Taking the Weekend Off

It's another long weekend up here in the Great White North. This Monday is Simcoe Day, as it's known as in Ontario, or just the civic holiday. It's a provincial holiday, not federal, so not everyone will have the day off, but any excuse for a long weekend will do. So I'm taking it off from blogging. See you again on Tuesday. In the meantime, enjoy this flower. 

Featured Links - July 29, 2022

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

A peaceful afternoon at the Topsail Island marina

• A Visual Guide to the Aztec Pantheon. "Through these illustrations, I hope to commemorate the complexity of the Aztec Pantheon, make the academic research more accessible, and show how this civilization is still alive in our global culture. With luck, they will also help you see this society with the wonderment of your inner child’s eyes, just like I did all those years ago."
• Why the Arctic Is Warming 4 Times as Fast as the Rest of Earth. "The loss of sea ice is exposing darker waters, which absorb more of the sun’s energy. It’s a devastating feedback loop with major consequences for the planet."
• ‘There’s no one long Covid’: Experts struggle to make sense of the continuing mystery. "A group of virologists gathered to ask and answer questions about what causes long Covid, how to predict who gets it, and how to treat it."
• The unexpected star of NASA’s Webb images — the alt text descriptions. "A team in Baltimore was responsible for the words that made the stunning photos accessible to everyone."
• Best Practices for Graphics in Modern Publishing Pipelines. "The following best practices for creating and publishing graphics are application-agnostic and can be done in everything from open source software to top-flight, tools-integrated component content management systems."
• Could machine learning fuel a reproducibility crisis in science? "‘Data leakage’ threatens the reliability of machine-learning use across disciplines, researchers warn."
• Tonga Eruption Filled The Atmosphere With Water, Potentially Damaging The Ozone Layer. It could also contribute to global warming over the next decade.

Syd Barrett the Artist

Syd Barrett is best known for being one of the founding members of Pink Floyd, but he was also a very talented artist. Here's a short video of some of his art. I was vaguely aware that he was an artist as well as a musician but had no idea he was as good as this video demonstrates.

 

2021 World Fantasy Awards Ballot

The finalists for the 2021 World Fantasy Awards have been announced. The winners will be announced at the World Fantasy Convention in New Orleans over the November 3rd weekend. I expect that A Master of Djinn will win the Best Novel award.

These are the finalists for Best Novel.  

Black Water Sister by Zen Cho (Ace Books/Macmillan)

A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark (Tordotcom/Orbit UK)

The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros (Inkyard Press)

The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri (Orbit US/Orbit UK)

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward (Nightfire/Viper UK)

Featured Links -July 26, 2022

 Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

• Famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed a cabin in Algoma. "The E. H. Pitkin Summer Lodge, located on Sapper Island, is the last surviving Frank Lloyd Wright building left in Canada."
• Strike! Webb Telescope Report Reveals Micrometeor Damage To Mirrors. "In a commissioning report, the Webb Telescope team included an image of the telescope’s giant, honeycombed primary mirror that betrays the damage inflicted by a piece of space debris that smacked into the Webb sometime between May 22 and May 24, 2022."
• Webb Telescope's Search for Life In Space May Take Longer Than Expected. And if you have image processing skills, you can process the Webb data yourself. 
• Princess Mononoke: The masterpiece that flummoxed the US. "Twenty-five years old this week, the film is Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki's most complex work. But how it was mishandled in the West speaks of fundamental artistic differences, writes Stephen Kelly."
• Can Democracy Include a World Beyond Humans? "A truly planetary politics would extend decisionmaking to animals, ecosystems, and potentially AI."
• Manuscripts and art support archaeological evidence that syphilis was in Europe long before explorers could have brought it home from the Americas. "The only problem is that this syphilis scenario is wrong, according to ongoing research by paleopathologists, scientists who study skeletal remains for evidence of disease. After decades of painstaking work, they have concluded that the syphilis-causing spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum already existed in the Old World long before Columbus boarded his ship and sailed to Hispaniola."
• The Silurian Hypothesis: Could An Advanced Civilization Have Lived On Earth Millions Of Years Before Humans? "If a technologically advanced species existed on Earth before us, they may have left a trace."

A Good Weekly Newsletter

I get quite a few email newsletters but one I always look forward to reading is Field Notes. 

Field Notes is a weekly newsletter of urban nature writing and photography from author Christopher Brown. Subscribers receive every new edition of the newsletter directly to your inbox, so you won’t have to worry about missing anything.

