![]() ![]() The Dispossessed started as a very bad short story, which I didn’t try to finish but couldn’t quite let go. In her introduction to the Library of America reprint in 2017, reflecting back some 40 years from late in her life, the author wrote: The invention of the ansible places the novel first in the internal chronology of the Hainish Cycle, although it was the fifth published. It features the development of the mathematical theory underlying a fictional ansible, a device capable of faster-than-light communication (it can send messages without delay, even between star systems) that plays a critical role in the Hainish Cycle. ![]() It achieved a degree of literary recognition unusual for science fiction due to its exploration of themes such as anarchism and revolutionary societies, capitalism, utopia, and individualism and collectivism. It is one of a small number of books to win all three Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards for Best Novel. Le Guin, one of her seven Hainish Cycle novels. The Dispossessed (in later printings titled The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia) is a 1974 anarchist utopian science fiction novel by American writer Ursula K. ![]()
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![]() Whether you are retelling a hilarious story, retweeting a captivating photo, or weighing in on someone else’s commentary, always give a shout-out to the rightful originator. Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language. If you value your audience, write headlines that work.Īvoid the annoying practice of publishing misleading headlines, which we’ve all been fooled by - or else risk alienating your audience forever. Too often we forget this and treat online audiences as easily manipulated rubes.Ī sure way to get people to click on your post - but, be immediately turned off from reading it - is to dangle a sensational headline that fails to deliver on its promise. Say “No” to misleading headlinesĪ staple of Carnegie’s proven methods involves recognizing the importance of others. ![]() In the modern age of the Internet and social content sharing, we can still look to age-old truths in deciphering a code to grow an audience (win friends) and successfully market online content via social media (influence people). ![]() Carnegie’s many nuggets of wisdom ring largely true, because more than anything else they speak to human nature, which for better or worse seems to change very little over time. More than 70 years ago, the American writer and lecturer Dale Carnegie published a transcendent book on people skills entitled “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() However, if one considers a more restricted model of computation, which captures reasonable restrictions on the power of an algorithm, then very strong lower bounds can be proved. Unfortunately, for this general model of computation, no proofs of useful lower bounds on the complexity of a computational problem are known. In modern cryptography, and more generally in theoretical computer science, the complexity of a problem is defined via the number of steps it takes for the best program on a universal Turing machine to solve the problem. As cryptography is a mathematical science, one needs a (mathematical) definition of computation and of the complexity of computation. This means that one wants to prove that the computational problem of breaking the scheme is infeasible, i.e., its solution requires an amount of computation beyond the reach of current and even foreseeable future technology. ![]() This chapter explores a topic in the intersection of two fields to which Alan Turing has made fundamental contributions: the theory of computing and cryptography.Ī main goal in cryptography is to prove the security of cryptographic schemes. ![]() ![]() ![]()
![]() She’ll have to give up her name and let him in completely or lose the best thing that’s ever happened to her.įor fans of Stephanie Perkins and Morgan Matson, THE COLOR PROJECT* is a story about the three great loves of life-family, friendship, and romance-and the bonds that withstand tragedy. ![]() Bee must hold up the weight of her family, but to do that, she needs Levi. Losing herself in The Color Project-a world of weddings, funerals, cancer patients, and hopeful families that the charity funds-is no longer enough. When unexpected news of an illness in the family drains Bee’s summer of everything bright, she is pushed to the breaking point. But while Levi is everything she never knew she needed, giving up her name would feel like a stamp on forever. Levi is not at all shy about attempting to guess Bee’s real name his persistence is one of the many reasons why Bee falls for him. ![]() That is, until Bee meets Levi, the local golden boy who runs a charity organization called The Color Project. Hello everyone! So today I get to be part of a blog tour for The Color Project* by Sierra Abrams and, for it, I am doing a spotlight post! Let’s begin with the book details….