Al Macintyre: Brain Exercise

Sun, 05 Jan 2003 18:59:41 GMT

The Cartoonist Weblog = worth visiting for random insights, and delicious mixture of pictures and text..

Tue, 19 Nov 2002 07:53:13 GMT

Best Business Books of 2002.

Strategy + Business: Best Business Books of 2002

This appears to be a great collection of books, separated by category and reviewed by the editors of Strategy + Business.

[tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog]

Mon, 18 Nov 2002 08:19:18 GMT

www.netcrimes.net and Misdemeanors is the latest book I have taken a look at. It is written great! Each chapter is a mixture of stories of real problems for real people, showing us what it is to be a victim of out-of-control: cyber-stalking (get help via www.haltabuse.org if you a victim of this); identity-theft (more kinds than I knew about, which means I need to say more in Identity Protection than what was implied by Stop Identity Theft because my Banking Stories may have distorted my vision as to where the greatest threats come from, www.cybersnitch.net has advice how not to become the next such statistic); hostile people out there posting stuff that pretends to be from you; spam; hoaxes; all sorts of frauds; what you ought to do about it, with tons of useful links. Some of these connections will be making their way onto my web site in future postings. Some have already come here, although with a somewhat different spin than that of www.jahitchcock.com J. A. Hitchcock. Here are some wonderful starting points.

www.trf.k12.mn.us/lhs/shutthedoor.html = safety brochure to help schools and law enforcement understand about anonymous e-harrassment and what can be done about it
If you want spam or want more than you already getting, then sign up at www.iwantspam.com
If you sent $ in the mail to some place to buy something that was communicated to you via the Internet, and you now think you have been cheated, prompt contact with postal inspectors can put a scammer in the slammer www.usps.gov/websites/depart/inspect
Got questions about computers and the Internet? Check out http://whatis.techtarget.com and www.askanexpert.com
Do you suspect that there are programs hiding on your computer that should not be there? I not talking viruses & trojans but spyware. Check out www.cexx.org/problem.htm and www.lavasoftusa.com
Let's suppose someone might be impersonating you and behaving in a disreputable manner, you can keep track of yourself online by submitting your first & last name, or your e-mail address to www.tracerlock.com and they will e-mail you when it finds a match (I know I am in a LOT of places legitimately)

Tue, 05 Nov 2002 22:32:08 GMT

[Tomalak's Realm]: Scott Berkun's uiweb.com: QUOTE Top Reasons why ease of use doesn't happen on engineering projects. In reviewing all the email I've received at this website, and the experiences I've had teaching and consulting, I've tried to catalog the different reasons why projects didn't result in easy to use designs. UNQUOTE [Tomalak's Realm]

This is great. The reasons each come with discussion of how to fix the problem.

Ease of use was not stated as an explicit project goal.

Any development project must have clearly defined goals that team leaders agree to, one of which ought to be ease of use for end-users of the product, combined with a set of trade-offs. If we cannot do everything desired (schedule slips), how important is this goal?

Ease of use was not defined in actionable terms.

Designers tend to focus on that which is clearly defined, such as features, performance metrics, defect rates, time schedule, which means that user friendliness can get ignored if it does not also have spelled out what is needed to satisfy the end users. It is critical to spell out what it is that is being lost if someone decides to cut it out.
Before the project specifications are finalized, the team leader needs to make sure customer needs have been properly researched.

Decision makers don't see the trade-offs.

An element of quality is the productivity of the end users of the product.
The needs of end users, to efficiently perform the product functions, must be researched, before the product specifications are completed.
For many end users, they prefer something that is easy and efficient to use, than something that is robust and never crashes. Most of us want both, but as time and budget run out, typically some goals are sacrificed, so it is important up front to have a set of priorities which goal to cut first / last.

Unseen impact on ease of use on system / code architecture.

Think prototyping and error messages.
Think User Interface mapping out very early in the overall design.

Confusion over how to use customer data.

Data does not solve problems, people do.
Thus it is critical that the data not be misinterpreted or misused.

