I am an addict, but a healthy one. One of my addictions is reading — every night when I go to bed, I have to spend an hour reading a book, just to settle my brain and redirect it away from constantly fussing over the work I’ll need to do. I try to vary the subjects: so one recent book was Silent Spring, which was a mistake, since it was way too close to my work, and another was The Demon of Unrest, but sometimes I just want some lazy trash, and Kindle Unlimited has been a great source of all kinds of interesting variety. Until lately.

When I look at the Kindle Unlimited offerings, this is what I see:

Do you detect a theme? I get screens full of boobs, crotch shots, and presumably seductive poses. It’s gotten ridiculous, and it’s gotten worse. The Amazon AI knows I enjoy a good SF novel, and to the Amazon AI, that means bosoms. Lots of big, pillowy bosoms everywhere…and most of this cover art is probably generated by an AI somewhere. There was nothing that interested me anywhere.

I had a wild thought that maybe the covers aren’t indicative of the content — maybe it’s the easy availability of cheap AI-generated art has led to writers throwing provocative covers on their work, but that there’s actually some good writing underneath. I made the mistake of downloading a random couple of these things.

No, there isn’t any good writing there. It’s all cheesy, formulaic, stupid shit. I skimmed one that was purportedly about a guy who found a gadget that allowed him to travel back in time to the early 19th century, which has potential for a good story and maybe some interesting stuff about history. Unfortunately, the extent of the history was the author (and his proxy, the protagonist) congratulating themselves on being smarter than those stuffy ivory-tower academics because he knew that the War of 1812 was fought in this period. Did he explore any details of that war? No. What got him enthused about time-traveling was the opportunity to get laid with a busty daughter of a minor politician. Thus, the cover.

What’s worse is that so many of these books are part of a series — sometimes 15,20 books long — that go on and on repetitively, never actually exploring the SF topic they nominally introduce. There are apparently people who consider themselves authors who churn out klunky dialog and interminable “stories” that are all wrapped around unimaginative sex acts, and seem to be written by and for genuinely stupid men. And they’ve driven out all the interesting stuff! (Be warned, though: download one of these trash books, and Amazon will try to feed you even more.) There are good books sprinkled in there, but they’re drowning in all the hackery.

You know we’ve got a guy on this network, William Brinkman, who is trying to make a living writing and marketing through Amazon, and I can’t imagine how tough it is to get noticed while swimming through that morass. He doesn’t succumb to the temptation of lurid cover art or an endless series of books chummed out with minimal effort. He’s also got a book on Kindle Unlimited, A Fire in the Shadows. I may have to stick to familiar authors, rather than exploring new authors, because the hacks have taken over, and that’s
a real shame.

The lesson: You can tell a book by the cover. Also, you get what you pay for.

It’s the end of March, at the end of a disappointingly tepid winter, and what happens? We get an unexpected snowstorm. Thanks, Winter, but it’s too little, too late, and I refuse to accept it.

OK, it’s snow, but it’s pathetic.

I’ve been a fanatical Apple fanboi for over 40 years. I bought my first Apple II in 1980, and I switched to the Mac in 1984, when they first came out. I was an official Apple developer in the 1990s — I persevered throughout that long period when everyone was predicting that the company would eventually fade away, eaten up by the evil Microsoft. I stuck it out through the 6502 era, the 68000 series era, the Intel era, and now the Apple Silicon era. My lab is full of Macs. I’ve got a Mac desktop and a Mac Powerbook and an iPhone. You may not question my devotion.

And then…

The Justice Department sued tech giant Apple on Thursday, kicking off a potentially historic antitrust battle. The lawsuit alleges that Apple’s ecosystem of products are designed to limit competition and put consumers at a disadvantage. “Each step in Apple’s course of conduct built and reinforced the moat around its smartphone monopoly,” the authors write. Later in the filing they add that “this case is about freeing smartphone markets from Apple’s anticompetitive and exclusionary conduct and restoring competition to lower smartphone prices for consumers, reducing fees for developers, and preserving innovation for the future.”

Good! It’s about time! Apple is a big fat bloated tax-evading monster that needs to be smacked down and taught some humility. Every big company needs to be regulated, and I don’t exclude the ones that make great products that I love.

This would be my attitude.

Apparently, I am in perfect health, a veritable Greek god, perfect in every way. Except…I had to point out to my doctor that I have these terrible flare-ups of joint problems. Just the week before my physical, I had been painfully crippled by inflammation of my Achilles tendon — suddenly, with no warning or precipitating injury, my ankle was swelling up in all kinds of strange lumps and bulges, and I was scarcely able to walk.

