Keith Grahams Wanderings

The Infinitive of Go, John Brunner (1980)

2009-07-02T14:00:00.000-04:00

It's not often that I get to enjoy a discussion of Cantorian set theory in a Science Fiction novel. Being a math major means not being able to talk to anyone about your true interests. Brunner wrote a witty and fast paced Novel in 1980 about the theory of infinite sets and it's much better than it sounds.

Read my discussion of The Infinitive of Go by John Brunner

A year on the bus

2009-06-30T22:41:00.002-04:00

June 30th marks exactly one year taking the bus to work. I am used to it and I even know the names of some of the people that I see everyday (if you knew me you'd realize this is unusual).

The advantages of the bus are that I have saved a ton of money and that I've read probably 80 books. I figure that commuting has saved me about $4,000 cash money. I started at the peak of high gas prices, but even though the price of gas is down I am still saving. I can also doze on the bus when I am tired, although once I slept through my stop and had to walk back a half mile.

The disadvantage has been that I am stuck at work if I want to leave work early. I am a prisoner of the bus schedule. One thing is that I can't play harmonica on the bus the way I used to play in the truck.

Overall, the bus has been a good thing.

Carnivale of Blood

2009-06-30T15:00:00.002-04:00

Carnivale of Blood - A lurid name for a short story (3300 words) that does not actually have much blood. I've been writing this a few hundred words at a time for the last month. It is based on an idea from Lawrence Durrel's book Balthazar about a vampire in Venice, Italy. Along the way I lost the vampire and the story turned into cyberpunk murder tale with a little sex. I hate vampires so losing the vampire was good. I have to check it a few more times for typos and find a place where an R rated cyberpunk story might be accepted. As always, I want a good paying venue that reports quickly, but this seems to be impossible to find.

Friday I submitted a very short (2300 words) dark story, Remembering the Date, to Futurismic. It is about damage done to a man's psyche when he undergoes a "lossy" jpeg type compression in order to transmit himself between the stars. The story is very brief with only just the one real character so I expect it will wind up at a free venue not long after the futurismic rejection.

Cat Mouse Circus

2009-06-29T10:57:00.001-04:00

Our oldest cat, Willie, is a thinker. He is slow and fat and does not like to exert himself. He uses his brains. He knows that since we fed the birds all winter that there has been a jump in the mouse population living off of the bird seed. He knows that the mice find a way into the cellar from time to time. He knows that there is a way that mice can get from the cellar into the kitchen from under the sink. He knows that the mice want to scarf his kibble.

What Willie does is sit to one side of the kitchen sink and watch carefully for mice. Once a month he catches one.

Last night Willie caught a mouse. The mouse was quite surprised and let out a squeak that sent all the cats rushing in. Willie ran into the dining room with Ollie and Furry on his tail. Blue and Gracie woke up and ran down to the dining room wondering what the commotion was, and even Max showed up.

Willie dropped the mouse and fled. Ollie picked up and started running around with the poor mouse in his mouth. He promptly let it go. I was there trying to rescue the mouse by this time and the mouse, unseen by me, ran beneath my legs and under the Grandfather Clock. (Think Hickory Dickory Dock). I went back to the TV and decided to let the cats solve the situation.

For the next hour, Ollie and Gracie searched for the mouse, finding him briefly, but then losing him as the mouse found a new place to hide. Willie went back to the sink to wait. I felt sorry for the mouse, but if the cats couldn't catch him, how could I be expected to do better?

As Erica went up to take her bath, Gracie ran up to the bathroom ahead of her and dropped the mouse in the bathtub. Gracie has learned that her pets can't escape from the bathtub. Many times I have come into the bathroom in the morning and found a cat toy in the bathtub and occasionally a dead rodent.

Gracie likes to play knock hockey with the prisoner, sending him spinning around the tub. The mouse looked dead and was wet from cat drool. I quickly went to grab it in a paper towel and as soon as I tried, the mouse woke up and started running around the tub, trying to escape. Gracie went nuts so I grabbed her and made Erica hold her while I caught the mouse.

The last time I saw the little fellow he was running under some bushes at the side of the house. I expect he'll be back. When he returns, Willie will be waiting.

Mighty Starlites

2009-06-28T21:26:00.002-04:00

Here is my buddy Bob Rucker playing bass guitar with the Mighty Starlites. You can see Bob in the intro, I can hear him in the music, but he's off to the side. I've played harp with Bob playing guitar many times. He's an incredible blues slide guitar player, but since he's found religion he only plays gospel. Still, it's the best gospel you'll ever hear. Isiah Whatley lives two doors down the street from my Mom.