Confusion over who the customer is (user vs. customer vs. client).

The person who will be using the product is often not the same as the person who pays the development bills.
Document the needs of both, and how conflicts in expectations to be resolved.
You don't want to be communicating to users in geeky jargon, but in terms of business goals.

Technical focus dominates the view of the project.

Team leader needs to balance the various perspectives.

Diffusion of design authority (too many cooks).

Best way to manage this is to have one person, or a small number, define vision for the project.
Then other people design their aspects of the big picture, within the shared vision.

Feature based design vs. scenario / task based design.

The primary value of software is not in its repetoire of features and capabilities, but rather in the ability of its users to complete the tasks for which they aquired this computer product.
It is not good enough to have features somewhere within the package that can get the job done.
End Users need easy navigation to getting the job done, whatever the job might be.
Having a usability engineer in the quality assurance testing staff is essential.

No connection made between business goals and ease of use.

If the project specifications and team leadership fail to make clear how important ease of use is to overall sucess of the project, then this aspect is one of the first things to be cut, and one of the main reasons why projects fail at many corporations, after they have invested millions of dollars into some conversion.

General Incompetence.

Teams need to be led by good examples, to avoid getting dysfunctional teams.
The worst kind of bad decision making is where something is not communicated until it is too late to fix.

The wrong people are involved.

The right people are those who are able to effectively balance several key attributes.

Compassion for other people.
Abstract Problem Solving Skills.
Ability to effectively communicate design ideas.
Experience crafting designs and observing other people using them.

Lack of familiarity with the creative process.

It is essential to understand a variety of disiplines and how to cross their boundaries and balance them.
Adequate time needs to be allotted to various different development phases.

Tue, 05 Nov 2002 20:42:54 GMT

I wrote up Alternate Realities in Games to help clarify the topic for my earlier Heaven Dimension story. Alternate Realities in Games should primarily be of interest to fans of Science Fiction Gaming history. About half of it is the big picture of what was out there when I was a player, and about half of it outlines my contributions.

Tue, 05 Nov 2002 19:12:27 GMT

I have started a Heaven Dimension story which may be of interest to Science Fiction fans who are not deeply religious, which explores God's dimension within the context of SF's Alternate Realities genre' of Time Travel.

Thu, 24 Oct 2002 21:53:54 GMT

I took the multiple intelligences test and was told that of the six kinds, I scored highest on Personal Intelligence. The six kinds are:

Linguistic
- I am definitely NOT a word smith able to get my point across with either precision or flair. So what should I do about that?
Logical / Mathematical
- At one time this was my best subject, but it has deteriorated thanks to disuse. Math was no sweat for me in school. Some of the sciences were tough, some easy. Where I fell down was in memorization. When I had the leisure to figure things out, I did Ok. I could visualize multiple dimensions, but they tended to slow down my thinking geometrically.
Visual / Spacial
- A phobia associated with heights and crowds probably impeded my exploration of this part of our world. I can function, but I just try to avoid certain combinations. I have met a few people with photographic memory and am glad I do not have it. What they all had in common was a lack of sympathy for people with impaired memories, an arrogant disdain for normal frailties.
Physical
- I had never before considered athletic prowess as a form of intelligence, but you know, our world values that, and reading this section tells me that this includes craftsmen and artists, who are gifted in non-verbal expression.
Social
- I figure I am probably lowest here, perhaps tied with physical. Both low compared to other people, and low compared to how well I do in the other intelligence areas.
Personal
- Personal intelligence is all about the ability and willingness to reflect on life's big questions:
  - I know that there is such a thing as stable secure powerful computers at affordable prices, so why does the crud drive them out of business?
  - Why did 9/11 happen?
  - Can the sniper get a fair trial and why does that matter?
  - Why does our current enemy hate us so much, and is there a long term solution for the continuing recruitment of new enemies?
  - What should I be doing differently, planning for my future?

