• The Floppy Disk means Save
  
  Brilliant, if you haven’t already seen it.
  (tags: computers )
• Jumping through hoops
  
  How London got the Olympics.
  (tags: )
• EU cookie law compliance (in WordPress)
  
  Does your blog obey European law on cookies?
  (tags: internet eu )
• Dresscode: Blue tie and male |
  
  Dell computers has a message for women: “Shut up, bitch!”
  (tags: computers sexandgenderandsexuality )
• They Took His Life and Threw it on a Skip by Julia Jones
  
  The writer Francis Wheen lost most of his archives in a fire last month.
  (tags: writing )

I decided I really wanted this book after the ever-excellent Bookslut tipped me off to this interview with the author. It mostly succeeds; it is the story of a man going through intense emotional crisis and working it out by writing a book about pencil sharpening, except that almost everything apart from the pencil sharpening has been taken out. Rees is good at capturing the tone of how-to manuals, especially when describing really obvious and easy tasks. There are a couple of points when he wanders far off-topic and the humour did not work for me, even taking it as intentionally ironic. On the other hand, I loved the sequence about how best to help your friend use an electric pencil sharpener (by breaking into their house and smashing it). I suspect that most readers will dip into it rather than go through from start to end, and that may be best.

It may be ten years or so since I read this, and I had forgotten how good it is. Set at the Versailles court of Louis XIV, it is the story of Marie-Josèphe de la Croix and a captive sea monster, destined for slaughter for royal entertainment, and how her realisation of the captive’s personhood revolutionises Marie-Josèphe’s world, all in lush yet intense prose. Presumably it was one of the sources at the back of Neal Stephenson’s mind for the Baroque series set around the same time.

The Moon and the Sun won the 1998 Nebula for Best Novel, one of those years when the Nebula process came up with an admirable choice from a strong field. I have read three of the other shortlisted books, and two of them – Bujold’s Memory and George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones – are particular favourites of mine, though perhaps less obvious Nebula winners. I have also read (though was much less impressed by) Connie Willis’ BellwetherKing’s Dragon by Kate Elliott, Ancient Shores by Jack McDevitt, and City on Fire by Walter Jon Williams. (Blue Mars and Forever Peace won the Hugos around this time.)

• Karabakh: ‘frozen’ conflict nears melting point
  
  The ever shrewd Wayne Merry warns of the increasing certainty of war.
  (tags: war azerbaijan armenia nagornokarabakh )

Fortunately none of this year’s Hugo nominees is actually a bad book, an improvement on some previous years (no Willis, no Sawyer). Even so, I found it pretty easy to rank the nominees as follows:

6) Deadline, by “Mira Grant”. I’m a little sorry about this, because it is an enjoyable book that kept me turning the pages. But the fact is that it’s the middle book of a trilogy, in which the characters spend most of their time running around a devastated zombie-infested America and the plot isn’t actually resolved. For me it fails the test of whether I would be embarrassed if it won the Hugo, especially given the quality of some of the competition, so with regret it goes bottom of the list.

5) No Award. I may be being a bit harsh on Deadline4) A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin. I enjoyed this one very much as well, and it will almost certainly win the award as it is so far ahead of the field in terms of name recognition. But it’s the fifth book of an ongoing series, and judged on its own merits (as opposed to the series as a whole so far) I reckon there are three better books on the ballot.

3) Leviathan Wakes, by “James S.A. Corey”. The only traditional sf book on the list, with asteroid mines, spaceships, and evil businessmen exploiting alien tech and fomenting war. Not hugely adventurous in style and vision but a good old sensawunda romp.

2) Embassytown, by China Miéville. A hugely ambitious novel about language, aliens, war and revolution. Doesn’t quite match the level of its ambition with unattractive central characters and a plot that gets derailed towards the end. I expect it won’t do as well as it deserves in the vote as it is a difficult (but rewarding) read.

1) Among Others, by Jo Walton. A superb novel about being an sf fan in a hostile world, something many Hugo voters will relate to, though perhaps fewer will have had to deal with an evil sorceress mother into the bargain. Particularly grabbed me because of the late 1970s setting in a liminally Celtic environment, not very distant from my own. I expect it will lose to A Dance With Dragons, but I do hope that those voters who take the trouble to read the entire shortlist respond to it as strongly as I did.

