Everything2 New Writeups

Apiaka (person)

2009-12-25T00:08:43Z

The Apiaká (also Apiacá) are an indigenous group of people who live in the Brazilian states of Amazonas, Mato Grosso and Pará. The first contacts with europeans happened in the 19th century, and with the process of depopulation they were unable to keep their language and their original way of life. As of 2009, there were 1000 individuals in the tribe.

Name

The people of the tribe in the Apiaká Indigenous Land refer to themselves with this name, and have done so since the beginning of the 19th Century. It is a variation of the Tupi word "apiaba", which means "person", "people", "human being". Their Kayabí neighbors call them apy'iting or Tapii'sin, meaning "light skinned people".

Language

The Apiaká language belongs to the Tupi-Guarani family of languages. These indigenous people don't speak it anymore, as they adopted Portuguese, the official language of Brazil, after many years of contact with the european colonists. Some…

Trust Networks as a Replacement for the Monetary System (essay)

2009-12-24T19:54:33Z

The rise of the Internet and various technologies that leverage the nonzero-sum nature of information resources has illuminated and certified a worldview that for a long time was seen merely as crackpot prophecy: the inevitable collapse of the monetary system. Money, and other zero-sum resource markets, depends upon the fundamental premise that taking from one gives to another and that giving to one takes from another. The explosion of the information economy resulting from the rise of the Internet has laid bare the fact that that premise is not universally true for all goods and services.
For some time, monetary systems were effective means of maintaining a rough meritocracy; provided that an extremely low bare-minimum threshold was met, it was possible to leverage one's abilities to rapidly rise in prosperity, ensuring the continual leadership of a productive elite and driving society in a proper direction. However, this system was ultimately doomed, as it produced a class of…

The Annexation of Hawaii (event)

2009-12-24T17:01:27Z

Hawaiian History 101

The Hawaiian Islands were first discovered by Europeans in 1778 by Captain James Cook. After the introduction of missionaries into the "barbaric" society of the Hawaii, the culture began to change. Public nudity and hula were banned, the Hawaiians adopted Christianity and English became their primary language. Eventually, in 1810, the Hawaiian Islands were united under King Kamehameha I when the first monarchial government was established. A democratic government was created on October 8th, 1840 when King Kamehameha III willingly relinquished his absolute powers by signing Hawaii's first constitution. Between 1845 and 1849, under the rule of King Kamehameha III and Alexander Liholiho (dubbed King Kamehameha IV), the Organic Acts, a Civil and Penal Code, and a revised constitution were proposed and accepted by the Hawaiian Government. King Kamehameha V dissolved the government under the Constitution of 1852, because…

Quantum Santa (person)

2009-12-24T15:33:43Z

Consider what Santa Claus does. He travels to several hundred million households in a single night, and yet manages to find time at almost every stop for interaction with the occupants (winking at hidden children, eating cookies, getting frightened by M&M's, grabbing a cola out of the fridge). How does Santa do it?

Recent experiments have indicated the possibility for quantum entanglement in biological systems. Now we all know that Santa is magical, but maybe he is just a really good engineer able to exploit quantum effects. When you think about it, it makes sense. Santa is really, really good with tools and can make any toy any child wants in his workshop, and he also has a team of diminutive alien engineers who can help.

Riding the quantum foam, Santa is able to be in every house simultaneously. That is why he can…

Wilderness of mirrors (idea)

2009-12-24T15:05:57Z

Wilderness of Mirrors

The phrase was not coined by Dulles but used in a poem by British poet Thomas Stearns Elliot who graduated from Harvard in 1909. T. S. Elliot in his poem 'Gerontion' coins the phrase. It was James Jesus Angleton who then referred to it to describe the Defense Inteligence Community, he was the director of the CIA in the mid 1970's. He resigned in 1975 after getting too paranoid and thinking that the KGB and an agent known as 'the 5th man' had infiltrated the CIA. Even Angleton himself was under suspicion of working for the KGB. The phrase 'Wilderness of Mirrors' and it's semantics is open to discussion, Angleton in his concept of Wilderness of Mirrors meant that the KGB had manipulated the CIA to believe what it desired, the CIA neither being able to defend or identity the illusion. As a result of this defense intelligence bosh up it was rumoured that Cicely, Angletons wife has left him. But it came to be known that on the contrary…

No place I'd rather be (idea)

2009-12-24T13:35:10Z

"I love you."