When we are communicating with people we need to be sensitive to the fact that different people understand things best different ways, learn things best different ways. Good writing helps. Examples and Analogies help. Illustrations help. Numbers help.

Now one might argue that tests like these need to be similarly crafted with great wisdom. I saw some questions there that I had never before seen anything like it, and some familiar forms. It was a mixture of spacial, math, literary, and common sense questions.

Write your name using the hand you don't typically write with and look at the results. Which is true? I checked that the results looked like they were written by a four year old. Fortunately I was not asked about what my name looks like normally.

Chris is now 2/3 of Ted's age. In six years, Chris will be 4/5 of Ted's age. In 15 years, Chris will be 7/8 as old as Ted. If they are both under the age of ten, how old are they now?

I started with ((Ted now) x 2/3 = Chris now) + 6 years = (Ted then) x 4/5 therefore T x 10 = (T+6) x 12 solving for T now, with result of a negative number. I majored in math in college, but I really have not had this kind of arithmetic since grade school - I suspect I am misinterpreting 4/5 of Ted's age now or then?

Tue, 08 Oct 2002 07:09:43 GMT

Erik Benson volunteered in a comment on [Eclecticity: Dan Shafer's Web Log] that All Consuming, inspired by onfocus.com's book watch, aggregates all of the books that are mentioned in weblogs (as reported by weblogs.com) and provides a list of the most popular books in the weblogging community.

Mon, 07 Oct 2002 06:36:59 GMT

Sometimes work on one of my stories leads to ideas for other stories, and it was because of my directory of Blog Software that I thought it might also be a good idea to do one on Blog Books, but along the way I found some great places mentioning books that did not not belong in that essay, but sure were worth book marking for some future visitation.

I found a ton of book reviews at

Sun, 06 Oct 2002 18:15:25 GMT

The following are some long notes after cracking yet another book on a topic I want to know more about in general terms, and hopefully be more likely to remember some of these principles when I am in a position that it would be good to be applying them, when I do my web things. Hopefully, the kinds of conclusions and insight that you see in my notes will help tell you whether you want to go out and get this or a similar book for yourself. This is what I got out of just one chapter of a book. I may be doing this sort of thing with other chapters later.

I mention several people's web sites in this article, in which I note some thing they have been doing that I do not want to emulate. These web sites have great collections of information. I would not be mentioning them if I did not think they were worth while places to suggest that other people go. So when I mention something I not like, that is an eye speck blemish from the perspective of what I seek in making my site better, when learning from them. If you go to their site and not find the evidence of which I speak, then that will tell us that they saw my observations (or someone brought it to their attention), and applied these lessons of usability that I am struggling to learn.

Website Usability, according to the introduction in the book Usability for the Web by Tom Brinck, Darren Gergel and Scott Wood, is a collection of goals that can conflict with each other, so we have to prioritize which are applicable in any given circumstance. This concept also applies to any documentation we have that teaches someone something, and our design of software outside of the web.

Functionally Correct
- The software is user-friendly, and performs flawlessly.
Efficent to Use
- Get the job done fast and hassle free.
Easy to Learn
- Minimal steps for the end user.
Easy to Remember
- Ideally, the end user not need any cheat sheets.
Error Tolerant
- How are errors discovered and dealt with?
Subjectively Pleasing
- Think graphics, color combinations, content arrangements. Is the color contrast one that works for people of all ages?
- My personal preference is maximum visual contrast (light background, dark text) without assaulting the eyeballs (avoid bright stuff except to make an occasional emphasis).

