SRF Heavy Industries

When you lead off with a link, and that link goes to a couple thousand words of financial system diatribe, you can pretty much guarantee either people aren’t going to click it or, if they do, they aren’t going to come back. I’m taking a gamble, but I believe there’s a good reason to do so:

Matt Taibbi explains via Rolling Stone the scams that will keep our economy — and the world’s — from recovering as long as these people are loose on Wall Street.

If you read that, you really can skip the rest of this post. If you didn’t, here’s the upshot:

Economic recovery has not arrived. At best we are reinflating the bubble despite the huge leak in the balloon. That huge leak is described in the number of scams Wall Street is using to siphon off TARP/bailout funds into individual tailored pockets in very expensive suits.

For instance, the Fed lowers interbank lending rates to 0% to reload banks with liquid money for the purposes of loaning it to small businesses and new mortgages. You’re a bank. You borrow $100 billion. You look around for a good investment worth loaning $100 billion to. You decide to buy Treasury bonds, which pay back at 3.75% interest. Hooray! You borrowed $100 billion from the US Government at 0% interest, loaned it back to them at 3.75% interest, and for a year of doing NOTHING USEFUL with $100 billion, you have earned $3.75 billion in PROFITS, which you may now split between shareholders and distributing as bonuses and blow on coke and whores.

It would have been better for the Fed to have just written a check for $3.75 billion, handed it to Goldman Sachs for coke and whores, and done ANYTHING ELSE with that $100 billion.

And this is the LEAST scammy trick described in the above article.

NOW please go click. Forward the link to your Senators and Representatives. Ask them whether they will be standing between you and Wall Street when things go down or beside you with a pitchfork in their own hands.

[*]

The browser.

There, I’ve said it.

I don’t have  good mobile browser. I have a T-Mobile Wing. It gets the job done — right up until it’s supposed to ring when I get an incoming call, and I kind of consider this failure a bit of a feature. But most of my interaction with the outside world is, I kid you not, filtered through SMS. Both incoming and outgoing. I hit a hardware button or two, and there’s the list of everything that’s happened recently: news headlines (via RSS pipes sent to a Twitter account I follow), select Facebook and Twitter updates, and, of course, actual SMS messages from people who have my number. If the bluetooth headset is in my ear, then a robotified voice of Terry Gross (from NPR’s “Fresh Air”) on too much thorazine (not REALLY Terry Gross, but that’s REALLY what it sounds like) vocally transcribes the incoming messages in real-time into my ear. I also get the sender and subject lines of incoming e-mail on any of several accounts.

I also can’t really think of a way to replace this audio ticker service with anything browser-based until mobile internet accommodations for the visually impaired become more widely implemented and available.

I understand Google’s love of the browser-based application. BIOS + HAL + your selection of OS + your selection of browser + HTML/Javascript/Flash/Air/Silverlight application environment = an eventual platform-independent application space (and prepares the way for cutting out a couple of those really inefficient layers for the mobile market: BIOS/HAL/Browser-based application environment, for instance) that’s based upon agreed-on app-implementation standards. Kinda.

Whatever. It doesn’t bug me in the slightest that they REALLY want to filter all the messaging on earth (now including video/audio streams in chat and Google Voice) through their servers, weight the importance of each nugget by seeing who is paying attention to it and for how long, and finish summoning The Demon That Knows What Is Current And Relevant and will be able to insert context-relevant bilboards into the video chat streams, accompanied by catchy jingles. Really doesn’t bug me, sorry. I have personal uses for that demon and I can’t wait for it to get here.

It’s just the browser thing. And that audio-ticker service thing I depend on. That’s all. Other than that I would probably actually use G-Mail and Google Docs and Wave and Buzz. But their API (what API?) doesn’t really lend itself to I/O via SMS. Because how could they show me ads if it did?

So there.

[*]

Sidewalk in suburbia. An actual neighborhood — fifty, sixty years old — instead of a housing development/subdivision. Nine out of ten streetlights shedding a sulphurous mist just post sunset. New sidewalk. New cracks. Brick bungalows maybe ten yards back from the roadway. Mailboxes a lesson in suburban diversity.

