I'm Not Boring You Am I?I'm Not Boring You Am I?Dr. Robert Runté on popular culture, education, and life. 
Articles
Edward Willett Interview, Part 2
2008-02-05 07:10:00 Robert: One of the things I liked about Marseguro was the complexity of the main, and even a few of the secondary, characters. (This is in sharp contrast with a lot of SF where the viewpoint character is essentially flawless Hero, or at best a Peter Parker flawless Hero-with-angst.) Your viewpoint characters are either slightly damaged individuals or ordinary people (well, aside from the whole gill thing) who have to try to rise to the occasion. And every time they succeed, you keep raising the bar on them for the next task. This makes for very engaging characterizations. So my question is this: if you were casting for the movie version of Marseguro, who would you have playing which roles?Edward : Now there's a question I've never considered.Hmmm. Richad Hansen...how about Nicolas Cage? Seems like an ordinary guy but can do extraordinary things when he has to.Emily Wood...Catherine Zeta-Jones comes to mind, except she's too old. Someone like that, though. I don't see enough movie... More About: Interview , Part
Edward Willett Interview, Part 1
2008-02-05 03:17:00 Edward Willett, author of Marseguro and Lost in TranslationRobert: In my review of Marseguro for Neo-Opsis Magazine, I said that "As the stakes continually rise, the protagonists have to constantly up their game to overcome yet greater obstacles and confront yet more profound ethical issues...As in Lost in Translation the characters have to confront their prejudices, overcome their justifiable hatreds, examine their loyalties and -- even more clearly in this book ? Willett seems to suggest that triumph ultimately belongs to the characters who able to experience the most growth. The winners are those who are able to place others over self, whereas the losers are undone by their core selfishness. In Willett's universe, karma counts..." So I have to ask -- did I get that right? Do you believe in Karma? Was that a conscious theme of Marseguro?Edward: I guess I would say I believe in karma as a good organizational principle for storytelling. Certainly I don't see much evidence of it i... More About: Interview , Part , Edward
Interview with Edward Willett
2008-02-05 03:03:00 I'm doing an interview with author Edward Willett on Facebook for the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy group (moderated by BC author, Donna Farley) to coincide with today's official release of Marseguro, Ed's second mass market SF novel. I'll reprint my questions and Ed's answers here when it's done, but if you'd like to add your own Q and A to the process, join us any time between now and Thursday Feb 7 on Facebook.You can also read the first two chapters of the book at Ed's site and view the book trailer. My review of Marsguro is in the current issue of Neo-Opsis or you can read the positive bits excerpted on Ed's blog Ed's Blog. More About: Interview
New SF Imprint
2008-01-31 20:08:00 Not the sort of SF I write -- or usually read -- but nevertheless an interesting announcement:University of Ottawa Press Announces Speculative Fiction Imprint The University of Ottawa Press is very pleased to announce its new speculative fiction imprint, Cangrande. The imprint will include books of ?science-based fiction,? novels which draw heavily on current scientific research. In the tradition of Francis Bacon, Mary Shelley, and Aldous Huxley, Cangrande books will emphasize the social and ethical challenges technological innovation poses to human existence, and explore the utopian vision of the future promised by science and materialism. ?We are very excited about this new imprint,? says UOP Marketing Manager Jessica Clark. ?It signals an important shift in our publishing program towards trade books. We also feel that Cangrande?s editorial mandate fits perfectly within our scholarly list. Though these books use the novel form to dramatize scientific progress and the ethical issue...
