The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

I think someone must have given this to me as a Christmas or birthday present. I mean it's a new hardback. I never buy those unless they're on the close out table. Well, almost never.
    It's an excellent book that tells a very unpleasant story about a very unpleasant future. It's set in Thailand, which is hot and humid now. Think about what it will be like when global warming takes hold. The city is surrounded by dikes built to keep back the sea. There are coal fired pumps on the sea wall. They run on coal because we've run out of oil. Is the world overpopulated now? Hard to tell, numerous, constantly mutating plagues are on the loose, but it's still crowded in the city. And did I mention it's hot and humid? And everyone is constantly sweating? So, not a very nice place. But we have characters, interesting characters: the tiger, champion of environmental purity; the mole struggling to serve two masters; the evil agent of the evil genetically engineered seed company, and a host of other characters, some with large but minor roles, other with small but crucial roles. Political intrigue at it's finest.
    One of the most interesting bits was the description of a violent insurrection, how, to the average man in the street, the pot apparently just boiled over without any warning. Never mind the instigators had planned it out meticulously in advance. Maybe that's what it takes. That, and being able to keep a secret.
   Oh, yes, the Windup Girl. Victimized female, but attractive, with hidden talents (no, not that kind), who finally gathers herself together and ... well, I'm not going to say anymore, except that it isn't until she finally gets free that she manages to get a grip.

Update April 2016 added Amazon link.

Moscow International Business Center

We're talking about that cluster of new buildings all under construction. Massive pre-planned development in central Moscow. Google Maps View. Russian web site looks to the future.

Threshold

We have a cat. We've had him for a while, five or ten years or so. Everyone in my family loves him except me. Maybe I love him too, hard to say. It has fallen to me to feed and water him and clean his litter box. He has me well trained, he squeaks (meows) when he wants to go outside, and I open the door for him. He comes to my office window and bats at the screen or the glass when he want to come in, and I get up and go open the door for him and then walk up the basement stairs to open the door for him so he can gain access to his food and water. I try and remember to pet him at least once a day. I read something about how cats need to be petted, so I do my duty. Sometimes I will stroke him, sometimes I ruffle his fur, sometimes rub him vigorously. But I only spend a few seconds at it and then I'm back to whatever it is that fills my days. He will sometimes sit with my wife and I when we watch TV, but he is just as liable to get up in the middle of the show and wander off, or bolt. I don't know how I would feel if something happened to him. I might be relieved that I don't have to cope with him anymore. On the other hand I might miss him. I dunno.
    I have a bad habit of losing my temper: I yell and curse loud and long, and occasionally throw things. I like to think it happens less often now than it used to, but I don't really know. What I have noticed is that it is more likely to happen when I am tired, and moreover there seems to be a limit below which I am more likely to go off. When I am well rested, I am well behaved. As the day goes on and/or I exert myself, I become more tired, and if I am worn down because of previous exertions or illness, I am more likely to slip over the edge.

   Two days ago I had a migraine headache, the second one in a month, the second one in my life, or at least that I remember. I say "migraine" because the pain was bad enough to make me nauseous. I took a Zyrtec (anti-hay-fever medicine) and in a couple of hours it had gone away. Connection? Cause and effect? Sure. Maybe. Anyway, that episode drained me and next day I laid low. Yesterday evening, Gus, the cat, started squawking, making his little meowing noises, wanting something, I lost my temper and hollered at the little twerp. I made so much noise that older son came to see what the problem was. Fortunately he is mature enough to face down his father-the-jerk and tell me to cool it.
    So my mission, should I choose to accept it, is to recognize when I have reached the limits of my endurance and to stop before something happens that triggers an outburst of insanity. This is hard to do when I am tired. Perhaps now that I have identified the circumstances I might be better able to avoid these situations.

Software Patents

A 1911 Industrial Worker (IWW newspaper) publication advocating industrial unionism that shows the critique of capitalism. It is based on a flyer of the "Union of Russian Socialists" spread in 1900 and 1901.