A crow followed me from lightpost to lightpost. I didn’t notice until just after the third one — when he swooped by at arm’s length and waited for me at the next one.

I slowed to a halt and stuck out a raincoated arm. He fluffed up on the post, considering, then dropped down in a less-than dramatic swoop, ending up on my forearm.

Even though I’d been acting like I expected it, I was caught off guard. I couldn’t tell you whether he weighed more like a grapefruit or a bowling ball. Adrenaline surged while I thought of what to do next.

I thought about the neighborhood I was in. I hazarded, “What up, my nigga?”

He cocked an eye at me the way birds do, where everything you say or do requires them to look at you in a funny way. “Hello,” it said.

Of course. “So this is where I get the lecture about political correctness in my greetings?”

“Hello,” it said. I sighed.

“Hello,” I replied.

He bounced up and down, the way a bird will when it’s testing a branch to see if it’s springy enough to help with take-off.

“Gum?” it asked. “Hello.”

I was, in fact, chewing gum. I rolled it to the tip of my tongue and presented it.

The crow bounced gently up to my shoulder and pecked the gum expertly off the tip of my tongue.

“Hello,” it said, unmuffled by its beakful, and flew off into the trees behind a nearby house.

“Aloha,” I replied. “Don’t let it drag the ground unless the streets are clean,” I called out after it.

I have no idea what I meant. My own special version of Tourette’s Syndrome. It sounded like good advice regardless.

The footsteps that had been shadowing me for the past quarter mile kept their distance. Hell, I would have, too.

I just read the State of the Union address. I prefer to read rather than watch because I get more out of reading — if I didn’t get something, I can go back and try again. If something sounds inconsistent, I can flip backwards and forwards and see if something is really out of kilter.

As with much that passes for public speaking, I had to separate everything into facts and appeals. I don’t have a full team of researchers to dig data for me, but frankly I think the actual state of the union is a worse picture than the one Obama painted with the facts he presented. Yes, we’re in two wars and one of them is ending. Yes, we still have torture-prisons where people who haven’t been convicted of anything are incarcerated, but we’re closing one of them and scaled way back on that torture thing.

Our educational system is still a wreck and nothing has happened with healthcare except a lot of screaming, and not much of that screaming has been about the actual problem: the feedback loop of insurance companies charging doctors high malpractice premiums — which then push the costs of those premiums back to patients, who then have to pay higher coverage premiums TO THE SAME COMPANIES. It’s as if they’ve found a secret tap for draining money out of everyone’s wallet and think if they only crank it open 10-15% more each year, they won’t get caught. The only way to stay out of that loop is to not buy insurance and not get sick. The only arguing I’ve heard about so far is the argument to make it illegal to not buy the insurance. That’s the wrong order, you twerps. Fix it first THEN make me buy it.

Unemployment is not depicted to be as bad as it actually is. Obama says one in ten people can’t find work. Technically true. Demographically it’s worse than that. Seventeen out of a hundred black males can’t find any work here in Georgia. But it’s worse than THAT, even, because that one-in-ten figure is just people who are still looking and haven’t given up. Also it doesn’t count people who have sucky jobs that don’t cover all the bills and who are still being dragged by spiraling debt towards default and foreclosure and bankruptcy. And God help them if they get sick.

So let’s say that REAL unemployment figure is a lot closer to one in five. If not, by now, one in four.

Obama discusses the broken, partisan nature of the House and Senate. He does say that some seem to be acting like it will take a clear sixty votes in Senate to get any bill through both houses. So he’s pretty accurate there. This is largely due to the unprecedented polarizations of the propaganda networks. The tea/douche-bagging phenomenon continues at an unslowed pace, for instance. This is unsurprising. Pardon me for some nearly unforgivable profiling here, but the stereotypical FOX News viewer is a bigoted white Christian fundamentalist who is frightened to the core of living in unprotected among people who are not much like them and, by now, nearly justified in setting fire to their backwards little enclaves simply because the smell of burning flesh and hair is better then the stench of unbridled fear.