50 movies in 50 days
2008-01-27 23:56:00 I've been catching up with John Herbert's blog, Shlock and Yawn and was very impressed with his current series, 50 movies in 50 days, in which he reviews old SF movies, most of which no one has ever heard of...or wished that they hadn't heard of them! Highly entertaining. More About: Movies , Days , Popular Culture
Hawaii Aftermath
2008-01-27 17:16:00 The wind was over 100K Friday, the temperature cold enough to freeze even the hardiest Canadian, so the combination was not pleasant. Indeed, Kasia flatly refused to go out into the already dark afternoon following Ballet class, even though we had no alternative to walking across the windswept parking lot to the car if we were to get home. But in the end, cries of "I'm not going out there" could only be overcome by my physically picking her up and carrying her to the car. Which turned out to be damned difficult in the face of gusts up to 120K, which, with her added weight and a thick layer of ice on the ground, stopped me cold in my tracks. But we eventually made it across the cold dark vast expanse of the otherwise empty university parking lot (her ballet class is Friday afternoon, so all the university students and faculty were long gone) and I got her buckled into her car seat. As I started the freezing cold car and drove out of the lot, I once again heard a little voice from t... More About: Caribbean , Alaska , Hawaii , Florida , Cruise
Hawaii: Left over photo
2008-01-01 06:58:00 As an aside on the trip, I find it fascinating how digital has changed how kids deal with photography, scenery, and trips. When I was a kid, I didn't get a camera until about 12 or 13, and then just enough film and flashbulbs to take maybe 12 pictures. And you waited a couple of months to find out how your pictures came out because you couldn't see the first ones until you took the last picture on the roll, and then another couple of weeks for processing. (Admittedly, I'm old, and things had improved a bit by the time digital was phasing out film.) But today, Kasia can have a cheap digital camera at age 4; her camera shows her what she took immediately, and she can take about 5000 photos with the memory chip I got her without any further investment in film or processing. Tigana, at age nine, has developed quite an interest in architecture because she has been photographing it since she was six. We first loaned Tigana a digital camera when touring Casa Loma years ago, on what was ... More About: Photo , Hawaii , Left , Cruise
Hawaii: Sunsets and Rainbows
2007-12-31 20:12:00 The licence plates say, "rainbow state" and it's no exaggeration. I don't think that there was a single day that went by that we didn't see one or more spectacular rainbows. But they could also have called it the sunset state (though I suppose some of the connotations there are not quite as good!) because every night had a spectacular sunset too. More About: Hawaii , Sunsets , Rainbows , Rainbo
Kasia's Song
2007-12-28 20:12:00 "Anywhere you go,Anywhere you go,Anywhere you go,There you are!"She sings this one a lot. So I asked her about it and she said, "You'll have to talk to my people." "Your people" I asked.She pointed to her shelf of 'My Little Ponies'. "Those are my people. You need to check with them." So I'm thinking maybe we have spoilt the kids a little with these vacations in Hawaii and staying in conference hotels etc, that they are starting to think of themselves as upper class. So I said to Mary we have to take our kids camping for the next vacation, or maybe a Motel 6 kind of level. "Let's do the camping," Mary replied. "At least then the bugs belong there...." More About: Song
Cruise: Other Passengers
2007-12-24 05:27:00 One of the things I found intriguing about the cruise was studying the other passengers. There were any number of middle class businessmen and their families as one would expect, but I also noted some others who seemed, um... well, to have more colorful careers. I am sure the two Russian families and the Colombians were probably insurance agents or some such, but the two bikers wearing full colors were, well, bikers. And I couldn't help noticing that the bikers were exceedingly polite to the Russian and Colombian families. Made you wonder, you know?And then there was the very muscular black guy who never smiled and had a tattoo of a seal on his arm -- navy seal maybe? He had the build and the security guy look, and we are talking Hawaii with its major naval bases, so not entirely implausible. But this guy kept looking this way and that like someone doing a threat assessment, but he's, you know, in a hot tub on a cruise ship, not guarding the president. And did I mention he never ... More About: Cruise , Passengers
Cruise:Trip Home