Common Problems of Usability with many web sites today include

Human Perceptual Issues
- We should give serious thought to how best to arrange data to serve the needs of the people who will be accessing it. Data organized efficiently according to ruies of underlying data base structure is not good enough when end users not familiar with that structure, like people on highways without maps or road signs.
- Think menu structures such that it is obvious for a user where to look first, using subheads on lists. I have barely begun doing links on my web page, and I have seen tons of examples how not to do them, where people have columns of links that scroll off the page before we get to another topic of linkage.
  - Ernie the Attorney, has sub-headings for Personal, then Law stuff, but I not see any link from his home page to his stories
    - or categories (which have some software redirecting anyone who tries to explore them, so from that I conclude that he has applied software to successfully get privacy in some categories - for more info on that concept see in my Radio Doc Sources - look up Rick Klau),
  - of which he has many interesting to explore, and once there, there is no obvious link back to his home page. Thus, to successfully navigate Ernie's site, you have to Understand the Radio url number system, and also recognize that Ernie violates hyperlinking standards (more on that below). I want to do my site so that users do not need to know any secret system to get around.
  - Alison Fish, for example, has sub-headings for Radio Docs, Development, Web etc. but I can see that any one of those can begin to get like the long winded lists of older sites. She also has no lonk back to her home page from a story. This could be deliberate.
    - My friend Julian Goh (whose site is not yet open to the public) saw some navigation tools that he saw no need for, and he deleted them. This was a Manila site in which we discovered that once you delete some things, undeleting them is not always available, especially after the learning process got to the point of realizing that we did have a need for what he deleted.
    - I eventually want to have an easy site navigation structure, in which from any page a user can get to my home, then from there to any of my content - categories, stories, archives. At some point perhaps I should move all the home stuff to some new category name, and leave the home page for site navigation aids.
Navigation
- Is there a logical architecture to the information on a web site, that is obvious to any casual visitor?
- Links should have a clear indication of where they are going, without being urls that run across the page. Think about phone menus when we call some business and there are a string of vague categories that drill down to more specific except most of the time it is guess work which is best and we often end up not where we want to go, so let's avoid that sort of thing in what we design.
- There are standards. Use them.
  - Blue text with underline is a hyper link - do not use that for something else. Purple means my browser remembers me being there once before. Some folks whose weblogs I subscribe to via News Aggregation (see Understand Radio News Aggregation for explanation of that topic) who habitually violate this standard, such as Ernie the Attorney. Do not emulate them, in that respect.
  - Cory Doctorow's Boing Boing uses bold black headings for items, which are rendered to my Radio News Aggregation like Ernie's abuse of purple underlining. This is a potential glitch to bring to the attention of Radio Userland. However those links do work to get to the permalinks involved, where Ernie's purple words are just that, with no linkage.
  - I want the same standard that we get with Radio Free Blogistan. Incidentally, look at the arrows at the top of the page. No ambiguity. That is a standard to emulate with arrows.
  - If clicking on something goes some place and it is inappropriate to use the blue text underline, then make the fact of the hyperlink obvious, such as a raised 3D image that looks like a button. HOW to accomplish that is something I will need to learn in future lessons.
Human Memory
- Too much to remember means something will be forgotten.
- Too long to remember means something will be forgotten.
- Too many similarities in what is to be remembered means confusion invited.
- Don't require users to have to remember stuff between web pages. They will stop to look at something interesting and forget what they needed to remember. The book gives some examples of financial sites that make it far too easy for a human being to enter what is a valid financial transaction, and not in fact know that one did a transaction, but is in fact a human keying error, made all the more likely by the design of the site.
Database Integration
- Many businesses use their live data as output to a web site where the end users interact with the data. There is a great risk that the data changes rapidly while the user is trying to do the transaction, so there needs to be some way to let the user know that this is happening and can affect them.
- It should be well known to developers how web design is different from traditional software. In pre-web programs, the data dictates the flow. Different kinds of data need to be processed in different but similar ways, and the bulk of the data can be organized to process similar transactions together for overall efficiency. In web-processing, the end user could do any random thing, and each input needs to be resolved rapidly, so as not to keep the user waiting.
- If a user returns to a page we recently we were on, are we seeing the latest information, or something from our Browser Cache?

Sat, 05 Oct 2002 23:52:51 GMT

This is a long post about my latest readings trying to understand why the world economies are in a mess. Don't expect any clear answers, as I am still struggling to understand if anyone really understands what is needed.

