The Aesthetics and Beauty of Knowledge
Shih was the opposite of facts and raw information; shih was the elegance of knowledge, the insight and skill to organize knowledge into meaningful patterns. As an artist chooses colours or light to make her pictures, a master of shih chooses textures of knowledge – various ideas, myths, abstractions, and theories – to create a way of seeing the world. The aesthetics and beauty of knowledge – this was shih.
– David Zindell, The Broken God, 1993
Geek Attitude
The attitude thing is about flexibility, portability, creativity, sociability and jamming (ran out of suitable “ity” words!). It’s about improvising – in the practical and musical senses of the word; not getting tangled in boundaries and the “right” way to do things.
Definitely the only way to travel.
– Martin Delaney – “Laptop Music”.
Kuehleborn's Unfathomable Thoughts
Get your free copy of Arc 1.3: Afterparty Overdrive
It is now more than a week ago that Arc announced the third volume of their sciencefiction magazine on their website:
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The wait is over. Arc 1.3: Afterparty Overdrive is out now – and it won’t cost you a penny. This time out, we’re taking a look at the future of pleasure: from robot music to riotous shopping and the gentler pastimes of crowdsourced theatre and biohacked gardening. And we’re making it free for a limited time on our Zinio and Google Play stores.
That is very generous, of course! In fact it is a great offer. Problem is, as always, the copyright cops. Google Play is not available where I live, so I can’t download the ePub. What is the problem? Since it is free, there is nothing to steal!
An alternative is the Kindle version (with Calibre I can convert it to the format my Sony reader understands). But:
(Sorry, Kindle readers: your version’s coming soon.)
Arrgghh, I hate waiting!
Incidentally: the announcement made me think about that other Science Fiction magazine, TRSF. I’m curious if a new volume will be published.