I turned around in the drain to crouch against the wall so I wouldn't get wet in the small trail of watery slime at the bottom. The light of the torch illuminated his face and arm, and I grinned. Too typical of him to tell me that, right here right now, with spiderwebs in his hair, his clothes wet from where he fell into one section of drain that was deep with water. I've cooled down but I'm still sweaty, I've crawled through this drain for the last 45 minutes, my feet and socks are wet, my shorts are dirty and my new shirt is experiencing more than any of its siblings ever will.

He brought me here, to this underground den, asked me to crawl through water, dodge pieces of glass, try to ignore the spiders, the moths and the potential rats. He expected me to be okay in the pitch black and the small spaces, to…

Avatar (review)

2009-12-24T12:53:34Z

cartel's writeup above, dated 2004, gives a good idea of the scope of the Avatar project. James Cameron got his wish, and spent four and a half years developing Avatar, using technology that wasn't available when he first envisaged it over a decade ago. The result: well worth the wait, particularly when watching it in 3D.

The film itself runs for two and a half hours. The plot - slightly different to that of five years ago - revolves around an ex-Marine - Jake - who lost leg functionality in combat on Earth, and has been picked for the Avatar project. He is picked as he is genetically compatible with his dead brother, who did significant work on the project. The project involves combining human DNA with that of the Na'vi and creating "avatars" of humans in the shape of the Na'vi; these avatars can be controlled remotely by people involved in the project. On the first journey into the forests of Pandora, Jake gets separated from his fellows. He is found by one…

Liar, Liar (event)

2009-12-24T09:56:34Z

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
~John 8:32

I remember the sorrow; I remember the guilt; but mostly I remember the betrayal.