2007-12-24 05:25:00 The ship docked early in the morning, but we didn't have to leave until about 9AM to get to the airport for our 11AM flight home. Another advantage of our penthouse status was not having to line up for departure at a designated time, like everybody else, but just go when we wanted, knowing that our bags would be waiting in the VIP section whenever we came down. Mary had arranged for a limo to pick us up, on the grounds that it only cost $10 more than the regular shuttle bus, and as long as we were living the life of the rich and famous, we really ought to go all out.Arriving at the airport, we discovered that our flight was delayed three hours -- which meant that we could not possibly make our one-hour connection in Vancouver. The Air Canada desk hadn't even opened yet, and when it finally did, they weren't able to do anything for us anyway -- all they could tell us was to check with the desk in Vancouver...which of course meant we would have to leave the secure area with our lu... More About: Hawaii , Home , Trip , Cruise
Cruise: Kauai
2007-12-22 05:24:00 We spent the morning on the beach at Kauai. Tigana met another girl from the cruise her own age and they become fast friends, playing together happily. I was amazed both kids could be on the same ship for a week and only meet the last day, but I guess the girl and her mom had taken advantage of all the excursions and had spent relatively little time on board. Back on board in the late afternoon, we took the kids to a Pizza party organized by the Kids Crew, then watched the scenary as the ship pulled out. Kauai has the best scenary of trip (not that my little pocket camera is up to taking it in), the ship making a point of going along the Northern coast while a Hawaii an cultural representative provided a commentary on history, etc., before turning back to its route home. We then took the kids to the Kids Crew for PJ night; Mary and I had planned a romantic dinner on the balcony, but we had to cancel due to inclement weather (major winds), so ended up just eating in the buffet.We got... More About: Cruise
Kauai
2007-12-21 05:24:00 My birthday today, so feeling a bit old.Mary gave me the morning off again as a birthday present, so I spent the morning writing while Mary took the kids to the beach. Writing on a balcony in Hawaii could quickly become addictive, and I started telling Mary she really should apply to the University of Hawaii -- and I'd just take early retirement and write. We spent the afternoon aboard ship again at the pool, and I again had an afternoon of mixed terror and pride as Kasia taught herself how to swim. Ate at Little Italy again with kids for my birthday dinner, and this time we had excellent service from Anthony the waiter (who was everything our previous waiter had not been). Then the kids wanted Kids Crew, leaving Mary and I to wander the deck, a nice birthday activity. We took in the singer, W. T. Greer, in the Pink Champaign Lounge, and he was so good Mary eventually fetched Tigana out of Kids Crew to hear him. Tigana was duly impressed when she requested a song (God Bless the chi... More About: Cruise
Cruise: towel animals
2007-12-20 17:32:00 Like baloon animals, only made out of towels. The steward would leave these for us on the beds when he came to turn down the beds each evening. Unfortunately, the pictures of the early towel creatures were among those that I lost fooling with the camera settings. But here are a couple that I was able to retake.Towel ElephantTowel cool dog. More About: Hawaii , Animals , Cruise
Cruise: Kona
2007-12-20 07:22:00 Kona is a tender port, which means there is no dock,and you have to go ashore aboard the cruise ship's tenders ?actually three of the powered lifeboats, each of which holds 60 people or so. Once again, our elevated status as residents of a suite meant that we got to skip the line-ups and board the tenders whenever, rather than wait for an assigned section. Ah the joys of being rich -- or at any rate, living like we were rich.rear view of a tender mounted on the cruise ship as a lifeboatWe spent the morning shopping in the local artisan market, buying various knick knacks, etc., and wandering around the town. The highlight was eating snow cones (I use the Canadian expression somewhat loosely, since they are in no way equivalent) at Scandicanian Shaved Ice. The 'small' size was the size of Kasia's head; the medium that Mary and I shared was roughly the size of a basketball. Each ball of shaved ice comes with three flavourings (from a choice of about 30 exotic flavours) and Kasia a... More About: Hawaii , Kona , Cruise
Cruise: Maui: day two
