Author: Scott

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Books

Plague Year by Jeff Carlson

Plague Year has a star– the nanotech that destroyed civilization and has stranded everyone up on mountain peaks. The story starts more than a year later and is told from two points of view. Cam is a ski instructor who has compromised his morals to survive despite the lack of sustenance up above 10,000 feet, and Ruth is a scientist on the International Space Station. Both stories are well told, with compromised but still sympathetic characters. Sawyer’s subplot is interesting and knits the two experiences and lives together with interesting contrasts.

The ending is abrupt– the action stutters to an break point and we get a sentence to end this book set up for the next book, Plague War. I will probably read the sequel, but it isn’t a strong compulsion. I enjoyed it, but I suspect it isn’t one I’ll reread much.

Categories
Books

Why Popcorn Costs So Much at the Movies by Richard McKenzie

An interesting book, but the forward is terrible and almost made me put it down. (Grand claims about Evolutionary Psychology in an Economics books was a huge red flag. Fortunately, by the time I got to the final chapter, he turned out to be claiming less– I guess an edgy start was his marketing plan.)

He does a good job of introducing puzzling prices we encounter in our daily lives and offering interesting explanations (or a good hypothesis) for each. The various demand curve discussions a little murky in text, but often backed up with a sketch appropriate to the situation, so it would up being clear in the end. Even better were the additional facts that informed many of the specific issues.

The title issue was easy to see as soon as he introduced the fact that movie producers, rather than charging a flat fee for a movie reel instead charge a high percentage of the ticket revenues (often 70-95%). If 95% of ticket sales are going to the movie producer, then yeah, the theater has to pay for everything from something– and really, drinks and popcorn is what’s left. If they lose 70%+ of their ticket price, their incentive to hike admission rates should be small (since they get less than $1 per $3 increased)– but with most theaters showing $10+ movies already, it’s hard to imagine prices continuing up. Or at least it’s hard to imagine people still buying the theater’s popcorn when the cost of admission has eaten their whole entertainment budget.

Categories
Books

The Myth of the Rational Market by Justin Fox

An interesting look at the evolution of several approaches to the market, economics equations, and schools of thought designed to address economics mysteries. The careful tracing of specific professors and their students makes for quite a complex geneology of ideas– but it’s fascinating to see the players of today, the schools and clumps of association that led to development of theories.

The easy takeaways are that markets may not be rational– but in the ways that are bad for an individual investor, you might as well assume they are. People don’t leave money on the table if they can help it– so if you spy an opportunity, it’s always best to try to figure out what you’re overlooking. The increasing influence of behavioral economics seems “fringy” to the mainstream– really, they mostly seem to be providing formulas and quantification that match the pre-1940s economist’s caveats, just expressed in math instead of disclaimers.

I like the idea of behavioral economics research– testing where the limits of human rationality and patience are and figuring out which systematic biases we have. It seems like a fruitful line of investigation, and a good corrective to the all seeing market… at least for now.

Categories
Food

Savory Breakfasts

I remember reading this a while back, but after discussing this with Jennifer this morning, I may move to incorporate a few of these into our routine.

From Your Morning Pizza

Uncovering this little-known fact has made the savory, grain-based breakfast a matter of routine for me. I do polenta with butter and Parmesan; steel-cut oats with peanut butter (sometimes with hot sauce); and, a recent favorite, brown rice with dried mushrooms and dried tomatoes.

In addition to the polenta “pizza,” and the wheat berry-soy-scallions bowl, which I eat in one variation or another at least once a week, you might consider this coconut oat pilaf, a spicy, aromatic dish that will change the way you think about oatmeal. As for the wild rice and quinoa dish, a kind of stuffing for breakfast, this — like the traditional post-Thanksgiving meal — is a perfect place for leftovers. As is breakfast in general.

We’ll probably start by trying the polenta as an experiment, and see where it goes. Who doesn’t want a few more options at breakfast?

Categories
Books

The Cipher by Diana P. Francis

The book is subtitled “A Novel of Crosspointe”. This book is the first of three published so far, according to the author’s website.

I liked the novel, though the heroine bets beat up again and again, almost beyond endurance. If you think Harry Dresden’s always getting hurt, Lucy’s in such deep hot water and so near death and disaster that it’s hard to keep reading. Despite starting with action, it took time for my interest to develop. And Lucy’s problems go on and on, snowballing and making for a pain filled life for the vast majority of the book.

A few scenes stick a bit– like the time near the end when Lucy says she won’t take it any longer, but a half-hour slips by in the next sentence. But overall it’s an interesting book and a well done world. I’m interested in the sequels, particularly with new main characters. Lucy (and, to a lesser extent, Martin) have completed their arc.

Categories
Misc

Misc

Guidelines for sharing your world building
Bliss Stage Fansite: Love is my Weapon
The prisoner TV show from the 1960s [free]
Diaspora AP

Chatty’s Mouseguard– 1, 2, 3, and 4

The 5×5 method
Old mechanics, new applications

Easy recipe: Popovers
Cool program for opening docx and odt files!
Fun holiday and bday cards

to read– Questions based setting creation and Good Archipelago setting

Categories
Books

Stealing Myspace

The full title is Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America by Julia Angwin.

