Saturday, December 26, 2015

She was trouble


















... which reminds me...



Saturday, December 19, 2015


Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Quantum Converter



And when at last it is time for the transition from megacorporation to planetary government, from entrepreneur to emperor, it is then that the true genius of our strategy shall become apparent, for energy is the lifeblood of this society and when the chips are down he who controls the energy supply controls Planet. In former times the energy monopoly was called “The Power Company”; we intend to give this name an entirely new meaning.

—CEO Nwabudike Morgan, “The Centauri Monopoly”

Saturday, December 12, 2015

Tuesday, December 08, 2015

Sunday, December 06, 2015

Caithe's Remorse







"I will bear your pain."

Saturday, December 05, 2015

Wynne's Locket







"I go where I please, and just now it pleases me to stay among friends."

Thursday, December 03, 2015

Tree Farm



In the great commons at Gaia’s Landing we have a tall and particularly beautiful stand of white pine, planted at the time of the first colonies. It represents our promise to the people, and to Planet itself, never to repeat the tragedy of Earth.

 —Lady Deirdre Skye, “Planet Dreams”

Wednesday, December 02, 2015

Die Gedanken sind frei

Die Gedanken sind frei, but if you don’t understand the language, thoughts aren’t free: getting access to them is difficult and expensive.

If you conceive of science as an information system, as an accumulation of data and logical relations between data, then you will probably feel that the efficiencies of English monolingualism outweigh its disadvantages. But Gordin also (and too briefly) introduces a different conception of science, not much taken up by philosophers, which emphasises the importance of metaphorical extension in scientific change. Scientific notions like wave, force, law, heredity and fact have different semantics when expressed in different languages: as metaphors imported from everyday life, they have different resonances and affiliations in different cultures and languages, and therefore different bearings on the resources scientists have to extend their meanings through research and theory. (Science itself is such a notion: its semantics in English are not exactly the same as les sciences, Wissenschaft, наука or επιστήμη.) So, depending on whether you think of science solely as an information system or as encompassing the dynamic exploration of metaphors, you come to different conclusions about the significance of monolingualism. If metaphor is central to science, then the language in which science happens matters a lot.

The road from universal Latinity to universal English was full of twists, turns and bumps