Wednesday, January 9th, 2013

lethargic_man: (Default)
I've been reading The Rapture of the Nerds, by Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow, which I have been eagerly looking forward to since I first heard of it. As the title implies, it's about the Singularity, or rather the relationship of baseline humanity to a developing Matrioshka brain, a subject Stross's novel Accelerando skirted, by diverting the action away from the solar system during the critical period. The Rapture of the Nerds skirts the subject too—it's a difficult thing to tackle directly—but does so in a significantly closer orbit than Accelerando. Nevertheless, for those who read this kind of thing, there's little in the way of groundbreaking new ideas: reading it, I was thinking, "That's out of Greg Egan's 'Reasons To Be Cheerful', meanwhile he took that from Ken Macleod..." Plus, there's a nice twist on Contact. Nevertheless, it's a fun read, in places lots of fun:
The surviving missiles stab towards them and there's a musical chime from the countermeasures control panel. [...] "You've got mail!" the countermeasures system announces in the syrupy tones of a kindergarten teacher. "Facebook-Goldman-AOL welcomes you to the United States of America. You have 14,023 new friend requests, which you will receive after this message from our sponsors. Your hen wants milking, your goat has been turned into a zombie, there are 14,278,123 new status updates, and you have been defriended 1,974,231 times. There are 5,348,011 updates to the privacy policy for your review."

Bonnie thumps something on the panel, muscles like whipcord standing out on her arm as she glares at the oncoming missiles. Huw backs away. She might actually be a communicant, he realises in absolute horror. She might actually have a Facebook account! She's mad enough.... These days, tales of what Facebook did with its users during the singularity are commonly used to scare naughty children in Wales.
Read more... )
lethargic_man: (reflect)
The media have been making a big hoo-har about the fact the Commonwealth has changed its succession law so if Prince William's firstborn is a daughter, she will accede to the throne even if she has a younger brother. Today's news is that the Queen has issued Letters Patent to ensure such a daughter is a princess from birth, which would not hithertofore have been the case for a daughter. According to the abovelinked article, the Letters Patent reads:
All the children of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales should enjoy the style, title and attribute of Royal Highness with the titular dignity of Prince or Princess prefixed to their Christian names.
What an incredible botched job that seems to me: it only applies to the situation where the heir to the throne is a male; it does not clearly set out the law for future generations. Now that a daughter would become (in due course) Heir Apparent, rather than Heir Presumptive, she would go on in due course to become Princess of Wales when William is king (no, I didn't know that; I had to look it up); and should she go on to have a firstborn daughter herself, that daughter would be the eldest child (not son) of the Princess (not Prince) of Wales, and her daughter should be entitled to be rank of princess too—something that will require further legislation or Letters Patent, as it is not covered by today's Letters Patent, and makes me wonder whether Her Majesty (someone who, Wikipedia tells me, previously turned down the idea of being made Princess of Wales when it was suggested to her father) has really bought in to the concept of egalitarianism.

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Lethargic Man (anag.)

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