It only takes two weeks for the dream vacation to become a nightmare. Two weeks for darkness to fall and for hidden secrets to grow bigger and bigger until they blow up in your face.
From the outside, looking in, Costa Rica was perfect: our entire class of twenty taking a trip to a gorgeous county, parentless.
From the inside looking out... Well that's a different story: we were twenty "friends" together constantly for two weeks, with chaperones that, try as they might, simply could not keep us all out of trouble at the same time.
~~~
Memories are meant to fade with age, dull with time. Memories exist to be forgotten, but this one refuses to disappear. The memories I've tried so hard to suppress assault my subconscious mind.
The nightmares--the ones that wake me in the middle of the night with…

Paul Desmond (person)

2009-12-24T08:51:07Z

Paul Desmond (1924-1977) was a jazz alto saxophonist, most well known for his contributions to the quartet of Dave Brubeck, and for penning the very well known hit Take Five for the group. However, he was a supremely talented musician who earned the respect of peers such as Charlie Parker, and who made a number of fine recordings with other jazz notables such as Jim Hall, Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker.

Desmond was creatively at his peak in the 1950's, a decade most known for the development of bebop, in jazz terms. However, his style was much more relaxed and obviously melodic than most of the boppers, and he never really embraced the style. His primary influence was probably the great tenor saxophonist Lester Young from the generation before. His improvisations are characterised by long, flowing lines full of melodic invention, and a gentle and relaxed tone that worked exceptionally well in the piano-less quartet he shared with Jim Hall. With his sophisticated and elegant…

Johnny Hodges (person)

2009-12-24T07:55:00Z

Johnny Hodges (1906-1970) is famous for having played lead alto saxophone in the orchestra of Duke Ellington for 38 years. He has an instantly identifiable, poignant sound, and was featured on many ballads written by Duke, such as "I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good", and "Isfahan". Along with Benny Carter, he is probably the most seminal and influential voice on alto saxophone from the early years of jazz.

Although he was apparently self-taught, he did study with the great Creole soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet, and he can be heard on soprano on a number of early Ellington recordings. The influence of Bechet is quite clear in Hodges's broad vibrato, although his melodic approach is generally much smoother and less energised than Bechet's - no doubt a result of Hodges's calmer and less volatile nature.

On stage, Hodges's demeanour went beyond cool, to the almost icy, it seems. Once, when asked why he never played a wrong note, he simply replied: "Why should I?". There is also…

the maps are wrong (essay)

2009-12-24T00:32:57Z

After reaching my thirties, and looking back over my life to the people and places I once knew, I got the urge to excavate some of those past crypts of memory. Late one night in lachrymose enthusiasm, I taped off the area to excavate like a skilled archaeologist and using the current tool of choice for digging up one's past, I logged onto Myspace. Perhaps you haven't heard of Myspace, and perhaps you've also been living under a rock on Tristan da Cunha. (I'm convinced even the teens from the tribes of the most uncivilized parts of the world have Myspace pages. Let's imagine that for a moment, if you will: raucous tribal music, earthy layouts full of ancient symbolism, an adopted "monkey" and pictures of long-breasted women sporting the latest style of plate lip. Ah, the imagination boggles at the decorative diversity of these equal opportunity World Wide Web real estate plots.)

So, in honest pursuit of finding physical evidence of those recollections and people I held so dear in my…

mod wheel (thing)

2009-12-24T00:19:00Z

The first all-in-one, hardwired synthesiser with a built-in keyboard was the Minimoog, designed by Bill Hemsath and Robert Moog and released by Moog Music in 1971. It's hard to say how much of its design was carefully considered, and how much was arbitrary. Regardless, other companies -- including the Japanese trio Yamaha, Korg and Roland -- soon started to imitate the Minimoog's placing of elements as well as its sonic features. Ever since, almost every synthesiser produced has taken the form of an all-in-one product that has a prominent keyboard at the front, with two partially visible wheels to its left, and an array of knobs or sliders behind it that seems designed to intimidate the newcomer to the world of synthesis.

While the knobs or sliders can be used to intricately craft subtle nuances of the synthesiser's sound in painstaking ways, the two wheels to the immediate left of the keyboard are kept close to the…

Very Bad Santa (person)

2009-12-23T19:28:35Z

It has been suggested that Santa Claus, or Father Christmas as he is known in the land of the sane, is Very Bad Indeed. At least according to one Dr Nathan Grills from the Department of Epidemiology and Preventative Medicine at Monash University in Australia who has carried out a "review of literature and web-based material" in order to "assess Santa's potential negative impact on public health".