I’ll just sit here for a minute while you go back and sort out the syntax of that last sentence. I know it’s a bit twisted, but it’s too close to exactly how I feel for me to try to rewrite it for simplicity’s sake.

These people are actually in favor of Armageddon, secretly rooting for it, even, because they think they’re still in charge somehow, or, if not, that their networks are tight enough to allow them to be the only survivors when shit comes down, that when Mad Max rolls into town, they’ll be the only ones with gasoline. To this I can only answer, I really hope you can survive on drinking gasoline.

I’ll skip the evaluation of the appeals. Those are easy to spot. More interesting are the tone of the appeals, backhanded as often as straightforward, revealing an immense amount of exasperation and frustration on the part of the President. This is unsurprising. Not meaning to talk bad about Obama here — I truly believe he’s enormously competent and even awe-inspiring — but he won an election that, in reality, could have been won by a deranged goat if it had stepped onto the Democrat party ticket. And considering the shape the nation was in after eight years of GWB, the only people who could have actually wanted the Presidency at that point would have had to be similarly deranged. There was nothing on the plate to be served to the President BUT exasperation and frustration and whatever it takes to get people to stop pointing their damn fingers and just clean up the mess before we all choke on it.

My principal worry about who to vote for in the Democratic primary was weighing the sanity of the person volunteering to jump on the grenade rolling around on the floor. The fear that we would get another crushing couple of years of GWB policies never really crossed my mind. McCain would have been a breath of fresh air even, but his sanity was even worse in doubt after conceding to the showboating that selected the big bucket of insanity that was Palin for a running mate. THAT, friends and neighbors, was an act of desperation that deserved to fail. TO THIS DAY Palin is right off the set of some SNL-inspired mockumentary and seems to be the only one who doesn’t get the joke.

I slipped a little bit off topic there.

Anyway, Obama’s exasperation is not surprising. The fact that there are no real rumors of him losing his temper is surprising. I don’t really have more I feel I need to say about that.

I would like to see what progress his appeals inspire. I saw a lot of pledged support for traditional situations, for the middle class that has absolutely taken a couple of shots below the waterline, for families and households with children. I’m not going to see it purely in terms of what he’s pledged for people like myself — no children in the household that would could toward the tax credits, living in the hinterlands that are handfuls of 1099s instead of a W2 or two per household and tax forms that have to be shipped to the IRS in a box because envelopes aren’t big enough.

There are plenty of people scheduled to fall between the gaps in the appeals due to nonstandard employment and nonstandard family life, and that’s all unfortunately because it’s prettier, and more emotionally appealing, to talk in terms of supporting jobs and families than in terms of basic human rights that apply to everyone, regardless of age or race or situation, that we’re afraid to admit we’re on the wrong side of the curve on.

In any case, that was an excellent speech, Mr. President. It covered all the emotional bases and many of the factual ones. It offered a carefully described majority some hope that change was still in progress. The rest of us will continue to hope that someone will get around to us eventually.

[*]

Papa Legba, show me the way to Titanyen

Baron Kriminel kicked the island, shoved the buildings down, slaughtered the children and old people and beautiful people in their prime, for Titanyen is lonely

Baron Cimetière open the gate to Titanyen

Baron Samedi, laugh, Baron Samedi and Maman Brigitte welcome all with open arms

Baron La Croix tap friends on shoulder, take coats and hats and show dancers to their places

Maman Brigitte, give everyone their cross

Inside sits Papa Ghede, playing cards with Ghede Bábáco, pick up your spades and dig

Baron Cimitière, hug all the little children and hold them close

Ghede Nibo, sing with the voices of the dead, sing all their names and all the names of all their fathers and mothers, sing as you dig

