Just started Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun.  First reaction: while Science Fiction is by no means the only offender in this regard, I’m immediately suspicious of any book that flatters me for reading it (with a spattering of word games throughout the text).  Discerning readers should be rewarded, not congratulated.

Second reaction: I wouldn’t even have noticed, but Wolfe puts so much into his Latin-root neologisms that the use of excruciate for torture not involving an actual cross seems unnecessary, and practically invites nitpicking.

Delicious:

The militants had made their hideout in a cave which was actually the bear’s den, said police officer Farooq Ahmed.

The dead have been identified as Mohammad Amin alias Qaiser, and Bashir Ahmed alias Saifullah.

“Word spread in the village that Qaiser had been killed by the bear,” another police officer said.

A joint party of the police and army personnel went into the forest and collected the bodies of the two militants.

Police say they also recovered two Kalashnikov assault rifles and some ammunition from the hideout.

Further south, the government of Sri Lanka, having acheived the impossible in suppressing the decades-old Tamil uprising, aim to conquer a still more indomitable foe, sin.

Terrorism had been defeated and tobacco,alcohol and drugs would also be eradicated with stringent measures.

NATA Coordinator Dr. Prasanna Cooray said the Act. 27 on the National Authority on Tobacco and Alcohol of 2006 prohibited the sale of tobacco and alcohol to any person under 21 years of age but some of the companies and individuals selling these products were using ruses to go round the law in promoting these products. Therefore, it would be necessary to amend the Act to strengthen it though some positive results were obtained by this Act.

Good luck with that, guys.  Sometimes it’s good to quit while you’re ahead.  Ask the bear-martyrs.

I’m pretty indifferent to the article, and to the issues mentioned therein, but the poster image that Slate is using on its homepage is gangbusters.

The Atlantic chimes in on the collapse of Nintendo’s numbers.  I lean toward the theory that Apple and not Sony or Microsoft is to blame.  The caterwauling of self-described “hard-core gamers” is starting to sound a bit like the grumbles from model railroaders that self-assembled plastic trains ruined everything for the scratch-builders to my ears.

From The Atlantic.

The emerging technology, called “Augmented Reality,” enables users to see location-specific data superimposed over their surroundings. Long a staple of science fiction, it’s trickling into the real world through the iPhone and similar ultrasmart mobile phones. With AR applications such as Layar, the smart phone displays what its camera sees, with information about nearby buildings and shops, travel directions, even notes and “tags” left by other users in that location. Although AR now relies on handheld devices, electronics makers like Sony are working on systems that you wear like sunglasses, making augmented vision more immersive. [jump]

Conceivably, users could set AR spam filters to block any kind of unpalatable visual information, from political campaign signs to book covers. Parents might want to block sexual or violent images from their kids’ AR systems, and political activists and religious leaders might provide ideologically correct filters for their communities. The bad images get replaced by a red STOP, or perhaps by signs and pictures that reinforce the desired worldview.

Did I mention that the “wrong” people can get replaced too?

Now imagine that instead of a map, those records were combined with an AR system able to identify faces.You don’t want to see anybody who has donated to the Palin 2012 campaign? Gone, their faces covered up by black circles. You want to know who exactly gave money to the 2014 ban on SUVs? Easy—they now have green arrows pointing at their heads.

You want to block out any indication of viewpoints other than your own? Done.

I can’t wait.

So the Twilight books each feature a different monster boyfriend for the heroene?  Did the Mummy make the list?  Also, I’m disappointed that although I was able to find Boo-Berry this week, no one was selling monster cereals in single-serving boxes for trick-or-treaters.

McDonalds abandons Iceland.  (Restaurants will re-open under local name, with local production.)

[I may need an Iceland tag; I've mentioned that nation at least as often as, say, China.]

This story has been disheartening to anyone who’s ever been a child.  We used to think of pilots as but a little less glamorous than astronauts (and astronauts as little lower than gods).  Now we learn that piloting an airplane is so boring that either napping through it is commonplace or, worse, that pilots while in flight would rather level up their Warcraft characters than attend to the matter at hand.  I wonder if nowadays forty-year-old pilots envy eight-year-old boys instead of the other way around.

Update: As usual, The Atlantic has a discussion.

P.S. I don’t really care about the issue per se; I’m prepared to meet The Maker every time I set foot in a vehicle of any sort.

In my dream, I test drove a new GM vehicle.  It was the size and shape of my old ‘77 Pontiac Phoenix, and the dashboard looked the same: the spedometer was a big rectangle with a fat, red needle wobbling left and right; the modern stereo looked like an AM radio with the big white knobs.  The cabin was big but not roomy, and the interior was done in green vinyl and plastic.  It was a completely ridiculous car, but I felt like buying it.  Then I woke up.

A LEGO Rock Band is in the works.  I suppose now’s as good a time as any to admit that I don’t “get” Rock Band/Guitar Hero.  Why use a simulation when an actual electric guitar is so easy to learn to play than any the knuckle-scraping simian can manage it?  (Well, not The Monkees, perhaps.)  They ought at least have picked an instrument that’s hard to play, like the contrabassoon or pipe-organ.  That way I could re-create the scene in The Commitments where they play “Whiter Shade of Pale” in the church.  Fun!