Where did Internet economics go wrong? One book I may need to read is Re-Thinking the Network Economy by Stan Liebowitz, professor of economics at University of Texas.

When the value of a product increases with the popularity of the product, that is a network effect ... telephone, fax machine, e-mail.
Strong network effects mean advantages to the companies that grab market share ahead of latecomers to the competition.
Superior quality can fail because people wait to see other people try them out first, while remaining with that which appears to integrate well with the network.
But there is also a cost to learning something new, and using it in concert with other products you already have.
Superior products need superior marketing, and people able to use them without losing advantages they already have.
I am not convinced this book, as reflected by the review, is saying anything that is really new to me.

Check your local book store and pick up the latest Economist. The Sept 28 to Oct 4, 2002 issue focuses on the dismal state of the world economy, various theories economists are operating on, and whether we can rescue ourselves from the current mess.

If you want numbers, turn to the back of the magazine to get charts by nation of unemployment rates vs. a year ago; wage trends vs. prices; proportionally how many people get how much info from Internet vs. Radio & TV; Financial indicators; Stock Market trends; exchange rates; Government debt, compared to 5 years ago.

For corporate America, the current recession has been the most damaging since the 1930's Great Depression, leaving many businesses having excess debts. Is the stock market slide just a loss of confidence in fraudulent accounting, or more sinister. The Economist talks about what went wrong in the dot com bubble and what still needs to be fixed in the aftermath, then there is analysis of what has happened in past technological revolutions, with most of the benefits of higher productivity going to consumers and workers, in the form of lower prices, and what material benefits we can get from our wages, rather than in meaningful profits for corporate investments. This means that people need to invest towards pensions, which lowers business growth.

Europe's stock markets are suffering worse than America's while Japan is in a rut.

The Economist is telling us that the Western World is on a collision course with deflation, which they say is worse than inflation, but today's central bank leadership learned their trade in a world where the worst threat was inflation, and they are ill prepared to deal with today's reality. Are we headed for another Great Depression, or can the IMF, the Fed in the USA, The European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan, and our friends in Argentina and Brazil, in concert get the doldrums turned around?

There's a lot in common today with the eve of the Great Depression. Popular wisdom that the old business economic rules did not apply any more, a long economic bubble that seemed like it would never end. In the alst 20 years, America was in recession 10% of the time. In the 90 years before WW II it was in recession 40% of the time. In most of the rest of the world, the trend has been to shallower recessions, and longer periods of prosperity. The revolt against Keynesian policies since the 1970's was based on the belief that government intervention destabilizes an economy, but we have just seen that capitalists also can destabilize an economy.

As an introduction, I should say that I look favorably upon the theories of Henry George, who was a contemporary of John Maynard Keynes, the father of economic theory in the West, and of Karl Marx, the father of socialism in the communist nations. I would like to see a continuation of Keynesian economics but with a good infusion of some of the Georgist philosophies.

Until space travel is better developed, the limiting factor for capitalism is the surface of the land, its fertility, and the mineral wealth below. Henry George felt that the environment was sacred and that the only taxes should be on the basis of the amount of land needed to sustain business enterprise. Thus, farmers should not be taxed on their crops, and part of the tax should be on the basis of how much the water is polluted, while businesses that clean up the environment should get tax credits in proportion to how they have contributed to the clean air and lack of medical risks delivered to the population.

Under Keynesian economics, environmental disasters are a good thing for the economy, because the environment has zero value, and money spent to clean it up means an investment of labor and capital.

When with Its the Economy Stupid return to center stage in election campaigns? Europe seems to be mired in Immigration controversy. America is focused on ousting Saddam from Iraq, which the Economist says will rise Oil Prices, which I think will hurt Europe and Japan more than the USA, depending on how the Airline bailout goes. Can South America figure out how to get out of their economic mess?

Will the anti-IMF protesters ever figure out how to tell the people what it is they want? What I see on the TV are a bunch of anarchists who do not believe in capitalism. If the news media is correct, then for them to communicate their message via the Internet would not make sense, because the Internet is grass rooots capitalism.

