Confetti

This and many other such "confetti" can be looked at @ VONNEGUT.com. These pieces cost 250$ printed on silk screen and are for free as you can see them here.

My eyes and ears were so closed that I did not even notice that my favourite author, Kurt Vonnegut jr., had, at the age of 82, published yet another book. "A Man Without a Country". Luckily the betablogger, knowing that I were a diehard fan, pointed me to it by mail and I placed my order at once.

I will tell you if that book can compete with Jailbird and Bluebird and Cat's Cradle. Stay tuned.

Triple Identity

This is about the book; TRIPLE IDENTITY An Intelligence Thriller For other uses please use our universal disambivaluation page.

This relatively new politeconomical thriller most probably manipulates historical facts quite a bit and is probably also moralically doubtful, but should on the other hand be exiting reading. I think I'll try.

Investigating attorney Dan Gordon is working for a unit of the U.S. Department of Justice that combats money launderers outside the United States. A routine mission develops into a complex international plot involving murder, espionage, kidnapping, conspiracy, and romance. Gordon, an indefatigable bloodhound, calls on his innate shrewdness, as well as his secret Mossad past and training, to ferret out the truth. In this intelligence thriller, attorney Haggai Carmon, a U.S Department of Justice outside consultant, weaves an ingenious plot. The Byzantine, subterranean methods by which rogue states - in this case the theocracy of Iran - seek to acquire nuclear materials are illuminated. If you want to understand how the CIA and the Mossad work, alone and together, you'll get no better picture than the one told in this compulsively readable intelligence thriller. Published by STEERFORTH PRESS; Distributed by RANDOM HOUSE. Triple Identity was already translated into Hebrew and became a success in Israel.

BTW1 (by the way one): Bertelsmann as the owner of Random House is going to earn nice money.

BTW2: Did I say already that we went and watched Mr. Spielberg's "Munich". A great movie in both our opinions.

Science Inspired Fiction & Mr. Sturgeon's Revelation

When I was but a boy and still in my spiritual diapers I was a pretty avid Science Fiction reader. I adored early Asimov and early Vonnegut, Stan Lem, Phil Dick and many many others. Now over the years, as I watched SF creep on in its slow approach towards reality I became and am still becoming less enamoured of it.

In the 1980ies I still gulped Blade Runner (book after film) and the pinnacles of cyber punk, Neuromancer ('84) and Schismatrix ('85). In the 1990ies I devoured Snow Crash('92) and the Diamond Age ('95), but after that interesting things came only slow and in a trickle.

Bruce Sterling's Holy Fire is a book I can recommend full heartedly. Set in a world of steadily increasing longevity (gerontocracy), a newly rejuvenated American woman drifts through the marginalised subculture of European young artists while dealing with the implications of posthumanism. It was nominated for many prizes and did not win any. It has not got it's own wp entry. Still.

William Gibson's Pattern Recognition ('03) is not really SF but rather NTF (Near Term Fiction) and pleased me but faild to enthrall.

Well, it might be only me and and my own fault if I grow older and only try to read books by cyberpunk guys older than me.

Now there is one really old author of whose writings I have read a story here and there and one novel. The man goes by the name of Theodore Sturgeon I will always easily remember one of those rather short stories because of its hilarious title "The man who figured everything" (cowritten with Don Ward in '59 and found in a battered SF sampler).^*

Here ends the overly long personal introduction

When following lcom's earlier link to 10 failed trends and making yet another transition from there, I came across Sturgeon's Law which is also called Sturgeon's revelation, the most primitive form of which is: 90% of everything is crud.

Fortunately Wikipedia also cites different forms of SR; If there is any difference in "desirability", the Bell curve of a normal distribution predicts that most experiences will involve average desirability, with roughly equal occurrances of excellence and gross inadequacy. Sturgeon's Revelation is an observation that once humans are exposed to excellence, mere average desirability is disappointing. The more proper formulation might be something like "80% of everything is crud, and 10% of everything is crap." If one either defines crud to include crap, or else defines excellence and crap to each be about 5% of all experiences, then "90% of everything is crud" would be true.

As I said above, the connection that made this musing on the expression of statistic probability possible and plausible, is Mr. Sturgeon's practice as a 1950ies science fiction author.

What remains is to disclose the title of the one novel I read. That novel is "Venus Plus X" in which Sturgeon describes the loss of unambiguity in the human sexes which, from 1960 till now has somehow climbed to pretty lofty heights. For in the 50ies being in their prime males in any case, that is. Still, in every which way, Venus Plus X is something that I call science fiction.

Here ends the overly long witty explanation.

^*TMWFE war nicht zuletzt deswegen als so witzig, weil in Bregenz alles so anders war. Dort gab es einen älteren Schriftsteller namens Max Riccabona, der uns in der Jugend sehr beeindruckte und ohne Ende an seinem Opus Magnus "Dr. von Halbgreyffer zu Etschpruntz und Dünnschitz. Der Mann der nichts in den Griff bekam" schrieb.

La Vida buena

Ich habe gerade ein Buch gelesen, geschrieben vom Gatten dieser wunderhübschen Dame.

Das Buch heißt Das gute Leben. Ich kann es jedem und jeder nur wärmstens zur Lektüre ans Herz legen.

Es war mein zweites Buch von diesem Autor und das davor war schon wahnsinnig gut, wie wir früher zu sagen pflegten.

Do not ever BOGU

We took the BOGU acro from Robert Scoble's Corporate Blog Manifesto where you will find his Rule #19

BOGU. This means 'Bend Over and Grease Up.' I believe the term originated at Microsoft. It means that when a big fish comes over (like IBM, or Bill Gates) you do whatever you have to do to keep him happy. Personally, I believe in BOGU'ing for EVERYONE, not just the big fish. You never know when the janitor will go to school, get an MBA, and start a company. I've seen it happen. Translation for weblog world: treat Gnome-Girl as good as you'd treat Dave Winer or Glenn Reynolds. You never know who'll get promoted. I've learned this lesson the hard way over the years.

We think the principle is interesting and not that bad, but:

We believe the contrary of what Scoble believes: You should never BOGU, meaning you should treat Gnome-Girl as bad as you'd treat Bill Gates or Dave Winer. By bad we mean polite and and with a professional distance. Expressions of nicety has only a side place in business. Give correct feedback and abide by it. Example: "Hey Mr. Gates, Excel is a very well designed application;" or "Hey Mr. Gates, Microsoft's long term OS - strategy has so many flaws in it, we do not use your OSes, if we can avoid it;".

With Gnome-Girl that would be: "Hey, Gnome-girl, your skirt looks like shit, do your really feel good in it?" or "Hey Gnome-Girl, I like the song you play on your blaster a lot;".