īernice Aurora Wescott has one thing she doesn’t want anyone to know: her name. *this post includes affiliate links I have with Amazon* ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() It was all a con job, a ruse, to destroy Germany. He studied the names of communists and socialists, and if they sounded Jewish, that's all he needed to know. He says this over and over again in Mein Kampf. His hatred stemmed from his paranoid conviction that the people calling themselves communists were in fact in on a foreign, Jewish conspiracy. In these areas Hitler largely saw eye to eye with socialists and communists. But what Hitler hated about Marxism and communism had almost nothing to do with those aspects of communism that we would consider relevant, such as the economic doctrine or the need to destroy the capitalists and bourgeoisie. Today this maneuver has settled into conventional wisdom. Hitler's hatred for communism has been opportunistically exploited to signify ideological distance, when in fact it indicated the exact opposite. All such ideologies-we can call them totalitarian for now-attract the same types of people. Communists champion class, Nazis race, fascists the nation. Both ideologies are reactionary in the sense that they try to re-create tribal impulses. ![]() Or, as Richard Pipes has written, "Bolshevism and Fascism were heresies of socialism". “The notion that communism and Nazism are polar opposites stems from the deeper truth that they are in fact kindred spirits. ![]() ![]() ![]() Book three, The Trouble with Jared is Jared’s story. ![]() The second book, Hunting the Wolfe, has Storm getting Wolfe all hot and bothered even as she plays intrigue like a deft hand. In the original quartet, the first book, The Touch of Max has Max falling for a traumatized woman who is also a mole. In fact, this whole exhibition has a more sinister intent: it is a bait to lure Quinn out in the open. Quinn is the infamous cat burglar who will be drawn to the exhibition.Īnd yes, Interpol is keeping a close eye on them all. Storm Tremaine is the computer expert who may or may not be a double agent, much to Wolfe’s consternation. Jared Chavalier hangs around acting all mysterious. Wolfe Nickerson is the womanizing head of security. These are the people that share the limelight in this story: Maxim Bannister is the millionaire who owns the priceless stuff in the museum. This story revolves around an exhibition of priceless art and gem stuff called Mysteries Past. Oh, and I should warn you, the story here will continue onward into the next book. ![]() ![]() If she wants to put the cat burglar Quinn in the main billing, she shouldn’t have kept him so much in the background. In fact, I don’t know what the author is thinking. From the foreword, Kay Hooper clearly intends to rewrite her early 1990 Loveswept series Men of Mysteries Past for a “wider” (read: non-romance reading) audience, but what she actually does is to take Hunting the Wolfe and squash out all the fun bits, leaving a dry, soulless husk of a book. ![]() ![]() ![]() I loved seeing all the prom events and Liz’s initial, and eventual, approaches to what it means to be a (Prom) Queen. I also liked Leah’s take on the classic “running for prom queen” theme (trope?). It was quite a clever & multi-faceted coming of age story.
![]() ![]() ![]() On one of his first days in Pyongyang, Guy says, “There’s a poem in the air. Still, Guy seems to leave a lot of things incomplete. Here’s another thought: what can Guy actually say in North Korea? What would happen to him if he rocked the boat too much? We can bet it wouldn’t be pretty. Logic seems to bounce right off the North Koreans like bullets off Superman, but should Guy disparage them for not listening if he never speaks? Of course, we’re pretty sure Sin wouldn’t have been up for debate anyway. When translator Sin blames the failure of reunification on the Americans, for example, Guy makes a valid rebuttal. Guy has multiple opportunities to debate with North Koreans, but he doesn’t always make use of these opportunities. Guy is a man of few words, and although he presents us with detailed pictures of life in Pyongyang, he doesn’t draw any explicit conclusion for us. But, speaking of drawings, he leaves us to draw our own conclusions. He shows us the sites with his lovingly rendered drawings. ![]() ![]() ![]() There are the normal literary and pop-culture references, but nothing too intellectual really. It’s more polished than previous Rincewind novels, and the character has less scope to annoy thanks to the format and extent of the book. In fact, for a certain purpose, it could be quite a good book. It’s the first time we see the Tezumen first-hand, having had at least one teaser before… but it’s also the last time, so nobody cares about them either. It’s the first – and it remains the most in-depth – work dealing with the demons of the Disc, but nobody realy cares about them, so that doesn’t matter too much. It’s short, and… there’s nothing really essential in it either. Eric was originally an illustrated novel, but my copy (like almost all the copies you’ll find these days) is minus its illustrations, leaving it just abnormally short (and something of an unwanted sibling in the family, its name often omitted or bracketed in early lists of Discworld novels). Divide that short length up in a very episodic fashion, and there’s not a lot of substance left. ![]() At only a few hundred pages, it’s easily the shortest Discworld novel so far, and not much more than half the length of Pyramids. ![]() To be honest, there’s not a great deal to say about Eric. ![]() (for those who missed the announcement, I’ve skipped Guards! Guards! on the grounds of not being able to find the damn thing, though I’m sure it must be around here somewhere…) ![]() |