Reading
The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross. Contemporary fantasy: various forms of magic are real, but work in a quasi-scientific manner based on parallel universes and information theory. The protagonist is a computer/magic nerd working for a secret UK government agency called the Laundry, suppressing illegal and dangerous magical discoveries.

Pretty interesting and well-done. The magic system is a bit waffly but does make a kind of sense. The Laundry is amusingly plausible: kind of John Le Carre meets Dilbert where bureaucracy and office politics are among the biggest obstacles to saving the world.

The nerd stuff is a bit cringe-inducing but does have some nice touches: like the secret extra volume of Knuth devoted to magical algorithms. The action is pretty good too, with a nicely set-up expedition to a satisfyingly creepy alternate universe.

Overall, worth a look.

Watching
Was a bit disappointed by the Battlestar Galactica "Razor" special. In a way it suffered from some of the problems of the Star Wars prequels. Part of the plot concerns how the Pegasus turned evil. The events though don't really seem to justify it, and the abandonment of the civilians and such don't really seem to be pragmatic. If Cain had had a good reason to think they could defeat or cripple the Cylon attck it would have made sense and been dramatic, but it seems almost motivelessly evil to kill civilians to inflict a few pinpricks of damage on the actual enemy.

On the plus side, the Galactica plot was better: nice to see the old-style Centurions again, and they seem more evenly matched against Colonial infantry. The Raiders are also old-school, but have machine guns instead of lasers.

Overall, not that promising for the final series.

Watching 2
Mighty Boosh series three starts Wednesday!

The BBC has an episode up in RealPlayer, but I think I'll wait for the proper version.

Musuems
Saw the Louise Bourgeois retrospective at Tate Modern a couple of weeks ago. Didn't find it that inspiring. I think the problem might be that I've seen so many derivative works that the originals now seem too familiar. The house/body metaphors reminded me of Anthony Gormley, the autobiographical childhood stuff of Tracey Emin, the distorted body-sculptures of Hans Bellmer. Even though they're actually ripping her off rather than the other way around, it didn't feel like I was seeing anything new.

The Crack was quite impressive though. The Guardian got some builders to discuss how it was done.

Web
Economics: Patent terms should be sector-dependent.

Criminal profiling just a party trick.

Michael Moorcock on fiction publishing:

Bit by bit through the nineties the booksellers began to assume the power once wielded by the Victorian private libraries in England and America when Mudies, for instance, could demand that books be published in multiple (usually three) volumes because subscribers had to pay to take out individual volumes, not whole novels. Thus the majority of Victorian novelists were forced to produce what George Eliot called ‘the middle volume’, essentially the section which trod water between the beginning and the end of a book. Dickens was the first literary writer to resist the power of the libraries by publishing in what was considered the vulgar method of shilling serial parts (though noting his success the stately Thackeray, who had advised him against it, soon followed his example) but generally through the major part of the 19th century the working novelist was forced to bow to the rule of Mudies and Bentley, the publisher who supplied most of Mudies’ stock and dominated the age. Publishers were even told how to price their books at 10/6d (half a guinea) a volume, which put, say, Middlemarch or Jude the Obscure well outside the pocket of the average reader.
...
It seems to me that authors as well as publishers will have to take the same risks Dickens took when he published his books as cheap part-works, the same risks authors took when they let their books be published at six shillings, instead of £1.10.6d, the same risks some of us took when we ignored the posher literary magazines of our day and preferred to see our work appear in vulgar newstand magazines with exotic and brightly coloured covers. At present POD and other electronic publishing are considered by literary journalists and others to be an inferior form of delivering fiction to readers, on a par with vanity publishing.This can only change rapidly if we make it change...

trhurler
Seems inappropriate to get overly sentimental over the death of trhurler. Some facts:

1. There were 6 active users on my K5 diary watchlist. Trhurler was one of them
2. I had some good arguments with him. I particularly remember two: the utility of pistols versus rifles, and the best movie car chase.
3. He had a now-rare ability to carry out sustained debates without overt fallacies.

I've no idea what he was like in real life, whether he was more or less combative than online. I don't think the fact he was an aggressive debater online necessarily means he was a bully in real life. Pummelling someone in a boxing ring doesn't mean you go around beating people up on the streets.

He was entertaining to read and fun to argue with. My world is slightly worse without him in it.