NB that three out of five of these feature dead girls in frequent conversation with central characters. In two cases it is the narrator’s sister.
See also: Best Short story, Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)

• How an angler and two government bureaucrats may have saved the Atlantic Ocean.
  
  Extraordinary and appalling.
  (tags: fish )
• Azerbaijani President’s Family Benefits From Eurovision Hall Construction
  
  Surely not!!!
  (tags: azerbaijan )
• A film festival in the Sahara desert: Like a mirage
  
  An extraordinary cultural event.
  (tags: westernsahara )
• Facebook Social Readers Are All Collapsing
  
  Good. I hate them.
  (tags: news socialmedia facebook )

Last of the Hugo nominees for this year for me; a sequel to last year’s Feed, taking forward the story of newsbloggers in a near-future USA covering the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse. Lots of action and capers, but I did not enjoy it as much: the previous book’s narrator is here present only as a voice in her brother’s head, there is no presidential campaign subplot, and most of all the story is left unresolved at the end, with a massive plot twist setting us up for the next volume, so it’s not a complete work. With some regret, this goes at the bottom of my Hugo ballot.

A book by a prominent Buddhist monk outlining key teachings of Buddhism. I started off rather liking it as an approach to mindfulness and how to process suffering and the good things about life. But after he Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, I started to get a bit irritated with the constant discovery of new lists of important spiritual things, from the Two Truths up to the Twelve Links of Interdependent Co-Arising; it seems to me that over-describing the undescribable is fundamentally a mistake. I also started wondering to what extent Thich Nhat Hanh is presenting a mainstream account of Buddhism or his own particular take (or his school’s). And I wonder also if there is much sense of the numinous in Buddhism; there didn’t seem a lot here. Anyway, it is still the most interesting book by a Buddhist on Buddhism that I have read.

We’ve just been re-watching the West Wing episode “Stirred”, in which the White House team discuss replacing the Vice-President in Bartlet’s bid for re-election, and it occurred to me that Joe Biden turns 70 in November; only five of his predecessors held that office at a greater age (Elbridge Gerry, John Nance Garner, George Clinton, Charles Curtis and Alben Barkley, two of who died in office). If he is re-elected and serves until January 2017, he will be older than all of them but Barkley. He may decide not to bother.

If so, this will probably be depicted as a blow to Obama’s presidency. Actually the precedents for presidents switching running-mates after their first term are largely positive; where an incumbent has rejigged the lower half of the ticket and lost, usually the original election had been a bit peculiar. The full list of such elections is as follows:

0) 1800 – Adams / Jefferson: Thomas Jefferson had served four years as John Adams’ Vice-President, but because of the problematic electoral system originally written into the constitution he was effectively leader of the opposition. Adams chose a formal running-mate (Charles Pinckney) going into the 1800 election, as did Jefferson (Aaron Burr), and the latter won.

1) 1804 – Jefferson / Burr: a very clear case where Burr was dumped after shooting Alexander Hamilton dead in a duel. Jefferson chose George Clinton as his new running-mate and was re-elected.

2) 1828 – Adams / Calhoun: because of the messy 1824 election, John Quincy Adams, like his father, ended up with a Vice-President who was effectively in opposition to the administration. In 1828 Calhoun ran with the defeated challenger from 1824, Andrew Jackson, and for the second time an incumbent President Adams was defeated by a ticket including his own Vice-President.

3) 1832 – Jackson / Calhoun. Jackson must have regretted teaming up with Calhoun; the relationship went rapidly sour, culminating when Jackson’s nominee for ambassador in London failed to get approval in the Senate on Calhoun’s casting vote. The unlucky nominee, Martin Van Buren, was chosen to replace Calhoun who thus became the only Veep to be disowned by two successive presidents. Jackson and Van Buren won re-election; Calhoun resigned the Vice-Presidency before his term would have expired.

4) 1864 – Lincoln / Hamlin: with the Civil War at full spate, Abraham Lincoln deemed it better to balance his ticket with a Democrat rather than a fellow Republican, and Hannibal Hamlin was replaced with Andrew Johnson; they won, and Johnson became President on Lincoln’s death.

5) 1872 – Grant / Colfax. Schuyler Colfax, elected with Grant in 1868, got involved with a financial scandal, and Grant replaced him with Henry Wilson. Grant and Wilson were elected; Wilson died, quite literally in his office, in 1875.