2007-12-19 06:21:00 breakfast on the balconyWe have breakfast in out on our balcony most mornings, brought by the butler. Well, we have to find something for the butler to do. And it cuts down the number of meals in restaurants we have to have with the kids. At age four, one restaurant meal a day is about the limit of Kasia's good behavior. So we have a good breakfast, some kind of snack around 1 or 2; then supper.I have generally enjoyed the ship?s food, though I am lead to understand by more experienced cruisers that the food is not up to the usual standard, especially in the premium dinning rooms which require reservations and additional cover charges. I found they tended to fall down on some of the tiny details that distinguish five star restaurants. For example, I was twice handed menus where grease stains obscured portions of the page, which one wouldn?t expect in anything above a roadside diner; and the Italian restaurant provided quite poor service, screwing up the order (forgetting some item... More About: Hawaii , Maui , Cruise
Cruise: Maui: Whale Watching
2007-12-18 05:18:00 Took Prince Kuhio Maui -Molokai whale watching tour. The tour shuttles arrived at the dock at the precise moment scheduled, and the rest of the trip was equally efficient. The crew appeared genuinely interested in both whales and our safety; the onboard concession was dirt cheap and so good Kasia ate two hotdog combos, an unheard of intake at a single sitting, and that after a good sized breakfast. The tour started with an orientation by the company?s naturalist, Katie, who was superb! I learned more about humpbacks in that 15 minutes than from any PBS special, and somehow seeing the whale?s tail spread out before you in person has a lot more impact than seeing something on TV. There were also two volunteers from the Whale Sanctuary on board to assist the naturalist, and they did a great job of floating around the boat answering questions as they occurred to us, as Katie provided intermittent commentary over the speaker system. Both of the volunteers were drawn to Tigana ?s fanaticism... More About: Hawaii , Watching
Cruise: Hilo: Anniversary
2007-12-17 05:11:00 December 16th was our 10th Anniversary , so we dumped the kids in the "kid's Crew" babysitting for the evening, and had a quiet dinner for just the two of us. We chose La Bistro, one of the premier restaurants on the ship that require an upcharge, but although the food was decent --especially the French onion soup -- it could not compare with the meal at La Mer a few nights earlier. Or Roy's. Or the Thai restaurant. Okay, not really fair comparisons since we had chosen the Honolulu restaurants based on the Basil's recommendations and they were all top restaurants in their categories, but one expects cruise ships to be top too. I'd rate La Bistro as equivalent to what you'd find in a Westin Hotel, so good, but missing some of the finer details --e.g., crème brulee was not the correct temperature and therefore right consistency. But nevertheless, a nice romantic dinner, especially given that we were on a cruise in Hawaii . More About: Cruise , Hilo
Cruise: Hilo: Volcano National Park
2007-12-17 01:17:00 Mary had booked a tour of Volcano National Park for our Hilo stop as a treat for me -- visiting a volcano has been a lifelong ambition of mine. She booked the tour through Roberts rather than the more expensive version through the Cruise line. Unfortunately, Roberts loaded about 8 other tour buses first, so our tour left 45 minutes late. Since the driver was still required to have everyone back at the ship on time, our time at each stop was very attenuated -- e.g., only 20 minutes at the Volcano museum which was just long enough to line up for the bathrooms, but not long enough to see any of the actual exhibits. It was extremely frustrating for a museum-loving guy like me. Similarly, the stop en route at the Manua Loa Macadamia nut factory was a bit of a bust because the factory was closed on Sundays, and there was not sufficient time allotted to take the self-tour (windows into the factory with video commentary in 6 languages), just time to shop in the gift shop for ice cream. Ano... More About: Hawaii
Cruise: The Ship
2007-12-16 07:45:00 I was surprised by (a) how big the cruise ship was, and by (b) how much stuff was crammed into the ship. In addition to the many restaurants, there was a chapel, a cultural center (with displays on Hawaii an history), a large library, a games room, an Internet room (prohibitively expensive though: 75 cents a minute for very slow access -- I did not avail myself of it, in spite of serious withdrawal symptoms); a large central atrium with grand staircase and glass elevators, and so on.Caddilac dinnerCultural Centergames roomLibraryAnother view of the libraryThe Grand StaircaseThe ship deck at night More About: Cruise , Ship