Initially it seems that Dr Grills sought to establish how well known this Santa was amongst the community. Apparently Dr Grills's investigations revealed a "very high Santa awareness among children", whilst he made reference to a recent study amongst (presumably Australian) "hospital inpatients" which had concluded that "awareness of Santa was near universal". Having thus demonstrated that the Vicar of Rome was indeed a Catholic, he then considered to the potential negative effects such a widespread fame might have on the population.

The tradition of leaving out a glass of…

Suicide in Scandinavia (essay)

2009-12-23T18:40:15Z

A few days ago, the journal "Science" published a report claiming to make an objective list of the United States by happiness. Actually, what the report did was claim that objective criteria of happiness would match up with people's subjective self-reporting of happiness. The actual paper might have gone into more detail than this, but once a Top Ten list of happy states was released, the national press had a field day with it. I myself was less impressed with it, and by doing a scatterplot of the list of happy states, and suicide rates, I found out that the "unhappiest" states have the lowest suicide rates.

I read a New York Times article about the study, which was of course relevant to the Times, since New York State was, allegedly, the unhappiest state. I mentioned to the author that it seems like a curious conclusion that the "Unhappiest" state would also have the lowest suicide rate. He agreed with me mostly, but also pointed out that some very happy…

SciFiQuest 2010: Odyssey Two (event)

2009-12-23T15:52:40Z

SciFiQuest 2010 will occupy the entirety of
Month One Of The Future: 00:00:00 January 1, 2010 to 00:00:00 February 1, 2010

No, we do not care about GP. That's an imaginary number in an imaginary database - Monopoly money, like Danish kroner and U.S. dollars. Here is what you get for contributing to SciFiQuest in our post-scarcity post-capitalist post-cyberpunk post-environment post-future: exposure. You get your name and the name of the thing you wrote stuck on the front page of Everything Two Dot Com, a site of enviable PageRank and surprising visibility. People will see your thing and read it and they may vote on it and they may C! it and they may bestow Editorial Coolness. They will click the "I Like This!" button. Join Me Or Die. Can You Do Any Less?

The aliens have arrived, and their ravenous hunger can be sated by only one thing: stories. This Is A Parable About The…

December 23, 2009 (thing)

2009-12-23T08:14:52Z

I blame a crappy day at work, and omnipresent holiday music. Hearing "it's the most wonderful time of the year" for the zillionth time, and muttering under my breath "no it's not the most wonderful time, it's the most harrowing time!" led to this.

It's the most harrowing time of the year,
Behind the cash register,
We're getting edgier,
Black Friday's here,
It's the most harrowing time of the year.

It's the worst retail job season of all,
We've got loud shrieking children,
And problems with billing,
And lines down the hall!
It's the worst retail job season of all.

There'll be discount demanders,
Customers sans manners,
And squabbling families all day.
There'll be creeps making passes,
And rude yelling asses,
All shoving folks out of their way.

It's the most harrowing time of the year.
Some shoplifting amateur
Fights with the manager.
The cops should be here!
It's the…

Why is it bad to make gays bishops, but okay to kill them? (essay)

2009-12-23T07:39:05Z

I'm a member of the Episcopal Church in the USA (TEC), so I'm of the Christian brand called Anglican. I guess it's even official, since TEC is the only church in the United States that is also a constituent member of the Anglican Communion (AC). The AC is a rather loose group of churches and peoples who share a common liturgy, usually pretend to be fond of each other, and consider the Archbishop of Canterbury as their titular leader and spokesperson. Of course, there are many people who call themselves Anglican, and even fuss over who is a Real Anglican. This isn't anything new; just ask anyone who's active in the Church of England. We have a rich and contentious history.

If you've been skimming the news in recent years, you might have picked up that TEC is having some internal struggles about accepting openly gay, lesbian and transgendered (LGBT) people in our church. Yes, they're everywhere now, and…

Spontaneous Benediction (person)

2009-12-23T06:25:37Z

A completely true story:

I was at my university, walking from class back to my room. It was 10:30 at night. There weren't very many people out. The air was misty, so every streetlight had a large, bright halo. Quite a lovely evening.

As I neared the place where I had to turn off of the main road and take the smaller path to my dormitory, I saw four people standing on the corner in a circle, holding hands. Four young men about my age, seemingly completely sober, holding hands in a circle. "What are you doing?" I asked, as affably as I could. I was very curious.

"Well, we're each headed toward different parts of campus, so we're bidding farewell to one another for the evening," said one. "You can stand in the middle!" said another. Honestly, they were not drunk.

I ducked under their arms and stood in the center. They seemed as though they would appreciate a bit of added theatrics, so I raised my…

Pyjama New Year (poetry)

2009-12-23T06:09:30Z

'Til now, you know, I've never been a pyjama man.