6) 1892 – Harrison / Morton. Harrison had been elected in 1888 despite having a smaller popular vote than the incumbent Cleveland; Levi P. Morton failed to deliver for Harrison in the Senate, and was dumped for one Whitelaw Reid, who was defeated along with Harrison in the 1892 election. Morton lived to his 96th birthday.

7) 1912 – Taft / Sherman: this is a slightly odd case, in that Vice-President James Sherman, duly re-nominated as the Republican candidate, none the less had to be replaced on election day because he had inconsiderately died the previous week. Taft and his hastily drafted new running-mate Nicholas Murray Butler came third, which is an impressive result for an incumbent ticket in a two-party system.

8 & 9) 1940 & 1944 – Roosevelt / Garner & Wallace. Franklin Roosevelt was elected President four times with three differemt running-mates. John Nance Garner, who served with him for his first two terms, was judged surplus to requirements and relaced with Henry Wallace in 1940; Wallace turned out to be too left-wing and was similarly replaced in the 1944 election by Harry S Truman, who of course succeeded Roosevelt on the latter’s death. Garner lived to within a month of his 98th birthday.

10) 1976 – Ford / Rockefeller. Again this is a slightly marginal case: though Gerald Ford was the incumbent president in 1976, he had not even been on the ballot in 1972, but was appointed Veep after Vice-President Spiro Agnew resigned in 1973 and then took the top spot after Nixon’s resignation in 1974. His choice for Veep was Nelson Rockefeller, but Rockefeller apparently did not enjoy it and ceded the position of 1976 running-mate to Bob Dole. Ford lost anyway.

So, basically, the portents for re-jigging the ticket are not bad. Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Grant and Roosevelt (twice) changed running-mates and got re-elected. For Adams père et fils, Taft and Ford there are extenuating circumstances which make it an unfair test. The only President who voluntarily rejigged the winning ticket of his first term and then lost his bid for re-election was Benjamin Harrison.

Part of the picture here is that there was no way to replace a Vice-President before 1967. For more than a third of the elections up to 1964, there was no incumbent Veep; seven, including Sherman in 1912, died in office, and eight succeeded to the presidency after a presidential death. (1832 doesn’t count here as Calhoun resigned after the election.)

Incidentally we also tried the first episode of the new Veep series last night, but when we realised we had lost count of the jokes about disability in the first ten minutes we turned it off.

• Wanted: a Marshall plan
  
  #fb Pacific islands threatened by climate change.
  (tags: eu climatechange )
• Washington Briefing: Strategic Exhaustion on the Potomac
  
  Sobering stuff from Jan Techau – particularly on the threat of political unrest.
  (tags: uspolitics )
• Dave Morris: The Familiar Other: My Meeting With the First Dalek
  
  A story from 1964.
  (tags: doctorwho )
• YouTube – The Muppets: Ode To Joy
  
  For Europe Day.
  (tags: video eu )

• The frequent fliers who flew too much
  
  Lots of interesting lessons about economics here!
  (tags: economics )
• BBC – Shakespeares Restless World
  
  How did I not know about this?
  (tags: shakespeare )
• Georgian authorities pour cold water on opposition protest
  
  Amnesty brief report and statement on harassment of activists.
  (tags: georgia )
• Dinosaur gases ‘warmed the Earth’
  
  Farts and climate change.
  (tags: dinosaurs climatechange )

• crafty_tardis: DW at Free Hugs at Minsk, Belarus (:
  
  Who fans in Minsk.
  (tags: belarus doctorwho )
• NYT: Those Revolting Europeans
  
  Krugman welcomes anti-austerity election results.
  (tags: greece france elections euro eu )
• Climate ship plots course through the battering waves
  
  Crucial meeting happening in the building next to my office.
  (tags: eu climatechange )

Four countries were holding national elections today (sorry, I have no views on Schleswig-Holstein or the Italian local councils).

In Armenia, President Sargsyan's party has got 44% of the votes, up 33% from the 2007 election, and will presumably stay in power with their coalition partners who got 29%, though I suppose they could take their pick of partners from the three parties which craped into the parliament with 5-6% of the vote. Shout out to my former colleague Levon Zourabian, who was running the campaign for former president Ter-Petrossian's party, which came third with just over 6%.