There are related articles such as an analysis of emigration immigration impact on the nations involved. America subsidizes foreign student education at a time that individual states are running out of money to finance domestic colleges. What is the impact on the middle class of nations with massive volumes of their smartest people leaving for other nations ... do they get enough money sent back to the families to compensate? Higher education becomes more important because it is seen as a way out of the nation. International trade flourishes between the nations the people are leaving and those they are going to. Very few nations now try to prevent their people from leaving, instead they try to solve the problems that are fueling the exodous.

The Economist suggests that what the nations losing talent should try is to promote dual citizenship, so that their former citizens will be more likely to continue to participate in the economic life of their old home and their new home. The UN has a program where expatriots may return home to help out with the assurance that they are free to return to their new homes. 300 Afghans who were educated abroad have returned to help out, and 4,000 have registered for this. The tougher it is for migrants to enter a nation, the less they are likely to leave once they get there, so the rules need to be adjusted to make temporary migration easier.

Several countries in the Americas have pegged their economies to the USA dollar, which means they need high productivity, low costs, and Central Banks that know what they are doing. Perhaps the nations that are doing well economically need to provide seminars for those in trouble. Argentina send its politicians to Universities in El Salvador, and other places, then when those other places economies doing well, use that fact in their political campaigns. Paraguay needs several kinds of reform. One third of Mexico's income is from oil, and the oil workers are threatening to go on strike.

Does anyone know what they are doing? The collapse in South America is spreading to nations adjacent to where it started. Would devaluing the US dollar be constructive? It would reduce the capital flight from South America, and improve US exports, but then perhaps Europe would be in the mess that the Americas now are in.

The USA is currently in a turmoil of Wall Street scandals in which one of the root causes may be lobbyists from big business persuading Congress to bend the rules to prevent proper inspection and regulation. Likewise the IMF is being accused of getting too close to the clients they supposed to be managing, so that there has been a pattern of bad loans. But part of the problem is the whimsical nature of international capital markets. They think some nation is a great investment. That nation's economy soars. They lose confidence in that nation, and a crash results there. The nations need to put some limits on to what degree they are captives of the international speculators. Is it time for some nations to declare bankrupsy, and if so, how much power should be handed over to creditors who contributed to the situation? The IMF is studying such a plan, called Sovereign Debt Restructuring Mechanism (SDRM), but nations that declare bankrupsy will continue to need an influx of capital, which means the IMF will need even more money than in the past.

President Bush, on the one hand seems politically opposed to Bailouts of other nations, but America promoting them in Turkey, perhaps to win support for the war on Iraq, and in several South American nations.

While Latin America's debt burden, as a share of GDP, is far lower than that of emerging nations in Asia, it is astronomical compared to its exports. An IMF World Economic Outlook analysis concluded that countries with deep financial integration but low trade integration are particularly prone to debt crises and currency crises. I want a translation, which I guess I will only get by reading more articles on what's wrong with the global economy, and in particular the nations that are leading the slide into worst times.

The main criticisms of the International Monetary Fund, which has been involved in the Americas for so long, that it ought to have aquired a reputation comparable to Greenspan in the USA, out of sheer experience solving economic challenges, are:

I have often believed that the biggest problem with economic foreign policy is that huge sums of money are given to Big Government Bearocracies with ample opportunity for corruption, when in fact what a lot of emerging nations have needed is support for grassroots capitalism on a foundation of a reliable banking system and rule of law.
The Economist points at inconsistencies in US foreign policy, where as different political parties achieve supremacy, the White House gives generous loans to nations that will go along with either the Democratic or Republican party line when that is kind of irrelevant to their nations.
The Washington Consensus of policies for emerging market prosperity are not being adopted, but they also need to be done in a fertile economic climate. Mexico's former President recently wrote in Forbes Magazine that the region suffers from far too little reform.
Conventional wisdom says that for sustainable growth in Latin America they need more than liberalization and privatisation. They also need decent education and judicial reform.

