analyzed as a Precursor to “The Matrix,” or, Whoa! Enclosed Worlds as Ontological Ground-Situations!
- Derrida: Are We Pronouncing His Name Correctly?
- Philosopher Deathmatch: This Week: Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt versus Adamantine Friedrich Nietzsche. We bring you the story straight from the Tel Aviv Thunderdome!
- Quiz: Which Type Are You: Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, Kramer, Cher, de Niro, Attila, Kirk, Wolverine, the Wolfman, Hitler, Seann William Scott, General Zod, Schopenhauer, Poseidon, the Green Power Ranger, Red Kryptonite, Captain Nemo, Robur the Conqueror, Robbie the Robot, Dr. Fu Manchu, NGC 3109, Oliver Platt, an introvert, a man, a More >
We May be Slowly Running Out of the Belief That We’re Running Out of Things, Libertarian Scientists Say
Aug 5th
Washington, DC—
A new report issued by the Institute of Libertarian Science warns that within decades we may completely exhaust the earth’s supply of things to be worried that we’re exhausting the earth’s supply of.
“If we don’t start conserving the belief that there are things that need to be conserved, soon our entire stock of these beliefs will be gone,” Neil Paxson, a spokesperson for the Institute, said. “As early as the 19th century our society nearly depleted the idea of the near depletion of whale oil. Even as we speak we’re approaching the end of the belief that More >
Story Analysis: “Erosion” by Ian Creasey
Jul 30th
Note: As part of my own personal effort to try to plot better, I plan to try to do some plot analyses of SF stories, mostly those published in Year’s Best collections.
“Erosion” by Ian Creasey, from Year’s Best SF 15, Hartwell and Cramer, eds. (2010)
Summary: in the 22nd century, Earth is (still) dying from global warming. Winston, a English man of African descent, has been augmented to prepare to colonize a planet around a red dwarf sun. As a farewell to Earth, he takes a walkabout along the English coast, where he meets a memorial hologram of a dead woman. More >
The Enema
Jul 28th
by Charles Baudelaire
- My young foot is a tenebrous orange,
- Traversing a pair of brilliant suns;
- The tangent and the rain are fated to be ravaged,
- Like a quill resting in my garden of vermillion fruits.
- There, I touch the autonomy of ideas,
- And the fat quill employs the pelicans and the rats
- For reassembling an inundated planet,
- The water creased with large Nerf tombstones.
- And are the new flowers that I dream of
- Trembling indolently in this solitary lava with
- The alimentary mystique of vigorous lemurs?
- —O dollar! O dollar! The temperatures manage the life,
- And the obscure Enema that wrongs the heart
- Of the blood that pardons and fortifies!
(Translator’s note: As we More >