Happy Hour

[Christophe]

What? There's only one discussion going on in the Pub?

That's definitely not enough. Barman! Another drink for me and the boys!

In the meantime I'll choose a song from the Jukebox:

www.youtube.video

[DavidM58]

That's the best Trumpkin I've seen! How was this accomplished?  Is it a halloween mask wrapped around a pumpkin? Adding the lazy eye was a stroke of genius.

[DavidM58]

Anyone seen The Martian yet? It's now on my list, having read this review by Howard Odum's daughter:

He's Told Us Not to Blow It

[Ambo Suno]

Hi, David. Yes, I saw Martian and read the book maybe a year ago. I thought it was a very tight science fiction story and the movie, though understandably condensed, seemed pretty faithful to the book.

I don't know what the review said, but to me, the movie is mainly inspirational and entertaining not instructive on the solution to man's big earth-based problems. Well, maybe daah.

I've read a number of hi tech sci fi stories in the last few years and the strong presence of these themes does suggest some ripenesses for some real world manifestations.

I'm now reading Neal Stephenson's latest book, Seveneves. It proposes a catastrophic destruction of earth's moon and the death of life on earth within a few years. There is a scramble to escape to space for a few people to save humanity.

For me, it evokes death and related fears in me as an individual and for mankind's continuation. Death, mortality, impermanence writ BIG. It's powerful.

The Martian was powerful too in evoking death, sense of aloneness, and other existential basics.

Just sayin.

(Seveneves is well written and conceived already - I'm curious how the story will unfold.)

[DavidM58]

Ambo,

Have you read Marian Zimmer Bradley sci fi books, esp. her Darkover series, where a spaceship from earth is forced to land on an unknown planet with limited resources. Half the crew is valiantly trying to harness their scientific know-how and trust in technology to repair and escape, while others explore and attempt to adapt to the reality of conditions they find themselves in, and to maintain resilience and sustainability (without using those terms).

[Ambo Suno]

No, I haven't D. pretty well done? Engaging enough for someone who can enjoy the adrenals cracked open a tad while reading?

Interesting sounding, so far.

[DavidM58]

Yes, absolutely. Highly recommended.

I've only read a couple of them, starting with Darkover Landfall

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkover_series

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkover_Landfall

[Ambo Suno]

Marion Zimmer Bradley - David, I'll keep my eyes open for him.

I want to emphasize that Neal Stephenson is great. I would say that this and his work generally is as uneffortfully 'integral' as any work or writer I have come across, without torturing us with explicit theory :) He is an amazing writer of sci fi! He does epic!

Bruce was wondering a while ago about him and about the book I am devouring now, Seveneves. I don't know whether he had a chance to read it. I wrote a wee bit about Neal in reply to B - http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/happy-hour?com...

I used the word woowoo, as I did recently regarding a couple of vignettes in Mark Lee's book on Krishnamurti. This morning, in post-surfing horizontal recovery mode, I ate through several chapters. I came upon the word from Stephenson's lips.

To set the huge stage in a few sentences: tech, science, and other nerd escapees, from the impending earth post moon-destruction holocaust, have cobbled together a weird gangly, quasi-labyrinthine monstrosity of a space station in orbit 400km above earth, preparing to live, as those below prepare to die from the exponentially developing "white sky" to come, followed immediately by the fully annihilatory "hard rain" of finer moon-chunk-collision rubble.

One tiny side consequence of this new world-wide conglomeration of peoples trying to make it up as they go is whether, how, and where within the precious space of station to allow peoples' religions to be expressed and practiced. In this passage of the book, the book which is redolent with thus far unexpressed spiritual evocation and emergency, on page 249, surfaces the tip of a transreligious sub-text or uber-text. Appropriate to this website - hah.

"He passed into Zarya, which was the next module forward in the Stack. Having been mildly spooked by thinking about embryos, he now had a vague intention of going into the Woo-Woo Pod to record his video. This was a spherical inflated structure, ten meters in diameter, with several large domed windows. It was accessed from Zarya via a hamster tube on the nadir side, so it was aimed at the earth. Ulrika Ek had drawn the ire of every religious group on the planet by refusing to provide separate places of worship for every single one of them in the Cloud Ark. Instead of sending up a church pod, a mosque pod, etc., she had provided this one structure., which was something like the interfaith chapel at an airport in that all different religions had to share it. Internal projectors would display crosses, Stars of David, or what have you on its interior surfaces, depending on what sort of service was happening there at the moment. It had a long, cumbersome, politically correct name, but someone had dubbed it the Woo-Woo Pod and the name had stuck.

That someone paused for a few moments at the entrance to the hamster tube that led to it, and detected the haunting tonalities of the Muslim call to prayer. Too bad. He'd thought that the pod might actually be a good backdrop for the message he was meant to deliver. But he would have to find another place. . ."

[Ambo Suno]

Thinking for a few moments, wondering if I should back-pedal, curb my enthusiasm, qualify my extravagant claims for "most integral", yeah, ok, he emphasizes the right hand quadrants. I suppose since the left side is my fave already, and since I read between the lines or fill in the blanks for myself, I didn't critique him and this, re "integral" as carefully as I might.

Hah - ok. He is a big thinker and tells a quite comprehensive story. He's amazingly knowledgable in broad deep ways. He's a hell f a sci fi writer. I extoll him!

[Edward theurj Berge]

I've been catching up on the new tv series, Minority Report. It's a sequel to the PKDick short story and movie by the same name. After finishing the 3rd episode I'm hooked. Hawk-Eye was just instituted, a police surveillance and profiling system that predicts future behavior based on historical behavioral patterns. Reminds me of suggestions for an integral profiling system.

[Edward theurj Berge]

I just saw the pilot of the new series based on PKDick's novel, Man in the High Castle. Very well done, to be expected with Ridley Scott as exec producer.

[Balder]

[andrew]

You guys gotta check out the blonde cop in this show! 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bridge_(Danish/Swedish_TV_series)

She's a cop with off the chart insight into criminal intelligence but her social lines of development are near zero! Brilliant and on Netflix.