News You Can Bruise for 2009 January 15

Here's another way to get science fiction set in the past: write science fiction set in the present, and then don't get it published for a long time.

Don't knock it, it works.

I've given up on the QCon people ever putting up the sweaty video of my talk, Justice Will Take Us Millions Of Intricate Moves. And I had this printout of the text of the talk that I'd made all these corrections to in pen, which I wanted to get rid of. So I made the changes to the electronic version, wrote a script that synced my slides to the text--effectively mashing my talk up with itself--and put the sucker online. Enjoy it. Act One is suitable for semitechnical readers; it's the latest incarnation of my "short history of the Internet" that Danny likes to rave about. And the conclusion sums up a lot of my general philosophy. In between is a bunch of technical detail! WOOOO!

Yeah, I'm cleaning out papers. Here are the funnier of some lame fake horoscopes I wrote for one of Jake Berendes's's abandoned zine projects. Man, I don't know how The Onion does it, week after week. Or why, for that matter.

• Venus is in Aries, giving rise to interpersonal conflict. Are you just going to sit there and take that shit? Get in your spaceship and blow Venus out of the sky!
• After scanning this horoscope you will glance at the rest, then your eyes will be drawn towards a mysterious ad at the side of the page. Could these be the cultists your uncle warned you of in his letter? With trembling hand you will copy the (cont. next week)
• You're really on your own here. You guys all behave so differently that any advice I could give would be vague and useless. The other 92% of you: keep it up!
• The old adage "caveat emptor" will take on new meaning when your home is decimated by giant mutant spiders. Will you have the skills to survive in the new social order? 9PM (8 Central)
• The stars saw what you did.

Oh yeah, I also found a note my mother left me, with the name and phone number of the company she wanted to manage her estate sale. Now that's preparedness.