Current batch of unwritten posts

I'm fully aware of the fact that coherent reasonably well thought entries look better than yet another list of things I did't find time to write about in the last 2 weeks.

• Been on an SF reading splurge.


• Nation by Terry Pratchett
• The Last Theorem by Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl
• Teranesia by Greg Egan
• The Atrocity Archives by Charlie Stross
• Necessary Evil by Joshua Williamson (artist Marcus L Harris)


• agaj-d reminded me of applying Bechdel's law to literature. These books all have strong female characters but, off the top of my head, I think only Nation passes. I'm not even completely sure about that.
• Saw Marine Express by Osamu Tezuka. An odd mainstrean 80's kids anime film.


• Occasional gorgeous things, like a fishing machine, that chews.
• Weird sequences, like some viscous looking sharks that get out of breath, and collapse into cartoons.
• And huge plot twists which just completely change the nature of the story.
• Knitted a tiny hat. Don't click. I look daft.
• Farah Mendlesohn talks at the BSFA. She's always worth listening to. Any panel I've ever seen her on has been a great one. All quotes are paraphrased.


• "History as a mode of seeing the world"


• or, history teaches you how tools on how to learn using what other people have written about.
• There a post in there about why I took History GSCE rather than Geography
• "People who write about how to get kids to read don't write about the pleasure of simply reading. The act of allowing text to flow past your eyes. Even reading something like the back of a tin of beans."


• My default "if there's nothing else I read the the back of" is "a shampoo bottle."
• iBon thought "cigarette packet"
• Hmm, I should do a poll.
• "People say kids hate being preached at. They're wrong. Teenagers hate being preached at. Kids love it."


• This links to the second to last paragraph in Farah's fanish origin story.
• It's the old thing of scientists being kids who never grew out of asking questions. I ought to get my thoughts together on this and try write something coherent.
• Went to a lecture on the first treaty between Japan and Britain


• It was given by a retired British ambassador to Japan, Sir Hugh Cortazzi
• He started by saying he suggested opening the 150 year anniversary with a lecture on the original treaty. Somehow he'd wound up having to do it, despite his lack of powerpoint skills. And as a punishment for attending we'd all have to take a copy of the 90 page book he'd written on it, trying to put this speech togther


• He was ace.
• Given that we understood so little of their culture, and the whole negotiation was translated from English, to Dutch, to Japanese and back (as neither nation spoke each others language), and a there was opposition from factions in Japan, it was amazing it happened at all, let alone how quick it all happened.