Your ISP and people on your network won’t see what you’re searching for, but Google can still be subpoenaed by law enforcement. Here’s the announcement.
Here’s a link:
Life Unconstructed
Archived Posts from this Category
22 May, 2010
Google Announced Secure Search
Posted by blackcampbell under Life Unconstructed, TechnologyLeave a Comment
22 May, 2010
Book Review: The Age of Zeus
Posted by blackcampbell under Books, Life Unconstructed | Tags: james lovegrove, the age of zeus |Leave a Comment
It’s been about two years since I had the will to sit down and read a book for pleasure. I’ve had to plow through hundreds of books in that time for my dissertation, and it nearly destroyed the love of reading for me. I was out at Barnes & Noble looking for a copy of the new Ian McDonald novel Desolation Road, and while gathering that and a replacement copy of The Fortress of Solitudeby Jonathan Lethem (if you’ve never read him, shift your ass out to the bookstore and grab Motherless Brooklyn!) I noticed a bit of cover art.
Normally, sci-fi cover art is highly formulaic and doesn’t often catch my attention. Stephen Martiniere’s stuff is about the only look that will stop my eye (and is how I discovered McDonald.) This was obviously Zeus, king of the Greek Pantheon, giving me the glowing-eyed “you will buy me!” look. Not being manipulated by cover art at all…I immediately had a look.
Hence my purchase of James Lovegrove’s The Age of Zeus. I’d never heard of Lovegrove, but I’m a sucker for Greek myth, especially when the back blurb suggests something close to a story idea I’d had. I bought it yesterday. I finished it a few minutes ago. The bloody thing is 678 pages in paperback (well over the 100,000 word suggestion from the publishers I’ve talked to lately.)
Zeus and the Olympians show up out of nowhere ten years ago and with the aid of their panoply of monsters bring peace and justice (of a fashion) to the world. they’ve decked the world powers in war and have settled down to rule the planet from Mount Olympus in Greece — aiding the Greek economy tremendously. The UK (it’s a British-centered book, so I suspect the author is in the UK) and US areled by Pantheon sycopants, and only Japan is actively thumbing its nose at the gods.
A wealthy arms merchant has put together a bunch of high-tech combat armor and assembled a collection of people hurt by the Olympian “peace initiatives”, usually due to loss of family or friends. The twelve heroes wear their TITAN suits and go off killing monsters in preparation for the big throw-down with the Gods.
The book is a fast read, the prose quick and enjoyable. The characters are fleshed out well, the monsters are nicely brought up to modern sci-fi standards. So well, that the monster hunts are in some ways better than the combat against the gods in the latter parts of the book. I particularly like the Medusa — which don’t so much turn you to stone and flash-scorch you into pumice. The Minotaur features prominently, and gives hints to the final explanation of the gods’ and their creatures’ true nature. Even knowing where he was going with the story, I was enjoying well enough to slam through the book, but will admit that the final reveal was a bit long in coming and not really a surprise.
The book bothers to do something a lot of sci-fi using the Greek Pantheon does: flesh out the gods. Usually, they are glossed over, and only one or two is used to represent them — normally Dionysus or Aphrodite (the ones I find most uninteresting.) Lovegrove gives us a good view of Zeus and Ares, Dionysus and Aphrodite once again are the main gods that the characters actually interact with, and the two that always fascinate me — Athena and Hephaestus — are given a glossing over, at best. Lovegrove’s take on Hades — a lecherous necrophile looking to create his next object of affection, his Persephone — is creepy and funny at the same time.
Overall, it’s a good summer read for the beach or the plane. I got through it in a few hours.
13 May, 2010
“Friggin in the Riggin”
3 May, 2010
The Times reports Spiderman saves a comic store from a robbery. Well, okay…it was one of the employees dressed (badly) as Spiderman, but hey — I’ll take my superheroes where I can.
26 April, 2010
From one of my favorite bands, The Housemartins: Build.
22 April, 2010
The Church, Under the Milky Way Tonight
21 April, 2010
I started pulling some of my stuff for an up-coming yards sale this morning. The criterion for doing so was simple: if I hadn’t seen/used/read the item since I moved to this house — gone!
It’s tough to do, for me, and for a lot of people. Some will disagree with the, but I suspect most will side with me. Materialism isn’t the problem, nor necessarily sentimental value to some of the stuff that I’m getting rid of. Simply put: your stuff is part of who you are. It comes to define you, in many ways.
Looking through the crap I’m getting rid of, I can see reflections of things that were important to me, aesthetics that have shifted over time, vestigial remains of hobbies that I enjoyed, but that were pushed aside by time constraints, electronics replaced by newer devices but not sold/throw/given away.
Human nature is to acquire. I think this is hardwired into our survival instincts from our Pleistocene origins: collecting stuff was most likely a survival strategy. Need something to bash an animal senseless? Might want to hang onto that thigh bone you have. What if is gets cold? Should probably keep a few more furs and skins…just in case. Having stuff — at least useful stuff — can aid your survival and comfort. And represents status, as well.
And it becomes part of you, in many ways. The model kits I built reflected an interest I had at a particular time. I enjoyed building them; I like looking at them — they have no particular use. I have some bits of art that mean a lot to me: someone bought, painted, or drew it for me, or I feel a connection to the aesthetic…but it jut breaks up the blank walls. There are wee toys that I don’t play with, but they are decoration to showcase my interests to outsiders. Like tee-shirts with sayings, the logos of companies I buy from, or advertise a TV show or band I like, it’s a way to broadcast my interests to others.
This can make getting rid of things traumatizing. I’ve had to do it a few times. Several of those were circumstances where I had no choice but to shed my stuff — traveling out of a few steamer trunks, instead of a moving van or truck. Other times, it was a means of expediency — get rid of furniture or personal items to be able to move on the cheap, or fast. Each time, dropping these things stripped a bit of my personality from me (it seemed.) But after it was done, I often found I didn’t miss them…
There are exceptions, of course. I occasionally miss my ’98 Mustang. It was a present to myself for finishing my training (two years of it!) in the military; that car represented accomplishment. When I sold it, she was six years old and on the verge of needed a lot of work to maintain her. Gas was going up and I needed cheaper transport, so I sold her to buy my first Triumph motorcycle. Still…I miss what that care meant.
I miss some of the comic book series I’ve had to divest myself of. I hadn’t been reading them, and getting rid of them was a smart (and at the time profitable) idea, but not having them to flip through or reread removes those stories and artwork to my long-term memory. I have trouble rereading books (save for non-fiction that I reference for my work), and most of the fiction I have I don’t return to. It’s not practical to have them. But seeing the spines on the bookshelves brings the stories and characters back to mind as if I did read them.
Selling, throwing out, giving away your things can be cathartic, however. You can cut away portions of yourself that are ossified, memories that are painful, vestigal elements of yourself that are no longer vital to who you are. Like ripping a band-aid off, the experience can be painful, but it can also be liberating — packing off those bits of your life that act as an anchor to moving ahead, or making changes that you need to to become who you will be.
I’m not going to miss most of this stuff I’m getting rid of — even some of the things I still enjoy having — and already I can feel some of those hooks in my psyche holding me back from going forward being torn away.
And I’ll have more room in the house…
11 April, 2010
The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec
Posted by blackcampbell under Movies | Tags: adele blanc-sec trailer, steampunk |Leave a Comment
I love steampunk. I love what I’m seeing in the trailer. Hell, I’ll even put up with subtitles…
The Black Campbell 