high fantasy

It is set in an entirely fantastic world with little similarity to our own.

epic/heroic

Although the first few chapters appear to be about scientific and artistic endeavours, it turns out to be about a protagonist and his friends saving the largest city in the world. (It is not Campbellian, however.)

new weird

It is weird fiction in that the fantasy realm is nothing like Tolkien’s and it has a lot of stuff in it just for the sake of being weird.

urban

Also unlike Tolkien, the story takes place entirely in an urban environment. According Miéville, it’s inspired primarily by Victorian London but also cities like Cairo. There’s a line in the book that implies the population of the city of New Corbuzon to be 600,000, the same as London in 1725; since there are no automobile suburbs, the city’s seemingly infinite number of neighbourhoods feels quite dense.

punk

Like cyberpunk, Perdido Street Station features the exploits of marginalized members of society with access to high technology for their world. Unlike most cyberpunk, the plot is action-adventure rather than detective noir. A common theme in cyberpunk that I missed is an upper-class character who is slumming.*

steam

Although this book is often classified as fantasy steampunk because of the frequent mention of trains and “analytical engines“, devices are always powered by chemical batteries or electricity whenever steam would be inconvenient for the characters. I found the fact that all the computers in this world were binary to be rather improbable compared to decimal or analog.

dungeon punk

Magic is commonplace, used in industry and quite limited. The fact that magical power is well understood and can be manipulated by machines is not exploited.

socialist

Miéville is a Trotskyist and Perdido Street Station features some bits of a Socialist Agenda. A subset of the citizens of New Crobuzon are randomly selected to be given a vote in each election, which should theoretically produce the same outcomes as full sufferage (with higher voter turnout!).

roleplayingesque

Miéville is a big D&D nerd and has cited The Monster Manual as one of his favourite books. Perdido Street Station is written like a novel set in an roleplaying world, with lots of potential character types and jam-packed full of monsters.

* But I hate cyberprep, which is upper-class science fiction.

I believe that I should express what would personally benefit me and allow BC Transit’s planners to find the maximal utility for the population. Living and working downtown, I don’t use transit very often but I appreciate a good system waiting for me when I do.

The survey works by dragging options into an ordering. Some of the options do not have intuitive names (“economic growth” = jobs created by running transit operations) and the descriptions appear in an easily ignorable right pane.

Step 2 involves prioritizing the major edges in BC Transit’s planned network for Victoria. For each edge, you can specify whether you prefer frequent bus or mass transit. I neglected to “add a custom” options for better coverage of James Bay, Cook Street Village and Ross Bay Village. I did appreciate that the network edge enhancements were competing with whole-network options:

• Increased frequency
• Increased coverage
• Extend service day

The coolest section was Step 4: “How do we pay for this?”. I’d love to have a debate about all of these options:

• Passenger Fares
• Property Taxes
• Local Gas Tax
• Advertising
• Provincial Funding
• Road Tolls
• Parking Tax
• Community Pass (bus passes given to every household in exchange for property tax increases)
• Vehicle Levy

The 3G was launched in 2008. Even in the cell phone industry, two years is not that long. The previous revolutionary phone before the iPhone was the Motorola RAZR, launched in 2004 (the iPhone 4 is not revolutionary). Planned obsolesence is an environmentally irresponsible business model that the consumer electronics industry must move away from.

We know that Apple did test iOS 4 on 3Gs, because they disabled multitasking and backgrounds to improve performance (which makes you wonder how much worse it could be?). I understand that Apple is used to charging for computer operating system upgrades, which is one big reason why I have never bought an Apple computer. Perhaps Apple figured that a free OS upgrade is worth what you pay for it?

Versions of OS/X do not have official support lifecycles – Apple just decides to stop supporting old versions. This is part of the reason why Apple products will never be embraced by enterprises: only consumers and small businesses will tolerate having to upgrade on Steve’s whim. Apple is primarily a hardware and media company, so the analogy isn’t perfect, but consider some popular operating system support lifecycles:

• Ubuntu Dapper Drake which was released in 2005 will be supported to 2011
• Microsoft supports products for at least 5 years after their release

Apparently iOS 4.1 will fix the problem, but my next phone will almost certainly be running Google Android (just as soon as Google Voice is released in Canada ).

Given that the jailbreak was free, I was expecting an open source ethic for jailbroken apps. I was totally mistaken: the jailbreak app installer, Cydia, has set up a parallel grey-market app store.

Two of the best original reasons to jailbreak an iPhone no longer apply:

• a computer can use it to access the Internet (“tethering”), but Rogers now allows this for all phones
• wifi-only apps like Skype can run over the cell network, but Apple now allows this for all apps

Some of the apps I was looking forward to using but ended up costing money:

QuickReply

The ability to reply to a text message in the notification screen, without dropping you out of whatever app you’re using.

