Online evaluation form

Thanks to the five of you who already have filed an online evaluation form for our class, for a 42 percent response rate, five out of 12. (I can't see who the evaluators are, nor the evals themselves, only the response rate.)

I'd like the response rate to approach 100 percent, as I would love to encourage the university to keep doing evals this way. Online evals are more efficient and environmentally friendly, and how they work this semester in the test classes (including ours) will help determine whether the program expands in future semesters.

So when you get a chance, do that by the deadline of Friday, Dec. 4, please. I've appended the university how-to boilerplate below. I'll remind you of this when I see you in person Wednesday, Dec. 2. I look forward to it. Happy Thanksgiving.

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PLEASE SHARE THE FOLLOWING WITH YOUR STUDENTS
This course will be using a new online system for collecting the end-of-semester Student Opinions of Instruction questionnaires instead of in-class paper forms. Your response is very important and is used to assess curricular and instructional quality, as well as to identify opportunities for improvement. Your responses are confidential; only a summary of all student responses without individual identifiers will be provided to me and college administrators.

The new online system enables you to:

complete the questionnaire anytime, anywhere, at your own pace allowing for more thoughtful and constructive responses; and

save and return later, as well as review and edit completed questionnaires prior to the end of the collection period.

Beginning November 15, 2009, most Student Opinions of Instruction questionnaires will be available. The questionnaires for Nursing courses will be available on November 22, 2009. You may access them in either of two ways:

Login to myBama then select the Student Opinions of Instruction channel on either the Academics or Student tabs. Once in the system, you will see a list of courses you are being asked to evaluate.

An email invitation and up to 2 reminders will include a link to the online system; reminders will only be sent to those who have not submitted all questionnaires.

Meow

IBM has designed a supercomputer that accurately replicates the cerebral cortex of a cat...onward to Skynet!

article here

paper topic

ehhh.. I forgot to post a new topic instead of commenting thrice

My topic concerns the thesis for The Baum Plan for Financial Independence (novel, not short story)

I don't know what the thesis of the novel is. However, I know it specifically identifies two things: the constructed nature of gender and the human desire to tap into an infinite resource.

If anyone has some ideas as to what the thesis might be, please post for discussion.

Paper Topic

I am really struggling trying to find a good topic for our paper. Right now I am leaning towards apocalypses and peoples' reaction to them

My paper topic

For my second SF paper, I want to examine the integration of renewable energy sources or devices in SF stories. I can examine the fundamental theories the authors used to come up with these new SF idea, and also what are the fallacies in the plans right now that keeps each idea as a SF idea and not viable in the real world.

Some of the SF ideas I was considering to use are the Zero Point Energy concept in River of Gods and the Faulelt Engine in Powerless. I am also considering looking at the fabrikator in Kiosk and the QSNA in The Juniper Tree.

What do y'all think? Are these SF ideas we have read about good ideas to write about? Is there any better examples out there, especially in the Lunar Quartet we read?

And now for something completely different...

Kidding, just another paper topic idea.

I was considering doing a paper on the roles of children within science fiction. It seems as if children usually fill some sort of mystical, supernatural, or super human role within science fiction stories, such as Ender in Ender's Game and the Brahmins in River of Gods, and I think it be interesting to examine different instances of this phenomenon as well as why it exists.

Thoughts? Questions? Concerns?

Potential paper topic

It's pretty simple. I think I'll just do a paper comparing and contrasting the roles technology plays in WALL-E and Stanley Kubrick's 2001. I think I mentioned this some time a while back, and I still like the idea. Any thoughts/ suggestions for things you think I should mention?

My Potential Topic

There were several topics that I kept toying with in my head, but the one that I can't seem to stray from is the exploration of how the future is imagined in science fiction. I'm thinking about looking at science fiction from the past and seeing how wrong or right they were about today's setting, as well as what perhaps motivated them in making that prediction. I would also look at today's science fiction (using the material from class) and compare/contrast its depiction with past science fiction. And finally, I might try to imagine how the genre will evolve in the years coming concerning its depiction of the future.

Thoughts? Opinions? I'm not in love with it, but I've just had a hard time wrapping my head around anything else about which I could write 2000 words.

