Selamba

Click for full-sized:

Warrior queens

Catherine Asaro is my new favourite writer. Her Skolian Imperialate series deals with a future where three human civilizations exist: the Allieds (Earth), the Skolians, and the Eubians/Traders. This is a rough outline of her history:

• About six millenia ago, unknown aliens transplant a bunch of humans from South America to another planet.
• The humans form the Ruby Empire, which has space travel and highly psi-based technology. The Ruby Empire is ruled by warrior queens who keep their men in seclusion.
• Ruby Empire collapses.
• A few hundred years ago, humans redevelop spaceflight.
• Genetic engineering accidentally creates the Aristos, a race of anti-empaths who derive pleasure from torturing psions. The Aristos rule the Eubian Concord.
• An Aristo project later creates the Rhon, extremely powerful psions who escape and establish the Skolian Imperialate, rediscovering and using ancient Ruby technology. The Imperialate is a semi-democracy with a parlimentarian system but the Ruby Pharoah (female, as in the ancient empire) and other nobles holding considerable power.
• About a century and a half from now, the Allieds develop spaceflight and meet the two other human empires.

I rather like Asaro's approach to gender relations - feminist without being the sort of dreamy New Age or the Valerie-Solanas-man-hating-radical types. Here's a sample from the preview of her latest, The Ruby Dice:

Across the amphitheater, the Majda queens were sitting at their consoles, tall and aristocratic. Only their women held Assembly seats; even in this modern age, they followed ancient customs that forbade their men to inherit power.

When Earth's people had finally discovered the Imperialate, they had scandalized the noble matriarchs of Skolia. Apparently on Earth, men historically held more power than women. The matriarchs claimed this was why it had taken Earth's people so long to reach the stars. They asserted that if women had been in charge, Earth would have achieved that pinnacle of technology thousands of years earlier. Their arguments conveniently ignored the fact that their ancestors had developed star travel because they had starships to study.

Earth's annoyed males responded by pointing out that Earth had achieved a far greater degree of peace than the Imperialate, which surely had to do with the fact that bellicose, aggressive women had been in charge of the Imperialate rather than peaceful men. Naaj Majda hadn't understood why Kelric found this so funny. She even acknowledged the Earth men had a point. Kelric told her to go read Earth's military history.

Asaro herself has had a really interesting career - she went to college to become a ballet dancer but ended up becoming a physicist - and a terrific SF novelist. Her writing is truly unusual in that the stories have both deeply emotional character development as well as "hard SF" math and physics.

SF&F quantitation theory

Quickie theory: the quality of a science fiction or fantasy author's world-building skills can be measured by the ratio of fan-generated wiki text : author's original text in novels and short stories concerning that particular universe.

I came up with this idea because there's a surprising number of Wikipedia entries regarding Garth Nix's Old Kingdom series, which is only 3 novels and one short story so far. (It's not a trilogy because he's promised at least one more novel.)

A good author should be able to write a world that is internally consistent, and describe its history, rules, characters, and other contents by context alone, spending minimal time on explanations that don't flow naturally into the story (e.g. Harry Potter being raised by Muggles and having to be shown around the wizarding world). The characteristics of being internally consistent and having a lot of interesting content that's touched on glancingly by the author gives fans a lot of material to organize into synopses, timelines, histories, protocols, etc.

I tend to dislike most books that give you a long glossary at the end, the exceptions being the Lord of the Rings and David Brin's Uplift series. Brin has a bloody menagerie of alien civilizations, but he focuses tightly on the experiences and feelings of individual characters in the narrative itself. As far as I'm concerned, if I have to keep flipping back and forth between the story and explanations in the back, I might as well be reading research papers.

I ran this idea past Krista who's one of my fantasy fiction buddies and she said it sounded workable. Anyone else agree?

Hot tub

Last night we had the Grad Christian Fellowship's women's retreat in New Glarus, which is a cute little fake Swiss town. I'm sure they had real Swiss immigrants back when it started in the 1850s, but now it's a tourist trap.

The two speakers were the Assistant Dean of Diversity and a sociology prof, who'd known each other for about two years professionally, but were each extremely surprised to find out that the other was Christian when we invited them to come and talk. Sociology and Asst. Dean of Diversity...go figure. I think in some fields - surprisingly, not the life sciences - announcing that you belong to an organized religion is like coming out of the closet.

The Chalet Landhaus is really nice but also awfully expensive, which is why the women's retreat is in February (off-season). But it's made of wood, has well-heated rooms, etc., plus a Jacuzzi. Someone commented that "if I had one of these in my house, I would be so relaxed." Well, there's a reason we don't have Jacuzzis in our houses:

Grad students aren't supposed to relax.

