Chris Corner is one of the founding members of the trip-hop group Sneaker Pimps, trip-hop being soul-influenced electronic trance music (though what trance music isn’t electronic?). I’m sure I’m oversimplifying that description.
Month: November 2016
Japan
No, this is not a review of Robert Heinlein’s 1961 novel, though I did read it many years ago. I would categorize that novel, at best, as fantasy masquerading as science fiction. Just because the main character spent time with Martians does not automatically confer the quality of science fiction onto the story. I don’t recall any real SCIENCE in the tale. Anyway.
It’s Thanksgiving here in America, my increasingly paranoid and xenophobic homeland. I was reflecting this morning on my visits to Japan, and how touched I was by random acts of kindness from strangers.
My initial visit to Japan was my first international trip ever (well, unless you include Canada, the 51st State). I remember standing in a long, winding line waiting to pass through Japanese customs in Narita Airport. Suddenly, the full awareness hit me that I was about to enter a foreign country, where I was an outsider who did not speak the language. I panicked a bit, wondering if I was ready for this. Continue reading “Japan”
The FIRST and SECOND Weekly Riddles
I love recreational math. I’m sorry to have to say it, but there it is. It’s practically what I do for a living. I’m a math teacher by trade (in that I’ve been all around this great blue and green marble and ply my trade wherever math teachers are needed), and rather than teach what the curriculum states I should, I warp the curriculum to satisfy my desire to do recreational math.
That isn’t really as intimidating or boring as it sounds. A lot of people enjoy the mathematics of games, and spend a lot of time pondering riddles. Most people, however, don’t know that when they are contemplating a brain teaser, they are actually performing a subtle form of mathematics. Take this guy for example:
Remember him? He’s that guy you used to doodle into your notebook back in grade school. Or maybe junior high school or high school, or all of the above. The goal is to sketch the drawing of this barn-type thing without lifting your pencil off the paper, and without crossing over any lines that you have already drawn.
No doubt at some point in your life you attempted this little game, and no doubt after a bit of work, you figured out a way to accomplish the feat stated above. How did you do it? Did you use logic and reasoning, or did you just draw it a bunch of times until trial and error revealed the solution? No offense, but probably the latter- at least that’s how I used to do it.
Role-Playing Games I’ve Written (Part One)
I’m a man of many ideas, most of them unquestionably terrible.
Not ideas of the “screen-door on a submarine”, or “no-stick frying pan” variety, as such concepts require some combination of imagination, technical savvy, and ingenuity, and I possess only one of those three qualities. Most of my ideas fall into the category of “creative fiction”, and as such, take the form of writing which consists of mind-bending (and sometimes nonsensical) plot-twists, dialogue both as witty and lacking in substance as real-life banter, and fantastical world building and lore which is left to rot on the vine for lack of dedication to the moments in between. None of these in and of themselves make for particularly satisfying reading, and so my career as an author was stalled at an early age.
Continue reading “Role-Playing Games I’ve Written (Part One)”
The ManSlap Club
Right now, at this very second, I am watching a wrestling pay per view. This is notable because it is the first wrestling pay per I have viewed in sixteen years. (Side note: Are they still called pay per views?) I stopped watching back in 2000 or so, around the decline of the “Attitude Era”. But that’s a tale for another day.
Here’s what I noticed watching this pay per view- man are these guys muscular and good looking! A far cry from the days when you could make a living rasslin by possessing nothing more than a prodigious gut or laughable physical abnormality. Now you gotta be jacked and vascular, just like my two heroes Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sly Stallone. Watching these beefcakes narrowly miss punches and kicks has got me thinking back to what my buddy Dan and I dubbed “The ManSlap Club”.
Leggy Robot Girls (aka Perfume)
Now that my friends and I have our own little corner of the Internet, I can share music videos that I love and hopefully get recommendations from others in response! I really want my contributions to this blog to center around science-fictiony things, and with the music I love, that’s easy! Dan Hunter of the band PlayRadioPlay! (now Analog Rebellion) once said he writes electronic music specifically because he is a nerd. Well, I listen to electronic music because I’m a nerd. The bands I listen to also tend to sample heavily from anime and science fiction movies.
However, if I want to introduce a theme of music for geeks, what better video than the capture of a live stream by Perfume, a trio from Japan I’ve seen described as “leggy robot girls.”
An Update on My Previous Post…..
It worked. The link, in fact, posted successfully. Thanks for your support.
While I’m Giving a Test…..
Hi. Right this second, I’m proctoring the first of five tests I will be administering throughout the day. What better time to see if I can figure out how to post “articles” on my blog?
Hold on one second….. my students are using my momentary lapse in attention to pass each other answers. Good for them for taking initiative.
My students aren’t the only ones taking a test, however! I, too, am testing whether or not I have the ability to determine which tabs to click in order to memorialize this finger vomit on the front page of the new site my friend Becky has created for us. I am also testing what happens when I attempt to attach a pre-written document to this page. The latter is a test I failed. Continue reading “While I’m Giving a Test…..”
Intelligence Explosion (in machines, not in this blog)
You can find many videos on YouTube of prognosticators discussing the impending explosion of machine intelligence. I choose here to start with Sam Harris, a favorite public intellectual of mine and the person through whom I stumbled upon Nick Bostrom‘s work. Anyone who works in or studies technology has surely heard of (if not read) Bostrom’s book, “Superintelligence.” Continue reading “Intelligence Explosion (in machines, not in this blog)”
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