A bunch of random stuff

Firstly, I almost forgot to post this week. Remembered at the last minute. =)

Secondly, I think I'd like to write my paper using Kessel's Stories for Men and/or Sunlight or Rock. I've got a few different ideas but most likely it'll center on Erno (just because his character fascinated me)

Thirdly, in my Anthropology class today, we talked about the third gendered( as in neither male nor female) caste group in India (known as the Hijra). Reminded me of the Nutes in River of Gods.

And Lastly, Does anyone else notice that the more advanced a group (mostly an alien group if you're watching scifi) is, the more arrogant they are? Seriously, I always find it frustrating to hear some advanced alien say "But that's impossible" You'd think they'd be advanced enough to think outside the box. Apparently it's hard to advance beyond arrogance.

Paper Topic

I think I'm going to write my paper on how the title "Pride and Prometheus" relates to the story. I'm going to focus on the story of Prometheus, how pride affected the characters and their decisions, and similarities between this story and "Pride and Prejudice". It sounds odd, I know, but they have some similar elements to them.

As far as a paper goes...

I'm heading in a direction where I believe I'd like to explore the possibility that "artificial intelligence" is the next evolutionary step of for humans and what that would mean for our suddenly obsolete species. What would happen if we really did reach the singularity? If A.I. is alive and cognizant wouldn't it act in the way any living thing would and fight tooth an nail to preserve its existence and propagate its species? I know I would....

Paper Topics

Ok, so what I am currently batting around are a couple ideas. Neither are fully furnished yet.

1) Comparison of humans vs robots vs androids and the blurry line that exists between them. Also maybe analyzing/looking at why this line exists primarily due to human fear of being bested/defeated

2) Human fear driving sci-fi. Many stories in SciFi are crafted out of the things humans fear. Supreme aliens with exceptionally better technology coming and destroying us all and/or conquering the world; the world being destroyed by some event (like an asteroid); human technology getting out of hand and thus destroying us all (robots, AI, weapons, etc).

I just woke up with this one this morning, so it is really uncrafted and unfinished.

Anyone got some comments or ideas for either of these?

Potential Paper Topic

I was thinking about writing about Kessel's three lunar stories about the Utopian/dystopian feminist colonies. I guess analyzing them from a feminist perspective, any thoughts?

Not too late to start watching Fringe

Tonight at 7 eastern time Fringe returns to Fox. Awesome SF show that is worth a viewing.

Together At Last! Dinocroc Vs. Supergator!

I thought this was too hilarious not to post Click here

Digital Cloud Could Be London's Next Monument

Thought this was pretty interesting

Digital Cloud

Paper topics...?

So, I am totally unsure of what I want to write about, anyone overflowing with ideas want to share or anyone else with me on being totally unsure about anything to write about?

Paper Topic- John Shults

Hey professor Duncan I hope you feel better. I tried to e-mail you a last weekend but maybe I sent it to the wrong e-mail address?

Anyway I was thinking about writing my paper on the messiah figures in the Yiddish Policemen's Union, The Matrix Trilogy, and the Bible. In YPU, the messiah figure gives his life to expose a zionist plot. In the Matrix Neo gives his life to save the human race and dies. Jesus gives his life for the human race and is raised to life again. What do you guys think?

Class canceled today

Folks, I have been laid low with the flu, and while I'm better than I was, I would have neither voice nor energy for our class this afternoon, so I'm canceling it. We'll finish our conversation about River of Gods here on the blog. We also can be talking here about paper topics, because next week's class meeting, Nov. 18, will be devoted to discussion of those. Thanks, all.

Names

I was looking up some of the names from River of Gods, and discovered that some of them refer to cities in India.

Ajmer Rao- Ajmer is a city in the Ajmer district of Rajasthan
Shaheen Badoor Khan- Shaheen is a middle eastern name that means peregrine falcon, Badoor is a village in the Kasaragod district of Kerala, India, and Khan is many things. It is an old, central asian title for a sovereign or military ruler. It is also a river in Namibia.

Soundtrack

Has anyone had a chance to listen to some of the soundtrack Ian McDonald gives on page 597 whilst reading River of Gods? I think I'm the newest fan of Asian Dub Foundation...

What the heck's a Boltzmon?!

SPOILERS!!!






