and 
Parsec, an open souce project now in Second Life, enables users to move objects and control music with their voice. Seismic ramifications of this Brian Eno-ish sounding "fun, collaborative mash-up" of voice and virtual interactivity include content creation, musical integration, therapy, and ultimately the control any parameter in virtual worlds.
read more | digg story
It is with great sadness that I observe the passing of a true literary great, Mr. George MacDonald Fraser, last Wednesday. Fraser, of course, was the author of the Flashman novels, which I have read and reread faithfully since the age of 12. I grew up with Flashman, and dare I say it, Mr. Fraser was a role model of sorts. His death is a sad loss for literature and humorous writing.
I quote, verbatim, a particularly good obit from the International Herald-Trib that I received in a passalong email. The author is Margalit Fox and the source link is cited.
George MacDonald Fraser, 82, author of 'Flashman' novels January 3, 2008
By Margalit Fox
George MacDonald Fraser, a British writer whose popular novels about the
arch-rogue Harry Flashman followed their hero as he galloped, swashbuckled,
drank and womanized his way through many of the signal events of the 19th
century, died Wednesday on the Isle of Man. He was 82 and had made his home
there in recent years. The cause was cancer, said Vivienne Schuster, his
British literary agent.
Over nearly four decades, Fraser produced a dozen rollicking picaresques
centering on Flashman. The novels purport to be installments in a
multivolume "memoir," known collectively as the Flashman Papers, in which
the hero details his prodigious exploits in battle, with the bottle, and in
bed. In the process, Fraser cheerfully punctured the enduring ideal of a
long-vanished era in which men were men, tea was strong and the sun never
set on the British Empire.
The Flashman Papers include, among other titles, "Flashman" (World
Publishing, 1969); "Flashman in the Great Game" (Knopf, 1975); and, most
recently, "Flashman on the March" (Knopf, 2005).
The second volume in the series, "Royal Flash" (Knopf, 1970), was made into
a film of the same title in 1975, starring Malcolm McDowell as Flashman.
In what amounted to an act of literary retribution, Fraser plucked Flashman
from the pages of "Tom Brown's School Days," Thomas Hughes's classic novel
of English public-school life published in 1857. In that book, Tom, the
innocent young hero, repeatedly falls prey to a sadistic bully named
Flashman.
In Fraser's hands, the cruel, handsome Flashman is all grown up and in the
British Army, serving in India, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Now Brigadier
General Sir Harry Paget Flashman, he is a master equestrian, a pretty fair
duelist and a polyglot who can pitch woo in a spate of foreign tongues. He
is also a scoundrel, a drunk, a liar, a cheat, a braggart and a coward. (A
favorite combat strategy is to take credit for a victory from which he has
actually run away.)
Last, but most assuredly not least, Flashman is a serial adulterer who by
Volume 9 of the series has bedded 480 women. (That Flashman is married
himself, to the fair, dimwitted Elspeth, is no impediment. She cuckolds him
left and right, in any case.)
Readers adored him. Today, the Internet is populated with a bevy of Flashman
fan sites. Flashman's exploits take him to some of the most epochal events
of his time, from British colonial campaigns to the American Civil War, in
which he magnanimously serves on both the Union and the Confederate sides.
He rubs up against eminences like Queen Victoria, Oscar Wilde, Florence
Nightingale and Abraham Lincoln. For his work, Flashman earns a string of
preposterous awards, including a knighthood, the Victoria Cross and the
Medal of Honor.
Fraser was so skilled as a mock memoirist that he had some early readers
fooled. Writing in The New York Times in 1969 after the first novel was
published, Alden Whitman said:
"So far, 'Flashman' has had 34 reviews in the United States. Ten of these
found the book to be genuine autobiography."
The son of Scottish parents, George MacDonald Fraser was born on April 2,
1925, in Carlisle, England, near the Scottish border. His boyhood reading,
like that of nearly every British boy of his generation, included "Tom
Brown's School Days."
In World War II, Fraser served in India and Burma with the Border Regiment.
His memoir of the war in Burma, "Quartered Safe Out Here" (Harvill), was
published in 1993.
