Choice

People don't like to be meddled with. We tell them what to do, what to think, don't run, don't walk. We're in their homes and in their heads and we haven't the right. We're meddlesome.

River Tam, Serenity (2005)

What is the meaning of virtue without the chance to sin?

I wanted to write about government, religion (or the roles of religious authorities), faith and freedom of choice – all heavy stuff – but I got lazy to actually do it.

Die

A random movie quote because I don’t have anything better to post.

President Thomas Whitmore: What do you want us to do?
Captured Alien: Die. Die.

Independence Day (1996)

Small Insignificant Things

1. These last few days there are crickets (or something) on the other side of my bedroom wall keeping me up at night. They are still singing now. ARRGH!
2. Now that Gmail has implemented those cool new themes, I find myself checking my mailbox more often than usual; like two million times an hour!
   
   
   
   
   
3. I can’t help getting annoyed when I hear or read announcements that begin with “Please be informed that ...” Of course announcements are meant to convey information, DOHH! The worst is the guy who makes those announcements just before Friday prayer at the university mosque. Every week he’ll make about five announcements one after another and starts every single one of them with “Please be informed that...”
4. Just as annoying – well, a bit more annoying actually at the moment – are students who obviously don’t know the answer to an exam question but still write an essay three pages long about everything else. Yes, it’s the spray-and-pray method; throw everything in including the kitchen sink and hope that they’ll score some points. Add to the combo some barely legible handwriting, and it’s a recipe for hypertension.

PESDenial

For Mon:

Election @ xkcd

The proposed cure: Super Obama World

Book Report – Ender’s War

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card is one of the books everyone tells me to read. A classmate first recommended it to me way back in high school, but I only got around to reading it just recently.

Against the backdrop of humanity’s long war against an insectoid alien species referred to as buggers, Ender’s Game tells an intimate story of Andrew “Ender” Wiggin, perhaps humanity’s greatest military commander in fiction. Although a “genius among geniuses” and identified at early childhood as the future defender of mankind, Ender doesn’t have it all easy. In order to draw out his potential, his handlers subject him to isolation and intense conditioning and training, even to the point of real risk of physical and psychological harm. He rises above the challenges, of course, which I cannot help but compare to the other “The One” who is supposed to bring balance to the Force but turn to the dark side instead.

Ender’s strength, apart from his tactical genius, is his empathy. While fully aware of his capability, he is always fearful of his potential for cruelty. After unknowingly wiping out the whole bugger species by destroying their home planet, thus committing xenocide, he sets out to redeem himself by finding a surviving bugger queen cocoon a new home.

Wonderfully written, Ender’s Game won both the Nebula and Hugo Awards for Best Novel in 1985 and 1986 respectively.

Last Order

Yesterday, I placed my last Amazon order for 2008 for the following items:

• Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet [Hardcover] by Jeffrey D Sachs
  
• Little Brother [Hardcover] by Cory Doctorow
  
• Saturn's Children [Hardcover] by Charles Stross
  
• Under a Blood Red Sky - Deluxe Edition [CD/DVD] by U2
  

The delivery estimate is given as December 31, 2008.

Book Report – Timescape

Timescape by Gregory Benford is the winner of the 1980 Nebula Award for Best Novel, a science fiction classic. The Nebula Award, given out by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), and the Hugo Award are two of the biggest awards in science fiction, analogous to the Golden Globe and Academy Awards for movies. I picked up the book at a thrift bookshop for RM6, while waiting to watch a movie.

In 1998 (the book was first published in 1980), the world is falling apart. There are shortages of energy and food, and New York City has been destroyed by a nuclear attack by terrorists; but the overarching problem is a growing ecological disaster. John Renfrew, a Cambridge physicist struggling to secure research grants not only to fund his research but also feed his family, proposes to send a warning to the past using tachyons – particles that move faster than light.

At the receiving end are unsuspecting young University of California, La Jolla (UCLJ) physicist Gordon Bernstein and his graduate student assistant Albert Cooper in 1962, who notice Morse code while sorting out noise that is messing up their nuclear magnetic resonance experiment. Tachyons are unheard of in 1962. Braving scepticism and ridicule, Bernstein follows through in figuring out the messages, leading to the biggest discovery in his career.

Author Gregory Benford is an actual physics professor, so the best thing about Timescape is in it being an example of hard science fiction, the science of the story – the physical natures of tachyons, reality and time; e.g. the grandfather paradox – are amply discussed. At the same time, the private lives of the characters are not neglected as well, like Bernstein’s struggle in figuring out his girlfriend Penny and adapting to the California lifestyle and Renfrew’s neglect of wife Marjorie. If there is a weakness in Timescape, I’d say it’s its perhaps too realistic portrayal of the repetitive work of experimental scientists; emphasis on the repetitive.

Overall, a very satisfying read.

I’m now reading Ender’s Game.

Compulsory

com•pul•so•ry
adjective, noun, plural -ries.
–adjective

1. required; mandatory; obligatory: compulsory education.
2. using compulsion; compelling; constraining: compulsory measures to control rioting.