YouTube - Mighty Starlites " I made it" By Brother Tony Whatley

Famous Person Death New Coverage

2009-06-26T11:26:00.000-04:00

The blog where this comes from has been overwhelmed by traffic, so all I can do is show the image above.

Polymath, John Brunner (1974)

2009-06-26T10:39:00.001-04:00

I have another dozen or so Brunner books to read, including Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up, and I am starting to really enjoy Brunner's style.

Polymath is an early Brunner Novel that first appeared in an Ace Double as Castaway's World. This later revision has a good adventure plot plus heavy Brunner themes. It works well.

Read Review of Polymath, John Brunner (1974)

Manshape, John Brunner (1982)

2009-06-25T13:24:00.000-04:00

When you read a Brunner novel you never know if you're going to get one of the lesser ones that he knocked off in great numbers or one of the great ones.

Manshape is a much better novel than the ones I have been reading. It was published as "Bridge to Azrael" in 1964 in Astounding.

Read the review of Manshape by John Brunner

Dibenzothieno[3,2-B]-thiophene

2009-06-25T09:09:00.002-04:00

Eric's son Ari is working on a chemistry project at college. He is doing a survey of certain types of molecules in order to find a new way of making solar cells.

He writes:

Dibenzothieno[3,2-B]-thiophene, one of our candidate molecules.

I've been trying to figure out where the electrons are in the Highest Occupied Molecular Orbital (HOMO) and the Lowest Unoccupied Molecular Orbital (LUMO), coloring them, and then creating graphics like this.

Lyme Disease

2009-06-23T15:05:00.001-04:00

I got it.

That last tick was a nasty one. I have to take nasty horse pills for a few weeks.

William Gibson is on Twitter

2009-06-21T23:14:00.001-04:00

twitter.com/GreatDismal

Bummer - this is bad.

Beaches

2009-06-19T19:22:00.001-04:00

It rained most of the day, but that did not prevent us from stopping by some of the beaches and walking around. My goal was to get my feet wet, but it was cold and nasty so all we did was take a walk.

Here are pictures of Mom collecting shells on the beach at the Kennedy memorial beach.

Next are some pictures of Larry at the beautiful beach up at Chatham.

Larry took some pictures. These are from his camera. That's Mom and me.

Annual Cape trip

2009-06-18T16:08:00.002-04:00

Larry and I headed out to Cape Cod. We are not doing anything new this year. We even have the exact same room in the hotel in Hyannis.

I have free wifi again so I can upload the pics as I take them.

Larry hit the bed and started channel surfing. Mom is asleep in her room. It is 4:15 in the afternoon and I am already bored.

The weather outlook is for rain the whole time we are here.

The main difference this time is that Mom is along.

Here is a picture of us at a rest stop in Rhode Island.

World's End, T. Coraghessan Boyle (1987)

2009-06-17T11:09:00.003-04:00

This is a novel that I want to like and in some ways I think is really good. I am however at odds with some of the things that the author does and there are some aspects of the book that I dislike.

The novel blends the history of the lower Hudson Valley with the events of two families separated by 300 years of history. Part of the book follows the fortunes of early Dutch settlers of the area below the Bear Mountain Bridge on the east side of the Hudson. This can only be Peekskill. My friend Phil Chadeayne's family came from this area, and some of the things that I know about his family history, like the road building gangs, are recounted in the book. My own family lived on the west side of the Hudson in Tappan and Nyack. My ancestors fill the old cemetery next to my house where the earliest graves are from the early 1600s.

As I read the historical parts of the book, I found myself more interested in the life of my own early American family than in the events in the lives of Boyle's mostly fictional characters. I was impressed at how the Blauvelts and Polhemuses on my side of the river never had the problems that the Van Brunts and Van Warts did on the other side.

The other half of the novel is about the descendants of these Dutch characters as they play out their destinies in the twentieth century. Although the characters were painted well by the author they seem to experience way too much angst for my taste. Life, in my experience, seems much more boring in reality than in fiction.

The aspect of the novel that I particularly dislike is that it tends to be too literary with cute coincidences and symbolic events. I dislike seeing the strings holding up the spaceships in Science Fiction Movies, and I dislike seeing the hand of the author as he writes a story.

I give as an example to the heavy hand of the author that both the Dutch protagonist and his 20th century descendant lose a foot due to an accident. In the case of the 20th century protagonist, the foot is lost in a motorcycle accident when he hits an historical marker that was placed on the site of an event that shapes the book. I'm sorry, but I felt like putting my finger down my throat when I read that.

