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Papilleau

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...second star to the right.. [05 Feb 2005|12:45am]
[ mood | quixotic ]
[ music | Quarantined Past - February ]


Harry Turtledove's Worldwar has sunk its claws in me. Just finished the second in the series, Tilting the Balance, and it looks like we humans are proving to be no pushover for the lizard invaders from Tau Ceti. Settle in for a protracted clash of civilizations, as Harry Turtledove's gift for drawing characters spins us yet another of his trademark multiple perspective tales and pulls us into the many fronts of this war of the worlds on an Earth turned upside down. New keenly drawn protagonists rise to the forefront to embody the tensions underlying the common front against the scaly devils. Russians, Germans, Americans, Brits, fighting in a united cause, in the trenches, in the skies, as commandos and as underground partisans. A world under occupation, Poles and Jews, Communists and Nationalists, the cowed and the defiant. It's easy to get involved in the stories of memorable characters like SS colonel Skorzeny, field nurse Lucille Potter, minor league pitcher Bobby Fiore, and of the stories of the Lizards too, like the plucky alien armored fighter driver Ussmak, Drefsab the informer, and lizard POWs Ullhass and Ristin, who end up bonding with their keeper Sam Yeager and scientists of the roving American atomic research team to which they are attached. It's not all guts and glory either, there's human drama and emotion under extreme conditions, like those confronting Moishe Russie, leader among Polish Jews, and his family. Or the passion, disappointments and frustrations awaiting physicist Jens Larssen on his treks across a divided U.S., or those of Liu Han in occupied China. The Lizards aren't almighty, though they pack a wallop. And just as they prove sometimes to be easily manipulated addicts to of all substances, ginger, so I now crave my next taste of this classic Turtledove alternate history series.

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...loaves and fishes.. [26 Jan 2005|01:46pm]
[ mood | mellow ]

At last, someone with technical wherewithal has patented a process I've advocated for a long time--vat-grown meat. Here's the idea, for those who have not heard me talk about it. Replace our inhuman system of meat production by using bioengineering to clone meat for consumption, ad infinitum, from cell scrapings. No more butchering, no more vast archipelago of animal Auschwitzes feeding our gluttonous appetite for flesh; instead, just clone all the meat you need. Industrial capacity production of extruded nuggets, sheets of fish fillets, carpets of steak, all of it grown in vats and ready for cutting up and packaging. I know the prospect will throw the bio-ethicists into high dudgeon, and prompt knee-jerk cries of Franken-food (!) from quarters who even now get queasy at just the idea of GMO strawberries or navel oranges. In fact, the link above is from a site that ridicules the idea. They'll get over it. To me it's far preferable to the current cruel system of meat production with its high karmic cost. Vat-grown meat is the ultimate low-karma method, short of us all going vegan. Vegetarianism may be preferable, but it won't be the norm rather than the exception for a while yet. But wouldn't it be nice if by the end of the century animal slaughter were considered as barbaric and backward as say, wearing furs is now? Vat-grown meat will take a long time yet to be perfected and to gain public acceptance, no doubt. It was a long time until everyone was comfortable with the idea of electrical wires running through walls. But the day will come when domestic animals of the world will at last be able to retire to their pastures and barnyards, long-suffering servants of humanity, freed to just pull occasional duty in petting zoos, honored and beloved companions, like horses are today now that they are no longer humanity's principle means of transport. I say, bring it on.

21 comments|post comment

...I did it just the same.. [22 Jan 2005|01:43am]
[ mood | curious ]
[ music | Movement 3 - Vangelis ]



      In accordance with the principles of double-think it does not
      matter if the war is not real. For when it is, victory is not possible.
      The war is not meant to be won, but it is meant to be continuous.

      The essential fact of modern warfare is the destruction of the
      produce of human labour. The hierarchy of society is only
      possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance.

      In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on
      the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group
      against its own subjects, and its object is not victory over Eurasia,
      or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.