–noun

3. something, as an athletic feat, that must be performed or completed as part of a contest or competition: The ice skater received a higher score on the compulsories than on her freestyle performance.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)

I received a letter yesterday saying that I’ve been selected to attend a week-long course I don’t want to go. It says that attendance is compulsory, but attached with the letter was a reply slip with two boxes: I will attend, I will not attend. I ticked the second box and sent it away.

So much for “compulsory”.

Book Report – The Clone Elite

The final portion of my July order from Amazon – The Clone Elite by Steven L Kent – arrived on Friday!

Humanity has spread across the Milky Way. The Unified Authority (UA), modelled after the United States of America and Plato’s Republic, resorts to the use of clones as soldiers, though led by natural-born officers. In 2510, a separatist war erupts when four of the six spiral arms of the galaxy declare independence from the UA, incited by a religious cult commonly referred to as Mogats. However, infighting between the rebel factions forces the Confederate Arms Treaty Organization (CATO) to form an alliance with the Unified Authority, leading to a successful combined UA/CATO attack on the Mogat home world that ends the war.

The attack on the Mogat home world draws out their alien allies then known as Space Angels. Now the aliens are turning on human colonies one by one, seemingly unstoppable, heading for Earth. Desperate for soldiers, the UA constitutes a mandatory conscription of retired clones, and the planet New Copenhagen is selected as the site for an all-or-nothing last stand against the alien invaders.

The Clone Elite is the fourth instalment of the so-called Clone series by Steven L Kent. I am a sucker for series, so I’ll keep buying and reading them as they come, but The Clone Elite is easily the weakest book in the series so far. The story is mostly monotonous and often repetitive. Little, if anything, new is learned about series protagonist Wayson Harris or his occasional sidekick Ray Freeman. Little of import too is revealed about the aliens, especially their motives and their arrangement with the Mogats. I suppose more will be revealed in subsequent books.

__________
PS: With The Clone Elite, which I finished reading late Saturday night, I’ve reached my twelve books target for 2008!

Slow Day

I
They are a bit tricky to put on and take off, but I absolutely love toe socks!

II
Change (and more) found in the various compartments of my faithful five-year old backpack:

• RM1.13
• US$5.51
• £2.16 leftover from a 15-hour transit in Heathrow/London
  
• €0.01 from Professor Fenollosa
  
• ¥123 leftover from a transit in Narita
  
• 1 × MBTA brass token that used to worth US$1.25
  
• 1 × MARTA token from a visit to Atlanta
  

III
I finished marking the Principles of Macro paper on Tuesday and submitted the results yesterday. With the department virtually deserted I thought about taking today off, but decided against it thinking that some students might come looking for me with the Intro to Econs final coming this Monday. Guess what, nobody came.

What's on TV Again?

It’s November, in the middle of the examinations period, Barack Obama has just been elected new President of the United States, and I don’t have anything to write about. So let’s talk about what’s on television to get the ball rolling.

Counting, I can’t believe that despite dropping some shows from my previous list I am watching twenty-four television shows a week!

1. 30 Rock. Tina Fey and gang are back for season 3. Her Sarah Palin impersonation on SNL got a lot of attention, but my favourite character on 30 Rock is definitely Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaghy.
   
2. Bones should be back soon after a month-long break.
3. Californication. Star David Duchovny supposedly went into rehab for sex addiction just weeks before the season 2 premiere. True or not, it was definitely great publicity for the show.
4. CSI-NY. I wonder how the original CSI is doing.
5. Dexter. In this third season Dexter has a new best friend, and is getting married and becoming a father. Are things going on too well for our favourite serial killer?
6. Eleventh Hour and Fringe. Two shows about science gone mad. Eleventh Hour, based on a British show, is the more grounded of the two while Fringe, like Walter, is totally out there.

8. Gossip Girl. I’m not sure why I’m still watching this.
   
9. Greek has just concluded its ten-episode second season.
10. Grey’s Anatomy.
11. Heroes.
12. House.
13. How I Met Your Mother. The closest we have to Friends (apart from Friends re-run)?
14. Life.
15. My Own Worst Enemy. Christian Slater plays a secret agent with a chip implanted in his brain. Instead of the usual secret agent with a secret cover identity, we have a secret agent with a split personality. At the flick of a switch Edward the secret agent becomes Henry the middle-class family man. The story begins when the chip malfunctions.
16. NCIS.
17. Prison Break. The stupid hacker Roland is dead. Good.
18. Private Practice.
19. Sanctuary. Stargate alum Amanda Tapping runs a “sanctuary for all”. Expect all kinds of weird stuff.
20. Sons of Anarchy.
21. Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
22. Stargate Atlantis.
23. The Unit. The top-secret US Army Special Forces team soldiers on into season The season starts in high-gear with assassination attempts on the President-elect and the Vice President-elect.
24. True Blood. First, there is this woman who can hear people’s thoughts. Then, there are vampires, people getting high on vampire blood, and I suspect werewolves of some kind too in the future. People are getting killed, but so far the main characters are just busy having sex.