Meador Manor

The wonderful Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, by a Square is now available for free download from Google Books.

It is a part of Google’s latest effort to offer free downloads of their public domain books. Search for “free books” to find more.

For the uninitiated, Flatland is a fun introduction to one-dimensional and two-dimensional thinking. Plus the concepts developed by it can then help one visualize some of the basics of General Relativity.

Observant readers already know that I’m a huge fan of the darkly re-imagined Battlestar Galactica on the SciFi channel. Before you tune out, take notice that this show is NOT at all like the cheesy 1970s show that was a Star Wars ripoff. The new version is a very dark story of holocaust, betrayal, and survival with no bug-eyed alien or ray gun in sight. It has even won the prestigious Peabody Award for "distinguished achievement and meritorious service" – the thinking person’s Emmy.

Now Salon has ranked this as the most underappreciated show on television, and offered up a fun list of ten reasons to NOT watch Galactica:

• 10. I like my science fiction peopled with multi-nostriled characters sporting thick, blue, leathery skin. Too many of the “Battlestar Galactica” characters are preposterously hot, and stubbornly refuse to ooze green, viscous liquids. Who wants that?
• 9. William Shatner hasn’t made a single guest appearance!
• 8. There’s too much realistic adventure and too many pulse-racing fight scenes; I don’t like to get that excited.
• 7. The Cylons (the terrorists!) seem to exhibit real emotions and possibly humanlike feelings, creating constant existential crises for the Galactica staff. That’s silly. In real life, the good guys are always clearly distinguishable from the bad guys.
• 6. A woman president? Come on, it’s already science fiction, why tip over into the realm of fantasy like “Commander-in-Chief”?
• 5. I don’t want a President Roslin, with her clear-eyed pragmatism and steely political instincts, when I can have the portentous speechifying of President Bartlet!
• 4. The personal crises on the show — breast cancer, loss of loved ones, the brutal disillusionment of loving someone you can never have — are unbelievable. They live on a spaceship! Now, if they lived on Wisteria Lane …
• 3. Where’s the fat, goofy husband?
• 2. The gripping, conflicted experiment with democracy aboard Galactica seems too unrealistic. Politicians make good decisions and elections are always fair!
• 1. No light sabers. Not a one.

So if you’re interested, check out the online episode Scar at the Galactica site at SciFi. If you get hooked, the third season begins on Friday, October 6. And don’t worry if you’re way behind on the storyline. They’re showing a one-hour special that will get you up to speed at 6pm Central that night, followed by the two-hour third season premiere. Set your DVR/VCR! Or you can always purchase any episode of Galactica for download from iTunes, or pick up the DVD sets. Join us in watching the best drama on television.

Back in the Dark Ages of Microcomputing, before the IBM PC or the Apple Macintosh, I owned a couple of TRS-80 Color Computers with Microsoft Basic. They were clunky but quite fun to program throughout my junior high and high school years. When I was in my second year of college my friend Sam bought one of the first Macintosh computers, and it was indeed revolutionary. Its graphical interface and software were incredibly impressive, although hobbled by the hardware of the day.

But the higher cost of a Macintosh and the dominance of the Microsoft operating system made me a fellow traveller on the road to the Microsoft monoculture of today. For years Microsoft Windows PCs have been quite flexible, cheap, buggy, and difficult to operate with scads of available software. Whereas Apple Macintosh machines have been elegant, expensive, integrated, and easy to operate with much less available software.

I don’t regret my failure to follow the Macintosh road since Microsoft machines have dominated in my professional work. But the resurgence of Apple, with the tremendous success of the iPod and now the company’s use of more capable Intel microprocessors, leads me to wonder if I might splurge and buy myself a Mac one of these days. I have been mightily impressed by and invested heavily in the two iPods I have owned and Apple’s iTunes software.

The elegance of Apple’s products and marketing is nicely contrasted to Microsoft’s mind-numbing complexity in the following spoof, which was created by Microsoft employees.

I’m also being influenced by Leo LaPorte’s excellent This Week in Tech and MacBreak podcasts. Leo’s enthusiasm for the Mac platform is infectious.

So before I upgrade to a Microsoft Vista PC, with all of the attendant headaches that will entail, I think I just might take a bite out of an Apple.

Goodness, I hope not!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKi5kv7MwPg