Brown is the author of three near-future science fiction novels and lives in Austin, Texas. While I yet read any of his novels (two of them are sitting in the to-be-read collection on my Kindle), I always read and enjoy Field Notes as soon as it hits my inbox. Here's a brief excerpt from this week's newsletter.

It was a few degrees short of a hundred when I took my next break at mid-day and decided to go for a run despite the heat. An urban trail run that sought out the shade, following the bulldozer paths under the new onramp down to the old jeep roads that traverse the woods beneath the bridge. The young deer whose spotted fur I had seen a couple weeks earlier was gone to bones now, mostly desiccated there a few steps from the exit lane that had killed it.

It made me think about the challenges our automotive habitat provides for young animals to try to survive into adulthood and their own reproductive years, and whether the coming generation of self-driving robot cars will improve the situation. Later in the day, the memory got me thinking about what challenges the planet we have made presents for the survival of our own young.

Photo of the Week - July 24, 2022

This week's photo is a hollyhock that we bought for our backyard. I used the Portrait mode on my Pixel 4a to blur the background. It's such a pretty flower.

Saturday Sounds - Jefferson Airplane - Long John Silver

Through much of my adolescence and early youth the Jefferson Airplane were my favourite band by far. I was lucky enough to see the original Airplane twice and if I could go back in time to experience only one concert again, their 1969 concert in Detroit would be it (although I would bring earplugs as they were LOUD). 

The Airplane only lasted until 1972 when they morphed into the various incarnations of the Jefferson Starship, which I saw four times in later years. July 20th was the 50th anniversary of the last studio album, Long John Silver. Recorded live off the floor at Wally Heider Studios in San Francisco in early 1972, it is a perfect snapshot of the Airplane at the end of its too short life. 

It's been a while since I've listened to this album and it holds up better than some of their earlier recordings. Without Marty Balin in the group, Paul Kantner's anthemic science-fiction-tinged epics ("Son of Jesus" and "Alexander the Medium") get the full blast of the band's power. The high point of the album though is probably Grace Slick's soaring "Aerie (Gang of Eagles") which I drove my parents crazy with by playing it at full volume the last year I was living at home. And you should play it loud too. 

The Space Movie

This Tuesday was the 53rd anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the moon, certainly one of the most significant events of the 20th century. In memory of that, here's The Space Movie, a 1979 movie directed by Tony Palmer and featuring the music of Mike Oldfield. 

In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the moon landing, director Tony Palmer traces the history of America's space program, from the earliest stages of rocket development tests during the 1920s to the lunar missions of the 1960s and 1970s. Using archive footage and recorded conversations from the NASA archives, Palmer chronicles all aspects of space missions, including preparation, takeoff, spacewalks and finally Apollo 11's arrival on the moon.

 

Stratford's Richard III

Ontario's Stratford Festival has a world-wide and well-deserved reputation for its Shakespearean productions, musicals, and other plays. Earlier this week, Nancy and I attended their production of one of Shakespeare's better-known plays, Richard III, with Canadian actor Colm  Feore playing Richard, and a splendid production it was.

The play was staged in the newly renovated Tom Patterson Theatre, a smallish room seating about 700 people. Like the larger Festival Theatre, it features a thrust stage that brings the action well out into the audience. The theatre has been upgraded with state-of-the-art audio and lighting that was used very effectively during the play. 

Colm Feore is not an actor who I'd have thought of to play Richard, but he was very believable in the role. He doesn't have the vocal power of say, Brian Bedford, who I saw perform Richard III in the 1970s, but he played Richard with a sly charm and physicality that seemed quite appropriate.  (One of my friends commented that he must need a massage after every performance). The rest of the cast was up to Stratford's high standards, notably Michael Blake (Duke of Clarence), André Stills (Duke of Buckingham), Diana Leblanc (Duchess of York), Seana McKenna (Queen Margaret), and even including the actors who played the young, murdered princes. 

The staging took full advantage of the theatre and its associated technology. The historical Richard was brought into the modern era by the framing, at the beginning and end of the play, of the discovery of his body a few years ago. It gave the play an added depth, especially at the end, and I was quite moved. 

It's been a long time since I've been to a play and I'm glad I saw this one. Our digital screens can bring much to life, but there is a special magic to the best live theatrical productions that cinema or television will never have, and this production of Richard III had that magic. 

Stratford is a lovely little town with many excellent restaurants and sights to see outside of the theatre. We stayed at the Foster's Inn downtown, for the second time, and will stay there again if we return to Stratford.