LockInfo

Preview upcoming apppointments and unread messages on your lock screen. There are free alternatives that didn’t work.

Some of the free apps I did enjoy:

Five Icon Dock, Five Rows and Five Columns

These three apps combined increase the apps on your home screen from 20 to 30.

SBSettings

Single-touch access to things like turning the ringer off in software so you don’t have to worry about the button getting bumped in your pocket at a movie theatre.

Poof

Hides unused app icons like Weather and Camera where I have third-party replacements.

I can’t believe that people would pay for an app that may be completely unusable after an operating system upgrade. Many of the jailbreak apps were buggy, including the installer Cydia. My phone in general became buggier, occasionally spontaneously restarting or freezing up. I was quite disappointed in jailbreaking and decided as soon as iOS 4 was released I’d get a clean slate.

]]> http://mentalpolyphonics.com/posts/jailbreaking-my-iphone/feed 0 http://mentalpolyphonics.com/posts/divorce-rates-are-over-rated http://mentalpolyphonics.com/posts/divorce-rates-are-over-rated#comments Mon, 30 Aug 2010 23:21:29 +0000 Don http://mentalpolyphonics.com/?p=12209 In response to Jared’s post.

Given divorce rates, choosing a marriage partner is not an item to cross off a list but a recurring project.

I knew this was wrong – the appeal to a large divorce rate and the implicit claim that many or most marriages end in divorce. I remembered reading in Freakonomics or some-such that the common claims like “60% of all marriages end in divorce” were misleading. The idea is that when those figures came out in the nineties, they were looking at everyone alive who was divorced and comparing it to everyone alive who was ever married. Allegedly, this is not the best way to measure the incidence of something. Additionally, it included the large number of divorces in the seventies as the pent up demand for divorces was allowed to burst as many took advantage of the liberalization of divorce laws to end many bad marriages. The divorce rate was also particularly high around the seventies as many impulsive, self-centred hippie marriages ended.

Anyway, I didn’t reply until now because I didn’t want to search out the statistics to back up my claim, but this morning I happened across an article about divorce in Salon. It quotes:

The divorce rate in America is at a 30-year low. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention¹ puts the current divorce rate at 3.5 per 1,000, down 8 percent in the last five years, 16 percent since 2000, and a staggering 34 percent since its peak in 1979. Roughly 20,000 fewer American couples are divorcing every year as compared with a decade ago.

Making the gross simplification that all marriages are equally likely to end in divorce in a given year, then a divorce rate of 3.5 per 1,000 means that any given marriage has a 99.65% chance of not ending in divorce in a year and, if we simplify further and assume that the divorce rate holds steady in the future, an 81% change of lasting 60 years without divorce.

¹ – That the CDC tracks the divorce rate in the US is very interesting. I’m sure there’s a funny or insightful observation that someone could make about that.

]]> http://mentalpolyphonics.com/posts/divorce-rates-are-over-rated/feed 1 http://mentalpolyphonics.com/posts/burning-man-is-burning-the-planet http://mentalpolyphonics.com/posts/burning-man-is-burning-the-planet#comments Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:21:57 +0000 Jared http://mentalpolyphonics.com/?p=12205 Burning Man is quite environmentally-friendly on a local scale because it’s almost impossible to damage the Black Rock Desert and they really do leave no garbage (or water!) behind. But not surprisingly, a festival about getting far away from civilization and lighting shit on fire is incredibly bad for the climate.

Naively, the problem with Burning Man is the amount of electricity required to keep 45,000 people alive in the desert for a week. There has been a push to use biodiesel for generators and art vehicles in recent years. But analysis finds that participants emit ten times as much carbon getting to the festival as they do once there, for a total of 0.7 tons of carbon per person! (Although that analysis only includes direct emissions and not the indirect emissions caused by producing materials used at the festival.)

Back in 2007, when Americans could afford to care about the environment instead of the economy, the theme of Burning Man was “Green Man”. This article gives an excellent overview of the carbon footprint of the festival (including the tantilizing prospect of transportation by train). I can’t find any discussion online about the environmental impact since then.

One argument given in favour of the festival is that it is environmental-consciousness raising. But given that 0.7 tons per person is about half the sustainable global yearly output, at some point consciousness must get raised to the point when people stop going.

Another argument is that there is a carbon opportunity cost: if people didn’t drive to Burning Man, they’d take a plane on another holiday. That is true as long as carbon emissions are not priced. Once people can’t afford to go on any holiday that’s unreasonably far away, they’ll direct their efforts into more local gatherings. BC has two explicitly Burning-Man-themed festivals (Recompression and Burn in the Forest) and some other festivals that could be become cozier, more human-scale Burning Men.

]]> http://mentalpolyphonics.com/posts/burning-man-is-burning-the-planet/feed 0 http://mentalpolyphonics.com/posts/on-the-road http://mentalpolyphonics.com/posts/on-the-road#comments Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:55:54 +0000 Jack http://mentalpolyphonics.com/?p=12142 I am moving to Ontario in about an hour. See you later/soon.

