brainstorms

Saturday June 18, 2005

accelerando now available for download

charles stross's latest novel, accelerando is now available online under a creative commons license. charles asks bittorrent be used. [i ordered my hardcopy sometime ago]

The book is available for reading in HTML, with minimal markup (to make it easier for web clipping utilities to digest it). In addition, zip archives are provided for download in a variety of formats. The primary formats are RTF and conformant HTML 4.0. For direct reading on PDAs and smartphones, a Plucker database is provided. Finally, there are (deprecated) plain text and Palm DOC versions – these lack typographic markup.

music: tbd. i'm thinking of haydn string quartets by amadeus quartet (trio) but i may go for something like mercan dede's secret tribe (nar) or electronic.

darwin's watch...

I just received my eagerly awaited copy of pratchet, stewart & cohen's the science of discworld III: darwin's watch [the title alone will cause many to start grinning from ear to ear] one does not wait long: chapter two is titled paley's watch and takes on "intelligent design" as should. all of a sudden, you just know this book will not be a bestseller in many states, especially kansas.

Once God is removed from the day-to-day running of the planet, and installed somewhere behind DNA biochemistry and the Second law of thermodynamics, it is no longer so obvious that He must be fundamental to people's daily lives. In particular, there is no special reason to believe that He affects those lives in any way, or would wish to, so fundamentalist preachers could well be out of a job.

hmm, sleep, or darwin's watch. choices, choices... [um, i cannot believe what i just wrote]

important/great books referenced in the first fifty pages:

young and edis (eds) why intelligent design fails
susan haack, defending science - within reason
dennett, darwin's dangerous idea
dawkins, blind watchmaker

[a note on paper: the copy i am holding was printed and bound in england, and the copy page says papers used by ebury press are natural, recylable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. it does not say acid free. it does not smell or quite feel like acid paper, but i cannot tell. sigh]

what science abhors, the arts crave. -- science of discword III

[this book seems unavailable in the US through online sellers in any straight-forward way. you may wish to order it from canada, through chapters/indigo or amazon.ca.]