I'm reading about those loathsome creatures, patent trolls, this morning and I come across this little bit:

Rader's four-judge group affirmed the broad scope of what is eligible for patenting under Section 101, written in 1952. "Both inventions and discoveries are eligible for patenting," wrote Rader. "Before 1952, the courts had used phrases including 'creative work,' 'inventive faculty,' and 'flash of creative genius' which compared the existing invention to some subjective notion of sufficient 'inventiveness' as the test for patentability."  

In the view of these four judges the 1952 Act, written largely by a patent judge and a chief patent examiner, got rid of that "flash of creative genius." It simply stated that to get a patent, an idea couldn't be obvious. This simple test for "nonobviousness" would be more "objective" than a test for inventiveness.

This might explain why I haven't patented anything. Everything I think of is perfectly obvious, otherwise I wouldn't have thought of it. Never mind that you actually need to apply for a patent in order to get one.
    I don't like patent trolls (companies that make no use of their patents themselves other than to extort licensing fees from other people), but I view them as a product of our times. If our society was not so productive, we would not have so many under-utilized lawyers who have nothing better to do than to cook up near-criminal schemes for making money. It we weren't so busy pushing half of what we make over a cliff every day, we might be putting more people to work. I keep looking for an answer and I keep coming back to pyramids. We need a national program to transform the Rocky Mountains into a series of giant pyramids. That should keep the unemployed busy, and it would straightened out all those ugly, craggy rocks.

Tranquility

Quiet country estate, yours for a paltry 75 million. It looks like something out of someone's medieval CGI fantasy, but it's real and Sotheby's is selling it. The photos are unbelievable. I didn't think anyone built anything like this anymore. All you would need would be a couple of thousand stinking peasants groveling at your feet and you could feel like a real king. Once again Scott provides me with blog fodder.

The Bridges of Toko-Ri

Going through a pile of old books I came across a copy of James Michenor's The Bridges at Toko-Ri.  It looked familiar, but I didn't recall the story, so I started reading it and soon encountered the character "Beer Barrel", the LSO (Landing Signal Officer) who worked better when he had a couple of beers in him, and since he was critical to the successful operation of the aircraft carrier, the admiral overlooked the keg of beer he smuggled on for each cruise. So, yes, I read the story a long time ago.

Skyraider attacking a North Korean bridge during the Korean War.

    Scott sent me a link to the "true" story of the Bridges at Toko-Ri today, which reminded me of another story story about the Korean war that I wrote about earlier. This story had a couple of interesting bits in it. One is that the single engined Douglas A-1 Skyraider aircraft they were using had as much bomb capacity as the four engined WW2 B-17 heavy bomber, which depending on how you add things up could be true. Combat aircraft carry four kinds of payload: crew, ammo, fuel and bombs. Crew and ammo are pretty much fixed. You carry all the ammo you can, you don't want to run out. If you are not operating at the limit of your range, fuel and bomb load can be traded off. More bombs, less fuel, or vice versa.
    Another was Operation Pinwheel, where the propellers on the prop planes were used to help dock the aircraft carrier. I remember seeing this in a movie as a kid and I was amazed that you could do such a thing. I mean, who'd a thunk it? I didn't understand what the people in the movie were so upset about. I mean, those props are just big fans, aren't they? Why not use them if they are handy. Well, sonny, for the same reason guys get upset when their woman uses his razor to shave her legs. Or put it more plainly, for the same reason a surgeon would not want you chopping vegetables with his scalpel. You don't use highly stressed, precision instrument for crude, barbarian type work.
    The last was "the pilots marched into the wardroom singing the prisoners song" (para-phrased). The Prisoner's Song? What's that? A sad, sad lament. Not my cup of tea, but YouTube has several versions, including one by Johnny Cash.

Packards in Russia

Upon liquidation, the remaining pre-war Packard designs and tooling were sold to Russian car companies. For decades Packards would continue to be built under the ZIL and ZIM nameplates, catering to the Communist elite. Post-war Packard designs would continue to appear around the Soviet Union into the 1970s. - From a story about the Packard Factory on Something Interesting.

No wonder all those Russian cars looking like American cars from the 1950's. They were.