Cut and Paste game.

[dennisrwood]

www.angleton.tx.us/

[dennisrwood]

www.angleton.tx.us/

[aTOMiC]

right-of-way

[Dragonlily]

The Southern meaning of "States Rights" the way it worked out in reality was "Aristocrats Rule!" You only have to look at France at the same time as the American Revolution to see how horrendous life could be for average people under an aristocracy, because the French aristocrats ignored the realities of life for anyone but themselves. It was ultimately a self-defeating attitude, because the people they fed off of had to rise up or die. The logical progression if the South had become independent could well have gone the same way.

[drew]

a.

[aTOMiC]

Things you should not touch or put your fingers in

1. electric wall socket
2. A tape recorder up your brothers nose
3. Paris Hilton

[dennisrwood]

Click here for more information A new Thanks To Gravity album? Well, sort of. It's actually a live and rather spontaneous recording of a performance from the Blue Mermaid in Portsmouth, NH, recorded in October of 2002. The band is dubbed "Silhouette of Gravity", since it's not really the same Thanks To Gravity anymore but it certainly is the same material and features Andy Happel and Sean Daniels from the original line-up. Joining them for the evening were Duncan Watt on keyboards (and the bass parts with his left hand), and Bob Beal on guitar.

[Dragonlily]

Re: [critiques] The Ocean Between Us for critique

[dennisrwood]

I remember reading a fantasy short story in the mid- to late 1980s called "Pink Wonder." I don't recall the author or the periodical where it appeared; the story follows a young turnip (the main character) from a truck garden in NJ to a yuppie's wok in NYC.

[Dragonlily]

KILN PEOPLE
David Brin
Tor, January 2002
Reviewed by Joy Calderwood

Generations into the future

Detective Albert Morris can pursue his violent profession without a qualm. Clay copies of himself search out the bad guys. A ditto can be stabbed, shot, drowned, or dismembered, but as long as the copied head gets back to realAlbert by the end of twenty-four hours, its memories are all uploaded to its original to advance the investigation.

What does it feel like to be a ditto Albert? It feels pretty much like the real thing. Certain enhancements of abilities can be made in copying, but Albert’s personality and his whole life up until the moment of copying are all imprinted on the clay blank. Each copy, knowing it only has twenty-four hours to live, goes out to do its job, while realAlbert stays at home to plan strategy, snoop over the internet, or spend time with his ladyfriend Clara – anything so long as it’s safe.

As the action opens, a ditAlbert is fleeing the thugs of a criminal known as Beta. Beta is a recurring opponent of Albert, an archcriminal who illegally makes and sells copies of famous people. Driven by the never-say-die obstinacy which is Albert’s strongest trait, this ditto makes it possible for realAlbert to break up the copying ring. But that’s only the beginning. Albert has come to the attention of some powerful people whose motives can only be guessed at.

When Albert creates his Tuesday dittos, each of the three should be disintegrated by Wednesday. But new technology is in the air, and two of them are destined to last, in mutated form, until Friday, when all is revealed. In this society, with cameras almost everywhere, it shows the genius of Albert’s opponents that any secrets have been kept at all. Albert, even multiplied, would be no match for these people without dogged determination and a painful application of the new technologies. This society is due to be rocked to its foundations yet again by what he discovers.

567 paperback pages seems like a lot of space to cover only five days, but remember, we have realAlbert and several of his copies all narrating their part of the action. The main copies are a gray ditto, the businessman version, sent to investigate the death of Dr. Yosil Maharal on behalf of his daughter Ritu. This gray disappears from the expensive estate of Ritu’s employer Aeneas Kaolin before he has had time to learn much. The other ditto with a future is a green, copied to do the household chores but destined to be a hero. A second gray takes on a contract which is not what it appears to be, and a black ditto adds concentrated computer skills to the investigation.

Weaving back and forth between these viewpoints, we become as confused as the various Alberts were meant to be. You have to be able to think with the logic of this unique civilization to follow the choices and possibilities of KILN PEOPLE. Albert is very much at home in his world, but new potentials are opening up, and he can only speculate what is going on behind the scenes.

To help keep track of all these Alberts, author David Brin has entertained himself with his chapter headings. Riffs on contemporary sayings (our contemporary) humorously signal the reader who is going to be narrating next, and what about. He has also twisted terms just a little to fit them to ditto life, dropping them casually into the narration. For example, a copy of Albert is a ditective; kidnapping a ditto is ditnapping. Brin is not known for his sense of humor, and here we see why. The jokes are very self-contained, dry and whimsical. Brin doesn’t care if you “get it” or not – he enjoyed it.

David Brin won his place among the aristocracy of science fiction when his STARTIDE RISING won both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards. A scientist in real life, he makes the ecology of nature a recurring theme in his books. He also does what I call “social ecology”. He postulates a single, big what-if, then theorizes all the large and small ways in which that what-if would affect a society. In the case of KILN PEOPLE, he has dittos doing all the dangerous things. What will the real people of that society do to escape boredom? What is the life of an expendable, short-lived ditto like? How much heart is it possible to have when life is so cheap? And where do we go from here?

June 2005 Review

[I'm Murrin]

. crank up the punishment, refuse to allow for 'special circumstance', that ends up as an excuse to let someone off the hook. if your wife is killed by a drunk driver, do you really care his reasoning?

[dennisrwood]

Roger Waters CD's released in Japan are not remastered
___ Recently we reported that in Japan three Roger Waters albums had been released in the 'mini album format and said the discs themselves may be remastered. We have spoken to Roger Waters manager and this is not the case all three albums, The Pros and Cons, Radio KAOS and Amused to Death are the same as the original CD release's. Mini album CD's try to recreate the look and feel of the original vinyl album release.

[Dragonlily]

Fleetwood Mac: The Dance DVD

[Loredoctor]

www.gamershell.com/download_9105.shtml

[aTOMiC]

4' chain link fence

[Dragonlily]

Guess the next poster Game

[aTOMiC]

He/She SHOULD have won the Oscar:

1. Gary Sinise, Lt. Dan, Forest Gump
2. Kevin Bacon in Murder in the First!!!!
3. Elijah Wood, LOTR
4. Bill Murray, Lost in Translation
5. Scarlett Johannsen, Lost in Translation & Girl With the Pearl Earring
6. Harvey Kietel in The Piano
7. Cate Blanchett for Elizabeth

[Dragonlily]

I had to put down a couple of first-person Jean Plaidy novels because the narrator kept telling the reader how beautiful, desirable, etc. the narrator was. Had they been recast in the third person they might have been bearable. (Then again, maybe not--it would have perhaps just been other people saying how beautiful, desirable the heroine was.)

[aTOMiC]

He/She SHOULD have won the Oscar:

1. Gary Sinise, Lt. Dan, Forest Gump
2. Kevin Bacon in Murder in the First!!!!
3. Elijah Wood, LOTR
4. Bill Murray, Lost in Translation
5. Scarlett Johannsen, Lost in Translation & Girl With the Pearl Earring
6. Harvey Kietel in The Piano
7. Cate Blanchett for Elizabeth
8. Christopher Lambert in Beowulf
9. Robert Duvall in Assassination Tango
10. Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind
11. Harrison Ford in Bladerunner

[Dragonlily]

Iranian