After leaving the military, Fraser embarked on a journalism career, working
for newspapers in England, Canada and Scotland. He eventually became the
assistant editor of The Glasgow Herald and, in the 1960s, was briefly its
editor.
Tiring of newspaper work, Fraser decided, as he later said in interviews, to
"write my way out" with an original Victorian novel.
In a flash, he remembered Flashman, and the first book tumbled out in the
evenings after work.
"In all, it took 90 hours, no advance plotting, no revisions, just tea and
toast and cigarettes at the kitchen table," he said in an interview quoted
in the reference work "Authors and Artists for Young Adults."
His other books include several non-Flashman novels, among them "Mr.
American" (Simon & Schuster, 1980); "The Pyrates" (Knopf, 1984); and "Black
Ajax" (HarperCollins, 1997). With Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson,
Fraser wrote the screenplay for the James Bond film "Octopussy," released in
1983.
Fraser's latest book, "The Reavers," a non-Flashman novel, is scheduled to
be published by Knopf in April.
I sometimes get such a good comment that it's a shame to bury it back in the comments section, next to the obits and car sales. This one was from Otto, concerning the recent piece on the move to get Napoleon III's remains back to France.
(Dear Mister Nizz)
The question turns on this. Is this"amour propre" or forgiveness.
If the latter, one must ask at what point is forgiveness given or witheld. Let us remember that Hitler restored German self-confidence, sparked, the economy, and made the trains run on time. He loved kids and dogs too-- and his mother loved him.
Louis Napoleon in addition to his architectural and city planning triumphs of Paris, also inaugurated the "institutionalized corruption" that has troubled France ever since- his comment to his supprters "Enrich yourselves" was of course at the expense of the public till. He did create a police state and he not only exercised remarkable ineptness in the Franco-Prussian War, but involved France in the expensive and embarrassing imbroglio in Mexico.
But beyond that, one must ask if the desire to return the remains to France involves an almost "Orewellian" rewriting of the history of Napoleon the little.
In either case if there is to be forgiveness than it cannot be at the price of that, and it must be forgiveness in full recognition of his shortcomings. How he got to be in an abbey chapel in England is part of that history.
To return his remains to France and recraft a legend around his revamping paris and making it the tourist capital it was, and ignoring the devastating effects of his regieme is an exercise in "Never-Never-Landism" that would make even the Illusionists of Disney Cringe.
It would however be an exercise in "amoour propre" entirely fitting for Louis Napoleon who if he was anything was the poster boy for "amour propre."
Otto
By the way, he made those broad boulevards and straight streets not for aesthetic pleasure or future tourist viewing- he did it so that artillery could command the streets of Paris and shoot down Frenchmen who tried to revolt. That's one reason he macadamed the steets too! To do away with the cobblestones that the Parisians threw up as barricades in revolt.
 | I received 85 credits on The Sci Fi Sounds Quiz How much of a Sci-Fi geek are you? |
| Take the Sci-Fi Movie Quiz canon s5 | |
Annie Leonard has put together a wonderful, easy to follow flash tutorial about the start to finish chain of of the materials economy. I found it alarming, but not patronizing, and never shrill. Since I was a little boy, I have often gazed at the junk around me and wondered "Where does it go when I'm done with it? If I throw this away now will it be here ten years from now?". It's all about a sustainable economy in a finite world. How the hell are we going to accomplish that before we rape the planet to death? Whether or not you think she has an agenda, it is worth a watch. See it here:
http://www.storyofstuff.com/video/
http://files.boardgamegeek.com/audio/FFG_CP_Interview.mp3
Excellent news from Boardgame Geek! Aldie reports in a quick interview with Christian Petersen of FFG that DUNE (rethemed), COSMIC ENCOUNTER, and BORDERLANDS will soon be reprinted by Fantasy Flight Games! Fantastic!
It's good to know that in these modern times, the French and the English can still squabble over symbols from the past.
Napoleon III was the last monarch of the French people and first president of the Modern French Republic, yet his remains have laid in an English Abbey for 120 years, largely forgotten by his people. . Stunningly, that has recently changed.
Born in Paris in 1808, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte was the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, and lived a colorful life.
After a number of foreign adventures, including supporting the disasterous Imperial adventure into Mexico in the 1860s, his army was crushed in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, prompting him to flee with his wife, Empress Eugenie, to Chislehurst, Kent, where he remained in exile until his death in 1873.
