Neutrino:
Sufficiently Advanced

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Well, now, how do I follow that introduction from John, here in his arena with the spotlight on? Best stick with the original plan.

Ahem.

What do I mean by “Incantations”?

Well, it’s about this: I believe in magic. I believe magic is happening right now, and that you are a part of it. See, I’m typing these words and, at some future point in time from where I’m sitting now, you are reading them. And two amazing things are happening. I am sending the thoughts that are currently passing through my brain into the future and, even more miraculously, into your brain.

We do this every day, but it doesn’t make it any less fantastic. Sure, it’s not always perfect. In fact, it hardly ever is. We misspeak. We misunderstand. Information and nuance gets lost or mangled in the transmission, and the worst part of the whole transaction is that it’s so hard to tell the ways in which we’ve fallen short. We may never really know the full extent of our failure, or how to repair it. I’ve spent most of my conscious life fascinated by how we use language and most of my working life in search of ways to wield that tool to best effect.

I started the quest in trade publishing — an industry that takes the words of millions of hopeful scribes, winnows them down, polishes them up, and in the end, produces these magnificent artifacts called books. Whether you think publishers are any good at any part of this process of selecting, editing, designing, printing, and distributing books; whether you think they have their priorities straight; whether you think they are likely to survive the next decade, year, or season — and I have my own opinions — I still believe the overall endeavor is a worthy one. I learned so very much in that milieu, including the fact that, in the end, Big Trade Publishing isn’t my game.

Instead my journey has taken me into the field of technical documentation for computer software (with a push in that direction from one John Sundman, we should note). Sure, it’s a different world. We have source code repositories instead of bookshelves. Web sites backed by hard drives instead of shopfronts supplied by warehouses. But all this — intelligently arranging ones and zeros to a particular purpose — is its own realm of magic, just like artfully arranging words in sequence. And at the core, my part in this new world is the same as it always was. I may be documenting APIs, but really I’m working on brain-to-brain interfaces, implanting information into people’s heads in the most effective way possible.

So what I plan to write about here is technology and publishing, language and code. I want to practice a little magic and telepathy. I aim to put thoughts into your head for your consideration. Whether you’re ultimately convinced by them or not, I hope to at least reshape or augment existing thoughts that you’re already carrying around with you. I also hope you’ll do the same, and use this complex system that enables communication between you and me to put thoughts in my head that weren’t there before, or to turn the kaleidoscope in my brain a notch. Truthfully … I want this all to be a little mystical.

My posts probably won’t be terribly timely. They may not always be deep. But I hope that, from time to time, you will find them interesting. I have so much in my head that I want to pour through the ether into yours. And so:

Hello, Wetmachine world. How do you do?

My Thoughts Exactly:
Incanting Incantations

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All y’all regular Wetmachine readers please note Incantations, the new blog of my dear friend Helen Michaud, added to the masthead above. Helen’s inaugural Incantation will follow soon in which she’ll tell you what-all she expects to write about here.

Helen’s a geekoid technical writer with a very interesting background in the NYC and Boston publishing biz.

She is a kick-ass writer. She tends to specialize in the Nicholson Baker idiom of the precisely observed intimate conversation, but her range is vast. (See for example, her backwards-written twitter novel.) Moreover, like Wetmechanic Harold Feld, Helen has an undergraduate degree from Princeton University, where all the smart people go to school, so you can rest assured that she is ipso-facto smart. (But unlike Harold, Helen was eligible for membership in the Princeton Asian Students Association as chronicled in Harold and Kumar go to White Castle Top that, Harold! . . . I digress. . .(by the way, were you guys (classmates???))

I met Helen nearly a decade ago on an open-diary site which has since fallen on trollish hard times, but which once rocked, big-time. I was a fan of her writing long before I knew her whereabouts on Earth. I just loved her stories– which were and are mainly micro-stories of overheard conversations, absurd encounters in public spaces, misunderstood marital exchanges, and similar. I was pleasantly surprised to find out, a while later, that she & I both resided near Boston, USA. Eventualy we met in meat-space. We became friends, and among other things, Helen went on to edit my book The Pains— not for any $$, mind you, but because she wanted to help me out. Whatever you may think of The Pains as a book, please take it from me that that book would have been a much, much less interesting effort absent her editorial ministrations.

