I spent a lot of time on Youtube for the last couple of weeks. EDU channel is amazing : that and all of the other on-line sources of educational material remove that from the teacher's tasks. So, more of a teaching assistant role : labs, discussions, grading assignments, ... No wonder home schooling is a trend.
Will and Maeva dancing Boogie Woogie style are amazing. Went through a lot of boogie woogie piano, lots of duets are very good. Again, there are many mixes with other genres happening.
I normally read slashdot.com every day : only a few of the articles are normally interesting, but I scan them all. Ditto news.google.com and digg.com. Al Jazeera and Haaretz every few days. Al Jazeera English is far more honest / unbiased than almost any US media, at least I don't know of better. Haaretz has a lot of opinion pieces which are ditto. Anti-semitic, I guess 8).
I want to go through all of the biggest online info sources .
A.C. Clarke's and S. Baxter's "Sunstorm". Book 2 of "A Time Odyssey". Interesting info on the Sun's behavior. OK story, not a must read.
Robert J. Sawyer's "Calculating God". Very good, a must read. SciFi is a literature of ideas, this exemplifies that.
Jerry Pournelle's "Exile to Glory". OK, not a must read. Kid's story, tho. Standard future dystopia, Pournelle off on his tirades about the trends to a socialist/collectivist future, escape to space. Saved by super-wealthy, etc.
David Drake "The Sharp End". Good story, but you have to read other of the "Hammer's Slammers" series to grok this one. The armaments and tactics based on that technology are interesting in these stories, but I can do without so much violence in my reading. He anticipated the violence-porn that is common in the video games. Deficiency of his early stories is that the shock outweighs the story and the characters are not developed, tho "The Sharp End" is a bit better.
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's "Lucifer's Hammer". Very good, nearly a must-read. Good for teenage boys, at least. Post-apocalypse society trying to rebuild. I had a hard time believing that a nuclear power plant could sustain itself without constant deliveries of critical parts, but otherwise didn't have to suspend dis-belief dozens of times as I do with every single Hollywood movie.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Friday, March 5, 2010
Gregory Benford's "COSM", ...
I just this moment finished Benford's "COSM". A most excellent story, fictional (but ever so real) physical phenomena driving a story of academic science in a high-energy physics environment. Lots of wonderful quotes. I don't know that academic environment, but it fits with my (probably biased and stereotypical of people who hold some { meta, }-libertarian position) understanding of that world.
I spent a couple of days this week pursuing YouTube music. Russian opera singers via G., and via searches for opera sopranos, ... I noticed that Emma Kirkby wasn't listed, my favorite soprano of all times. (Second soprano in Hogwood's Society for Ancient Music recording). It turns out that those genre's don't mix. So far as I can find, Kirkby has never done grand opera. Very strange in an era in which so many cross-overs (I can name dozens, e.g. Huun Huur Tu and Angelite ) are happening. The state-space is growing exponentially, as every distinctive sub-genre is a new dimension. HHT is one of those dimensions, Angelite is another. They are both playing across a wide variety of genres.
This intersection is, IMHO, quite good : Fly, Fly, my Sadness
Consequently, only 4 books: Harry Harrison and Gordon R. Dickson "The Lifeship". I have to think about why this novel is such a big step above what came before it, and why the step to Kim Stanley Robinson, McLeod, ... is another. There was something incomplete about the alien's mental universe. Cherryh does a much better job of revealing the evolving mental universe of the 'Adelman', effectively a slave owner. 3 = OK, but not a 'must-read'.
Jack mcDevitt's "Odyssey". Another "Priscilla Hutchins" ( 'Hutch' ) novel. This was good, nice mix of hard scifi, genuine logistics, a lot of well-drawn characters and insights into social roles and people. Very well written, IMHO. More than OK, not a 'must-read'.
A.R.Homer's "The Sobs of Autumn's Violins". WWII English counter-espionage as D-day happens. 2 = Marginal, didn't learn enough, characters weren't real enough.
Gordon R. Dickerson's "The Human Edge". A dozen short stories, each with some example of outside-the-box thinking. A good book for high-schoolers?
I spent a couple of days this week pursuing YouTube music. Russian opera singers via G., and via searches for opera sopranos, ... I noticed that Emma Kirkby wasn't listed, my favorite soprano of all times. (Second soprano in Hogwood's Society for Ancient Music recording). It turns out that those genre's don't mix. So far as I can find, Kirkby has never done grand opera. Very strange in an era in which so many cross-overs (I can name dozens, e.g. Huun Huur Tu and Angelite ) are happening. The state-space is growing exponentially, as every distinctive sub-genre is a new dimension. HHT is one of those dimensions, Angelite is another. They are both playing across a wide variety of genres.
This intersection is, IMHO, quite good : Fly, Fly, my Sadness
Consequently, only 4 books: Harry Harrison and Gordon R. Dickson "The Lifeship". I have to think about why this novel is such a big step above what came before it, and why the step to Kim Stanley Robinson, McLeod, ... is another. There was something incomplete about the alien's mental universe. Cherryh does a much better job of revealing the evolving mental universe of the 'Adelman', effectively a slave owner. 3 = OK, but not a 'must-read'.
Jack mcDevitt's "Odyssey". Another "Priscilla Hutchins" ( 'Hutch' ) novel. This was good, nice mix of hard scifi, genuine logistics, a lot of well-drawn characters and insights into social roles and people. Very well written, IMHO. More than OK, not a 'must-read'.
A.R.Homer's "The Sobs of Autumn's Violins". WWII English counter-espionage as D-day happens. 2 = Marginal, didn't learn enough, characters weren't real enough.
Gordon R. Dickerson's "The Human Edge". A dozen short stories, each with some example of outside-the-box thinking. A good book for high-schoolers?
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