I say, "Yes"!

And, apparently, so do a group of scientists and researchers. According to <a target="_blank" href="http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/space_resources_0311… article on Space.com</a>, mining specialists, space engineers, and energy strategists who attended the Space Resources Roundtable V held at the Colorado School of Mines thought that mining space was a good investment. Of course, they acknowleged that there some issues that needed to be dealt with first. Little details like food, water and air. All things that Earth has in abundance, but that are lacking on the moon and other "hot" mining sites. Getting resources in space is a <b>big</b> issue.
But, what I found most interesting was some of the new legal concepts that came up. For instance, the idea of how to "take possesion" of asteroids for mining via remote robots. What's more, who will have rights when? How will claims be managed? Unfortunately, there's plenty of room in space for lawyers. And, of course, legal disputes. Well, I guess all those lawyers better start reading up on their science-fiction! And, I better start writing a intergalactic courtroom drama....

Get a degree in game design.

Well, a minor, anyway.... According to <a target="_blank" href="http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,61162,00.html?tw=wn_story_pag… story on Wired News</a>, USC is now offering a minor in game design. They picture it as an "add-on" to a more serious degree, like, say art. (Actually, they interviewed an engineering student who was looking at taking the minor next year, too.) Anyway, I guess it just goes to show how enormous the gaming industry has become! So, think of all those video games you buy college-age people at Christmas not as "entertainment" so much as "research".

It's here!

Good or bad, biometrics has hit the retail markets. I'm not talking about those keyboards that have a thumbprint reader to unlock your PC either. I mean that there are retail establishments that are testing pay-by-thumbprint, <i>right now</i>! There's <a target="_blank" href="http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/18/0230239&mode=thread&tid=126… entry on Slashdot </a>that has links to both the good, and the bad, side to this technology. Frankly, it's the dark side that I find the most interesting.
Ever seen <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005JL78/fantasistnet">Minority Report</a>? If not, you need to see it for just this. Picture being tracked through a shopping mall via biometrics, with advertising targeted to you and calling you by name. To borrow an overused marketing phrase, it'll take spamming to a "whole new level". Ubiquitous computing? Forget that. Ubiquitous advertsing. That's a more likely scenario by far. I shudder at what this will do to our world. And, I can already see a steep rise in amputation related crimes. You thought identity theft was bad in our time? Wait until people are stealling <b><i>thumbs</i></b>!

(And, yes, I posted this on <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ryumaou.com/hoffman/netgeek/">my other blog </a>first.)

A whistling language?

Sure, why not! Not too long ago, someone on one of the many conlang e-mail lists I'm on started talking about a whistle-based language. I have to admit, I thought it was quite intriguing. I started to picture a bird-like race that might have developed such a language. In fact, I thought that someone had finally come up with a unique, new idea for a conlang. Nope.
At least, not according to <a target="_blank" href="http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/11/18/whistle.language.ap/index.ht… article on CNN.com</a>. It seems there's a whistle language that's existed for quite some time in the Canary Islands. Unfortunately, it's a language that's started to die off already. But, on the bright side, the government is working at preserving it. In fact, they've gone so far as to require lessons in it in their schools in an attempt to preserve this highly unusual language. The article also mentions the "First International Congress of Whistled Languages" which also brought in experts in whistled languages found in Greece, Turkey, China and Mexico.
Just goes to show, I guess, that nothing we can imagine is so alien that it can't exist! Let that be a lesson to you aspiring writers out there as you invent languages, and worlds, for your fiction!!

I see a disturbing trend...

I spent a little too much quality time on a conlang BBS this week. Well, it's not a real BBS, but it's one of those new-fangled, PHP-based web-BBS things. I hate them. I much, much prefer the old-fashioned e-mail list or newsgroup.
Anyway, I got all wrapped up in a discussion about the virtues, or lack thereof, in automated word generators. It started with someone reccomending <a target="_blank" href="http://www.fantasist.net/wordgen.shtml">my old generator</a>, which is really based on <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~pound/">code from Chris Pound</a>. Well, someone complained that it would be nice to be able to specify the phonology of the words to be generated. So I worked for several months at PERL and finally coded up <a target="_blank" href="http://www.fantasist.net/wordmaker.shtml">my Conlang Wordmaker</a>, which will look really familiar to people who have used <a target="_blank" href="http://www.langmaker.com">Langmaker</a&gt;. Well, when I posted that, it sparked a number of things, but one person made the comment that they "damn well would never use a word generator" to make their conlang. Well, that sort of irritated me. And, when I get irritated before my morning coffee, I tend to type rather sharp replies.

But, sharp replies aside, what's wrong with using a word generator? I mean, a piece of beautiful furnature that was assembled with power tools isn't any less beautiful, is it? Is something done by hand, in the slowest, hardest way possible, inherently more worthy of praise? I don't think so, but apparently quite a few conlangers do seem to think so. And, as I've poked around the web, it seems to be a sentiment that conlang people in general have taken to be a Universal Truth. But, why?