          -- From George Orwell's 1984
7 comments|post comment

...oyez.. [19 Jan 2005|01:30pm]
[ mood | ecstatic ]

LJ Extends Paid Accounts To Make Up for Blackout
5 comments|post comment

...swing low.. [18 Jan 2005|10:48pm]
[ mood | giggly ]
[ music | Wooden Shoes in Tirol - De Zwervende Keien ]


How we imagine our civilization is really in ourselves, when it is in our things.
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...london calling.. [17 Jan 2005|01:49am]
[ mood | peaceful ]
[ music | Mojo Pin - Jeff Buckley ]


There's literary fireworks afoot in Michael Chabon's The Final Solution: A Story of Detection. Growing up I was a Sherlockian completist, so I was delighted to hear that Holmes had been revisited in spectacular fashion, in this short 131 page novel set in blitz era London as an 89-year old Holmes is called out of retirement for one final case. This was my first exposure to Chabon, who writes the way an Olympic medal skater describes fluid patterns on ice. I will definitely look into more of Chabon's recent popular works. Many thanks to [info]bibliovixen for the lead. This is no mere pastiche of the adventures of the venerable sleuth. In fact, Sherlock Holmes is never mentioned in the book. He is the old man. The tale has to do with a refugee Jewish boy from Poland, shocked into muteness, and his African parrot, that spouts strings of German numbers and that provokes the interest of rogues and spies. Besides being plain fun to read, Chabon brings poignancy to his portrayal of the old man, retired from detective work for 30 years and now become a master beekeeper. We learn about hives and we experience compellingly the frustration of a man whose body has gone decrepit but whose mind is still very much there. We see through his eyes his first glimpse of a London devastated by German bombs and missiles yet which continues with the same inexorable will to live exhibited by his honeymaking brood. We see a survivor of the Victorian age washed ashore in an England whose very existence is threatened, brought back to vitality and engagement with a world in some sense no longer his own, by the plight of a boy who has experienced such murderous brutality and ultimate evil that even would make the master detective blanche and question the ultimate redeemability of civilized man. This has certainly put me in a mood for more Chabon, and for more Holmes. I looked around a bit and have come to the realization that there are many more novels that pick up with Holmes where Conan Doyle left off. I shall thus have to don my long grey hooded travelling coat and set out to investigate.

17 comments|post comment

...here's looking at you.. [16 Jan 2005|11:35pm]
[ mood | thoughtful ]
[ music | Those Crimson Tears - Ed Harcourt ]

Do you ever see faces in the linoleum? Or faces in the wallpaper? It doesn't take much for me to see them, not looking straight at me necessarily, but there all the same. Men that look like they walked off the pages of Da Vinci's notebooks. A smiling kid with inky deep eyes. A woman with the timeless face of a Byzantine icon. We have an ability to detect patterns. But would we evolve the ability to detect something that is not really there? Guess it depends on how you define really. To me these are faces of beings who pass through our space and become visible to us like dustmotes in light, shadows in the fog, or a laser in exhaled smoke. Manifest as long as the medium allows. For as long as the sun strikes the cloud, or as long as the wall or the tile floor exists. If we stick our fingers in a pond, what do amoeba know of us, save for a passing presence intersecting their world for the fixed time of our manifesting in it? We are someone else's Flatland. And just as an iridescent oil patch on the driveway may refract and reflect back some inkling of the greater world above it and around it, so maybe we can glimpse reflections and wraiths of the hyperreal as they impinge on the outer limits of our own perception.

15 comments|post comment

..spqr.. [16 Jan 2005|01:28am]
[ mood | relaxed ]
[ music | Hot Jazz Saturday Night ]


Senatus Populusque Romanus. I do love fiction set in the Roman Empire. Gunpowder Empire is the first in Harry Turtledove's new series, Crosstime Traffic. It's geared to young adult readers, so this is Turtledove Lite, which is a blessing actually. It's Turtledove reduced to its essence, a narrative consomme, with the redundancy and formula that his full length novels sometimes fall prey to boiled away. The result is a fast-paced, sparkling little novel, that doesn't bog down in battle gore or deep in a thicket of multiple perspective story line. No need for a glossary of characters here. Nice clean premise: smalltime traders from our own future cross over to a parallel world where Rome never fell and technical development lags almost a millenium behind us. Our traders travel surreptitiously, and as family groups. The family's teenagers, Jeremy and Amanda, get stranded in provincial Polisso on the eve of a siege by forces of the neighboring Lietuvan empire. Yes, those are Lithuanians, who along with the Persians are the main continental rivals to a Rome where the early general Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa lives long enough to rout resolutely the Germanic tribes who in our timeline were the eventual downfall of the empire. Not so in Agrippan Rome, which when we join them in progress, are going strong in a third millenium of uninterrupted static prosperity. But all this is just the backdrop to a dandy story about the wit and perseverance of two youngsters caught in a time of war, adapting the best they can in a world with few of the safety nets and material niceties we ourselves take for granted. Turtledove here returns to a Roman world reminiscent of the setting in his unforgettable Household Gods, co-authored with Judith Tarr. A scholar of the Byzantine Age, Turtledove has on more than one occasion taken us to the ancient world (the Sostrates & Menedemos series, Justinian, the Videssos series, Agent of Byzantium), and he does it all so very convincingly indeed. Gunpowder Empire is a great little book that I could scarcely put down. I have already mail-ordered the next book in this series, Curious Notions.

