Bruce: ‘The Dracula Tapes’ and ‘The Holmes-Dracula File’ by Fred Saberhagen are extremely good, and Saberhagen knew the source material very well.
Benjamin I. Espen: Dracula is like the still center around which a whole constellation of pop culture orbits. You can see a lot of things that were clearly derived from it, yet returning to the original is a shocking and even a refreshing experience. None of the derivatives have its power and gravity.
Isegoria: When I read Frankenstein years ago, I immediately realized how little resemblance it bore to the version of the story I’d osmotically absorbed through the culture.
Phileas Frogg: I’ve returned to Dracula many times throughout the years, and I’m always amazed that each time I pick it up I become more and more aware of the genuine horror of the story. My most recent re-read a few months ago elicited the willies on several occasions, a phenomenon that I really only experienced a handful of times while reading. Excellent novel, and far superior to, Frankenstein, despite the fact that they are paired together so often, and the latter seems to be preferred...
Gaikokumaniakku: I got up this morning planning on having a productive and diligent day, but now that I have seen a single mention of skeleton, I suppose I will spend the next sixteen hours watching Alessia Crippa videos. Che ci vuoi fare? Così è la vita.
Gaikokumaniakku: 1961: The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. 1971: Federal funding becomes normal. 1981: Defense funding becomes foundational. 1991: Dependence survives the Cold War. 2001: No civil rights for “enemy combatants” or “terrorists.” ; 2011: Grant-seeking becomes institutionalized. 2021: Government influence over entire economy is semi-concealed...
Phileas Frogg: The cost of civilization is the vicious, perpetual, and unapologetic enforcement of civilization. The refusal to pay that cost by our leaders is their insistence that we must forego the laws of civilization and be subject to the laws of the jungle once again. While the American experience of this seems to still be at the stage where institutional efforts could, maybe, still reverse our descent, in Europe, and the UK in particular and in light of the Belfast situation, it appears that they...
Bob Sykes: So, this yet another benefit of open borders and free migration. Evidently, this is an unintended (?) consequence of the wholesale, heavily subsidized transport of illegal aliens into the US by the Biden administration. Or did the anti-red meat crowd piggy-back a pet project on the Biden scheme?
Isegoria: Apparently “Descendant“ appears in his The State of the Art collection.
Bill: Eventually, the US Army will get to the logical conclusion of this line of development, namely, the smart suit from “Descendant” , a 1987 short story by Iain Banks. After a bad crash, the protagonist is badly injured; can he walk back to base? The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet. The suit walks faster than I do. It reckons it is only twenty percent stronger than the average human. Something of...
Isegoria: I’m reminded of Feynman’s anecdote, in Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, about struggling to speak Portuguese: Now I wanted to say, “So, I learned Portuguese,” but I couldn’t think of the word for “so.” I knew how to make BIG words, though, so I finished the sentence like this: “CONSEQUENTEMENTE, aprendi Portugues!” When the two men came back with the baggage, she said, “Oh, he speaks Portuguese! And with such wonderful words: CONSEQUENTEMENTE!”
Phileas Frogg: I had no clue Murakami used this method. Honestly my prose can get a bit purple at times, I should try it out. Now I just have to learn enough to write in another language.
Gaikokumaniakku: It is very hard to give honest and constructive feedback on complicated student projects that might prove a student has skill. If it were easier to give feedback, training desired skills would be much easier. Whether any form of training can really imbue a student with skill is questionable. Skill is like a delicate seedling: the teacher can try to provide the right conditions and after that everyone can HOPE that the student manifests skill by mysterious processes. Of course,...
Gaikokumaniakku: There are top-down and bottom-up approaches. In the hard sciences and engineering, we sometimes try to induce parents to send their bright 14-year-olds for special programs that could be called “baby’s first internship.” These top-down programs may or may not inculcate some detectable level of professionalism. These programs certainly are not common enough, or effective enough. But the scientific community is aware that more high-quality personnel are needed. Some...
Isegoria: I see that Swift’s knowledge engine has an entry in Technovelgy.
Bill: The Giertz method sounds like Swift’s knowledge engine, used for generating new ideas: These bits of wood were covered, on every square, with paper pasted on them; and on these papers were written all the words of their language, in their several moods, tenses, and declensions; but without any order. The professor then desired me “to observe; for he was going to set his engine at work.” The pupils, at his command, took each of them hold of an iron handle, whereof there were forty fixed round...
Bruce: Great catch James James! All the stuff about well-fed people and well-fed horses sounds like why the Mongols invaded everyone with food. Like starving men from small Viking settlements going after any seaside town with food.
Gaikokumaniakku: “Boredom is usually a consequence of an oppressive combination of physical constraint, social constraint, temporal constraint, and cognitive constraint, like sitting in a 2-3 hour faculty meeting, a boring high school class, or a superfluous but mandatory training workshop.” This is why teachers ought to make sure that their students take notes on paper, and teachers should not police those notes. The doodles and vagaries of paper ostensibly devoted to notes are the nesting-grounds of...
Gaikokumaniakku: “…given the important nature of the research performed by academics in the sciences and engineering, does he support having them them funded by the government, working in academia, and their work freely available in academic journals?” I don’t speak for Caplan, and he doesn’t speak for me, but I have a few choice jeremiads on the topic of why the peer-review system is broken. Engineering is so vitally important that I believe humans must prioritize its success despite the...