Cruise: The Suite
2007-12-16 04:28:00 We started the day with our second breakfast at Eggs 'N things, again luckily arriving just before the big line ups. The Cross-Cultural Research Conference was over by noon, and we were off to the cruise portion of our trip. Woohoo!Now, as mentioned previously, the whole idea of adding a cruise to our trip came up when Mary tried to book the Superferry to one of the other islands, the idea being that we would work at Wiakiki, and then keep our vacation portion psychologically separate by going to a completely different island. But the Superferry had been forced to cease operations while environmental impact studies were undertaken, so looking around for alternatives, Mary found a bargin curise offer. Well, we rather liked the idea of checking into one additional hotel, and then having it move from island to island while we slept so we could get a really good sampling of Hawaii . And Mary had always wanted to go on a cruise, so I agreed that that would be a very suitable way for us ... More About: Suite , Cruise
Oahu: Honolulu: Laundry
2007-12-15 06:14:00 In preparation for our move to the cruise ship, I dropped all our dirty laundry off at the Laundromat a couple of blocks away and paid a minor service charge (about what the Hilton charges for cleaning a single shirt) for them to do the washing for me while I went back to the conference. After the conference, I collected the laundry --now wrapped in a see-through plastic package (so customers could tell which was theirs) about a cubic meter in size -- and returned to the hotel. Standing at the elevators of the Tapa tower, I observed two young executive types walk into the lobby. As one turned to go one way, the other started to join me at the elevators. "Where are you going," asked the first fellow, "we're over here" indicating a lesser tower. Somewhat sheepishly, he replied that "They've bumped me up to Gold Executive for some reason. I'm here now." The other executive looked seriously taken aback. "What? Well, what floor are you on then?" "The 35th." (That's the top floor.)"O... More About: Laundry , Honolulu , Oahu
Oahu: Waikiki: Doctors on Call
2007-12-15 04:19:00 Breakfast was at Eggs 'N Things, a highly recommended restaurant a few blocks from the Hilton; we would certainly add our endorsement. And we were lucky, arriving just before the big rush, so we hardly had to wait. The portions were huge, more than I can eat (rarely the case for me), and the choice of half a dozen different fruit syrups made the kids happy with their pancakes. Tigana (and her friend Lisa Basil) went off for a surfing lesson, one of the highlights of the trip for Tigana. I don't have photos because my little digital pocket camera could not possibly pick them out on the ocean, but Lisa's dad tells me he got some good shots with his telescopic lens, so I'll add those here when I get them. And then I sent Mary to the pharmacy for my medicine, only to discover my over the counter drugs were prescription in the US. So, I suddenly needed to see a doctor.As this was after the conference, the Hilton's on-site clinic had already closed (4:30) so I asked where I could fin... More About: Doctors , Hawaii , Call , Oahu
Cross Cultural Research Conference (continued)
2007-12-15 00:43:00 Given the previous blog entry, it should be no surprise that my favorite paper from today?s sessions was George R. Franke and R. Glenn Richley, Jr. (both University of Alabama) paper, ?Mind the gap: The risks of bi-country comparisons in cross-cultural studies.? The basic thrust of the paper was that the very popular bicultural comparison format violates various principles of sampling and that at least 25% of the published papers using this technique were necessarily wrong. (Not that they could identify which were the wrong papers, just that given the nature of the techniques involved, statistically a quarter of the papers would have the reported relationship backwards.) Their analysis suggested that for even strong correlations, one needed a sample of at least 22 countries to ensure a reasonable statistical probability that one had depicted the relationship correctly. But even here I still had the objection that they were using ?country? as a proxy for culture, which may be accept... More About: Research , Cross , Cultural , Conference
Cross Cultural Research Conference