2 comments|post comment

...half-mast.. [13 Jan 2005|02:30am]
[ mood | confused ]
[ music | Mi Soledad y Yo - Alejandro Sanz ]

There's a lot of going ga-ga at the demise of WHFS. I think it sucks too, though HFS hasn't been a ghost of its former self since Damien and Weasel left, and that's been a long time. But I don't appreciate the carping by some who attack the fact that a Latin station is taking its place. Some of that's been pretty harsh, and frankly racist. It's not what the spirit of progressive radio or alt-rock is about. I'm glad there's going to be a Spanish station on FM that comes in clearly now. I wish it had been a rock en español station. I have no use for salsa or merengue. They could've just put 900 AM on the FM band. Too bad that of all the stations there are to buy they had to go and buy WHFS.

7 comments|post comment

...here they come.. [09 Jan 2005|02:08am]
[ mood | giddy ]
[ music | One of Us - Prince ]


It has been since forever that I have wanted to read this series. Ever since the first of Harry Turtledove's terrific alternate history novels I read, I've been noticing and been intrigued by this series on the bookstore shelves, with the Ayatollah Khomeini, John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other historical personages emblazoned on the covers. Well now I finally gotten to it. Turtledove's WorldWar: In the Balance, can only be described as rollicking good fun. (Does the word "rollicking" otherwise only get used on tv?) Sure, okay, maybe it does sound a bit hackneyed: Earth gets invaded by an alien race of lizards from outer space. But tell me, what science fiction doesn't demand that you engage in major suspension of disbelief? But you know what, this book was worth all the wait. Published back in 1994, this is the first of a series of eight books, the most recent and the final installment of which was published late in 2004. I've got some major reading pleasure ahead this year, for sure. World War II is interrupted in progress when suddenly the lizards come, prompting Churchill, Stalin, Hitler and Roosevelt to make common cause against a greater foe. As per usual, here is a multi-thread plot, with characters ranging from minor league ballplayer Bobby Fiore, abducted for an alien breeding experiment; Ludmila Gordunova, Soviet biplane pilot; Sam Yeager, custodian of two captured lizard fighters; to Jens Larssen, American atomic physicist, and many more protagonists. We get to know the lizards as well and learn about their far-flung empire, a hundred thousand years old, and how despite a technological headstart on the Earthlings, they are far from invulnerable or immune to miscalculation. They call Earth Tosev 3, and what a surprise when they find that in a few short centuries since last we were reconnoitered, we went from bows and arrows to the cusp of our own nuclear and space-faring age. So we unpredictable and wily mammals are a fair match for the scaly invaders as they don't have quite the walkover they expected. As Turtledove has proven in his many series and standalone novels, he has a gift for spinning riveting narrative, written with drama and a sense of humor. I enjoyed for instance encountering Gen. George Patton once again, who over in another timeline in an entirely different Harry Turtledove series, The Great War, is busy as an intrepid 1940's era Confederate general engaged in a rematch war against the Union. Harry Turtledove writes smart and fast-paced SF. I'm glad I finally around got to these.

2 comments|post comment

...nyuck.. [07 Jan 2005|06:03pm]
[ mood | amused ]
[ music | Deutsche Welle ]

This apparently new health update came to me in my e-mail today. With everyone formulating New Year's resolutions, I thought it would be an opportune time to share!



New Views on Exercise
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...meme theme.. [07 Jan 2005|02:49pm]
[ mood | blank ]
[ music | Russian MTV ]

"If there is at least one person in your life whom you consider a close friend, and whom you would not have met without the Internet, post this sentence in your journal."

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...and my poetry to protect me.. [01 Jan 2005|01:00am]
[ mood | nostalgic ]
[ music | Hot Jazz New Year's - WAMU 88.5 FM ]

I read 34 books in 2004! I have asterisked those here that really grabbed me. =)
11 comments|post comment

...check it twice.. [23 Dec 2004|05:05am]
[ mood | exanimate ]
[ music | Anarchy - KMFDM ]