Recently Helen has embarked upon a challenging, commendable, and daunting project — she’s editorial director of AE, an SF magazine a-borning; it’s devoted to Canadian Science Fiction. She’s raising funds for it on Kickstarter: please check it out and support her.

As a long-winded blabbermouth myself, I admire and envy those mininaturists who are masters of the apercu,
n 1.
A first view or glance, or the perception or estimation so obtained; an immediate apprehension or insight, appreciative rather than analytic.
The main object being to develop the several aperçus or insights which furnish the method of such psychology.
– W. T. Harris.
A series of partial and more or less disparate aperçus or outlooks; each for itself a center of experience.
– James Ward.
2.
Hence, a brief or detached view; conspectus; sketch.

I myself have four favorite miniaturists: Emily Dickinson, Beatrix Potter, Joseph Cornell and Helen. I would be hard-pressed to say which of these is my #1 favorite.

I try to keep my Wetmachine entries limited to a shorter first paragraph than this, but I’m indulging myself here, because I am delighted to announce Helen’s decision to join us here on Wetmachine. Now go check out AE, and pledge money.

My Thoughts Exactly:
Heinäsirkka, heinäsirkka, mene täältä hiiteen

Grasshopper, Grasshopper, buzz off why don’t ya?

That special time of year, when St. Urhu’s day elides into the name-day of St. Padraic, is again upon us. Longtime readers know that here at Wetmachine we have a special place in our hearts for this great Finno-Irish-American festival–mainly on account of I started this site and I’m a Finno-Irish American, of which there ain’t too damn many offer dere, as my late Grandfather “Pop” used to say.

Ode to Saint Urho
Ooksie kooksi coolama vee – Santia Urho is ta poy for me!
He sase out ta hoppers as pig as pirds – Neffer peefor haff I hurd tose words!
He reely tolt tose pugs of kreen – Braffest Finn I effer seen!
Some celebrate for St. Pat unt hiss nakes – Putt Urho poyka kot what it takes.
He kot tall and trong from feelia sour – Unt ate kala moyakka effery hour.
Tat’s why tat kuy could sase toes peetles – What krew as thick as chack bine neetles.
So let’s give a cheer in hower pest vay – On Sixteenth March, St. Urho’s Tay!

P.S. The Irish, sure, will take care o’ temselves on the morrow; of that I’ve do doubt.

My Thoughts Exactly:
How to sell a million copies of your novel

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Self-publishing novelist R.W. Ridley has some interesting comments. In order to sell a million copies of my novel, he says, I have to change the culture such that *I* am so fracking interesting that people will buy my books because they’re by me. In other words, people are buying the novelist, not the novel.

Not quite sure how to go about making myself that J.K. Rowling/Tom Clancy/Stephen King/Thomas Pynchon(??) -style compelling character, but I’m working on it. In my own bumbling manner. Very bumbling. . . Pynchon???? . . .

My Thoughts Exactly:
Don't look now, but in silico brains just got closer

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According to this article in Nano Letters, scientists at the University of Michigan have built a memristor — a chip that conserves memory, as neurons do:


A memristor is a two-terminal electronic device whose conductance can be precisely modulated by charge or flux through it. Here we experimentally demonstrate a nanoscale silicon-based memristor device and show that a hybrid system composed of complementary metal−oxide semiconductor neurons and memristor synapses can support important synaptic functions such as spike timing dependent plasticity. Using memristors as synapses in neuromorphic circuits can potentially offer both high connectivity and high density required for efficient computing.

Just in case you missed the implications, the title of their article is Nanoscale Memristor Device as Synapse in Neuromorphic Systems.

I discovered this article from this article in New Scientist (this link may or may not work for you). New Scientist cheerfully calls this memristor the “missing link” on the path towards true electronic brains, and points out that “the military” is already hard at work looking for applications. Gee, this all sounds so exciting! Why am I suddenly feeling very queasy?

Any of y’all others intrigued by implications of nanomachines and brains– and perhaps with a healthy touch of technoparanoia — are encouraged to check out my novels (if you haven’t done so already), especially the critically acclaimed Acts of the Apostles now available in sundry ebook formats!

