Apparently my office April Fool's joke was too subtle. I should have done the old trick of taking a screenshot of my boss' desktop icons, setting it as the wallpaper and then hiding all the actual icons in an invisible desktop folder. Or the random fake system errors ("Windows has detected that a gnat has farted within 50 feet of your computer. Please shut down all applications and then restart Windows").

Well, I guess I'll just turn it into a game to see how long it'll take before someone notices that the LJ4100 status display is complaining that the printer's out of chocolate.

One of the big traditional foods for Easter is ham, and I'm not sure why. All over the world, Christians eat ham in honor of a guy who, being a good Jew, would have been horrified by the thought of eating a pig's flesh.

After years of waiting and hoping, we finally got the knock on the door this morning from sectarian missionaries. Though I'm quite happy with my own belief system, I'm fascinated with others' — especially the various Christian sects, because it always astonishes me how different beliefs can be even though they're based on the same book.

Unfortunately, the house is full of boxes and bags, and piles of things to be sold on eBay or donated to a shelter, so I couldn't invite them in. And I was in my bathrobe, so I couldn't stand outside. And I couldn't stand in the door, because one of the cats would have undoubtedly decided to make a break for it.

So I had to wait for a cæsura in the missionary's stream of words to excuse myself. I caught the opportunity after he said that he and his friend wanted to talk to me about the Beast of Revelations [sic]. "No thank you," I said as I closed the door, and too late it struck me that I should have followed up with "I've already got one."

I think I broke my toe this morning. Actually, I'm fairly sure I did. Naturally, the walking stick I bought in Williamsburg on our honeymoon is nowhere to be found, so I'm hobbling around the house with the aid of a didgeridoo. Passed out twice soon after the event. The first time was impressive; I was slumped forwards at the computer desk, and then the next thing I knew, I was looking up at the ceiling, having fallen backwards in the chair, with a heavy file box (which had been next to the chair's base) upside down next to my head. Still haven't managed to work out the physics of that one.

Can't get a shoe on my foot. Hurts too much. This well and truly sucks.

My PDA's battery is holding charge for shorter and shorter periods of time. I dread the thought of having to replace it. On an unrelated note, I checked the statistics in the Pyramid Solitaire game and discovered that I've played 10,437 hands (not counting games I aborted because the card layouts made it obviously impossible to win).

Since Lisa's busy writing book reviews, I figured I'd write one of my own. Currently, I'm reading Harry Turtledove's Colonization series (three books so far).

My favorite SF genre is "alternate history". I also love explorations of alien cultures. Colonization gives me both of those at once: twenty years ago, World War II was interrupted by an alien conquest fleet (the events of which were detailed in an earlier Turtledove series, which I haven't read). It's now the Sixties, and only three major powers retain their independence: the United States, the USSR and Nazi Germany. England is free, but much reduced and sliding towards fascism; France is part of the Greater German Reich. Nearly all the rest of the world remains under the dominion of the Race, smallish lizards from Tau Ceti.

In the experience of The Race, civilizations develop slowly, so when their probes sent back images of men on horseback wielding weapons no more advanced than swords, they felt they'd have an easy time of it. When they arrived, they found that humans had developed "explosive-metal" bombs, and the three abovenamed superpowers managed to prevent the conquest fleet from subjugating their territory; since that time, humans have stolen and adapted the Race's technology, becoming more of a danger. The colonizing fleet has now arrived, threatening the uneasy stability which had arisen between humans and the conquest fleet.

While I'm enjoying all the alternate history and cultural exploration, the books are tedious to read at times; Turtledove seems to think his readers have the short-term memory of an avocado, so nearly every bit of back story and current plot is rehashed ad nauseam (to the point where it feels like one is reading Mary Worth or Prince Valiant).

How many times are we told that Mordechai Anielewicz has pains in his leg muscles because he breathed Nazi nerve gas twenty years ago? Every time he rides his bicycle, which seems to be his only mode of transportation. How often are we reminded that Earth years are twice as long as the Race's? Whenever years are mentioned by or to a member of the Race. How frequently is it explained to us that the Race prefers temperatures higher than humans find comfortable? Every time someone (human or alien) enters or exits a building or vehicle owned by the Race. How many times are the physiological effects of ginger on females of the Race, and the consequent effect on males' behavior, explained to us? More than I could count, that's for sure.

And he doesn't just explain in third-person to the reader. Oh, no! Characters explain things to each other over and over again, sometimes to the same people. When nobody's around for them to explain to, they think the explanations to themselves! Further padding out the word count, Turtledove adheres to the science fiction cliché that aliens — no matter how intelligent — are unable to grasp the concept of contractions when speaking English. I can buy that their own language doesn't use them, but if Russians can learn to use definite and indefinite articles when they speak English, aliens should be able to learn contractions. (Ah, but then they would sound less stilted and alien, do you not think? That is a truth indeed!)