Featured Links - July 18, 2022

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

• How To Ruin A TikTok Trick With Math. "It's a cool trick, but number theory is cooler."
• The Infamous 1972 Report That Warned of Civilization's Collapse. "The Limits to Growth argued that rampant pollution and resource extraction were pushing Earth to the brink. How does it hold up 50 years later?"
• Estimates of long Covid are startlingly high. Here’s how to understand them. You really, really, don't want to get COVID-19. Get your shots. Wear a mask.
• The Gaia Mission Keeps Unlocking Secrets of the Galaxy. "New data from the ESA’s probe, now eight years into its mission, adds significant detail to its portrait of nearly 2 billion objects in the Milky Way."
• America Is Sliding Into The Long Pandemic Defeat. "In the face of government inaction, the country’s best chance at keeping the crisis from spiraling relies on everyone to keep caring." Another not to be missed article from Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist, Ed Yong.
• ‘Mad’ Mike Hughes’ Last Ride: Inside a Flat-Earther’s Doomed Mission. I find it hard to believe that someone could risk his life trying to prove something so demonstrably wrong, but I guess he never saw a laker sail over the horizon on Lake Superior. 

Photo of the Week - July 17, 2022

Here's a photo of some of the wind damage from the derecho that we had in May. This is in Alex Robertson Park, south of where I live, near the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station. This tree appears to have been cut down after being heavily damaged. Taken with my Pixel 4a.

Saturday Sounds - Blackie and the Rodeo Kings - O Glory

Blackie and the Rodeo Kings are an unlikely success. The three musicians, Colin Linden, Stephen Fearing, and Tom Wilson, got together in 1997 to do a tribute album to the late and much-missed singer-songwriter, Willie P. Bennet. They thought the album would be a one-off but they liked playing together so much that they kept at it, and they became a successful and popular band.

Their latest album, O Glory, was released last week. It continues in the same vein as their wonderful live performances – a musical stew made up of folk, blues, rock, country, and gospel, seasoned with solid and occasionally stellar musicianship. 

If you ever get a chance to see them live, don't pass it up. Their records are good but their live performances are where they shine. 

The June Update from the OED

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is the dictionary by which all others are judged. You won't find it in bookstores and it's awfully expensive to subscribe to, but your local library probably has it on their website.

It's constantly updated and they published a large set of updates in June with an explanatory article on the blog. If you're fascinated by words and how they evolve, you should have a look at it.

The latest update to the OED includes over 700 new entries and senses. These range alphabetically from the East African ahoi (a person or body of people given the right to cultivate a plot of land without payment) to zooarchaeological (of, relating to, or designating animal remains recovered from an archaeological site). Our new entries span more than a thousand years chronologically, from the obsolete adverb aninne (within, inside, into, first recorded in the Old English translation of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History in the early tenth century) to the early 2010s neologisms sportswash and sportswashing, referring to the use of sport or sporting events in promoting a positive public image for a country or organization, distracting from other activities considered to be unethical, illegal, or otherwise controversial.

 Among other things, this update reveals that the phrase cringe factor was first used by the late Clive James in a review of the British television game show The Krypton Factor when it first aired in 1977. As a standalone noun, cringe has been used colloquially to refer to acute embarrassment or awkwardness since at least 1984, while the corresponding adjective cringe (‘it was so cringe’) is recorded from 2001. A new entry for public service announcement traces this phrase back to a 1948 report on public service broadcasting and the running of non-commercial ‘plugs’ for community causes on U.S radio stations; more recent humorous, mock-formal use is represented by a 2007 twitter posting advising against drinking a popular brand of energy drink immediately after brushing your teeth because ‘it’s gross’. You can also find out which of two competing pieces of British rhyming slang for—ahem—‘drunk, intoxicated’, Brahms and Liszt and Mozart and Liszt, is recorded earliest.

Featured Links - July 11, 2022

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

• The Seeds of Political Violence Are Being Sown in Church. "The new insurrection is being organized, in a sanctuary near you."
• THE JACKPOT: How London Became A Concierge for Kleptocrats. "Novelist Cory Doctorow tracks Britain’s domestic scandals back to the capital’s reliance on laundered money from overseas, and the feasting of so many professions on the proceeds."
• ‘Frankly it blew my mind’: how Tron changed cinema – and predicted the future of tech. "From cyberspace to AI, Steven Lisberger’s 1982 sci-fi classic was way ahead of its time. The team behind it explain how they made a game-changer."
• Stress busting and smoking hot: the OED June 2022 update. "The latest update to the OED includes over 700 new entries and senses. These range alphabetically from the East African ahoi (a person or body of people given the right to cultivate a plot of land without payment) to zooarchaeological (of, relating to, or designating animal remains recovered from an archaeological site)."
• ‘It’s not going to be as sexy’: Boca Chica looks toward a SpaceX future less lofty than it’d hoped. The Cape may become the major SpaceX launch facility, with major effects on the south Texas economy.
• Microbes May Hold the Secret to Creating More Powerful Rocket Fuel. "An anti-fungal molecule produced by the Streptomyces bacteria could enable supercharged biofuels."

