All posts by Greg Laden

Neil Gaiman’s Book About Douglas Adams’ Book

Books, , ,

Suddenly available on kindle, and right now, for two buck. Don’t Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy!!!

Douglas Adams’s “six-part trilogy,” The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy grew from a blip of a notion into an ever-expanding multimedia universe that amassed an unprecedented cult of followers and became an international sensation. As a young journalist, Neil Gaiman was given complete access to Adams’s life, times, gossip, unpublished outtakes, and files (and became privy to his writing process, insecurities, disillusionments, challenges, and triumphs). The resulting volume illuminates the unique, funny, dramatic, and improbable chronicle of an idea, an incredibly tall man, and a mind-boggling success story.

In Don’t Panic, Gaiman celebrates everything Hitchhiker: the original radio play, the books, comics, video and computer games, films, television series, record albums, stage musicals, one-man shows, the Great One himself, and towels. And as Douglas Adams himself attested: “It’s all absolutely devastatingly true—except the bits that are lies.”

Updated several times in the thirty years since its original publication, Don’t Panic is available for the first time in digital form. Part biography, part tell-all parody, part pop-culture history, part guide to a guide, Don’t Panic “deserves as much cult success as the Hitchhiker’s books themselves” (Time Out).

Practical Binary Analysis: Book Review

Technology, Uncategorized, , ,

A computer program is like a memo. Often, a vague memo.

You are the boss. You want a pile of files to be put away. You could do it yourself, but instead you instruct someone else to do it. There are a lot of them and they are all mixed up. So you write a memo to an employee that says “put the files away” and sis-bam-boom you’re all set.

Or are you? Continue reading Practical Binary Analysis: Book Review →

The Fight that Broke the Democratic Party

Politics, ,

The Trump presidency had done a tremendous amount of damage, to our country, our society, our culture, and civilization in general. It is appalling. The only thing more appalling than Trump himself at this point is the gaggle of Senate Republicans who support Trump. They are the sticking point. Were they to give the go-ahead, Trump would be out of office in ten days.

Continue reading The Fight that Broke the Democratic Party →

How to be a hacker

Books, Technology,

Wikipedia tells us that a “computer hacker is any skilled computer expert that uses their technical knowledge to overcome a problem.” The all knowing one goes on to note that the term has been linked in popular parlance with the made up Wikipedia word “security hacker.” Such an individuals “uses bugs or exploits to break into computer systems.”

Continue reading How to be a hacker →

Learning And Using JavaScript Eloquently

Uncategorized

First, let me disabuse you of the notion that “JavaScript” and “Java” are totally unrelated to each other other than having the word “Java” in both. That is a bit of revisionist history that serves no real purpose. On the other hand, JavaScript is not a scripty version of Java by any means. The two are different languages, developed independently, for very different purposes. The overlap or connection stems in part from the fact that early thinking about getting a language to program stuff inside browsers was happening when Java was emerging, and Java would be likely considered the default language to use for such a think, if a full blow real life language would ever be considered for this task. JavaScript have elements that look like Java, and was created by Brendan Eich to use instead of Java and it was, at the time, called Mocha, which is a coffee drink and Java is coffee and they drank a lot of coffee so….)

Continue reading Learning And Using JavaScript Eloquently →

Darwin, Tuchman, On Kindle, Cheap

Uncategorized,

Fossils, Finches and Fuegians: Charles Darwin’s Adventures and Discoveries on the Beagle (Text Only) is a biographical account of Darwin during the voyage. The Kindle version lacks the pictures, but if you have Alan Moorehead’s Darwin and the Beagle then you probably have all those pictures. I’m not sure if this is a worthy addition to the average person’s library, but if you have all the Darwin books and don’t have this one, this is a chance to fix that for a mere two bucks.


Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century is available on Kindle for 1.99. It is audible enabled.



Make America Gullible Again

Race and Racism,

What is the meaning of this photograph? I see several young folk, maybe high school or college age, walking along the street. The woman in front is wearing sunglasses, so maybe it is sunny, and she’s carrying what looks like a book and a binder, so maybe she is a student going to class. I see a man in the backgrouind who is smiling at his friend. The woman on the far right, just on the edge of the shot, seems lost in thought. This could be, in black and wight and with dress and hair styles suggesting some antiquity (1950s? 1960s?), a photograph of a bunch of kids who just got off a school bus and are on their way into class.

Continue reading Make America Gullible Again →

Field Guide To The Carnivores Of The World: Review

Animals, Books, ,

Carnivores of the World: Second Edition (Princeton Field Guides) by Luke Hunter and lavishly and beautifully illustrated by Priscilla Barrett is in its second edition. I reviewed the first edition here, where I discussed the idea of having a Order-wide “field guide.” To summarize, you don’t really carry a field guide to all the members of a world wide class around in your pocket in case, for instance, you run into a South American Coati or a Sulawesi Palm Civet on your walk back from your favorite bird blind in northern Minnesota. You have a book like this because you are a student of nature, and you find yourself needing to know about on or another carnivore at one time or another. Or, just because, as a student of nature, you might enjoy sitting in a comfortable chair and studying up on all the carnivores (aside from the carnivorous sea dwellers, which are not covered in this book).

Continue reading Field Guide To The Carnivores Of The World: Review →

What To Expect With The Super Blood Moon Eclipse

Humor, , ,

A lunar eclipse happens only during a full moon. Some full moons happen when the moon is closest to the Earth, and these are called “Super Moons.” Under some conditions, a lot of light gets round the Earth’s shadow during an eclipse, and this is red light. All three are happening at the same time this weekend, which gives us the rare Super Blood Moon Eclipse.

Here are the things to watch for during the Super Blood Moon Eclipse.

  • Since the Moon will be VERY close to the earth, there is a risk of it running into things. For this reason, climbers will be held at mid level base camps on Everest and K2, and observation decks on large sky scrapers will be closed.
  • Since the Moon is a critical part of the Zodiac, a very strong Super Blood Moon Eclipse can rearrange it. This is how we got Gemini — that was originally two separate constellations. Astrologers at the National Observatory are concerned that during this Super Blood Moon Eclipse, Leo may be knocked into Capricorn, which could endanger the goat. If the worst happens, those born between December 22nd and January 2nd will be Sagittarius, and those born between January 3rd and January 19th will be Aquarius.
  • Tides will be affected. Instead of having two tidal cycles a day, the tide will remain high for a couple of days. This will have a negative effect on the availability of clam rolls in New England. The Governor of Massachusetts has ordered taco trucks supplied by FEMA to be deployed around the Greater Boston Metro.
  • Lunacy will, simply put, run amok.
  • Conservators working at megalith sites such as Stonehenge will be on high alert for the arrival of more than the usual numbers of Inferi and Zombies.
  • Black cats will turn a shade of dark greenish blue. It will wear off after a few days.

There will likely be other effects, but Super Blood Moons are unpredictable, and every time one happens, some new thing previously unexpected occurs. It is always a bad thing, so be prepared. Lock your doors and windows, and make sure your Mormon Closet is full of Spam.