Baron Cimitière, hug all the grandpas and grandmas and hold them close

Ghede Masaka, tuck your bag in your belt and dig

Baron Cimitière, hug all the mothers and fathers and hold them close

Ghede Oussou, put down your bottle and dig

Baron Cimitière, hug all the brothers and sisters and hold them close

Ghede L’Oraille, straighten your dress and dig

Baron Cimitière, hug my cousin, my aunt, my uncle, hold them close

Ghede Plumaj, dust off your hat and dig

Baron Cimitière, hug my wife, my husband, hold them close

Ghede Ti Malis, wake up your lazy ass and dig

Baron Cimitière, hug all my good friends and hold them close

Ghede Zaranye, dig and dig and dig and dig and dig and dig and dig and dig

Baron Kriminel kicked the island, knocked the buildings down, slaughtered the children and old people and beautiful people in their prime, for Titanyen is lonely

Baron Samedi laugh, Baron Samedi and Maman Brigitte, welcome all with open arms

Baron La Croix, tap friends on shoulder, take coats and hats and show dancers to their places

Maman Brigitte, give everyone their cross

Baron Cimetière, close the gate to Titanyen

Papa Legba, bring me home

[*]

When I sit down to write it’s not exactly as if I intend to write the unreadable. It’s all these levels of abstraction I can’t ignore anymore. An example:

Physics –> Materials –> Voltage switching –> BIOS –> Operating system –> Application –> These words being written & fine-tuned & sent

(and realize this is leaving out a couple to keep things simple)

But then here I am, just sitting here thinking:

Physics –> Molecular chemistry –> Organic Chemistry –> Biological Chemistry –> Cellular abstractions –> Multicellular abstractions –> Organism –> Sensory BIOS –> Consciousness/attention –> Logical & Linguistic abstractions –> Some words in my head

(again it’s not just simple and linear layers, but a network of interlocking abstractions)

It’s not the layers that are the important parts, but the interfaces between layers. Those interfaces allow for abstractions. Abstractions make applications portable. With the right abstraction, any application ought to be able to run on any layer. Yes, even consciousness (and everything above it) on bare-metal condensed matter physics. If we create the necessary abstractions for human sensory input and communication output — write the BIOS, as it were — we should be able to move right in.

Partially, completely, aggregately.

It can go the other direction as well.

… Consciousness/attention –> Logical & Linguistic abstractions –> Communication –> Organizational behavior –> Societal tissue abstractions –> Social organism –> Social sensory BIOS –> Social organism consciousness/attention –> Social organism logical & linguistic abstractions –> … not a new idea, certainly. Really, it’s at least a couple thousand years old, bare minimum. And it’s such a natural progression.

Any application you can think of — and that’s anything that does anything — can be ported from one level of existence to another by the deliberate design and construction of an abstracted interface layer and careful duplication of inputs and outputs.

[*]

“It just hasn’t been an evening out for you unless there was blood dripping from the ceiling, right?”

“Once you’ve broken one physical law of the universe, it’s like the rest just mill about, looking at their feet, wondering which is going to be next.”

“When your only source of reliable information is a giant frog in a space suit that no one else can see, you tend to keep a lot of stuff to yourself.”

“You sank them by dropping an ox a hundred feet onto their boat? AHAHAHAHA!” “Don’t laugh! That ox was like a member of the family!” “Which one? Your wife? HAHAHAHAHA!” “If you must know, Harold, I named him after you! And I thought about you anytime I stuck anything up his arse.“

“What is your fascination with grafting spare tongues into random orifices in the serving girls, anyway? It’s their duty to hold their tongues most of the time, regardless.” “Yes, dear, but it never said where.”

Bonus points if you know my projects well enough to know which lines go with which novels in progress.

[*]

Received my copy of Finch from Jeff VanderMeer’s own hands at his reading at Manuel’s Tavern(‘s beer storage closet — a story in itself) Friday evening and read it in as close to one sitting as is possible in a house full of kids and livestock and snap-together model emergencies and such.