2007-12-13 20:40:00 Working day: We presented our paper at the conference, attended various other sessions. I found the presentations mixed: some were quite good, others kind of weenie. One I found kind of annoying analyzed articles on acculturation, but limited the study to three journals each in business and psychology, concluding that the majority of studies were quantitative rather than qualitative. There didn?t appear to be any rationale for the selection of the sample journals, and others in the room objected that even within business, how different journals approached acculturation could be radically different. I pointed out that sociology and anthropology might have something to say on the topic, and that those journals were more likely to have qualitative than quantitative methodologies. There just didn?t seem to be a point to such a limited analysis, which was too obviously a course assignment recycled for resume credit. I could even see the grad student doing it as a first experience at pres... More About: Research , Cross , Cultural , Conference
Oahu: Le Mer
2007-12-13 07:48:00 Wednesday evening we registered at the Cross-cultural Research Conference (at the Hilton where we were staying), and then went out to supper at La Mer, a five star French restaurant recommended by the Basils. It was a superb meal in a superb setting with outstanding service. The second floor view out over the ocean reminded me of something out of a Bogart movie -- very Tahitian/Casablanca kind of feel. Mary and I tried dishes outside our usual comfort zone on the grounds that if you were going to try something new, it should be the five star version. (Mary and I both have horror stories of thinking we didn't like particular cuisines because our initial exposure was through a substandard example, e.g., I used to think I didn't like Thai, and Mary used to think she didn't like East Indian, etc.) Consequently, Mary ordered the goose, and I had salmon roe for the first time...Low point of the day was Mary realizing that she had lost her driver's licence and credit cards. Lost, not ... More About: Hawaii , Oahu
Oahu: Sea Life Park (continued)
2007-12-13 05:29:00 In addition to the Dolphin encounter, we spent a couple of hours watching the dolphin show, touring the exhibits, and the highlight for me (second to watching Kasia with the dolphins, of course) was another interactive encounter, this time with Stingrays. Kasia and I joined Mary and Tigana wading into the stingray pool, but only Mary and Tigana snorkelled. But having the stingrays swim past and nudge me on their way to lunch was pretty darn cool.Here, Tigana watches a turtle in the reef tank. More About: Life , Hawaii , Park , Oahu
Oahu: Dolphins
2007-12-13 00:15:00 Having arranged for a shark encounter for Tigana, Mary cast around for an equivalent experience for Kasia. (Four year olds were not allowed on shark encounter, and she wouldn't have been able to snorkel anyway.) Thus, the dolphin encounter at Sea Life Park, an hour bus ride from Waikiki. I wasn't sure how Kasia would react, but she positively glowed for the whole time. It was pretty cool! And we learned that dolphins shed their skin seven times a day, to keep their skin hydrated and free from parasites etc. Consequently, their skins are incredibly soft -- "like butter", Mary says. More About: Hawaii , Dolphins , Oahu
Honolulu
2007-12-11 08:03:00 Spent the day at the beach with another family attending the conference (The Basils). As former residences of Honolulu , they were able to recommend the best resturants, and we shared a superb Thai supper at one of their favorites.I liked the bike racks available on Honolulu streets -- Kasia is climbing this one. (Note that I was using a new camera and hadn't figured out how to set the date stamp properly. Not sure why it thought it was August.)And still had trouble with concept of hotel lobby without walls...birds flying through overhead... More About: Hawaii
Oahu: Penguins
More articles from this author:2007-12-11 00:48:00 For weeks prior to the trip, Mary had promised Tigana and Kasia the opportunity to see the Penguins in Hawaii , in reference to the movie Surf?s Up, at which I would invariably protest that there were no penguins in Hawaii, that they lived in Antarctica, and that their mom was pulling their leg. Mom would then argue back with the usual, ?who you going to believe, me or Dad?? shtick, to the bemused amusement of all involved. At Turtle Bay, Mary presented the kids with two toy penguins to further confuse the issue, implying that these were the promised penguins. Of course, the setup was based on Mary?s Internet research that the Hilton Hawaiian Village had a colony of penguins within its grounds. Thus, we conspired to find out where the penguins were located and to maneuver the kids to the compound at feeding time. It worked great (see photo of Tigana?s reaction.)Turns out that only two species of penguins actually live at the south pole, and the others live in South Africa and South A... More About: Oahu 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
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