cat /proc/claus

“Very Well. And I say, Doctor, there may be some little danger, so kindly put your army revolver in your pocket”

– Sherlock Holmes, The Red-Headed League

The height of adventure and excitement in the 1900’s, this is so cute! ‘would you please take your gun, my friend? we might have a little danger in our way’. So different from the muscle-bulging, always-scowling, badass macho heroes of our days. Although I guess that this extremely gentlemanly behavior is what was imagined of a macho-hero of that time and place. Still, I love this quote.

As you might have guessed, I’m now reading Sherlock Holmes stories. I got the entire collection from Project Gutenberg, a wonderful website where they archive and organize classical literary works that have fallen into the public domain.

Talking about public domain, it is a good time to remind everyone of the list of works that could have been in the public domain this year. Take a careful look at this list — it is the list of works that would be now in the public domain, under the old 24+24 year rules. Notice that many of these works (specially music and Disney cartoons!) used a lot of inspiration from works that were in the Public Domain in THEIR time! In other words, authors that at the time used the Public Domain, are now NOT giving back, by supporting the crazy copyright system we have in place today.

If you are interested in this subject, this book is a great way to get introduced to the matter of intellectual property, what is wrong with it, what is write with it, and what we should do to fix it.

Happy new year everybody!

So I bought this book Monday night, thinking: “I need a book to read while I’m in the bus to the university”. I started reading it yesterday morning, on my way to school as planned. I couldn’t put it down after returning home, and by 11:30pm I finished it.

Fail.

At least, “The Boys From Brazil” was a pretty good book. I still have three more books I bought along with that one. Let’s see if I can control myself a bit better this time!

I always wanted to grow a nice full beard. All the great Unix programmers have one. Lots of mad scientists have some too. Unfortunately, my portuguese genes will not allow that. Every time I start to grow one by lazyless, I will develop a half hearted moustache, a too big goatee, and a few lost strands in my cheek — a truly pitiful sight.

That sucks, I always wanted to sport a nice, dworfish beard.

This weekend I got “The Never Ending Story” for a friend of mine. This was the first “real” book I have ever read (or at least so I remember). And it is a pretty good one too. I read the portuguese translation, so when I checked the version I got for my friend (the english one), I noticed that the name of a pretty important character, the luck dragon, was different between versions: Fulchur, for the portuguese translation, and Falkor, for the english one. Now, Fulchur sounds much more mysterious, unique and fantasy-like than Falkor, which just sounds like “Falcon” with a few letters swapped in. At first I was wondering why the portuguese translator decided to change the name (since Fulchur does not sound any more natural than Falkor in Portuguese). Then I remembered that “The Never Ending Story” was originally in German. I wonder which of the two names is closer to the original one.

Also, my upper leg/lower right hip is hurting like hell since Saturday. It might be because of me being sitting for too long due to extra work this month. It sucks tons. I have a nice chair in my lab, but my home chair is not so conductive for sitting in one place for long. I’ll have to look into replacing it soon, and probably spending a lot of money in it. I didn’t want to make my decision before knowing exactly where I will be in the next 6 months.

But that is another story, to be told at another time.

This week I was in a discussion on a web forum about whether robots would develop religion or not. During this discussion, I reminded myself of Isaac Asimov´s short story, ¨Reason¨, which is set in a space station where the robots had, in fact, developed religion. I wanted to re-read the story, but couldn´t find it ANYWHERE.

But I did find out that the story was published in 1941. That is 70 years ago. There is no reason for this story not to be in the public domain, spread far and wide, helping kids out there stretch and challenge their brains.

Shame on you, copyright laws.

¨Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery¨ by Richard Selzer, is the book that I´m reading at the moment. It is a collection of essays from a surgeon about his reflections on his work. The essays are loosely grouped by their subject, but don´t seem to follow any central line or style. Some are memories, other follow a more poetic vein. A big mixed bag, just like our entrails (this is the kind of metaphor you would find in the book!).

It works, very well actually. In some of the essays where he talks about the workings of our body and its illnesses, I find myself shivering from introspecting what is being said into my own bag of meat. When he talks about his experiences practicing medicine, I can´t help but wonder at all sorts of human drama, from the humorous to the sad and the bizarre, that physicians must go through.

Recommended read, and I´m only one third into the book.