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Rudy Rucker

Rudy Rucker is a writer, a mathematician and a computer scientist. Born in Kentucky in 1946, Rucker moved to Silicon Valley when he turned 40. Rucker has published twenty-five books, primarily science-fiction and popular science. He was an early cyberpunk and an editor at Mondo 2000. He often writes SF in a style is characterized as transreal. His most recent novels were Frek and the Elixir, a far-future epic about a boy's galactic quest to restore Earth's ecology and As Above So Below, a historical novel based on the life of the sixteenth century painter Peter Bruegel. Rucker is a professor emeritus of computer science at San Jose State University, where he created a number of freeware programs relating to chaos, artificial life, cellular automata, higher dimensions, and computer games. He is presently working on The Lifebox, the Seashell and the Soul, a nonfiction book about computers and the nature of reality. Rucker's website can be found at www.cs.sjsu.edu/faculty/rucker or at www.rudyrucker.com.

Weapons of Mass Destruction?

HELSINKI -- In the short-attention-span theater that is the American court of public opinion, will we likely remember why we sent a small city across the world to Iraq?

Before you write me off as a war critic, let me be clear that I am not. I've been generally supportive of the concept, and though I believe war itself to be the enemy, that is precisely the reason I've been less than critical of the effort: If the claims are to be believed, this man has been waging war on his people and on freedom. He is a despot. This is a liberal's war: We are fighting for justice, not oil, if the claims are accurate.

The claim, however, was clear: There are Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, and this proves the leadership of the country must be removed, even at huge cost (financial and otherwise).

In some ways, it is as if I assault someone on the street -- no, it as if I brought an enormous gang to assault someone on the street -- with the justification that they threatened my family with a gun. If there is never a gun found, and no clear witnesses to the gun, then we become the defendants, not the plaintiffs, as well we should.

This is especially true with self-help when there is an authority, such as the United Nations, to which we could turn instead of our gang.

Bottom-line: The world sees this matter now as a results-oriented analysis. If the Weapons of Mass Destruction are found and clearly proven, then the Anglo-American alliance of the willing will likely escape long-term damage. But if not, if there is no clear, convincing proof of the existence of the WMD, then the Anglo-American leaders may well be justly prosecuted as war criminals.

This is going to be especially hard to prove if those WMD are not utilized in the face of war. Simply parading them around after the fact may not be enough. The new question on my mind: Why haven't they used them if they exist? We've now crossed the red line, and still no chemical weapons.

Those with attention-deficit disorder (read: many americans) will not care. The rest of the world is not similarly afflicted, reading deeper than the television listings and the crawling ticker at the bottom of the CNN screen. The new agenda must be proving beyond a shadow of a doubt -- and there is doubt aplenty -- that there was good reason to start this war, because the real battle has just begun, and it won't end anytime soon, and that battle is in the court of world opinion and is nowhere near Baghdad.

posted by Jim Griffin at 2:20:40 AM | permalink

Anglo-American Angling

LONDON -- OK, I guess I'm the last one to come to a complete realization that Britain and America are in fact one, but I have a good excuse: I don't -- I didn't -- want it to be true.

I write this while awaiting a flight at London Heathrow airport's Terminal 3, a seething mass of humanity that nonetheless looks like an American shopping mall. Yes, a HUGE Starbucks in the middle, and gee gaws and gimcracks for sale everywhere. I flew here from San Francisco, and I live in Los Angeles, but in Terminal 3 at Heathrow I've yet to leave home. And that's not a good feeling, especially after flying all night.

I didn't want this to be true any more than I want to find snow in Hawaii. But it is true. And now I have one less stimulating place to which to flee.

I will continue to like London, yes, but it won't be the same. I wish Britain were opting to be more European, but forget that now. I'm not sure it's possible. Out with the pound, forget the Euro, they should be trading in dollars here.

And in this cruel joke of history, this accident of fate, no country has more to fear than our beloved neighbor to the North, Canada. Now THEY should join the EU, and adopt the Euro.

HELLO Vancouver! Toronto, here I come! Because England will be the 51st state long before Canada. It's not geography, it's a State of Mind.

posted by Jim Griffin at 3:41:58 AM | permalink

SARS? War? No, how do I stop all this Spam?

LOS ANGELES -- I'm worried, and getting more worried about its viral growth, its rapid dissemination throughout the population, seemingling geometric growth against our arithmetic remedies, increasingly Malthusian in scope.

Yes, I'm worried about Cory Doctorow's spam.

No, not spam from Cory.

Spam directed at his posse, his group of friends, and here I count myself as one.

Yes, you read that right. I now recognize that some of the spam directed at me has morphed into Craphound Spam, and surely no fault of Cory's and likely no fault of my own. Where I generally received only spam with odd phrases like "*Griffin*they are looking for you ..." in the subject line, or "Jame, maake your rod a MONSTER!! k9ghj," I now receive e-mail with the subject line of "Doctorow, try these herbal remedies" or "*doctorow*they are looking ..." -- well, you get the idea. You really don't want me recounting it all here.

Nor will I belabor the obvious much further. Suffice it to say that spam, like virii and war, grows in mysterious ways, and branches off from one healthy host to attack the next one down the line, and somehow guest blogging here has added me to a list that lumps me in for the purposes of spam with Cory and his cabal.

I feel boingboing banged, and it feels good, but in spite of the spam, not because of it.

posted by Jim Griffin at 8:20:57 PM | permalink

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