In Serbia exit polls show President Tadić a nose ahead of his right-wing challenger Tomislav Nikolić in the presidential election (29% to 28%), but his party several points shy of the top spot (23% to 27%). That will go to a second round in two weeks. Last time round, in 2008, Nikolić was ahead on the first round by 40% to 35%, but Tadić pulled off a major recovery and won by 50% to 47% in the second round. There are several minor parties in the mix who will try to play king-maker, though the expectation is that enough will line up with Tadić to keep him in power.

In Greece, the exit polls are pretty catastrophic for the two main parties, New Democracy and the left-wing PASOK. ND are down from 33% in 2009 (itself a historic low) to around 20%; PASOK have crashed from 44% to around 15%, and may have even come third behind the far-left Syriza who have trebled their vote from 15%. The Greek system is proportional with the quirk that the largest single party gets a bonus of 50 of the 300 total seats, but this will not be enough to give ND a majority. The Communists are on 9% or so, possibly behind the right-wing Independent Greeks who may be on 10%. The far-right Golden Dawn are next on 7% and the leftish DIMAR on 6%. LAOS, a right-wing party which was in the out-going coalition, is stuck with the Greens and Dora Bakoyannis's new liberal party on 3%. I imagine the most likely outcome is that the outgoing ND-PASOK coalition continues – they should just about have enough seats between them – though perhaps they will co-opt some new partners, and PASOK will demand what it can get. I am not a huge fan of the ND leader Samaras who will probably end up prime minister. (See results from Ekathimerini.)

And I'm watching the live coverage from France, where François Hollande has won the Presidential election, the first time the Socialists have won since 1988. It was tight enough at the end – 51.9% to 48.1% for the incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy – but actually it's a better margin than either Mitterand or Giscard managed in their contests in 1974 and 1981. I saw Sarkozy's concession speech, notable for his efforts to calm a still-enthusiastic crowd, and am standing by for Hollande's victory speech (which I imagine will be characteristically solid but unexciting) as the crowds rejoice in the Place de la Bastille (where I have an obscure family connection). It does seem to me, though, that with a result this close there is every chance that the Socialists will fail to get a clear majority in the coming parliamentary elections, and that the National Front will enjoy their potential as kingmakers in swing constituencies. (NB that the Socialists promise to bring in proportional representation to avoid this sort of thing in future.)

Isn't it sensible to hold elections on Sundays, and to close the polls at 8 pm?

I realised that in the course of my catch-up of current Doctor Who audios, I hadn't finished the recent Serpent Crest series of plays by Paul Magrs, starring Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor; this one also with David Troughton standing in for his late father. I had very much enjoyed the fourth episode in this series, The Hexford Invasion, and had been hoping that the climax would reach the same standards. It didn't, quite; the resolution of why there are two Doctors was pretty much as I had expected, though Tom Baker gets some marvellous carpet-chewing moments, and the resolution of the entire plot of the series does knit up the ravelled strands rather well. But it's vaguely satisfying rather than terribly exciting, and alas we have Richard Franklin returning as Mike Yates to try and carry the narrative. I rather hope that this marks the end of this particular run; it was good to get Tom Baker back in business, but the Big Finish plays he has been doing more recently show more promise.

Full set of Magrs plays:
Hornet's Nest: 1 The Stuff of Nightmares, 2 The Dead Shoes, 3 The Circus of Doom, 4 A Sting in the Tale, 5 Hive of Horror
Demon Quest: 1 The Relics of Time, 2 The Demon of Paris, 3 A Shard of Ice, 4 Starfall, 5 Sepulchre
Serpent Crest: 1 Tsar Wars, 2 The Broken Crown, 3 Aladdin Time, 4 The Hexford Invasion, 5 Survivors in Space

Update thread here. Apparently it's done with LÖVE.

Sternly academic book attempting to get inside the heads of the Desert Fathers (and Mothers) to establish what they really thought they were doing with their lives and what their understanding of the scriptures had to do with it.

A Torchwood novel where Cardiff is assailed by a zombie invasion and Jack, Gwen, Ianto, Rhys and Policeman Andy have to sort it out. Entertaining enough, with some decently tense horror passages, but no big surprises. By coincidence I was reading this at the same time as another much longer zombie novel, Mira Grant's Deadline