What Will Papilleau Get ?
Xmas pressie predictor
Big wooly sweater knitted by bibliovixen
Pair of Socks from goldmourn
Bottle of Whiskey from follydolly
Cd from agirlnamedluna
Something Cuddly from hokuto
Something Intoxicating from eterri
A backrub from saturniakitty
Something Funny from loreeley
Lump of coal from vizzygoth
Something Pretty from midnightquill
Something Shiny from chandrax93
Something Naughty from spacemummy
Something Smelly from jabber
Something Breakable from silverannex
Something Useful from nymphatacita
Something not useful from athens_pie
A GE Time Displacement Unit from racheltravis
Livejournal account from isnthtcrzy
An I-Pod from minutesofme
A song from quarantinedpast
Something Geeky from behindtheclouds

Username:

Made by _imran_ and beyond_bananas.
Hosted at Memeland
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...llama bean.. [21 Dec 2004|03:45am]
[ mood | grateful ]
[ music | A Night in Lemasia - Deepak Ram ]


I think that it was LJ itself that presented me with this paid membership. Because now I can't let it expire, since I've had such fun uploading new icons. My little flutterbird shall of course remain my default. I uploaded a new icon tonight, a self-portrait of the Peruvian photographer Martín Chambi (below), the chronicler of life in and around the former Inca capital of Cuzco during the early part of the last century. Thank you to [info]nymphatacita for suggesting I explain, and reminding me of the llama image above.



* * *
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...thanks to [info]bingsy [21 Dec 2004|02:42am]
[ mood | calm ]
[ music | Living From a Heart Palpitation - Halley ]

There are times when I feel like a time traveller, or Rip Van Winkle waking from a long dream. Tonight it is the joy of discovering new music that reverbates with me, that is as if I had known it all along. Maybe I was living under a rock, and all of you knew of these guys before. In case not, then I share with you the gift of music. So go listen:



Halley

 and

Okkervil River
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...fit for Inca kings.. [21 Dec 2004|02:24am]
[ mood | mellow ]
[ music | The Last Word is a Silent Vowel - Halley ]


"Papilleau’s Andean Molten Hot Chocolate”



Ingredients:

3 cups milk
3 squares semi-sweet bakers chocolate
1 Tablespoon butter
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
dash of ground cloves
dash of cinnamon

Pour a little of the milk in a pot and heat it. Melt in the chocolate.
Add in the spices, vanilla and butter, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon.
After the chocolate is melted, gradually add the rest of the milk.
Heat but don’t boil.

Serve with slices of buttered pannetone.



(thanks to my mate for setting it down and the lovely design)

=))
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...looking east.. [20 Dec 2004|01:43am]
[ mood | nostalgic ]
[ music | World's Great Optimist - Elvis Costello ]

Someone said they didn't like the word Dickensian. But this time of year when I look back at my Calcutta days, it is precisely the word Dickensian that comes to mind. It's a place that was once the second city of the British Empire after all, and architecturaly at least, it has aspects that remind one of London frozen in time at 1911. Other people go off to college to make a break from the family nest. I went to India. It was the first place I truly lived on my own, if you can call being in a city of 13 million on one's own. Calcutta is like New York, a place where all seems to happen at once. In some corners the sun never set on the Raj it seems. I worked in the Life Insurance Building, at the busiest corner of the city, Calcutta's Times Square. When Christmas time came I was able to go down to Free School Street and get all manner of holiday accoutrements, tinsel decorations and Boney-M Christmas tunes. No dead fir trees thankfully, denuding the Himalayas for such purposes had not yet occured to anyone, but I had a potted Norfolk pine which I festooned with lightweight carved shola pith decorations as would be used to decorate for an Indian wedding or puja. Then from Nahoum's Bakery at New Market, I'd select a fine raisin bread and plum pudding, then set out with my friends to St. Paul's cathedral for midnight Mass. Cal is a place where a lot of people burn stuff at night to keep warm. When it gets down in the 40F's it is wintry enough when there is no heat. So the place has this smokey Victorian aura to it at night, and in church with candles at every pew, one could well feel wafted back to the days of Dickens and Kipling. The gentle bell of the rickshaws walking home and the sound of Christmas caroling and sidewalk musicians. It was such a different world. Yet I managed to make some of my traditional Andean molten hot chocolate to warm my insides, all so many thousands of miles away from my own family, even as I basked in the warmth and fellowship of all the friends I made there, people I keep in touch with even to this day.

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...thanks to [info]spacemummy.. [17 Dec 2004|12:04am]
[ mood | loved ]
[ music | Creep (cover) - The Cure ]

Wipe your tears away...if you laugh as I did when hearing Dubya's version of U-2's


Sunday Bloody Sunday



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...lemming behavior.. [13 Dec 2004|03:12pm]
[ mood | full ]


( The How Do You See Yourself Meme )


Your World (Part One): What is your world made of? [boys]
brought to you by Quizilla
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