The book seems to be constructed of these types of events, and the author many times appears more clever than interesting in his attempts to bring all of these coincidental details together.

I must say that Boyle writes well, but uses an occasional word that I have to look up. I have a decent vocabulary, but there are lots of words that are not in common every day usage and they should be avoided in a novel. It may impress some people, but the key is to get on with the story without stopping the flow on an odd, but very literate word.

I make no apologies for preferring stories written by engineers, and that read like user manuals. I enjoyed Word's End, as much for its historical background as for the odd plot. The ending had a good punch to it and I think you might try reading it, if you like this sort of thing.

Cats Getting High on Catnip

2009-06-17T09:13:00.001-04:00

Seamus McManus: Beekeeper; Father of Cloud Computing

2009-06-16T12:16:00.001-04:00

Tick Bite

2009-06-14T11:18:00.001-04:00

I get tick bites from time to time. The cats bring in the ticks and sleep on the bed or the ticks jump on me when I inspect the bees. I get tested for Lyme disease regularly, but I have a feeling that I may have developed antibodies because it never comes back positive.

About two weeks ago I was bit on the back on the left wing bone side. I did not realize it, but it itched and I scratched it when I wasn't thinking. Since I didn't think to twist around to see my back in the mirror I was not really aware of the bite other than a persistent itch.

Yesterday, the bite became badly infected and my shoulder, underarm and upper arm started turning red and swelling. I am now on Tetracycline. The swelling is down, but there is still a huge red patch on my back. Tetracycline makes me feel sick and I have a killer headache.

I will call the doctor tomorrow because I don't want to feel crappy on my Cape Cod trip.

For the three of you who were reading this blog a year ago, you will remember that Larry and I try to take a couple of days off and go near ocean every year. We leave Thursday and will return Saturday night. I will bring the 'puter and a camera to take some pictures.

I'm sorry, I'm just not that social

2009-06-14T11:07:00.001-04:00

Facebook started up screen names yesterday. I am www.facebook.com/kpgraham. I went on to speculations which has a twitter panel and from beginning to end it was people begging other people to befriend them on facebook. I find this degrading. Each week I get three or four friend requests and I almost always ignore them. I don't need to be friends with someone with whom I have never met or corresponded. The rule is that for me to accept you as a facebook friend, we must have a prior relationship.

I went through facebook and hid all of the motor mouths that fill up the home page. I went through twitter and deleted anyone from my followers that I don't know, plus about a dozen people I was following that I realize I don't care about. I got rid of my MySpace account six months ago. Myspace is for 12 year old girls.

Facebook seems to be good for one thing besides finding old friends, and that's playing wordscraper, a scrabble type game. Twitter is good for nothing that I can see. I stopped using twitter altogether, although I kept the account

This is not to say that these apps don't have uses. If you sell stuff, twitter is good way to keep in contact with your customers, provided you send out something interesting from time to time and not just sales pitches. Facebook is good for events and organizing groups. I use linkedIn to keep track of the programming jobs out there.

Let's face it, though, some random person who is just trying to get his friend numbers up is no friend, just a leach.

The First New York Annual Beekeepers Ball

2009-06-12T21:13:00.002-04:00

Monday, June 22, 2009
6:00 PM to 11:00 PM
Water Taxi Beach - South Street Seaport

A not-to-be missed evening full of sweetness and buzz...

Indulge in the nectar of honey-infused drinks and hors d'oeuvres.

Waggle dance the night away on the shore of the beautiful, new South Street Seaport Water Taxi Beach.

If the spirit moves you, come dressed as a Beekeeper (all in white) or as your favorite bee (Queen, Worker, Drone). Costumes will be awarded.

Bring your local honey or find a new one.

Bee there.

Erica has expressed interest. It might be fun. Only drawback is that its $25.

Blood pressure

2009-06-12T11:30:00.002-04:00

I took a different blood pressure medicine this morning. My pressure has crashed and I feel like crap. I may ago home to crash.

The Boy Who Was Hit By a Meteorite

2009-06-12T10:29:00.005-04:00

Space.com has a story today about a boy who was hit by a meteorite. (I immediately added the title "The Boy Who Was Hit By a Meteorite" to my idea list.)

Meteorite-human contact is extremely rare and there are no know deaths resulting, although it is not impossible. Here are a few interesting recent human hits (from the linked article).

