@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org
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RanaldClouston

@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org

Lecturer in Computer Science at Australian National University.

He/him.

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KitMuse, to sciencefiction
@KitMuse@eponaauthor.social avatar

I need your help . One of the classes I'm taking at the graduate level this semester is Religion & Science Fiction. I read more fantasy, and would like to do my research paper on something that's not obvious (like ST/BS5/Matrix/etc.) & I'd love to use more modern sf rather than the golden age classics.

Anyone have any interesting ideas for my research paper on regarding the intersection of religion and science fiction?

@bookstodon

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

@KitMuse @bookstodon I know you're already inundated by suggestions, but highest recommendation to Snare by Katherine Kerr

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RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

@ouaterebreak @sticklandtim @rugby right, that already exists, and is an important driver for umproving standards in tier 2 European rugby. But there's no mobility between 6 Nations and the rest of Euro rugby

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RanaldClouston,
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@philippsteinkrueger @rugby the English sports media are reliably ridiculous; their teams are always heroes or relentlessly attacked, and their status can flip on a single result. Still, I don't blame the team for choosing the game plan most likely to win for them; but it would never have worked for them two weeks in a row against quality opposition

emarktaylor, to Rugby
@emarktaylor@thecanadian.social avatar

🏉 🇳🇿 🇿🇦 @rugby

I don't think Israel Dagg will be sending Wayne Barnes a Christmas card this year.

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

@emarktaylor @rugby it's a bit of tantrum isn't it? He keeps going on about 'malice' but the ref isn't obliged to mind read the players' minds to establish motivation; it's whether the actions are legal or not

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

@philippsteinkrueger @emarktaylor @rugby some penalties and sanctions in the rules do talk about intentions, but most of the dangerous play ones don't: https://www.world.rugby/the-game/laws/law/9 'Malice' would not have been considered a relevant factor to judging the first three cards in the final

Fanua, to mastodon
@Fanua@mas.to avatar

Nice to see all the chatter on . Sadly, my Manu didn't make it out of the pool stage. So, backing another team .

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

@Fanua @rugby yes, they were. A near record winning streak speaks for itself

luciedigitalni, to random
@luciedigitalni@aus.social avatar

Do I know any NZers who want to tell me what's the best coverage and how to access it from the Wist Island?

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

@luciedigitalni I'm watching https://www.youtube.com/user/radionz

RanaldClouston, (edited ) to bookstodon
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this epic, spanning 600 years (and 772 pages!) after the total depopulation of Europe by the Plague. The story is essentially 10 short stories / novellas across this time, linked by the reincarnation of characters. It did occasionally feel like work - KSR loves characters who lecture, although he usuallly writes about intellectuals for whom this makes sense - but overall I find it rewarding and rich. @bookstodon

RanaldClouston, to comics
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

#FinishedReading (well, re-reading): I don't think these books are even close to as famous as Alan Moore's earlier more serious work like V and Watchmen, but I rate them just as highly; the sheer density of characters, interleaving subplots, and visual gags is incredible. #Bookstodon @bookstodon #comics #GeneHa #ZanderCannon

Superhero cops walk onto a bar filled with gods, one of whom (Baldur) lies dead on the floor. Policer officer Smax orders the crowd "Nobody move in a mysterious way..."

RanaldClouston, to history
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

#FinishedReading this #HistoryOfScience on the non- Western contribution to science from 1450 on; stories range from brutal exploitation of indigenous biological knowledge to scientists like SN Bose who worked in more collaborative and acknowledged ways. Prose is a little pedestrian and academic but the material is really interesting. Not impressed with the erasure of Rutherford's New Zealand nationality though! #Bookstodon @bookstodon

Excerpt from book, describing Ernest Rutherford as British and using this as an example of a non-European scientist (in this case, Hantaro Nagaoka) not gettting proper credit for discoveries.

RanaldClouston, to bookstodon
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#FinishedReading a story of a Malaysian American woman returning to Penang with her parents and getting tangled up in the local ghosts, spirits, and gods. The dialogue is mostly Manglish (Malaysian English) whose distinctive syntax makes for quite a fun reading experience; I suspect #ZenCho has dialed it back a fair bit to keep it readable for non-Malaysian readers, mind. #Bookstodon @bookstodon

RanaldClouston, to scifi
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#FinishedReading on my beach holiday #GardnerDozois 's selection of short #SciFi from 1997. His collections seem to be always great although this is not his most diverse by authors or themes; a lot of uploading oneself into virtual reality in the air in 1997! My favourites were by @gregeganSF , Brian Stapleford, Carolyn Ives Gilman, Walter Jon Williams, Ian McDonald, and Gregory Benford & Elisabeth Malartre. #Bookstodon @bookstodon

RanaldClouston, to boardgames
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

Finished my second play of my new Christmas board game by and . My Stout Orcs, Merchant Sorcerers, and Underworld Humans were able to take this one! Such a fun game, with enough strategic depth and difficult decisions to add challenge without feeling heavy. @boardgames

