Ticklish Ideas

I just took the SF writer quiz and got three results by tweaking my responses where there were two or more me-ish choices. The results:

I am: Kurt Vonnegut For years, this unique creator of absurd and haunting tales denied that he had anything to do with science fiction.

Which science fiction writer are you?

I am: William Gibson The chief instigator of the "cyberpunk" wave of the 1980s, his razzle-dazzle futuristic intrigues were, for a while, the most imitated work in science fiction.

Which science fiction writer are you?

I am: Gregory Benford A master literary stylist who is also a working scientist.

Which science fiction writer are you?

Vonnegut is one of my favorite writers - I read every one of his books in the library when I was a teenager (my mom put Cat's Cradle in my hands when I was 13). Gibson I'm familiar with - I've picked up his books and read a few pages without getting hooked. Benford, I had to google. I'll look him up at the library next time. It's a fun little quiz and the bandwidth meltdown that ensued after Neil Gaiman linked to it is all better now.

I wonder what you have to do to get Ursula K LeGuin.

I used to feel a little guilty about my brother's take it or leave it approach to school and especially to reading. I had the academic overacheivement territory all staked out before my brother was into chapterbooks.

My guilt has pretty much evaporated now that I've realized that my brother (though younger) had figured out stable-and-sane-longterm-relationships before I had a driver's license, contributing to my total aversion to early marriage. Actually I'm nearning thirty and don't seem in any hurry to settle down.

Astronomers have detected a small rocky inner planet for the first time! After a couple of decades of analyzing wobbling stars it is now possible to read the subtle effects of an orbiting earth-like planet (this was thought impossible when I took astronomy in 1998). Very very exciting!

Neil Gaiman: "And when I was at school, we read about King Canute. I see from the Guardian his name is now spelled Cnut (http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1497065,00.html) making him sort of the FCUK of Early British Kings...."

Observation on transliterating Anglo Saxon names: I find it much easier to remember who's rule it is with the razor now that I know that Friar Ockham (or Friar Somebody of Ockham, more likely) came up with it in the 14th century (Occam's Razor). Dunno how it got the latinate spelling, or when, but spelled Occam it's a slippery name and I could only ever recall the part about the razor--now that it's Ockham in my head it's easy to hold on to.

I start back to school on Monday at The University. I've never taken classes there before, although I first used their libraries and loitered in the student union, um, 12 years ago now. I went to high school around here and resolved to go to a college, an actual liberal arts college (emphasis on liberal). By the time I was 15 I was decidedly snobbish about The University, with its hazings and its 500-seat freshman courses and its football-Saturdays-that-innundate-the-whole-city.

In the two years since I moved back to this city, I've been shying away from taking classes at The University (mostly for the old reasons, which get ever-sillier the further I get from age 15). Class starts on Monday. Today was a dry run - I drove across town and arrived and parked with time to spare before classtime. I found my classrooms. I got my ID card and a parking permit. I studied at the union (I'm brushing up on prerequisite material). I found a coffee counter close to my classroom. I'm ready.

I feel like a kid about to start school. It's a yummy feeling.

I got my Powells Bookstore newsletter the other day, and it linked to a wonderful interview with Sarah Vowell, a fellow American Studies buff and a This American Life contributor. She does a kind of work that I sometimes aspire to: she takes dry history and makes it into trade paperbacks that are a joy to read. Ms. Vowell on her trade:

[the speaker warned] 'We must avoid easy entertainments.' And I was just
sitting there thinking, Lady, entertaining is hard. Anybody can bore something
up, but making some of this stuff entertaining is the hardest thing there is.