]]> http://mentalpolyphonics.com/posts/on-the-road/feed 0 http://mentalpolyphonics.com/posts/a-tax-on-living-large http://mentalpolyphonics.com/posts/a-tax-on-living-large#comments Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:55:42 +0000 Jared http://mentalpolyphonics.com/posts/a-tax-on-living-large Lefty website AlterNet recently posted this list of tips for living without an air conditioner, aimed at residents of the Sun Belt. They forgot the most effective: move somewhere cooler. There’s a theory that one of the causes of the Sun Belt’s population boom since WW2 is the availability of air conditioners: you no longer had to be crazy to live there, so people did.

This reminds me of the criticism that BC’s carbon tax disproportionately costs rural residents, who have to drive everywhere. Well duh, if you want to live somewhere that will require a lot of resources* to survive in, you should have to pay for that. In BC’s case it turns out that commuters in the Lower Mainland use more gas than rural residents, which is not surprising because the whole point of sprawling suburbs is to trade travel distance for more living space.

Some of the AlterNet comments imply that alternate energy should let us crank our air conditioners to the max all summer long. But I think that if cheap energy giveth these lifestyles then it’s totally reasonable that climate change should taketh them away. Or, preferably, that the cost of lifestyle choices should include externalities and people can decide for themselves if living in places like Lousianna is worth it.

On the other hand, the appropriately-named Sun Belt could have a sufficient advantage in producing solar electricity to more than make up for the heat. A move away from electric air conditioning could lead to a boom in cities near bodies of water for deep water cooling. And although it’s easier to green heating than cooling (entropy’s not just a good idea – it’s the law), Canada may face a similar movement away from places that are particularly cold.

]]> http://mentalpolyphonics.com/posts/a-tax-on-living-large/feed 3 http://mentalpolyphonics.com/posts/best-fringe-previews http://mentalpolyphonics.com/posts/best-fringe-previews#comments Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:31:13 +0000 Jared http://mentalpolyphonics.com/?p=12166 At the Victoria Fringe preview last night each show got 2 minutes to provide an excerpt, talk about the show or do something unrelated to show off their talent.

Some comedy shows I’m more likely to watch based on their previews:

Dave Morris is an Asshole

Stole the show with a tongue-twister mashup!

Gonads & Gametes

“A jizz-packed splooge fest”

Peter n’ Chris Save the World

Mime comedy

When the Killer Mutant Lizards Attack

Satire of classic monster movies and military planning

And some of my speculative choices were confirmed:

Pretty Monster

Awesome black&white makeup

Ginger Ninjas

Best song of the night, but I hope the show is more about dancing?

A Day in the Life of Miss Hiccup

Weird and fun but not sophisticated dance

Public Confessions of a Public Servant

Fun, solid, but unrelated slam poem – Missie Peters knows how to use 2 minutes

The Tragical Comedy of Professor Punchinello appeared to be more Punch & Judy and less Sandman, so I’ll wait for a full review.

]]> http://mentalpolyphonics.com/posts/best-fringe-previews/feed 0 http://mentalpolyphonics.com/posts/the-game-of-life-is-not-linear http://mentalpolyphonics.com/posts/the-game-of-life-is-not-linear#comments Wed, 25 Aug 2010 17:53:51 +0000 Jared http://mentalpolyphonics.com/?p=12133 I just read this not-particularly-interesting New York Times article about “20-somethings” that do not act like “adults”. The article fights the timing but not the content of the incredibly old-fashioned five milestones in the transition to adulthood:

1. completing school
2. leaving home
3. becoming financially independent
4. marrying
5. having a child

In Erik Erikson’s 8-stage model of psychosocial development, if you don’t figure out how to make a long-term romantic commitment by 34 and raise a child by 65, you are developmentally delayed, unable to ever move on to higher stages of development. As you age, your options become constrained and you’re supposed to enjoy this forced focus of your energies.

I think it’s not that “kids today” have inserted another stage, pushing back the timeline for developmental milestones, but rather that our society is dismantling the linear progression:

1. School is not completed in a single sprint; the knowledge economy requires “life-long learning”.
2. Dwellings with a maximum of two generations are only standard in the West. Many baby boomers are spending so much time caring for their parents that we have to come up with something more convenient for the next generation.
3. The creative class are supposed to have a changing portfolio of income sources. Education and career changes form a continuous cycle.
4. Given divorce rates, choosing a marriage partner is not an item to cross off a list but a recurring project.
5. Nuclear families suck.

Personally, I’m trying to engineer a life that’s more dynamic than the track laid down by previous generations. That being said, the fact that I could relate to an article about “20-somethings”, when I’m at the end of my 20s made me feel a little old.

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