* On November 30, 1954, Alabama housewife Ann Hodges was taking a nap on her couch when she was awakened by a 3-pound (1.4-kilogram) meteor that crashed through the roof of her house, bounced off a piece of furniture and struck her in the hip, causing a large bruise.
* On October 9, 1992, a large fireball was seen streaking over the eastern United States, finally exploding into many pieces. In Peekskill, New York, one of the pieces struck a Chevrolet automobile owned by Michelle Knapp. Knapp was not in the car at the time.
* On June 21, 1994, Jose Martin of Spain was driving with his wife near Madrid when a 3-pound (1.4-kilogram) meteor crashed through his windshield, bent the steering wheel and ended up in the back seat.

Hits in space are thousands of times more likely, but there are so few people actually in space that the odds of a human hit would still be extremely remote.

The Webs of Everywhere, John Brunner (1983)

2009-06-09T10:37:00.000-04:00

John Brunner wrote a variety of novels starting when he was 17. Some of the novels are important, many less so. The Webs of Everywhere is a novel that could have been important, but lacks focus to the point where, when the book is over, I found little in that would stick to the ribs.

Read Review of The Webs of Everywhere, John Brunner (1983)

Bee Hives Trashed

2009-06-08T18:12:00.002-04:00

I came home today and found my hives knocked over and the bees were exposed to the elements all day. I don't know if the queens survived. I put the hives back together as best I could.

Kids, I guess, brought up to be stupid and thoughtless by stupid and thoughtless parents thought it would be fun to kill my bees.

That's the trouble in trying to do something in the suburbs. You are surrounded by people who have lost what little culture they ever had. They have no feel for the land or appreciation for the small creatures that live there. They think in terms of chemical green lawns and inflated property values.

Extraordinary Popular Delusions...

2009-06-08T15:49:00.003-04:00

I am a little behind in my reviewing. I finished Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay & Confusion de Confusiones by Joseph De La Vega with a Current Perspective by Martin S. Fridson (long title) last week.

This is a collection of two books that are considered the two best books on investing ever written. The Mackay book, Extraordinary... was written in 1843 and the Vega book was written 1688. One would assume that the world has changed since then, but it seems that there is nothing new under the sun and that the stock exchange, as we know it today, was in place in the middle of the 1600s complete with bulls bears, brokers, mutual funds, and all of the same kinds of manipulations that still get us into trouble today.

The Mackay book is several chapters about investment bubbles from the original book that included other chapters about popular delusions. It includes the famous Tulip Bubble that was used to describe the internet irrational exuberance of the early part of this decade. The more interesting chapter deals with John Law, a Scottish gentleman gambler who somehow makes friends with the heir to the French throne. He is able to convince the government of France that they should issue paper money (this is around 1720) to finance their debt. France proceeds to print too much money and it causes, first a huge boom in speculation in stocks, and then a huge bust as the inflated economy busts. The behavior of the investors has not changed one bit since then and it does not matter if the date is 1720 or 2008, the economic principles are the same in both cases and the results were the same in both instances.

If you have ever heard someone tell you that "this time it is different" just go out and read this book and you will see that there is nothing new under the sun.

The second book, Confusion de Confusiones, is by a Portuguese Jew whose family fled from Portugal to Holland. Joseph de la Vega was a Sephardic Jew who spoke Dutch, whose parents spoke Portuguese, and wrote in Spanish in the style of Cervantes.

Confusion de Confusiones is a manual for stock traders written as a dialog between a shareholder, a merchant and a philosopher. The narrative works very well as a set of simple questions and answers and is only bogged down in detail when the author leaves the format. It describes in details the activities of the trading of shares of the East India and West India stock companies. Stocks are bought and sold on margin. There is short selling and trading in options, puts and calls. There is a kind of mutual fund that traded in both kinds of shares in order to spread out the risk. There was trading in fractional shares that were not backed by actual shares, which were packaged risk without the security. There are scoundrels and thieves. There are honest brokers and there are those that purposely try to cheat.

Vega describes the bulls and the bears quite well, even calling them bulls and bears. Anyone who has ever bought and sold stock will see that there the process has not really changed in 350 years.

The books are instructive and should be required reading for anyone who owns stock.

Weekend

2009-06-07T21:50:00.002-04:00

I've spent the last three weekends working on redoing my deck. After digging and pouring footings and going to get lumber it is finally starting to look like a deck again.

I am exhausted. I can hardly move. I just sit here watching old movies (Blithe Spirit) and getting my ass whipped in Wordscraper by J.