At the end Lisa Durnau comes to the realization that the Tabernacle was actually a Boltzmon left behind from the singularity created by the Generation Three aeai at the Ray Power building (probably the most convoluted sentence I've written on this blog). Anyways, here's what the heck a Boltzmon is:

http://s23.org/wiki/Boltzmon

I'm not even gonna try the HTML encoding thing. The risk of epic fail is too high.

The year is After Colony 195

I'm not sure if we're going to talk about it in class or not, but on our syllabus it says we're suppose to read "Sanjeev and Robotwallah" in Year's Best.

This story has a lot of anime references so I was wondering if anyone else watches anime.(If not, then you should.)

I wonder if any particular anime influenced this story or if it was just anime in general. (Personally, I saw a lot of Gundam Wing in this story, but that's just me.)

Messiah Complex

Did anyone else think it was more than coincidental that the girl died in the end in order to resolve all, or at least most, of the problems in the story?

I'm not sure if it's really relevant or if it's just my imagination getting the best of me.

Baum Plan short story

Socialism will eventually become a practical reality if humans can keep capitalism from destroying itself.

The Baum Plan did not introduce this idea to me, it just presented the result: people walk in and get their own custom "look," like the way characters dress themselves in The Matrix. This got me thinking about the inflated price behind the "thousands of dollars in casual clothes" that the protagonist was wearing. The real value of those items is in the idea and the rarity; introduce 3-D printers, and designs/ideas become currency of the world as manual labor is increasingly taken over by increasingly efficient mechanical processes--i'd say taken over by machines, but that implies that a robot will cut your yard rather than a scientist engineering grass that does not need to be cut or cared for. The more inventions we have that remove the need for repeated service (who is going to figure out how to make my hair stay at the same length and remove the need for barbers?) the more people are freed to participate in the world of ideas rather than the world of services.

But, we've already seen some real problems with people trying to keep "intellectual copyrights" even on things like music, and that battle is continually being lost. Instead, musicians tour and make money by actually being musicians rather than selling an item. So, does the creation and execution of an idea become a service? Will the people behind the construction of a house (an architect, contractors, roofers, lumber suppliers, hardware suppliers, etc) eventually be removed so that the only person between a consumer and his house is an architect with a mechanism that makes his blueprint a reality?

With efficiency like that, society will put further and further emphasis on education... to what result is my question? Will it result in a world in which money's relevance drastically changes, where material goods are no longer valuable? Value will always remain, but how will it manifest if not in the form of greenbacks or goods?

If socialism is "collective ownership and regulation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange for the common benefit of all members of society," then it makes sense that society becomes much more socialistic when money is devalued.

Hemispheric Dominance

Last week in Downtown, we discussed some left brain/right brain differences and how they applied to the story. I highly recommend taking this test

http://www.wherecreativitygoestoschool.com/vancouver/left_right/rb_test.htm

it's an online test, but it gives a detailed analysis of different brain processes and which ones are controlled by which hemisphere. The randomness of jazz and the intuition required of religion are right brain processes as the test results will show you. Language and memorization are mostly in the left brain.

I'm 70% right brained with random processing as just under 70% dominant as my most dominant process, so if my comments seem nonsensical in class, it could be a result of some strange free association going on =)

V

Has anyone seen the pilot for this show. I missed it and was wondering if it was worth watching.

Between Worlds

So there is this quote in the book that I really liked. It's when Shaheen Badoor Khan observes Parvati at a dinner party and thinks "Between worlds. Neither one nor the other. That is the worst place to be."

It wasn't until I finished reading the book that I realized how this quote could also be applied to other characters in this book. Especially Aj. Except that I didn't think she had a problem being between the two worlds. I wonder if it's significant that when she is killed, she is actually fully human. Fully part of one world.

Or maybe the fact that she was killed by humans for being different is what makes it "the worst place to be".

Water Shortage

In River of Gods, one of the problems India is facing is a shortage of water. There is also a water shortage today in India, though it is not as severe. Instead of just melting glaciers, farmers in India are creating glaciers and melting them.

Anyone want a glacier? They only cost $50,000.

A previous thought recalled: Man vs. Machine

A very central theme I noticed in this book is one that I had raised previously when we were reading short stories and discussing paper 1 topics.

What separates man from machine. And not even necessarily in the way previously discussed of turning man into machine. But just the two as separate beings.