I think it's because so many of them are, or were, linguists or linguistics students. Academia is anchored to a rigid system of learning that tends to insist people follow certain patterns. I have a college degree, but most of what I know that I truly prize, I learned on my own far, far away from a classroom. I think far outside the box that academia tends to force scholarship into. For instance, in learning things like PERL, I learned that whichever way works, is a good enough way. Sure, there may be other ways, but if it works, it's good enough way. So, too, in my "day job". I manage servers in a corporate envrionment, so I often don't have time to find the "best" way. I have to make it work, usually on a budget, quickly. I apply that maxim everywhere in my life.
So, how does that relate to conlanging? Well, I'm not really too hung up on phonology or morphology. I don't care to spend hours upon hours making a rigid, highly technical scheme of phonology and morphology. It matters more to me how the language sounds. If I'm looking for something that sounds a little bit like Cantonese as spoken by a Polyneasean, what difference does it make how the words are formed? All that matters is that I get my end result, a conlang that <i>sounds</i> right.

I'm not in favor of form over function. I never have been. For most things, I'd rather it get done quick and dirty than never get done at all. So, I'm in favor of using whatever tools get the job done for a conlang. I don't care if you steal words from a natural language and "mutate" them into a new conlang. Do whatever it takes to make a language that adds that realism to your fiction! What matters isn't the process, but the art that you create!

No, really, there's a scientific study!

<a target="_blank" href="http://content.health.msn.com/content/article/76/90285.htm">Right here on MSN Health </a>they say that dark beer is good for you. Or, at least, better for you than the lighter beers. Something about the "flavonoids" that make it dark help prevent blood clots, which help prevent blood-vessel related problems. (This is also how that whole red wine thing works, too, by the way.) So, what the heck, it's Friday, go have a nice, dark beer. For your health!

No, not a computer virus.

That's right a real, live virus that was created in a lab. According to <a target="_blank" href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/science/2003-11-13-new-life-usat_x.htm">th… article on USA Today</a>, such a thing now exists. Once confined to the slum of science-fiction, completely artificial virii now exist. Thursday, November 13, a team lead by Craig Venter announced that they had created an artificial virus based on a real one in just two weeks' time.
Now, at this point all they did was make a virus that infected bacteria, but how long before they're moving on? Where will it end? With a "flu" like Stephen King imagined in The Stand? Or will it be more subtle than that? Or less?
Will we eventually feel that it's okay to "manufacture" animals through the same process? Will we make unicorns and minotaurs? Where do you draw the line?
I sure don't know, but it's a little more confusing now that the line has been redrawn for us. The only good thing about all this is that it gives science-fiction writers a whole lot more to write about!

Starting yesterday you can keep your cell number when you change plans.

At least, in some metropolitan areas. The rest follow on May 24th. Unfortunately, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,61184,00.html?tw=wn_polihead_… article on Wired News </a>doesn't say which areas start getting this option today. Still, it's nice to know. I know that I have hesitated to change plans because of the hassle of getting my new number to everyone. I mean, I have a <i>lot</i> of people who contact me via my cell phone. Not least of which is my wife and recruiters!
I wonder how long it will take before we're assigned phone numbers at birth, like Social Security numbers...

(Oh, and yeah, I posted this at <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ryumaou.com/hoffman/netgeek/">my other blog </a>yesterday.)

Yep, you can bid on a space mission on eBay.

Seriously. Of course, I'm not sure what the average Joe would want with a satellite, but you never know. It <i>does</i> have a camera, according to <a target="_blank" href="http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,61267,00.html?tw=wn_story_page… article on Wired News</a>, but is it really worth the price? Well, I guess we'll see.
Personally, I like it. Sure, I'm not going to bid on it, but I like the idea of privitizing space this way. After all, how else are we going to get out there? What's more, how else are we going to make it cheap? Cars and planes used to be horribly expensive, until everyone started using them. Now, almost every family owns a car and everyone flies somewhere. Okay, maybe not in their own plane, but still... Combine this with a little space tourism and we might actually start to get out into space!

I finished <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0716744732/fantasistnet/002-7694… Power of Babel </a>by John McWhorter this past week.

And, it was pretty damn good! Okay, allowing for the fact that I'm interested in linguistics and history and historical linguistics, it's still a good book. As my be guessed from that last sentence, The Power of Babel is about the history of language. Not <i>a</i> language, but <i><b>all</b></i> of them. Mr. McWhorter effectively uses examples from numerous languages from every continent and cultural region I can think of that has language.
In the very first chapter he outlines the five basic ways that language changes and then sets out to describe them in the subsequent chapters. I think he does and well enough that a rough, amatuer linguist like me can really understand what he's saying. He even has a whole, thick, meaty chapter dedicated to pidgins and creoles, which is a subject that fascinates me. He talks about the social and economic pressures that drive language change, which I thought was quite insightful.

Now, I have to admit, I got this book with the sole purpose of getting ideas for conlanging. I was <i>not</i> dissapointed! The linguistic ideas came hot and heavy. Everything got touched on in this book: grammar, phonology, morphology and how they all alter over time. I have to say that I liked this even better than <a href="http://www.fantasist.net/scroll/archives/2003_09.html#000239">the Language Instinct</a>, which was a very good book.
If you have even a passing interest in historical linguistics, buy this book and read it!