Fri, 04 Oct 2002 05:17:17 GMT

Remember Murray Leinster? He was the dean of science fiction before Robert Heinlein. His first novel published in 1919, for 50 years he pioneered virtually every sub-genre of SF story telling, such as alternate history and first contact stories. Baen Books have just come out with Med Ship, that claims to be the first complete publication of the Med Ship Saga, in the sub genre of science fiction doctor stories. Well I have read many of the stories in this collection, but the first in the book is not one I familiar with, so it worth getting. The contents are:

Med Ship Man
Plague on Kryder II
The Mutant Weapon
Ribbon in the Sky
Tallien Three
Quarantine World
The Grandfathers' War
Pariah Planet

Baen plans to bring out additional such collections of Leinster's work, the next one will be a collection of his stories of adventures on other planets.

Thu, 03 Oct 2002 05:41:49 GMT

Michelle Singletary, columnist with the Washington Post, is starting the Color of Money Book Club. Each month she will promote one personal finance book that can help us navigate out of the mess the economy now seems to have found itself in. Her first selection is The Richest Man in Babylon by George S Clason $ 6.99 from Signet. She selected this for several reasons - 144 pages quick read, inexpensive, but most important an old book with time tested wisdom about building wealth, using parables set in ancient Babylon.

We are invited to an on-line discussion of the book Oct 23 at noon CDT http://www.washingtonpost.com but if we want to win one of the dozen copies she will be giving away, our entry must be postmarked by Oct 7. Details in her Oct 2 column.

Thu, 03 Oct 2002 05:34:12 GMT

Remember Longitude, the PBS special shown in America on A+E, based on the book by Dava Sobel? How about The Map that Changed the World by Simon Winchester? Well, to that collection add The Measure of All Things by Ken Alder, featured Inside Borders Oct 2002 edition, a book store chain recently arrived in Evansville Indiana, where I live, but undoubtedly a familiar chain name in many larger cities. What these 3 books have in common is that they help us understand the history of science by following along the struggles of the people who made the discoveries.

2 astronomers in the 1700'ds attempted to measure planet Earth, and their research led to our metric system, but apparently they made a mistake, and covered it up. What mistake? Aha, now you will have to read the book,

Mon, 30 Sep 2002 19:44:43 GMT

I just read one of the latest Anne McCaffrey novels (now in paperback with about 450 pages) The Skies of Pern. This Science Fiction world continues to develop. The above link is to the author's web site - check the links to Rukbat as seen by present day astronomers on Earth.

The early settlers technical know-how was recovered thanks to the AI computer, so that they could put a stop to the traditional menace from the skies, so now people are wondering what will become of the traditional professionals who have protected their planet, and provided essential services. The central theme is a big rock splashing into the ocean setting up monster tidal waves, and what to do about that patterned after our own real world, except the Pernese solution is the marriage of Dragon telepathy and teleportation into a third ability telekinisis. We also have hints of disaffected troublemakers plotting future surprises.

For those of my friends unfamiliar with this SF series, there is a friendly controversy as to whether it should be categorized as Science Fiction or as Fantasy, and I believe it is both. Traditional SF has to explain how the presented science is other than what our current reality understands, and I think Anne does that satisfactorily. The problem for some readers is that they equate Dragons and Psychic Phenomena as Fantasy, and do not read the explanations. Traditional Science Fantasy is to have a fanciful world filled with engaging characters who go on adventures, and we thrill to join them. The Pern series is that also. So it is both SF and Fantasy in my mind, and high caliber both.

The Pern series might be read in sequence (also see her website / books / series / Pern): Dragonflight; Dragonquest; Dragonsong; Dragonsinger; The White Dragon first two chapters only; Dragondrums; The White Dragon remaining chapters; Get off the Unicorn; Moreta's Ride; Dragonsdawn; Chronicles of Pern; Dragons Eye (Red Star Rising); The Girl who heard Dragons; Renegades of Pern; Masterharper of Pern; Runner of Pern (I think I missed this one); All the Weyrs of Pern; Dolphins of Pern; The Skies of Pern; Atlas of Pern; and I have probably missed a few, but anyone who reads more than a few of these will soon fall in love with the series and get them all. There are also several games and SF Fandom activities based on the Pern series, and some information on Anne's site about how to avoid violating her copyright by such activities.

