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Elvis Costello’s newest CD, courtesy of Peter, delivered by Daniel. Thanks to them both.

In Middlebury, Vermont last weekend, I picked up The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge. I’d read Marooned in Realtime already, so his stellar reputation was corroborated by personal experience. I like short fiction when it’s more story than mood. These are. I’ll also have to follow up sometime about the Singularity. Vinge referred to it several times in short intro notes written for this collection, and I have to admit I didn’t know what he meant. From the first bit of this 1993 essay, I have the basic idea: we will soon have non-human intelligence(s) greater than human. Pretty old concept in science fiction. I’ll have to read the essay sometime in its entirety. The neat part about Vinge is that he is a computer scientist, recently retired from teaching at San Diego State.
About my previous book… I enjoyed Personal History, which I finished in the airport last weekend. The only thing lacking, really, was more detail on why Katharine Graham’s efforts with the Washington Post were successful. Her book was certaintly insightful, and I’d recommend it to others… I just finished the Personal History wanting a bit more of the Corporate History, too. Halberstam’s The Powers That Be covered some of this ground, but not enough of the 1960s onwards from a business angle.

[via Lawrence Lessig] One big picture, with few players

This NYTimes.com article will disappear in seven days, but the key facts are as follows. Harvard heavyweights won their first IRA national championship ever, capping an undefeated season to date (including Sprints). Most years, the crew cannot attend because of the Harvard-Yale race. Also, Charlie Butt’s crew came through to win the lightweight race, getting faster since Eastern Sprints. Every odd year since 1991, Charlie’s crew has won the national championship. I was part of two of those crews. It was 10 years ago in Camden, New Jersey (where today’s races were held) that our crew came back from getting surprised by Dartmouth at Sprints to win by open water at the IRAs. I just remember that we practiced starts incessantly in the intervening weeks, knowing that as long as no one got away from us early, the race was ours. We blistered everyone in the first 500 meters, and the result was foregone — but it was as exhausting as most any race I ever rowed, even knowing halfway through that we were going to win. Hate to live in the past, but that team sport surge of energy and emotion is behind me now. Congrats to this year’s crews… and Harry Parker and Charlie Butt.

Not the same thing as being there, of course, but I’m pleased to have some/any insight into the D: All Things Digital conference. At least Denise Howell’s transcript of Walt Mossberg talking with Steve Jobs gives some feel for the event, if not any new insights.

If I ever want to plan a round-the-world trip, this tidbit about a useful consolidator’s website will be useful.

Buy your own World War II aircraft carrier, for $4,500,000. Found via Slashdot, of course. And someone does consider the obvious (to me) Snow Crash connection. Wonder how many gallons-per-mile this thing gets?

I think I’ve read most (all?) of Gibson’s novels and much of his short fiction. Reading the transcript of a recent speech he gave at the
Directors Guild of America’s Digital Day, Los Angeles on May 17, 2003 reminds me why. He’s talking about film, of course, considering his audience, but he doesn’t limit himself in any way.

Our ancestors, when they found their way to that first stone screen, were commencing a project so vast that it only now begins to become apparent: the unthinking construction of a species-wide, time-defying, effectively immortal prosthetic memory. Extensions of the human brain and nervous system, capable of surviving the death of the individual — perhaps even of surviving the death of the species. The start of building what would become civilization, cities, cinema. Vast stone calendars, megalithic machines remembering the need to plant on a given day, to sacrifice on another.

I certainly consider digital technologies as part of my personal effort to the create a “time-defying, effectively immortal prosthetic memory” — I know if I don’t write it down, I don’t remember it well enough to describe to others, even though the emotional impact resides and accrues.

One other phrase jumped out at me, in part because of Pattern Recognition, his newest novel, which I have yet to read. He describes man as:

“an animal distinguished by a peculiar ability to recognize patterns…”

What he didn’t write here is that we (humans) also have an incredible ability to try and fit patterns on anything, whether they exist or not.

My father loves a good nap. Here’s a note from EMERGIC, written by Rajesh Jain in India: “Sleeping is a universal love.” Amen.

Like so many of my classmates, I probably had an M.C. Escher poster on my dorm room wall at some point during high school or college. I certainly grew up with at least two jigsaw puzzles made from his artwork. An inventor in England was inspired, and created a wonderful illusion, where water flows uphill. Most amusing part of the article for me was the description of the man responsible: “Inventor James Dyson, he of the bagless vacuum cleaner” I guess everyone hopes to known, for whatever reason. Not having seen or used a bagless vacuum cleaner, I won’t comment on how ingenious the fellow might or might not be, but certainly the BBC found it noteworthy. Anyway, there are pictures, diagrams, and explanations of how the illusion of water flowing uphill was created.