It's really a pity; the story itself is good, but a decent editor could have made it so much better. Had all the fat been trimmed, the first two books could easily have been condensed into one without losing anything save repetition. Of course, that would mean fewer books to sell. Who needs to write well when sheer wordcount will make the books look more impressive?

So, to recap: Good story, terrible editing. Low B- or high C+.

Speaking of alternate histories, I'm looking forward to Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. The trailer — with its nearly monochrome, Hugo Gernsback-esque retro SF look — really piqued my interest.

Of course, the very thing that makes it so interesting to me will probably mean its demise at the box office.

From The Feminine Monarchie, Or A Treatise Concerning Bees and the Due Ordering of Them (1607) comes this amusing little anecdote:

A certaine ſimple woman having ſome ſtals of Bees which yeelded not vnto her hir deſired profit, but did conſume & die of the murraine; made hir mone to another woman more ſimple then hir ſelfe: who gaue her councel to get a conſecrated hoſt or round God amighty and put it among them. According to whoſe adviſe ſhe went to the prieſt to receiue the hoſt: which when ſhe had done, ſhe kept it in hir mouth, & being come home again ſhe tooke it out and put it into one of hir hiues. VVherevpon the murraine ceaſed, and the hony abounded. The woman therefore lifting vp the hiue at the due time to take out the honie, ſawe there (moſt ſtrange to be ſeene) a chappel built by the Bees with an altar in it, the wals adorned by marvelous ſkil of architecture with windowes conveniently ſet in their places: alſo a dore and a ſteeple with bels. And the hoſt being laid vpon the altar, the bees making a ſweet noiſe flew round about it.

Not content to simply include the tale, and apparently afraid it might not be instantly believed, the author then went on to defend it from any criticism he thought it might receive:

But whether this doe more argue the ſupernatural knowledge and ſkil of the Bees, or the miraculous power of the hoſt, or the ſpiritual craftines of him, whose comming is by the working of Satan with al power and ſignes and lying wonders, it may be ſome wil make a queſtion: and preſuming to examin every particular circumſtance over narrowly, wil make obiections againſt the truth of the ſtory: which, by their leaues, in the behalfe of my author I muſt not ſpare to anſwere. Firſt it may be they will obiect that the hoſt being held ſo long in the womans mouth could not chooſe in that ſpace but melt and marre. Indeed, if it did remaine, as it was, a wafer-cake, this were likely enough: but being turned into fleſh it is an abſurd aſſertion. If they ſhal ſay that becauſe, it was now honi-harveſt, at which time good ſtals, ſuch as this was, are ful of wax and hony, that therfore there could not be roome enough for a chappel with a ſteeple and bels in it; I anſwere that this is as weake and ſimple as the former. For ſeeing it is knowne that a blacke ſmith of London did make a locke and key ſo little that a flie could draw it; why ſhoulde not the little ſmith of Nottingham (whoſe art is thought to excel al art of man) frame a little chappell in a litle roome? But then perhaps they wil reply, if we grant you this, howe then could the Bees flie about the altar in that little chappel, ſeeing they are not able to flie in ſo narrow a roome as the empty hiue? As for that, it may be a miſtaking of a word: happily the woman ſaid they did but crawle. If they ſhal aſke how the woman could ſee the altar with the hoſt ſtanding in the chancel & the bels hanging in the ſteeple, ſeeing the waxen wals were not tranſparent, they maie eaſilie thinke that the Bees woulde giue their dame leaue to looke in at the windowes. And if they ſhal ſay that thoſe bels being made of ſuch metall would giue but a weake ſounde when they were runge to matins; they muſt conſider the pariſhioners dwelt not far of. And ſo I thinke theſe captious criticks wil hold themſelues ſatiſfied.

Methinks the author doth protest too much. He follows up with another story, which he defends by saying that if it had been made up, the deviser "might haue made his tale more probable." In other words, because it sounds so ridiculous, it must be true!

A while back, I mentioned a plan to scan in my filing cabinets full of books spanning nearly 400 years (as early as 1484, as late as 1881). The new multifunction copier/printer/scanner/fax at work is aiding greatly in this task, as it can grind through a stack of 100 pages in about two minutes.

Although it can scan directly to PDF, it can't separate two pages on the same sheet, so I've got to scan them to TIFF, then go in and copy each individual page out and paste it into OpenOffice, and build a PDF from there. Slow, but much faster than using my flatbed scanner, that's for sure.

Of course, it's not much good without a way to get at them, so today I wrote a Web front end for a database containing the usual bibliographic information (title, author, date, publisher, etc.) and permitting download of the PDFs. A little more testing and I should be able to release it publicly. There are only 27 books ready to disseminate so far (some of which are only excerpts), with twelve more big ones scanned but not converted to PDF, and a couple more drawers left to scan.