tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post4177464025268409090..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: Actually, They Can't WinDale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-43622655411872270122010-11-08T14:10:52.410-08:002010-11-08T14:10:52.410-08:00> I've got the book but haven't read it...> I've got the book but haven't read it yet -- you like it?<br /><br />Oh yes, very much. There's the usual human+AI repartee -- in this case, a girl and her Ship, or a Ship and its girl. The banter is rather, uh, earthier than in the past.<br /><br />After finishing SD, I'm finally getting around to reading _The Algebraist_, which is another space opera, non-Culture this time. FTL travel by means of wormholes rather than hyperdrive, set in a specific Earth-calendar time (4034 AD, IIRC), AIs are illegal (there was a Machine War 7000 years in the past, and any remaining sentient machines are assiduously hunted down and destroyed by the current galactic regime. In addition to the fast-living species like humans there are slow-living gas-giant dwellers (called "Dwellers") that remind me of the dirigible behemothaurs of _Look to Windward_ -- not as big, but equally long-lived, and tolerant of a (very) few fast-livers picking their memories and libraries for the billion-year perspective on galactic history. Haven't gotten much further into _Algebraist_.jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-7534142038574259622010-11-08T12:44:29.180-08:002010-11-08T12:44:29.180-08:00I've got the book but haven't read it yet ...I've got the book but haven't read it yet -- you like it?<br /><br />About natural winners -- I personally believe that there is no such thing as a life-long winning streak, that only a negligible portion of those who have more keep more because they deserve it more than most who have less. <br /><br />It's rather like celebrity. While it is easily possible that one can attract the momentary attention of masses of people, I personally believe that every single person who manages to stay in the public eye for long sustained periods of time is psychologically disturbed and most likely a straight-up sociopath.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-71953197527119896602010-11-08T10:49:28.375-08:002010-11-08T10:49:28.375-08:00> Either Republicans in their current form are
...> Either Republicans in their current form are<br />> defeated and marginalized, or, in power and<br />> on their usual know-nothing bloody-minded<br />> greedhead rampage, they will destroy the country<br />> and lead to its marginalization in the world<br />> to the ultimate benefit of the world in any case. . .<br />><br />> [I]n the long run they can't win, since, as Keynes<br />> pointed out, the span of time in which humans aspire<br />> and struggle and meaningfully live our lives tends<br />> to be shorter than the longest of the long-terms<br />> we can fathom (in which, come what may, we are all<br />> dead). But, nonetheless, it is true. <br /><br />An amusing passage from Iain M. Banks' latest "Culture"<br />novel, _Surface Detail_<br />http://www.amazon.com/Surface-Detail-Iain-M-Banks/dp/0316123404<br /><br />Chapter 18<br /><br />There was nothing worse, Veppers thought, than a loser<br />who'd made it. It was just part of the way things worked --<br />part of the complexity of life, he supposed -- that sometimes<br />somebody who absolutely deserved nothing more than to be<br />one of the downtrodden, oppressed, the dregs of society,<br />lucked out into a position of wealth, power and admiration.<br /><br />At least people who were natural winners knew how to carry<br />themselves in their pomp, whether their ascendancy had come<br />through the luck of being born rich and powerful or the luck<br />of being born ambitious and capable. Losers who'd made it<br />always let the side down. Veppers was all for arrogance --<br />he possessed the quality in full measure himself, as he'd<br />often been informed -- but it had to be deserved, you had<br />to have worked for it. Or at the very least, an ancestor<br />had to have worked for it.<br /><br />Arrogance without cause, arrogance without achievement -- or<br />that mistook luck for true achievement -- was an abomination.<br />Losers made everybody look bad. Worse, they made the whole<br />thing -- the great game that was life -- appear arbitrary,<br />almost meaningless. Their only use, Veppers had long since<br />decided, was as examples to be held up to those who complained<br />about their lack of status or money or control over their<br />lives: look, if this idiot can achieve something, so can<br />anybody, so can you. So stop whining about being exploited<br />and work harder.<br /><br />Still, at least individual losers were quite obviously<br />statistical freaks. You could allow for that, you could<br />tolerate that, albeit with gritted teeth. What he would not<br />have believed was that you could find an entire society --<br />an entire **civilization** -- of losers who'd made it.<br />And the Culture was exactly that.<br /><br />Veppers hated the Culture. He hated it for existing and he<br />hated it for -- for far too damned many credulous idiots --<br />setting the standard for what a decent society ought to look<br />like and so what other peoples ought to aspire to; it was<br />what machines had aspired to, and created, for their own<br />inhuman purposes.<br /><br />It was another of Veppers' deeply held personal beliefs that<br />when you were besieged or felt cornered, you should attack.<br /><br />He marched into the Culture ambassador's office in Ubruater<br />and threw the remains of the neural lace down on her desk.<br /><br />"What the **fuck** is this?" he demanded.<br />---------------------------<br /><br />Oh those galactic politics. ;->jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.com