Anne McCaffrey is a prolific author with many series.

I also enjoy the Pegasus series, which explore moving ESP and Psychic Phenomena into Science and Engineering that lead mankind into the exploration of our Universe.
I enjoy the Ship who Sang series, which provide a wonderful technological adventure life for humans whose disabled bodies are an impediment only in our current real life.
Decision at Doona, with a few sequels, is a kind of down to earth grass roots first contact series.
Dinosaur Planet, and sequels, is a great way of showing how Science Fiction reflects the reality of the author and publisher as our reality marches forwards in the development of equality for women in our society. You can see how in her early writings this was truely a Science Fiction concept, but now it is fully accepted.
So if you enjoy Science Fiction, Fantasy, Good Literature, seeing how SF truely reflects our recent reality, are interested in fiction about where genetics and biotechnology might take us, or mental powers that science today does not consider credible, Space Opera, then there is entertainment for you in the writings of Anne McCaffrey.

I still read pretty fast - I purchased this book Sunday night, had a hard time putting it down, then finished it up the next day. I probably spent 6 hours reading it, which is not quite 250 pages an hour like I did when I was younger, more like 75 pages an hour, so I have slowed down in my middle age (I am almost 60 years young), but I suspect I still have considerable mental capacity, and will continue to enjoy great literature for many decades. When I was in Bob Evans last nite on my way home from Borders book store, the waitress asked if it was a good book, and I also told her about my first visit to the Borders in Evansville, saying that it does not have near the size of collection that is in our Barnes and Noble, but the layout is very similar to Books a Million, except they have much more Audio Books and good stuff for Children, although not as rich as Barnes and Noble (whose Evansville store is almost a city block in size).

She did not understand the appeal of Audio Books, so I explained that when I am driving long distances, like to another city, it is a nuisance trying to pick up whatever Radio Stations are a changing, but this is a great way to get the contents of a novel, provided we have a sufficently high quality sound system that we can hear the novel without losing touch with traffic noises. I also sometimes listen to fact books when sitting in traffic jams. I consider that better than reading a newspaper which can sometimes distract me from the fact that the traffic has started to move again.

Sun, 08 Sep 2002 06:00:01 GMT

I am a book-a-holic and recently chatted with another blogger who also is a book-a-holic. Suggestion: We each create a category that has reviews of the books we have loved, and we subscribe to each other's categories. We might only post something once a month, or once a week, depending on how prolific we are.

I would have a story like "Radio Doc Sources" except it would be a directory of books I have enjoyed on a particular theme or genre of literature. In time we might split our book category into several sub-categories, and there would be SF fans subscribing to what other people have written about their favorite SF books, plus history book enthusiasts, plus other specialities.

Saturday Topics: I mainly updated some of my categories.

e-Radio Ideas is my input to dws.Radio.FAQ, where I shared dreams for future enhancements to Radio, explained some stuff I have figured out, shared great links with places that do plug-in tools for Radio, etc.
History of Science and Technology, where I am interested in seeing strange ideas from invention to fruition, and the stumbling blocks along the way, with people figuring out what the new stuff can be used for, and controversies developing. Most of it is based on Physics and Computers, but I have a little Biology and the Humanities.
My Friends and Family = somewhat personal insights, worries and interests.
Science Fiction ... so far I have done weird stuff around my SF interests, not dead on, plus I recently been having intermittent Upstreaming problems here.

Thu, 05 Sep 2002 21:23:31 GMT

Comment on Al's Radio Doc Sources using Quick Topics. Eventually, Al wants to look into pros & cons of several different commenting systems for Radio, but we have to start some place.