What I'm Reading Now: Snow Crash

I'm trying my 2nd Neal Stephenson book (1st: the command line), the iconic 1992 Scifi "Snow Crash", of which I know very little. The introductory chapter is apparently an in-depth look at the fictional armed mafia-based LA pizza delivery monopoly. Very strange, indeed.

What I'm Reading Now: Coraline

After reading the dubious-quality post and checking out the trailers, I decided to pick up the audiobook (I don't get to the theatres much).  It's disappointingly short at 160 pages, but think it'll be plenty of fun for a book actually targeted at "Young Adults".  Too bad my kids aren't old enough for this yet.

Dancing with numbers - reminds me of Bee Season

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/01/12/memory-tips-from-aut.html

What a fun quote:

I say in my book that I do not crunch numbers (like a computer). Rather, I dance with them.

This reminds me of the little girl in Bee Season and her spelling feats.

Conficker tries only 200 passwords

200 passwords is an extremely short list.  Yet, it's effective.

http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2009/01/16/passwords-conficker-worm/

What I'm Reading Now: VALIS

Most every Philip K Dick book I've read has had some combination of:

• Insanity/hallucination
• Wacky invented religions
• Technology

...generally in that order.  For a scifi author, the technology is really at a minimum.  Perhaps we should re-assign PKD's genre.

So far, VALIS takes the prize in making the insanity+religion the entire plot of the book, instead of a mere influence.  In fact, a large percent of the book is occupied by a full text of the main character's "exegesis", which sounds like the insane ramblings of a nutcase's belief in humanities intelligent design by aliens.

This is probably my least-favorite PKD book yet.

All probabilities are fiendishly tricky

Randall Munroe says this today after posting a probability puzzle:

I love puzzles which are simple to state but have a fiendishly tricky or counterintuitive answer.

This must be why he can be a NASA roboticist and successful math/science webcomic author: for me, every probability puzzle is fiendishly tricky, and I usually love math puzzles. Probability is one subject that has always evaded my grasp - every correct solution seems completely illogical.

I won't even bother trying to figure out his posted puzzle:

Sue and Bob take turns rolling a 6-sided die. Once either person rolls a 6, the game is over. Sue rolls first. If she doesn’t roll a 6, Bob rolls the die; if he doesn’t roll a 6, Sue rolls again. They continue taking turns until one of them rolls a 6.

Bob rolls a 6 before Sue.

What is the probability Bob rolled the 6 on his second turn?

Link: http://blag.xkcd.com/2009/02/11/a-math-problem-2/

The Singularity approaches

Well, this is weird news. There is actually a NASA-sponsored university of singularity, if this website is not a hoax. If you know me in realspace, you probably already heard me warn of Ray Kurzweil's expected technological singularity (where I may have appeared to be a fanboy who'd been reading a little too much scifi), but I'm still very surprised that an organization exists to teach people how to cope with it. I mean, do we have a global warming university yet? It seems out-of-order.

Children are great for reminding us of our mortality

So my son, who is 4, and rather cute, tells me in his bubbly-cheery voice "Dad!  When I'm a daddy, you will be the grandpa!"

I know he's just learning his family roles & relationships, but this particular comment struck me as purely morbid.  He may as well have said "dad, when are you going to pay for your funeral arrangements so we're ready - for you to die?"