Author: Don

Tune of the day #273

It’s surprisingly difficult to find videos of off-track music from 1980 to 2005, even when an album had a Roger Dean cover. That was before YouTube, but too recently for the recordings to be of antiquarian interest. Consequently there is very little available to represent such eccentric bands as Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, and few of their earlier recordings are available there. BotM is classified as “RIO/Avant-Prog” at Prog Archives. Unlike most artists in that classification, they are generally fairly pleasant and not difficult to listen to, though not remotely radio-friendly.

Today’s quote

Grim:

The good argument in favor of billionaires — trillionaires, now — is that one person can make a decision about how to deploy substantial capital in efficient ways that a government, a corporation, or a committee can never. Musk is building space rockets and tunneling equipment that could build a Mars colony because he wants to, not because of fiduciary duty or because spreadsheets suggest it is wise. We are lucky that the world’s richest man loves Buck Rogers rather than Karl Marx.

Notes from the Department of Circular Communications

A query about “armchair paleontology” in the Halupedia led circuitously to an entry about Auguste Dubois-Lacroix (b. 1842, Paris; d. 1907, Pont-de-Chéruy), “an individual whose primary professional skill was the avoidance of notice.”

… a highly unremarkable civil servant whose posthumous notoriety arose from the ADLB, a complex and ultimately unsuccessful initiative he spearheaded during his tenure at the Ministry of Applied Obfuscation.1

… The stated objective of the ADLB was to enhance the clarity and efficacy of government communications by making them deliberately more difficult to understand. The underlying philosophy, according to contemporary documents attributed to Lacroix, was that true administrative efficiency lay in preventing unauthorized comprehension.

… Under Lacroix’s direction, the ADLB developed a series of groundbreaking techniques. These included the systematic introduction of non-sequiturs, the invention of new verb conjugations requiring three or more preceding subordinate clauses for correct interpretation, and the mandatory inclusion of obscure references to the Catalogues of Unnecessary Objects. The notorious Protocol of Ten Thousand Delays, a prime example of ADLB’s methodology, became legendary.

Roadrunner with flying armadillos

An inquiry about the flying armadillos of west Texas led quickly to the Archives of Misplaced Endeavors, the Project to Quantify the Weight of Apathy, and the Ministry of Futility Studies. Further research touched on the Treaty of the Fourth Dimensions Annexation, Viking Pineapple Relocations circa 975 CE, the Society for the Advancement of Spurious Mathematics, Chronometric Discontinuity, and many more remarkably obscure topics.

So it seems that not only can AI assemble listenable songs, realistic photographs and incalculable reams of prose of many kinds, it is capable of passable satire as well. (The entire prompt for the top illustration was “Ministry of Applied Obfuscation.” GPT added all the verbiage, not me.) I still prefer the scholarship of Will Cuppy, Alan Coren and Henry Beard, but as an occasional satirist myself, I find Halupedia disquietingly competent. Has AI developed a sense of humor?

Today’s proposition

Devon Eriksen (via Nicholas):

Heinlein was one of the 20th century’s greatest authors, if not THE greatest, and he was also the 20th century’s greatest philosopher and it’s not even close.

Is this defensible? I’ve read an immense amount of science fiction but little Heinlein2, and what Heinlein I have read didn’t particularly impress me. Are there depths to Starship Troopers and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress that are missing in what I have read?

Update from Robbo: “I’d have sent Evelyn Waugh, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, Charles Portis, and Plum Wodehouse into the lists, but I’m not sure what the rules of engagement are.”