RanaldClouston, to fantasy
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

#FinishedReading we picked this up because it was first in a series, but it turns out to be Book 9 of some giant metaseries! It seemed pretty accessible, and I loved the part of the book set in the 9th century, but I wonder if the 12th century part, which has more fantastical elements, might have been better with more context on the world. The book uses exclusively Celtic (mostly Welsh I think) language, culture, and folklore as its inspiration. #Fantasy #KatherineKerr #Bookstodon @bookstodon

RanaldClouston, to bookstodon
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

By my count I finished 34 books this year, not counting ones read with my kids. These are 4 of my favourites, in no particular order: a biography of eccentric mathematician Paul Erdos; a self contained SFF epic about the future of religion; a fascinating look at bird intelligence; and a moving Australian sci fi story of virtual reality and the gap between those who embrace it and those who reject it #BooksOf2023 #Bookstodon @bookstodon

Snare, by Katharine Kerr
The Bird Way, by Jennifer Ackerman
Every Version of You, by Grace Chan

RanaldClouston, to bookstodon
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This odd little book starts as a quite nice pop sci glance at time in 20th century physics, then shifts to speculations in philosophy of science. It comes with ecstatic blurbs from e.g. Phillip Pullman and Nick Hornby, who (like me) lack expertise to judge the meat of the book. Is it bullshit? Is it original? The whole package, including its sometimes strange language choices (who still uses 'Peking'?) left me intrigued but sceptical. @bookstodon

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

@bengo I'm far from an expert but I don't think this is at all close to Rovelli's views; Rovelli argues (broadly) that time has no place at all in fundamental physics, but only arises through consideration of entropy, which is a macroscopic, statistical, and (in some sense) subjective phenomenon

otherdog, to bookstodon
@otherdog@mastodon.social avatar

I have been so intimidated to start this (been on my shelf for months) but I think with the weather getting cooler and the nights longer, it’s time. @bookstodon

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

@otherdog @bookstodon I liked it a lot, although I did skip the chapter written from the viewpoint of Lucia Joyce, which I found to be pretty unreadable; thankfully not too much in the plot required it.

RanaldClouston, to scifi
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

#FinishedReading the followup to #AnnLeckie 's Imperial Radch trilogy. Although it is set in a different milieu, very much recommended to read the Ancillary books first because the conclusion of that series is a plot point here. Leckie is one of the best in #SciFi for inventing alternative cultures and seeing how they can clash or cooperate; here the high concepts are wrapped in a fun and twisty, somewhat noirish, tale of murder and politics #Bookstodon @bookstodon

RanaldClouston, to Logic
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

this 1854 book by George , which summarises his thoughts (first published a few years earlier) on , as well as probability. Boole built the world I live in as a logician (and to extent, the world we all live in in the age of computers) but this is the first time I've read him in the original, so I thought I might make a thread with a few notes in it as I read it over the next few weeks.

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

@johncarlosbaez right; although Boole's logic does not form a Boolean ring. + is not xor, but rather is a partial operation that is undefined if the left and right have intersecting denotations

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

develops by close analogy with arithmetic, though he is at pains to say this is mere analogy and there is no a priori reason the rules should be the same. So while we usually think of logic as being about entailment, Boole virtually ignores it in the early going and makes equality primary; see the attached proof of the principle of contradiction (here 1 stands for the whole universe, and x - y, defined only if y is a subset of x, is set difference), with its arithmetical flavour.

RanaldClouston,
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This footnote is an example of the arithmetical approach to making life terrible for ; given that x² (i.e. x and x) = x is an axiom, shouldn't x³ = x hold? Apparently not, as x³ - x = 0 'factorises' into gibberish terms like 1 + x (we can't add new things to the universe), or -1, which has no meaning at all (not to be confused with the negation of 1, which is 1 - 1 = 0). I must admit to my doubts about the well-definedness of this whole enterprise!

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

Before I get to the book itself, note that while Boole was revolutionary, the revolution didn't catch on quickly; this precious family heirloom, a logic textbook signed by my great-great grandfather in 1885, mostly focuses on logic as Aristotle would have understood it. It does, in fact, cover Boole, but mostly to complain that his work is obscure and unnecessarily mathematical!

Half a page of a book, focusing on the section 'Boole's System of Logic': "It would not in the least be possible to give in an elementary work a notion of the system of indirect inference first discovered by the late Dr Boole... The process as actually employed by him is very obscure and difficult ; and hardly any attempt to introduce it into elementary text-books of Logic has yet been made."
Hand-written inscription inside an old book: John Porteus, 11 Barony Street, Edinburgh, 1885

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

's propositions do not range merely across 0 and 1, as often presented today, but across subsets of all objects in the universe (or some agreed upon universe of discourse). If this sounds like Boolean Algebra, you're half right; conjunction is indeed intersection, but disjunction (which he writes +) is disjoint union, so x+y is not meaningfully defined in general, as with x/y in arithmetic (as y might be 0). This strikes me as something which might cause trouble later.

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