The book was a solid look at a tangle of people and relationships. It’s amazing how much strange luck played a part of Myspace’s history– for a throwaway desperate idea, it was amazingly successful. It’s also interesting how many of Myspace’s unique features– allowing widgets and custom html– came about as a result of bad programming or oversight, not planning.

Actually, that’s the take away of the whole book– sometimes luck shines down. Even the successful widget makers were fantastically lucky, turning huge profits because they released something wildly popular– often among several equally good competitors.

The book is tightly written, in a series of very short (often 3 page) chapters. That makes the read fly along– it’s very easy to say “one more section” and “one more” until the book is through.

Categories
Books

Across Realtime by Vernor Vinge

This is two books on the inside– the first, The Peace War, was a reread, though it has been a while. I liked it still– it’s an interesting world, the Peace Authority makes sense [though I’m really curious about those first weeks dismantling the old world], and the path to the book’s present is fascinating. The devastated low population world is quirky and unique. The struggle and Paul’s legendary skills seem a bit much at times, but it all works out well.

The second book, Across Realtime, expands on the bobble concept and seizes on it as a method of passing into the future– just bobble ahead and see what the world’s like when you get there. But everything is gone when the novel starts– some time after 2209 the human race disappears, and everyone coming out of their bobbles finds a wasteland. The book develops into an interesting hop across time, a big murder mystery with advanced technology, and a war between leftover fanatics. While the “low techs” are mostly undifferentiated, the high techs are all interestingly developed.

Categories
FATE Games

Assessments, Declarations, and Manuevers

From http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FateRPG/message/16305

Assessments, Declarations, and Maneuvers are all the same action, the way I look at the system. As individual applications, they’re framed differently. Assessments ask the GM to come up with something that in the story-space is already true, just discovered. Declarations empower the player to come up with something that was already true. Maneuvers empower the *character* to assert something new and now true.

Fred

And from Grant: If the GM is amenable, an Assessment may also allow a player character to ‘discover’ an element that the GM hadn´t even thought of previously. In this manner the Assessment works like a Declaration (see below) with the player stating that his character has identified a weakness, Aspect or other feature. The GM sets a Difficulty for the Skill roll to see if the character was correct in his Assessment, or whether he was mistaken. If the roll fails, the GM may wish to impose a temporary Aspect on the assessing character to reflect this, for example ‘Mistakenly believes the security cameras to have a blind spot’.

Pulp theft caper

Categories
Food

Holiday Baking

Last night was my last chance to make a big batch of cookies before my early Christmas with Eric and family, so I seized it. I’m proud of my sequencing– though I should have taken pictures, I’ll add some in later.

I began by mixing up the snickerdoodle dough, because it has to be chilled before use. By making it first (and baking it last), I was able to make the cookies with thoroughly chilled dough, which made rolling them in the bowl with cinnamon and sugar quick and easy. (BTW, that’s my reminder for next year: bowl, not plastic bag. You can roll it easily and don’t have it stick to the bag.)

Once I made up the snickerdoodle dough, I kicked it into a container and tossed it in the freezer, scraped the bowl and used again it for the Toffee Bars. It’s a real simple toss everything in one bowl and mix recipe– so I did so. Then it goes in a pan in the over for 15 minutes. When you pull it out, toss chocolate chips on it and cover with baking sheets to keep the heat in, melting the chocolate chips and making it easy to spread. (Note: the 1/2 cup the recipe calls for is too little chocolate to cover the whole pan, particularly in the 10×15. 1 cup works much better.) Last night, the chocolate spread fine but didn’t cover everything, so I tossed it back in the over for two minutes with more chocolate chips, then smeared them throughout for a nice consistency. (The one drawback was that I’d already added the nuts, so the second spreading of chocolate spread over/through them, and it may clump.)

While the Toffee Bars were baking, I mixed up the persimmon cookies. I didn’t soften the margarine, which made the creaming take a little longer, but it eventually worked out. The 1 cup of persimmon pulp is almost exactly one persimmon’s worth, which is easy and convenient. [Also: Persimmons are peeled– I don’t have a note for that in the recipe, and probably should.] The first batch was made with rounded teaspoons full of dough– the result was small, resulting in persimmon bites. The remaining two batches I kicked up to very rounded 1/2 tablespoon– probably 1 tablespoon leveled.

When the second two dozen persimmons came out of the oven, I got the snickerdoodle dough out of the freezer and made my first two dozen slightly rounded 1/2 tablespoon balls. I popped them dough back in the freezer between batches. When they came out of the oven, the cookies went straight to a rack, I grabbed the next dough container from the freezer and made the next 2 dozen balls. When the new batch came out, I moved the racked cookies to a big ziplock, the sheet cookies to the rack, and made the next batch. At 1/2 tablespoon cookies, I made 8 dozen snickerdoodles.)

[Now with pictures below the fold.]

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