Inventing the Future:
The Authority

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People have been having great pun as this has floated around the ‘net for a while, along with charges of Photoshopping, authentication via reviews of business directories, and charges of racism. Now within a day or so of the release of Gooogle Street View for Hong Kong, no more controversy. (Except for whether or not people should be offended by other people finding the joke offensive.)

My Thoughts Exactly:
What's in my wallet, part two

Six weeks ago or so I wrote a post about an unredeemed, and somewhat magical, pawn ticket that I’ve kept in my wallet for the past sixteen years. You’ve seen those TV advertisements for the “credit card” mafia front called Capital One. “What’s in your wallet?” they ask. Well, I used to have a Capital One so-called “credit card”1 in there , but I canceled the account last year –I’m still paying down the balance– so I have nothing with their name on it in my wallet to remind me that I’m still their bonded serf. In addition to that Magic Pawnbroker ticket I have this my wallet:

Some of the words are water-blurred, so here’s a transcription:


“Life’s challenges are determined by our thoughts and actions. Choose willingly and be proud. ‘I live, I believe, I love, I share, I laugh, I motivate, I fly, I run, I hike, I swim, I surf, I ride, and, most of all, I smile every day’”.

It’s a reproduction of a card that was found in the effects of an extremely close friend of mine, a former professional athlete (snowboarding), who died, much too young, of ALS, nearly two years ago. He indeed lived up to this credo, and, as I said in a eulogy at a memorial service for him in a packed-to-overflowing(non fundie, non-evangelical) church in his adopted home town of Colorado Springs, “he was a happy man until the day he died.”

Continue reading

Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Will Minnesota Senate Screw Duluth's Chances of Getting Google Gigabit Project?

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As reported by Christopher Mitchel from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Qwest has scored quite the little victory in its efforts to keep itself the world safe from real competition socialism. A state Senator and a state Rep introduced a bill that would have made it easier to for local governments to build municipal networks. Right now, it takes a local referendum vote with 65% to authorize a locality to build a network that offers commercial telephone service (and therefore any “triple play” broadband access service — or so they read it in MN). A State Senator and State Rep offered a bill to reduce the threshold on the referendum to a simply majority. By the time the relevant jurisdictional committee was finished, the revised bill included one of the favorite incumbent roadblocks to localities: a mandatory “feasibility study” designed to be so onerous and expensive to conduct that few local governments will want to even try.

Meanwhile, the good folks of Duluth are so desperate for real broadband that they made this joke video to get citizens to show support for bringing Google Gigabit Fiber project to town.

Question for the good Senators and Representatives of Minnesota: when you’ve got folks clamoring for real broadband, do you really want to be “protecting” your underperforming incumbent? By “clarifying” that your referendum law applies to any indirect provision of telecom service, and imposing a five year plan on municipalities, you are making it very hard for your local governments to — in the words of Duluth’s mock Public Service Announcement — “suck up even harder” than the competition. While I am hardly privy to Google’s secrets and innermost workings, I am willing to bet real money that when they weigh where to set up their pilot project, they will consider any possible legal landmines. Would you want to set up shop in a city where Qwest or some other provider might sue to block your use of city assets under the amended state law? Even if Google were to ultimately prevail, it would tie up the deployment in litigation. Who wants that, when the number of communities begging for Google to come and work its fiber magic keeps growing?

Mind you, there’s a good argument that even this version of the bill is better than the current law. Dropping the referendum requirement from 65% to a simple majority will do a lot of good even with the feasibility study requirement. But should that really be the choice? Don’t the people of MN deserve the better bill, without throwing (yet another) bone to Qwest to reward its failure to provide what people want and need?

So folks in Duluth, and other communities in MN trying to get Google Fiber, you might want to ask Qwest’s buddies in the legislature to cut y’all some slack and pass the original bill without the study requirement. that would send a signal that MN is serious about bringing broadband to its citizens and would welcome the sort of public/private partnership that Google appears to be offering. Or perhaps the MN legislature is just rooting for the people of Topeka “Google,” KS instead of the folks in Duluth.

Stay tuned . . . .