More links
I’m trying to clear out the backlog of web pages that’ve been sitting open on my computer for the past week or so.
- Courtesy of Wired, an item about a guy who wants to create an airborne hologram of the Temple in Jerusalem to bring about the end days. His plan involves “an array of high-powered, water-cooled lasers [being fired] into a transparent cube suspended beneath a blimp.” Holograms, airships, and religion—what more could you want? (Apparently, though, some people (and the Left Behind books?) suggest that the original Temple was really somewhere nearby, rather than right where the Dome of the Rock is; that approach would, alas, eliminate the need for blimps and lasers.)
- Fascinating piece by British sf author Adam Roberts on metaphor and sf. Warning: contains critical theory, also some Heinlein-bashing. Ultra-brief version of my own rather simpler views on the subject: some of the best sf works on both a literal level and a metaphorical level, but I also find lots of value in stories that aren’t primarily metaphorical—for example, in stories that would be naturalistic fiction if the world and/or universe were other than they are.
- The Book of Ratings apparently rates things. It currently features ratings related to aspects of pirates. Accents get an A-, while Walking the Plank gets only a D.
- Some excellent and funny pictograms and awful or silly writing at the Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness, much of which doesn’t really have anything to do with tech docs. The tenth image, the crankcase collar diagram, is rather un-work-safe even though it’s from a motorcycle shop manual.
- This week’s SCI FICTION features a novelette by Elizabeth Bear and a reprint by Manly Wade Wellman, and if only I can dig up some time somewhere, I’m looking forward to reading both of them soon.
- Meanwhile, The Infinite Matrix is running a weekly “unblog” by Howard Waldrop. It can’t be a blog, because Howard doesn’t have a computer or a Net connection; I’m guessing he’s papermailing his entries (okay, I guess you can call them “columns” if you want to) to Eileen.
- If you want to use spiffy curved/slanted quotation marks in your journal entries instead of straight up-and-down ones, you may want to try the texturizer. If you’d rather do the conversion on your own than use a web page, there’s a similar (but apparently not quite as smart) smart quotes utility in Perl.
- The Language Identifier analyzes text you enter and tells you what language it’s in, without actually translating it.
- Apparently the latest fashion in the Netherlands is implanting tiny jewelry in the mucous membrane of the eye.