Photo of the Week - July 10, 2022

This rose is in our front yard. When we bought our house, there was a rose bush that produced huge, beautiful orangeish-pink flowers. After an especially heavy winter, it stopped blooming. My wife tried taking a cutting and getting it to regrow in a different spot. Finally, last year, it started to bloom again. We're glad to have it back as the roses are beautiful. This was taken with my Pixel 4a.

  

Saturday Sounds - Billy Strings with Trey Anastasio - June 29, 2022

Billy Strings is one of the most interesting new, younger musicians I've come across in a while. He's a ferociously talented bluegrass guitarist who incorporates elements of country, rock, and out-there jamming into his music. 

Here's part of a recent performance from New York where he is joined by Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio for a few songs. You may want to just listen to this one as the video is shot from the audience and is more than a bit wobbly. But the sound seems to be from a webcast feed and the music is wonderful.

A Collection of Free Online Tools

TinyWow is a website that offers a large collection of free, online tools for working with PDF, graphic, and text files. For example, for PDFs, there are tools to create, edit, and merge PDF files and to convert them to other formats like text and Word. There are similar tools for manipulating graphic and video files.

All tools are free and if you're worried about privacy, uploaded and generated files are deleted after 15 minutes. 

The only problem with the site is that there are so many tools, it may be hard to find exactly the one you need.  

A List of July SF, Fantasy, and Horror Novels

July looks like it's going to be a big month for science fiction, fantasy, and horror book releases. Gizmodo has a list of 56 new titles. I've looked through it and there's very little that appeals to me, given that about 90 percent of the books are fantasy and horror and many of those are continuations of series. 

There were a few that looked interesting.

• Weird Tales: Best of the Early Years 1923-25 edited by Jonathan Maberry and Justin Criado
• Upgrade by Blake Crouch
• Three Miles Down: A Novel of First Contact in the Tumultuous 1970s by Harry Turtledove

 

Movie and TV Reviews - June 2022

Short reviews of movies and TV shows we watched in June. Despite it being baseball season, we seem to have watched a lot of shows this month, probably because most of them only had a few episodes. 

Movies

• I Want You Back: A slightly better than average rom-com. (Amazon Prime)
• The Contractor: B-grade action flick. I watched it three weeks ago and I cannot remember anything about it. (Amazon Prime)
• Interceptor: The only reason to watch this is to watch a buff woman beat up on a bunch of bad guys. Don't even try to rationalize the plot or your brain will melt. (Netflix)
• Doctor Stange in the Multiverse of Madness: I am mad at myself for spending two hours watching this. I enjoyed the first Doctor Strange movie but this one is just an effects-heavy mess. 

TV Shows

• Bosch: Legacy. This season continues with Bosch being a private detective and his daughter a police trainee. If you liked the original series (I did), you'll like this. (Amazon Prime)
• Obi-Wan Kenobi: This should have been a 2-hour movie. It reinforced my dislike of most of the Star Wars stories. Trying to do character development in what is essentially a fairy tale just doesn't work. (Disney+)
• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: It is very much a modern version of the original series without the darker elements that showed up in Discovery. So far it hasn't grabbed me. I do wish producers would stop trying to recreate the past and move on to something new. Written SF moved on a long time ago. 
• Stranger Things, season 4: I do hope this is the final season. The show has lost the charm of the first couple of seasons. (Netflix)
• Prehistoric Planet: A dead-on recreation of the classic nature films with David Attenborough and dinosaurs. What more could you ask for? (Apple+)
• London Kills, season 3: One of the better British police procedurals.  Almost as intense as Line of Duty. (Acorn TV)
• Fifty Shades of Green: A fast tour of the 50 best gardens in Britain featuring some truly beautiful and unique gardens. I wish it had been spread out over several episodes instead of crammed into an hour.
• Signora Volpe: A British spy takes a vacation in Italy and hijinks ensure. Worth watching for the gorgeous Umbrian scenery if nothing else. (Acorn TV)
• Martin Klunes: Islands of the Pacific. A three-episode travelogue conducted by the actor, Martin Klunes, star of Doc Martin and Manhunt. I enjoyed it a lot. I learned something about a part of the world I will probably never visit and it's gorgeous to look at. (Acorn TV)