Joe Haldeman's Blog, page 64

Crater Albategnius

 This morning's lunar drawing . . . .

[image error]/Users/joehaldeman/Desktop/albategnius.jpg

[image error]Hmm . . . another great feature of the New Improved Live! Journal!  . . . you can't just paste in images.

Have to see whether it does it automatically when I hit "Save" . . . 

Joe

(Evidently not.)

What a state to be in?

 [In sff.net, the conversation got around to how crappy drivers in Washington, D.C. are . . . . ]



Well, there are lies, damned lies, and mathematics. If you look at

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/departme...

you’ll see that the death rate in Washington for traffic accidents, year by year, is consistently about half that of the average for the rest of the country.

But then you think about one-half em-vee-squared and consider how few of the accidents in D.C. occur at 70 mph or more . . .

(The death rate in Wyoming, z.B., runs more than double the national average.)

Joe

Swedish movies and birth control

 We had a real groaning board here last night, family and friends over to watch the first installment of George Martin’s Game of Thrones. Everybody brought too-delectable things – I contributed a cheese board and a couple of plates of deviled eggs – and some of us ate way too much. Off to the gym. If I can only heave myself out of the chair.

The TV show was good. Pretty convincing pseudo-medieval gear. Good writing and acting. Comely wenches and muscular brutes and lots of on-screen sex and violence. Beheadings and rapes on prime time, oh my.

(I couldn’t help wondering what effect that might have had on me if I had seen it at eleven or twelve. Of course an 11-year-old today knows more about such things, or at least has seen more about them, than I had at twenty.)

On our first real date, in 1961, I took Gay to see Bergman’s The Virgin Spring, which for some reason I thought was a murder mystery. Well, it did have a murder, but the reason it was banned all over the country was an explicit (by standards then) rape scene. We did have a third date, nevertheless, but told her mother that the movie had been a Swedish murder mystery. Well, it was Swedish and had a murder. And naked men whipping each other with switches in a sauna; we didn’t mention that part either.

Nowadays they probably show it with the Saturday morning cartoons. “Mommy! Why isn’t he wearing a rubber?”

Joe

When in Iowa

 Working on the novel, I did some goggling around about bike riding in Iowa. Came across a description of the FunHaters’ Ride, out of Des Moines, which is short but sweet. It has the same paragraph under “Cost” and “Registration”:

None. Come on, can we all just leave the cameras at home. If you do bring the cameras, lay off the bribery pics. The fun of this ride, especially the second stop at the Saddle, is that anything goes. That does not happen often. This said, again clothing is optional and stupidity is encouraged if not demanded. And safely spread the love.

That sounds like the Iowa I know and love.

Joe


(LJ seems to have improved the last couple of hours . . .  )

organ recital

 You probably noticed the tempest in a teapot recently when one politician used the word “uterus” and some old fogie took him for task for using such an offensive word in public. Here’s a few ladies’ reaction to that. Sort of an organ recital . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpBO3e...

Missed out on half of open studio yesterday because I had to come home and be on Skype for a talk beamed up to I-Con on Long Island.

We had two models, for an interesting change. They both had scheduling constraints, but could split the work load. Here’s a five-minute sketch of the man and a twenty-minute one of the woman, with wash added.

Joe





Incidentally, don't you just hate the new LJ protocols?  Takes more than twice as long to do anything.  I guess that's typical "progress" in home computing.



Joe
 

writing, drawing

I have stumbled upon a coffee combination that is about the best I’ve had in years, though it would be difficult to duplicate. I got a half-pound of dark French roast beans when we were in St. Augustine, and this morning combined them with some Kintamani “Full City Roast” that Gay brought home from the market yesterday, and the result is remarkable! If you like your coffee strong enough to make your brain vibrate like a gong.

I’m a little beverage-conflicted, though, since (having finished an unsatisfying Elmore Leonard novel) I’ve picked up a series of Tea Shop mysteries, which a bookseller sent me, knowing I love tea. I started The Darjeeling Murders yesterday, and am enjoying the light touch.

Today I’m going to “attend” a science fiction convention in Long Island via Skype. (They asked me to be GoH some time ago, and I declined because I wasn’t feeling well. That excuse doesn’t work anymore, in this brave new cybernetic world. They’ll bring a convention to your deathbed and have a Last Words panel . . . )

But first I go off to paint a naked person, who I sincerely hope will be an attractive young lady, but will probably be a wrinkled old man with attitude. A much more interesting artistic challenge, of course.

Wonderful day writing yesterday, four pages that came easily and still seem good this morning. Passed the hundredth page of the new novel, a comforting milestone.

Joe

Joe

Talk o' the Nation Interview

 

here's the url of the interview . . .

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/14/135412699/answering-the-call-to-serve-changes-lives

Joe

Surprise Joe (so there!)

[Talking about linguistics in sff.net . . . ]

Dave, I’ve never studied linguistics and stopped studying computer science in 1965, so have no opinion about any of the futuristic stuff you’re talking about. In that earth-shaking year, though, 1965, I did -- in the most literal sense of the cluster of words -- build a “working natural language processing system." It was a string-manipulation program that generated World War I Flying Ace stories. (Porn would have been easier, but the CS department didn’t have a highly evolved sense of humor.)

Leafing through a recent copy of Byte magazine, I was surprised to find that a simulator for the program I used for that project, Snobol, is still available. Checking Google, though, I find that most of the references are to Sno Bol, a toilet cleaning product. Sic transit Gloria Linguii . . . .

Speaking of languages, this morning I got the cutest reply from a Chinese fan. He wrote me yesterday and I answered him.

“ . . . am so happy to receive your letter. I showed your reply to my friends, they even don't believe this is a letter from the SF master. It's a great surprise. In my surrounding of my friends, we give you a cute name, Surprise Joe. Because in your books, there are so many great surprises in your stories.”

I ought to have that engraved on a brick and mail it collect to critics who say I’m predictable.


S. Joe

Flutes . . . in . . . . . . SPACE!

NASA Astronaut Cady Coleman and Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson, do a flute duet -- in orbit and earthbound.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeC4nqBB5BM&feature=player_embedded

Joe

Talk of the Nation

This Thursday, April 14, I'll be on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" with Neal Conan, from 3PM to 3:40PM. I think I'll be talking about the effect being in the Army has had on the rest of my life. (At least I know that the call came in response to an article I had on that subject in _The Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute_.)

It's a good venue. Pity I don't have a brand-new book to push!

Joe