The Emperor died on January nine, 1873, during a multistage process to break up a bladder stone -- the actual cause of death being kidney failure and septicaemia. He was originally buried at St. Mary's Church in Chislehurst. However, after Napoleon III's son also died in 1879 fighting in the British Army against the Zulus in South Africa, Eugenie decided to build a monastery to house monks driven out of France by the anti-clerical laws of the Third Republic, which would provide a resting place for her husband and son.
Thus in 1888 the bodies of Napoleon III and his son was moved to the Imperial Crypt at Saint Michael's Abbey in Hampshire. Eugenie, who died many years later in 1920, is now buried there with them.
After lying ignored in a crypt in an English abbey for 120 years, the exiled emperor's ashes are suddenly the subject of a French ministerial delegation intent on repatriating them to the republic he helped bring about.
Christian Estrosi, the French secretary of state for overseas territories, said: "This trip will be for me an occasion to send a clear message to the British, to thank them for all they did for the imperial couple in exile, but also to remind them that we have some rights over them."
He may be in for a nasty surprise.
In a statement to the French people, Abbot Cuthbert Brogan, who runs the abbey, said:
"Unlike the English, who are very interested in the memory of your last emperor, not a single French person comes and meditates at the crypt where his remains lie.
I hope that your overseas minister is coming to ask for forgiveness. It's the least he can do in terms of politeness because you, the French, attach great importance to politeness."
Commenting on Mr Estrosi's intention to spend 10 minutes in silent reverence by the tomb, the abbot went on: "Ten minutes for a silence of 120 years! They are not interested in the remains at all!
What do you think of someone who has shown no interest in someone for much of his life and who suddenly claims, more than a century later, that the body belongs to him?"
Despite the ignominy of his later years - especially the crushing defeat by the Prussians at the Battle of Sedan - France owes much to Napoleon III. He had a huge hand in turning Paris into the elegant city so loved by tourists today - he replaced its unhygienic medieval streets with wide boulevards, created sewage systems and built parks and impressive apartment blocks for the masses.
The French, who want to reunite Napoleon III with his uncle's body in Les Invalides, in Paris, can also thank him for their railway network, and for creating a modern economy modelled on that of Victorian Britain.
Sources: Daily Telegraph, Daily News and Analysis, Wikiepedia.
When I was a kid, Evel Knievel was the archtype of cool. Seems like he was in the news all the time back in those days.. the days of jumping semi trucks, and Las Vegas, and even that Gawd Awful Snake River canyon jump..
Evel passed from this life last Friday, dying relatively painlessly, which is ironic considering the life he led. The man that boasted of having broken nearly every bone in his body ended up dying of natural causes.
In the late 1990's, Knievel's health began declining steadily. Knievel had a life saving liver transplant in February of 1999 as a result of suffering the long term effects from Hepatitis C. He contracted the disease after one of the numerous blood transfusions he received prior to 1992. In 2005, he was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable and terminal lung disease that required him to be on supplemental oxygen 24-hours a day. In 2006, Evel had an internal morphine pain pump surgically implanted to help him with the excruciating pain in his deteriorated lower back, one of the costs of incurring so many traumas over the course of his career as a daredevil. He also had two strokes since 2005, but neither left him with severe debilitation.
He died at Clearwater, Florida, on November 30, 2007, aged 69 years. He had been suffering from diabetes and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis for many years. Longtime friend Billy Rundle reported that Knievel had trouble breathing while at his residence in Clearwater, but died before the ambulance could reach the hospital. "It's been coming for years, but you just don't expect it. Superman just doesn't die, right?" was Rundle's reaction. In his last interview, he told Maxim Magazine, "You can’t ask a guy like me why I performed. I wanted to fly through the air. I was a daredevil, a performer. I loved the thrill, the money, the whole macho thing. All those things made me Evel Knievel. Sure, I was scared. You gotta be an asshole not to be scared. But I beat the hell out of death."
A lot of childhood icons have passed this year (do a sort on the obit label some time), but Knievel was one of the most memorable. So long, you crazy man. May your eternity be without a single twinge of arthritis pain.