This hits me fairly often, I can count on being incapacitated at least once a semester with this nonsense (note that, as a professor, “incapacitated” means still having to hobble in and teach, no matter how much physical agony I’m experiencing.)

This was not a good thing. It’s not what I would call healthy at all.

I complain every time I visit the doctor, but it’s one of those things that will fade away with equal suddenness, so it’s hard to treat. At this last physical, I pushed a little harder, and the doctor decided that we need to do more to get a diagnosis. I went into the blood lab and yielded a quart or two so they can carry out more extensive tests.

All week now, new test results have dribbled into my mailbox. All the usual stuff, like blood pressure, cholesterol levels, a full metabolism panel, etc., etc., etc. are in the perfect range. Uric acid, serum creatine, etc., all good. Thyroid hormones, 5×5. Because I’ve been out in the wilderness more during the summers, they tested for Lyme disease, West Nile, and a whole suite of exotic tick-borne antigens…nope.

If you just go by the numbers, I am like unto Apollo, beautiful and flawless. I don’t think anyone will be sculpting my form, though, and I’m going to remember this when the field season starts up again and my knee swells up like a balloon, again.

(I’ve got it good, though, compared to my daughter Skatje who dislocated her knee on a skiing trip a few weeks ago. Her imminent fate is “Left knee MPFL reconstruction and tibial tubercle osteotomy, open reduction internal fixation of osteochondral fragment from patella dislocation,” in doctorese. It could be worse.)

There were two tragic deaths in Fresno a few days ago.

The details from the news:

Two Fresno men who died in a crash involving a Tesla were identified Tuesday by the Fresno County Corner’s Office.

Jason Phillips, 24, who officers said they believed to have been the driver, and Chase McCutcheon, 32, were in a Tesla Model 3 about 1:45 a.m. Monday when the vehicle collided with more than one guardrail, the coroner’s office said.

The California Highway Patrol said the fatal crash happened on Copper Avenue as the Tesla headed west approaching a shift in the road near Willow Avenue.

The driver failed to traverse the shifting road at “a high rate of speed” and hit the curb, a guardrail and a street sign before the Tesla overturned, CHP said.

The car continued into another curb and guardrail, CHP said.
Neither Phillips nor McCutcheon were wearing seatbelts and were ejected during the crash, CHP said. Both were pronounced dead at the scene.

Let’s see…driving drunk at excessive speed with no seatbelts? I don’t believe in karma, but I do believe that humans can be incredibly stupid.

Apparently, the Tesla did not catch fire.

Spring break is over. I’m heading back to the classroom this morning.

What makes it all sting a little more than usual is that my restful week off was really just a brief interruption in the middle of the semester. I’m only half way through! I should be glad of the reprieve, but today I have to deal with the stress of resuming where I left off.

Oh well. I also spent the last couple of days setting up all of my classes. I’m all ready to go with a lecture on endocrine disruptors, specifically DES and BPA, which at least are interesting. I’ve got so much material here that I’m going to be talking about endocrine disruptors for the next two weeks.

One of the great questions of the Internet Age is, “Is a hotdog a sandwich?” It has never been satisfactorily resolved, but Talia Levin boldly submitted the question to a battery of academics. You know what the result had to be, but you might as well read it just to witness the chaos for yourself.

The one answer I liked was from Mark Crimmins, a professor of philosophy at Stanford.

Any well-defended answer to that would take many pages and encompass so many (great, interesting) issues about language. Still, I’d like to offer something to your reader. If you think what counts as a “sandwich” is unclear or somewhat arbitrary, then you had better examine in that light whatever principles you take to be important about sandwiches. Similarly for “baby,” “woman,” “conscious,” “intelligent.” Are you sure that the (perhaps unclear) applicability of these ordinary-language terms marks what is crucial to the distinctions carved by your prized principles?

Categorical mushiness, that’s what I like. All the definitions are fine, the only mistake you can make is expecting simplicity from complexity.

Today is my 44th anniversary, but I’m not making a big noise about it. You never know, I worry that I might mention the big number, and she’ll look at me with dawning awareness and say, “Well, that’s about enough of that then. Time for me to be moving on!”

I figure if I let her situation slowly ease in, then maybe at some time I’ll mention the years, and she’ll be resigned to it and say, “Might as well stay then, if I’ve been here that long.” Maybe if I hang on to the big 5-O I’ll be safe. You gotta go slow, you don’t want to startle them, or they might just dart away.