It’s the third (and likely final, at least chronologically) book in the Ambergris Cycle, set in a town (named after essence of whale vomit) whose complete history we get to traverse through the stories in this cycle. It should be noted that I haven’t had a chance to read the middle volume, Shriek: An Afterword, but I have read City of Saints and Madmen more than a couple of times.

Each volume is quite a bit different in the map it draws. The first is quite playfully historical in its approach, creating a wealth of interlocking characters and companies and elements that would be passive furniture in anyone else’s hands. The second I won’t comment much on, not having read it yet, but is a matched set of dueling narratives from a brother and sister team, somewhat at cross purposes. The third is blatantly mid-40s noir, set in an occupied echo of Paris, complete with Vichyesque collaborators — except the occupying force is a colony of sentient fungi. More on that in a moment.

Given the city of Ambergris and the twisted story of its timeline, I’ve no choice but to be reminded of Tanith Lee’s Secret Books of Paradys series. Lee writes consistently darker myths surrounding her fabled city in a more consistent style, but all of the tales in this series also tangle around a single city and it’s tangled histories and parallels. She lacks VanderMeer’s flair for the absurd and (overaccused to the point I suspect he’s truly tired of it) kink for squid and mushrooms. Lee takes the path of fantasy/horror more often while VanderMeer stays true to a form of historically flavored SF with the fungus creatures having their own alien biologically based technology — but I argue that kind of distinction really isn’t any kind of important distinction these days. The bookstores have been shelving the speculative stuff all in one lump for a couple of decades now, with occasional escapees from the genre ghetto to “true literature”.

The only criteria I’ve used in my own book-buying has ever been, “Is the story worth the money?” And the answer here is, yes, yes, VanderMeer’s stories are worth the money.

VanderMeer nails noir in Finch. The characters are gripping and variably textured and intriguingly flawed. The odds are overwhelmingly stacked. Women are perilous and have their own goals. Bullets and booze are readily available and never solve anything. Grim determination and endurance is way more useful a trait than Holmesian problem-solving ability, and everybody who can help is playing for a different team which would, for preference, crush a snoop like a cockroach. But this is set in Ambergris, a city long torn apart by warring merchant princes and, because this is just that kind of world, suffering from a soon-to-be-fatal sentient Cordyceps infection.

The absurdity is greeted head-on, without flinching, and no snickers out of the corner of the mouth. You get the dreamlike feel of Cronenberg directing a film adaptation of a William S. Burroughs novel. It can be funny, but you can only laugh when you come up for air and break out of the mindset, cowering in the safety of the real world. But then you have to consider, this is a real world where Cordyceps exists. And Toxoplasma gondii. And Wolbachia. And Spinochordodes tellinii. It’s really just not that infeasible that we may eventually run across some spore in a jungle somewhere that changes everything for us forever. Someday.

Evil domineering squid might seem a bit more of a stretch, but the oceans are really really large and very deep, and we haven’t explored a tenth of the volume yet.

Finch covers a huge amount of territory, story- and flavor-wise. The crossovers in genre produce a novel favorable to the union of the sets, not the intersection. If you like noir, you’ll like Finch. If you like absurdist stories taken seriously, you’ll like Finch. If you like your SF historical and culturally rich, you’ll like Finch. It’s not like if you just like one you’ll have to put up with the rest. The flavors mix and blend to make a brilliant, meaty stew that is anything but your usual comfort chow.

I will probably be reading it again tomorrow.

[*]

A spoonful of my brains in the cotton candy machine
Creutzfeldt-Jakob prions, sweetened-to-taste and caramelized
Twirled around a paper cone handle
A time bomb with a twenty-year fuse
A teaspoon of good ideas, poorly folded
Transmissible only by eating your father’s brains
And cotton candy
Stop picking on your sister
And apologize for throwing up on your stepmother
And promise you’ll do all of your spelling homework
And I’ll stop beating you with the buckle-end
Maybe
And buy you this disease on a stick
That will completely cure you of everything
Before you turn thirty
Maybe you’ll have children before you go
And I’ll teach you to make cotton candy
Taste better with nothing but
The power of your mind.

[*]