A tee shirt, old pants, that'd be more like me.
But these that you bought me, you know, I quite like them. They're
kind of like ones that Clouseau might wear.

If things had worked out, we'd drink tea in the mornings.
Reading in bed together, there in your big town house.
Thinking about walks, down in the city park.
Maybe we'd have owned, been owned by, a dog.

But somehow it still feels like a road never taken.
A life for some other man, but not for me.
Even though I suspect that the door is half-open,
I'm still copping out, with 'Let be what will be'.

But you know, when I see you, there's still something there.
It's a strong feeling, it won't go away.
You are quite remarkable, you're one in a million.
And we didn't end badly - a civilised, delightful
affair, to remember, to savour, in fact -
But never to cling on, long past the moment.
We cannot deny all…

DEAR LEADER (person)

2009-12-22T22:19:47Z

I r e m e m b e r t h e f i r s t t i m e I s a w DEAR LEADER. M y f a t h e r t o o k u s o n t h e o l d b r o k e n d o w n m a g l e v i n t o t…

Because I love you ( in 65 words) (idea)

2009-12-22T22:12:26Z

Even as we speak, my veins whisper letters of your name.
Perhaps you're the only person in the Milky-Way who can spot the faintest modulations in my chimes.

Likely, you could be a tamer, since you've prevailed over me in soliloquy, while nobody else defeats my witty tongue...

Actually, I don't love you
because:
I can't achieve perfection,
only
this.

Inspired by Tu Vida En 65.

Cryptonomicon (review)

2009-12-22T20:48:06Z

"This is how it's done. You pile one thing on top of the next and you keep it up and keep it up -- sometimes the galleon sinks in a typhoon, you don't get your slab of granite that year -- but you stick with it and eventually you end up with something sooo big."

Cryptonomicon enjoys an almost mythical reputation as an epic novel about cryptography, set in both World War II and the present day. Almost everyone who's managed to finish it (no mean feat considering it weighs in at over four hundred thousand words) seems to have given it a glowing review.

As much as I hate to admit it, I'm not one of those people. I'm pretty disappointed, even frustrated, with this book.

Considering Cryptonomicon is about cryptography, its author Neal Stephenson seems to focus on other people's adventures during the war as a consequence of the codes that have been broken more than on the actual codebreaking itself, and more on the business politics surrounding the…

Quick Skin Roasted Potatoes (recipe)

2009-12-22T11:59:00Z

This is a way of roasting spuds that I've not seen elsewhere. They come out almost like thick cut crisps (or chips if you are in the US). They are quick to cook, and combine easily with roast meats like lamb chops, chicken pieces, or whatever. You can easily put them together, and arrange that everything will be ready at the same time. Finally, the way of coating them in butter and oil means that you don't have to fiddle around with basting, and they get a lovely crispy-fluffy texture. Salt crystals and rosemary make a classic flavour.

The recipe. Ingredients:

potatoes, in their skins, scrubbed. Ones with good thick brown or red skins work well.
sea salt (in crystal form), pepper
lightly salted butter and olive oil
rosemary

Cut the potatoes into chunks, up to about 2 inches or so. Try to maximise surface area by making big chunks, half inch or so thick.
Place in COLD water in a pan (with a close fitting lid,

…

Timequake (review)

2009-12-22T07:54:40Z

I suppose if I had to review TimeQuake as succinctly as possible, it would be to say that if this manuscript showed up unheralded in the mailbox of some editor, there is not much chance that it would get published. There is not much chance it would get read past the first few pages.

This book is a memoir, randomly summing up the life of Kurt Vonnegut and his friends and families, in a series of rambling anecdotes. Mixed in with that is a novel following a science fiction plot about a ten year suspension in free will and its aftermath, the eponymous "timequake". The timequake is never explained in much details, and the characters in the novel are never fully explained, because the action of this novel is broken up by Kurt Vonnegut's memoir. Vonnegut admits as much in his introduction, saying that the original novel "Timequake" was never finished, so he produced this instead.

All of this could be seen as daringly post-modern, and for the most part, Vonnegut's style pulls…

Nine Princes in Amber (review)

2009-12-22T04:50:34Z

Author: Roger Zelazny
Published: 1970, Doubleday
Genre: Science Fiction / Fantasy

Nine Princes in Amber is a classic SF/F novel, and the first of the Chronicles of Amber series, which eventually grew to include ten books and six short stories. Like many SF/F classics, it is not very good. In its time it was a brilliant idea, a way to bring sword and sorcery fantasy out of the middle ages and into the 'real world'. It contains many interesting ideas, but these ideas have been so overused (and by better writers than Zelazny was at that time), that it now seems both hackneyed and poorly written. It is still a fun read and it will pull you in, but don't expect anything too great. This is an unpolished novel by an amateur writer.

The story centers around Corey, who wakes up in a hospital with no idea of who he is, where he is, or what happened to him. In the great tradition of rugged survivalist…