I HATE it when that happens.

Sometimes when I'm waiting for a file to transfer or a disc to burn, I'll grab a paperback from my conveniently located bookshelves and just read a page while I wait.

Today I picked out The Atrocity Archives, the first book in the Laundry series by Charles Stross.  Stross is a brilliant author, who goes back and forth between hard SF novels like Singularity Sky and H. P. Lovecraft/John le Carré/computer geek mashups like the Laundry books with consumate skill. 

I flipped open The Atrocity Archives near the end of the story, where the action is taking place in an alternate dimension, an Earth near absolute zero, where the oxygen has long since frozen and fallen as snow to the brittle, lifeless soil - "colder than summer on Pluto", as it's described in the book.  

The group from our Earth is being stalked by body-snatching demons, eager to take possession of the invaders and use their bodies to escape through the portal to our dimension.  However, the hero of the story (who would laugh at that particular tag) harvests the hands from the long-dead corpses of sacrificial victims, and uses them to create Hands of Glory, a magical item that renders the person carrying it invisible.  All they have to do is ignite the fingertips, and then escape through the portal.  

Now, I've read this book a couple of times, enjoyed it enormously, purchased the sequels, and would probably buy the t-shirt if one was available.  But today this little voice in the back of my head spoke up:

Absolute zero...no air....

Ignite the fingers...escape through the portal...

....

How do the fingers keep burning in a vacuum?

Damn.  I had exactly the same experience reading a Terry Pratchett novel where a character fires the seventh bullet in a six bullet clip into the floor rather than his adversary.   It somehow subverts the whole process, you know?  

- Sid

Gnomic statements V.

I have always wished that there was someone to be the Amanda to my Neil.

- Sid

 

"ALL DAY BREAKFAST!" just isn't as thought-provoking.

Some interpretations of quantum physics suggest that there are a myriad of parallel universes to our own. In traditional quantum physics experiments such as Schrödinger's Cat, the state of the cat in the box with the particle-activated poison is indeterminant until observed, at which point the wave function collapses into one state or another.  The parallel universe approach says that the wave function doesn't collapse, but decoheres or divides, thereby creating one universe in which the cat is alive, and one in which the cat is dead.  Since this approach would apply to every event from the subatomic level up to my choice of beer, infinity would hardly seem large enough to contain all of the alternate universes. 

However, in the empirically experienced universe where I decided to photograph this sign, it turned out that I wasn't the Guinness drinking version. Either way (literally), if you ask me this is pretty intellectual stuff for a pub sign - at least in this universe.

- Sid