---

One thing that Dr Turley mentioned was that she'd grown up poor (as had Dr Sanchez) and she'd been taught to hate rich people. (Look at the 5th item on her publication list, by the way.) I definitely didn't grow up poor, but our family was more or less lower-middle-class, and I wasn't taught to hate rich people but to look down on them - not explicitly, obviously, as my dad's a pastor, but you pick up on comments about spoilt kids, corrupt politicians, pampered housewives, nepotism, etc.

It drove me nuts to hear my Bengali friend, whose family in Dhaka had servants and drivers, insist that they weren't rich. It drives me nuts to hear my boyfriend, whose family has 4 cars total and whose parents own their own very nice house, insist that they're not rich. Not by relative neighbourhood or USA standards, maybe, but by the standards I grew up with they look like close to millionaires.

It's becoming very uncomfortable to me to realize that with the level of education I'm going to end up with, and the type of job that I'm probably going to have, I will be joining the ranks of the "rich people". I don't want to have to deal with investments and stocks and all that bullshit, and if there are any children in my future, I have an absolute horror of them growing up to be privileged brats. Maybe I can pull a John Wesley and give most of it away to continue living at the frugal-but-far-from-desperate lower-middle-class level that I'm used to.

Steve won't like it though. He wants his own aeroplane. We'll have to hash something out.

This solution

Welp...Parliament dissolved today...the circus has begun.

Oh, and is anyone surprised that AAB is a few hours short of being a TOTAL bare-faced liar?

Wednesday February 13, 2008 Parliament won’t be dissolved today, says PM

BANGI: Parliament will not be dissolved today.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi put an end to such speculation, telling reporters here yesterday: “Esok tak ada (No, it won’t be tomorrow)”.

He also denied that today’s Cabinet meeting would be the last with his present team of ministers before Parliament is dissolved to pave the way for the next general election.

Wednesday February 13, 2008
MYT 1:10:44 PM Parliament dissolved, elections on

PUTRAJAYA: Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has announced that Parliament has been dissolved, paving the way for the 12th general election.

At a hastily convened press conference at his office Wednesday afternoon, he said he had met the Yang Di Pertuan Agong in the morning and received His Majesty's consent to dissolve Parliament.

"I've informed Parliament and the Election Commission," Abdullah said. The state assemblies have also been advised to dissolve.

Also, I'm excited that Jeff Ooi is running. Go Malaysian bloggers!

Pray for peace. I think we've all seen in the last few months how apparently stable countries (e.g. Kenya, Pakistan) can dissolve into chaos when the fairness of elections is severely compromised and politicians on both sides - Gov't and Opposition - think more of their own power than of the people they're supposed to represent. (Look at Bhutto; her administration and family were notoriously corrupt while she was in power but then she gets shot and all of a sudden she's a martyr for democracy.) I really doubt anything so extreme will happen in Malaysia, but pray for us.

---

Barack Obama was in Madison today. I support him but as to the prospect of my spending hours in a stadium crammed with noisy undergraduate students (ref: undergrad cooties), he can go fly a kite =P

Also, David Morgan-Mar (the Irregular Webcomic guy, who's Australian) explains why the rest of the world gets upset about American presidential elections: they have so much power over us but we have no say. I've been trying and trying to explain this to my white Republican boyfriend. At least he supports McCain =)

I can has munny bak?

When I'm tired and out of sorts I tend to lack self-control and end up doing stupid things on impulse.

Like, last Friday I had a cold and went home from work early and skipped the GCF fortnightly meeting, which was a pity because my friend Krista was giving a talk. Steve was a sweetheart and came over to make broccoli cheddar soup for me, which was REALLY sweet because he doesn't normally cook.

But then after he left I kind of went crazy and stayed up till 1:30 am doing my taxes. I was very exhausted and felt terrible, but I got my tax returns done! (haha suckers)

(Look at those eyes...that's what I mean when I tell you this cat is sexy.)

Gata Positioning System

For a while I've had an idea of using Google Maps to map out my cat's range, based on where people have called me from to say "Is your cat lost?" but I didn't get around to it for a while. We have 5 data points so far.

Given how bloody cold it is, she's not going outside on her own for a while, obviously, but I'll start again in the spring.

