NPR has a nice list of 100 great sci-fi novels, and they’re trying to narrow it down to the 10 best. Head on over there and vote, or at least scan the list and see how many you’ve read.
Author: Mike White
Genomes, Books, and Science Fiction
Damn you, Altered Carbon
I wanted to like you so much. You were supposed to be the best thing since Neuromancer.
Altered Carbon is a clever William Gibson/Raymond Chandler hybrid, with a brilliantly imagined future world, but this book suffers from the core flaw I find in nearly all of the sci-fi I’ve been reading lately: an amazing core idea is left barely developed. In the case of Altered Carbon, although the author struggled mightily, nothing in this book developed naturally: not the plot (excessively convoluted, contrived, and in the end unconvincing), not the characters (the characters, except for superficialities, are largely interchangeable, and there is no genuine psychological development), and certainly not the larger social and philosophical themes. A philosopher from the hero’s home planet is fequently quoted, but this philosopher is neither poetic nor profound. Altered Carbon is clearly inspired by The Big Sleep, but unlike Philip Marlowe, Takeshi Kovacs is not convincingly tormented by being a man of honor and conscience in a world without either. Kovacs is more like John McClane (or any other kick-ass John like John Rambo or John Connor, but we can at least give Morgan credit for not naming his character John Kovacs) than he is like Philip Marlowe, and, in spite of their unquestioned awesomeness, the main characters of Rambo and Die Hard would be completely out of place in hard-boiled noir. They work by blowing shit up, and so does Takeshi Kovacs. Continue reading “Damn you, Altered Carbon”
Alcohol consumption and financial success
Via The New York Times, a new Gallup survey suggests that alcohol consumption and financial success are positively correlated.
In accordance with the standards for inferring causation that seem to prevail in my scientific field (genomics and systems biology), I’m going to conclude that the secret to financial success is to drink more.
We’re not in Kansas anymore
Here at the Cold Spring Harbor Computational Cell Biology meeting, after the first session:
Terms I have heard: ‘tensor’, ‘partial differential equations’, ‘quantum dots’
Term I have not heard: ‘DNA’
During an average day at the lab back home:
Term I hear: ‘DNA’
Terms I do not hear: ‘tensor’, ‘partial differential equations’, ‘quantum dots’
Wired Fear Mongering – Body Scanners
Wired lets me down with some airport body scanner fear mongering:
TSA admits bungling of airport body scanner radiation test:
The Transportation Security Administration is reanalyzing the radiation levels of X-ray body scanners installed in airports nationwide, after testing produced dramatically higher-than-expected results.
The TSA, which has deployed at least 500 body scanners to at least 78 airports, said Tuesday the machines meet all safety standards and would remain in operation despite a “calculation error” in safety studies. The flawed results showed radiation levels 10 times higher than expected.
Read a little more deeply, and it turns out that the problem is not that the machines are emitting 10 times higher than expected radiation – it’s the much less hazardous (and less sensational) problem that the technicians testing the machines forgot to divide by 10. Continue reading “Wired Fear Mongering – Body Scanners”
The Finch and Pea 