Looks like Terry Pratchett has a new book out, Making Money. The previous book with the same cast, Going Postal, was wonderful. I still frequently enjoy a bacon sandwich of regret. This time, the conman Moist von Lipwig is moved from reforming the post office to reforming the central bank. Lord Vetinari does enjoy his little joke. Terry Pratchett writes fantasy, but not the dragon-and-damsel kind. His stories retell aspects of our own world in a clearer, compressed form that just happens to be consistently hilarious. They are the best modern moral tales I know of.

Looks like a How-To Do-it-yourself guide to destroying the Earth is in the works. So many people out there who want to figure out how to build the button. But never press it. Heavens no.

Sam Hughes gives a careful, methodical analysis of how to destroy the Earth for real. Here’s the preamble:

Destroying the Earth is harder than you may have been led to believe.

You’ve seen the action movies where the bad guy threatens to destroy the Earth. You’ve heard people on the news claiming that the next nuclear war or cutting down rainforests or persisting in releasing hideous quantities of pollution into the atmosphere threatens to end the world.

Fools.

The Earth is built to last. It is a 4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne ball of iron. It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime than you’ve had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits merrily. So my first piece of advice to you, dear would-be Earth-destroyer, is: do NOT think this will be easy.

This is not a guide for wusses whose aim is merely to wipe out humanity. I (Sam Hughes) can in no way guarantee the complete extinction of the human race via any of these methods, real or imaginary. Humanity is wily and resourceful, and many of the methods outlined below will take many years to even become available, let alone implement, by which time mankind may well have spread to other planets; indeed, other star systems. If total human genocide is your ultimate goal, you are reading the wrong document. There are far more efficient ways of doing this, many which are available and feasible RIGHT NOW. Nor is this a guide for those wanting to annihilate everything from single-celled life upwards, render Earth uninhabitable or simply conquer it. These are trivial goals in comparison.

This is a guide for those who do not want the Earth to be there anymore.

(read more)

Invisible Man say, “I can has light.” Gots light.

And it was good. Then some people took it far too seriously.

“In the spring, Jeeves, a livelier iris gleams upon the burnished dove.”

“So I have been informed, sir.”

“Right ho! Then bring me my whangee, my yellowest shoes, and the old green Homburg. I’m going into the Park to do pastoral dances.”

(Wodehouse, “Death at the Excelsior“)

There’s very little worse than being part of a trapped audience. For example, in his book the Girl on the Boat, Wodehouse notes that:

Ships’ concerts are given in aid of the Seamen’s Orphans and Widows, and, after one has been present at a few of them, one seems to feel that any right-thinking orphan or widow would rather jog along and take a chance of starvation than be the innocent cause of such things. They open with a long speech from the master of the ceremonies - so long, as a rule, that it is only the thought of what is going to happen afterwards that enables the audience to bear it with fortitude. This done, the amateur talent is unleashed, and the grim work begins.

When there’s no competition for an audience, things get ugly. No danger of that on the web, a constant seething roiling battle for attention. That’s a bit of a shame, because I’m intrigued by a vision of every online session on the internet beginning with a long speech from the Master of Ceremonies. Who could be the web’s MC be? Maybe the very reverent Dr. Rev. Google, dressed up in a natty tux:

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the internet. We’ve prepared a wonderful web for you tonight, full of juicy Web 2.0 goodness. But before we get down to your actual search, we’d like to first mention some notices about events and happenings on the Good Ship Google. Ms. Blogger, our esteemed entertainments chair, has kindly condescended to organize…

Etc etc. Ok, it would be excruciating. But think of the poor Seamen…

Your priorities in life are all wrong. Your language reflects that. Read this summary of Lapine, and reflect on what really matters. Lapine is the language of rabbits, as constructed by Richard Adams in Watership Down. It has just 56 words, from hlao (”any dimple or depression formed in the grass, such as that formed by a daisy plant or a thistle, which can hold moisture”) to Thethuthinang (”name of a doe who lived in Efrafa”). Are you that clear on what matters to you? Do you know what your 56 words are?

It has been 15 years now since “The Noodle that Knew Remorse” came out. In that time, a lot has changed in the world. But the core insight of the Noodle remains valid: pasta plus passion equals drama. Try offering a bouquet of spaghetti to your loved one on Valentine’s day and you’ll see what I mean.

For those who haven’t read the Noodle (for shame!), here’s a review (full disclosure: the Broken Plank is a Dalek Bell holding):

Life. We don’t talk about it much but everyone knows it is there. Lurking. A shadowy figure that infiltrates every fiber of our being. But what do we really know about it?

This is the subject matter of Dalek Bell’s greatest novel, “The Noodle that Knew Remorse.” In this epic, Bell uses the metaphor of a thousand rampaging elephants for life. Frightening. Massively powerful. Perhaps not particularly rational. Something that is liable to pound you into the ground and squish you flat if you stand around analyzing it too long.

This contrasts strikingly with Bell’s metaphor for love, which is a thousand rampaging penguins. His thought processes in this instance are rather trickier to fathom. Perhaps he has a fondness for rampaging penguins, and who could blame him. Certainly, a horde of rampaging penguins unleashed on a major city can be, like love, all-consuming.

“What is this life thing anyway?” - The Broken Plank, 1998

I’ve been receiving a lot of emails from would-be bloggers asking how it is possible to have an output as prodigious as mine. First, it has to be said, some people are just born with a prodigious output. If you don’t have it, there’s really nothing to be done (no matter what certain spam advertising campaigns would have you believe). But second, if you want output, you have to make noise. Consider P. G. Wodehouse’s book, the “Clicking of Cuthbert” (or, in American, “Golf Without Tears”). I’m not familiar with cuthberts, but I believe they are a kind of English golf club that makes a distinctive “clicking” noise when you hit a good true shot down the fairway. And it is the same with blogging. If you hear that distinctive “clicking” noise, the pitter-patter of tiny keys as it were, the you are probably doing something right. Wodehouse knows best.