Check this out, you can click on the points to see the descriptions I wrote! The labels are the dates she was found there.
View Larger Map

NOTE TO ANY CREEPY PEOPLE WHO ARE THINKING OF USING THIS TO STALK ME: My window has a security device on it that I can set to prevent the sash from being opened more than 4 inches, just enough for the cat to squeeze through. There's no way a human could get in.

As to the post title, "gata" means female cat in Spanish. Mi gatita es princesa. ^_^

Happy New Year!

Chinese New Year, Year of the Rat...and my seventh away from home.

The family's at my aunty's house in Subang Jaya this year. We did a video call on Skype, so I saw some cousins (Jemufo, Jerng, etc.) live for the first time in a couple of years. Not that said cousins don't have computers, we're just bad at keeping in touch =)

Near the end of the call, my first sister Yan (after me, before FlowerMoonFish) started yelping "I did it! I did it!" in the background.

me: What's she screaming about?
Jemufo: A puzzle.
Yan: I'm a genius!
me: Then how come you're majoring in social sciences?
Yan: Hey! Er...at least I'm not one of those stupid arts people.
Jemufo: HEY!

Man, I miss them.

Missing child

>PLEASE READ AND FORWARD TO ALL YOUR
>FRIENDS..MISSING CHILD
>
>Dear reader, I am a single parent who
>is looking for my only son. Some time
>ago he was kidnaped while on a school
>trip. Eye witnesses say they were
>attacked by two men, we believe they were
>traffickers who sell children because
>this part of the world where we live
>is not a save place. My son is disabled
>and could not escape like the other
>school childrens.
>
>He is the only family I have because my
>wife was brutally murdered shortly before
>our son was born. I am hoping that the
>kindness of strangers and the power of the
>internets will bring him back.
>
>If you see him please contact the
>authorities immediately. Here is a picture
>of my son:
>

Maybe I should have waited for April Fools' to send this to people but I'd had this idea for a long time and felt bored last night.

People who forward "missing child" emails (and now Facebook wall posts) willy-nilly drive me nuts. I don't think they use their brains to consider whether it actually helps anybody or not...like folks back home who send out fliers about kids who [purportedly] disappeared in the USA or UK...when the senders and 95% of their friends live in Malaysia.

In a lot of cases the kids have either been returned home by cops, found safely, or confirmed dead LONG ago. Some others probably don't even exist. My favourite stupid missing child alert is the "Evan Trembley" one that's been making the rounds of Facebook Super Walls. It was started by Evan himself as a prank. Little bugger's probably regretting it now.

Unnatural organic

Don't look now, but there goes an organic cabbage wrapped in plastic. As its pesticide- and synthetic-fertilizer-supported brethren were not.

The hypocrisy and oxymoronic-ness of some parties who promote and/or sell organic foods astounds me. Packaging is only one of the aspects where the ridiculous may be found. In the past I've also bought Roundy's organic free-range eggs from Copps that came in a TRIPLE-layered plastic carton, unlike normal eggs that come in recycled cardboard. Are these free-range hens calcium-deficient, that their eggs must be sold in armour?

Another example of packaging madness committed by a store involves Whole Foods itself. I bought fresh salmon burgers from them and observed the counter worker wrap them in something that looked like newspaper, just like in the wet markets back home. Only it turned out to be not newspaper going into a second career, but the same plastic-coated paper normal groceries use, but printed with a fake newspaper design in an incredibly lame attempt to look retro. There goeth the holy and virtuous Whole Foods, wasting energy and ink - not that the cosmetic is going to make shoppers in 21st century Wisconsin feel like they're in 1900s Boston.

A couple of years ago when Wal-Mart announced that it was going to carry organic goods, environmentalists on Treehugger and other websites sneered at this rather than acknowledging it was a step in the right direction. Granted, Wal-Mart is well-known for unethical practices, but at least it's making healthier food available to ordinary consumers, in addition to forcing some of its suppliers to be more environmentally friendly. I've quite happy that the Wisconsin chain where I usually shop, has organic veggies at prices not much more than regular (although I can't say the same for their eggs).

The sort of snobbery displayed by the people mentioned above outrages me. Guess what, wankers: organic farming is NOT going to save the world UNLESS it can be made affordable and accessible to ordinary people with pressing demands on their time and money. Not just a) the wealthy elite for whom environmentalism is a fashion and b) the true hardcore environmentalists who are willing to sacrifice a normal lifestyle to be AGAP (As Green As Possible).

According to my boss, Whole Foods is nicknamed "Whole Check" because that's what it takes to do your shopping there. Screw them and their seven-dollar squashes, I'm getting my organic stuff from Copps.