One can speak that "living" things can evolve and change over time. But robots/AI are even better. They can travel at the speed of light (since all that they are is a program which is just bits of data that travels at the speed of light all the time). they can evolve instantly, unlike "living" things that take thousands to millions of years to see any changes.

Aeai or robots or whatever your AI source could evolve instantly in two ways. One, literal, way is that it literally would rewrite its coding by downloading it to a computer and change it like humans change code, making changes, updates, fixes, etc and then upload that new code to itself. Similarly, it could build itself a new shel and jump to that shell. Instant physical evolution. By this method, robots could then have progeny, of sorts, that are mixes of its makers.

The second, more complex way, is that it could update its own coding on the go, which is somewhat more difficult since you cant change something that is in use, at least as of this time.

And so, what separates them from us as far as beings are considered?

This book made me think back on these issues and thoughts. What do you all think?

The Age of Spiritual Machines

Here's a link to the Wikipedia article on Ray Kurzweil's "The Age of Spiritual Machines". It lists some of the predictions he makes in the novel, such as when they begin to copy themselves or take/pass/fail the Turing Test... He seems like he's got a point when he says that non-biological intelligence will continue to grow exponentially whereas biological intelligence is effectively fixed.

Accelerated Age of SF

I strolled across this review of River of Gods that was pretty interesting. The article takes a look at how SF has entered into a so called "Accelerated Age" since 9/11. The article also gives a little more insight into the process that Ian McDonald goes through when writting his novels.

Everything you could ever want to know about Turing Tests

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-test/>

Hopefully I got the link right. This might be handy sometime to someone. Also, if you happen to be an aeai, you can attempt to pass one of these, and illustrate your sentience (or not, if you live in a country that enforces Hamilton Laws).

List of characters

Hey all, just thought it might be nifty to have a list of characters and a brief blurb of what it is they're doing in the novel. Luckily, wikipedia did my work for me. I don't claim any credit for this, but I'll certainly take it advantage of it. Hope it's mildly useful for everyone.

• Mr. Nandha is a Krishna Cop whose job it is to excommunicate rogue aeais. Parvati is his wife trying to cope with boredom at home and high society class dynamics.
• Vishram Ray is an aspiring stand-up comedian who finds himself controlling his father's energy giant Ray Power, after his sudden retirement into sanyas.
• Tal is a beautiful nute working as a set designer for India's most ubiquitous tivi soapi - Town & Country, watched by millions.
• Shaheen Badoor Khan is a powerful civil servant, and direct secretary to the Prime Minister Sajida Rana.
• Shiv and Yogendra are small-time hoodlums caught up in the larger flow of events.
• Najia Askarzadah is a Swedish-Afghan reporter who ambitiously jumps into the civil war brewing in the subcontinent.
• Lisa Durnau is a physicist who has been sent to an asteroid by the US government, to see what's inside the alien artifact.
• Thomas Lull is an AI genius living in exile in India, hiding away his past.
• Ajmer Rao is a mystical girl who can see into people's futures, she's looking for her biological parents.

So after writing my first paper, reading RIVER OF GODS, and reading other short stories in this class, I have pondered immensely over the possibility of advanced artificial intelligence having a strong presence in our society in the future. If someone would have asked me a few years ago how I felt about such a possibility, I probably would have been all for it. But as I have increasingly thought about it I have become unsettled with the idea of nuts and bolts having sentience while humans become seemingly obsolete.

Therefore, I think that if artificial intelligence does progress to the point at which robots may pass the Turing Test, there should be some sort of law such as the Hamilton Act. What do yall think? Are you comfortable having sentient robots running around with the same freedoms as yourselves, or would you like some measures in place to keep them in check?

River of Gods: Nutes

The nutes seem to be an interesting aspect of humanity that I guess evolved from the overpopulation issue and as humanity's solution of escaping the desires of the body. Yet Tai seems unable to resist his previous gender/ current nute attraction to Khan, and that makes me wonder whether the nutes themselves are truly sex-less or asexual or what?

River of Gods- technological and cultural dualism

The existance of ancient religions and customs along with artificial inteligence is very interesting. I can't imagine the caste system still in place in india 37 years from now. Especially with the addition of an AI caste.
I also think of our society and dualism. Countries such as China are certainly technologically dual. They have grass hut villages just outside of super advanced cities like beijing. What aspects of the U.S. are dualistic?