Did you think you didn't have to choose?

In a bit of a funk this morning for no particularly good reason; certainly the vague disappointment of having all of last night's plans fall through contributed to that, but on the other hand I sat around reading Ringo & Evans' The Road to Damascus most of the evening so I think it's pretty much of a wash...the book is good, by the way. On the one hand Ringo's distaste for "do as I say, not as I do" social utopians is very much evident, but on the other hand the book avoids the stink of polemic, unlike Watch On The Rhine. Brief review behind the cut.

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I also finished Ringworld's Children by Larry Niven, which is a much better story than its predecessor, The Ringworld Throne. Louis Wu is back, and this time he's got the biggest problem of his life: how can he keep the races of Known Space from tearing the Ringworld apart to discover its secrets, when he only has the cowardly Hindmost, the immature son of Chmeee (formerly known as Speaker-to-Animals), and a gibbon protector of uncertain loyalty to work with? The only problem with the novel is a personal one...it's been so long since I read Throne that I need to go back and find out what I forgot, because there a mess of references to it in the new novel that I just didn't get. That can wait until I've moved into the new apartment.

Did you think you didn't have to choose?

In a bit of a funk this morning for no particularly good reason; certainly the vague disappointment of having all of last night's plans fall through contributed to that, but on the other hand I sat around reading Ringo & Evans' The Road to Damascus most of the evening so I think it's pretty much of a wash...the book is good, by the way. On the one hand Ringo's distaste for "do as I say, not as I do" social utopians is very much evident, but on the other hand the book avoids the stink of polemic, unlike Watch On The Rhine. Brief review behind the cut.

( Read more... )

I also finished Ringworld's Children by Larry Niven, which is a much better story than its predecessor, The Ringworld Throne. Louis Wu is back, and this time he's got the biggest problem of his life: how can he keep the races of Known Space from tearing the Ringworld apart to discover its secrets, when he only has the cowardly Hindmost, the immature son of Chmeee (formerly known as Speaker-to-Animals), and a gibbon protector of uncertain loyalty to work with? The only problem with the novel is a personal one...it's been so long since I read Throne that I need to go back and find out what I forgot, because there a mess of references to it in the new novel that I just didn't get. That can wait until I've moved into the new apartment.

Expanding your mind, shortening your horizons

I read Jeff Jarvis' Buzzmachine for a couple of different reasons, one of which is that he's one of the few honest liberals out there, equally ready to slag leftist poseurs as rightist idiots. The other reason is that he occasionally speculates on the future of media, or why he thinks there isn't one, at least not the way it is today.

To sum up his post, his take on the situation is that the Internet facilitiates conversations between people, which are inherently more interesting than the Old Media model of "We talk, you listen" which is what drives all of the MSM from newspapers to magazines to books to movies and TV. Radio, too, for that matter, although talk radio doesn't fit the template for reasons I'll discuss below the cut.
( Read more... )

Expanding your mind, shortening your horizons

I read Jeff Jarvis' Buzzmachine for a couple of different reasons, one of which is that he's one of the few honest liberals out there, equally ready to slag leftist poseurs as rightist idiots. The other reason is that he occasionally speculates on the future of media, or why he thinks there isn't one, at least not the way it is today.

To sum up his post, his take on the situation is that the Internet facilitiates conversations between people, which are inherently more interesting than the Old Media model of "We talk, you listen" which is what drives all of the MSM from newspapers to magazines to books to movies and TV. Radio, too, for that matter, although talk radio doesn't fit the template for reasons I'll discuss below the cut.
( Read more... )