Ex Bibliotheca

The life and times of Zack Weinberg.

Tuesday, 30 April 2002

# 3:45 AM

code

I now know more about Emacs Lisp than I ever planned to learn, Emacs' 3-way merge utility works almost the way I'd like, and the big merge is done. Later merges will hopefully be smaller.

(fx: collapses in a heap)

books

Also, today I finished rereading The Dispossessed. I like it just as much as I did as a twelve-year-old, but for completely different reasons. The twelve-year-old me liked it mostly because Shevek (protagonist) gets to invent new physics theories. I wanted to do that. The idea of a culture with no law but basic decency to one's fellows was appealing, but I didn't really grok it at the time.

The current me likes the book because Le Guin manages to make her anarchist society genuinely believable. The people of Anarres are real people, with their flaws and virtues both. She understood what troubles it would have, why Shevek might decide to leave in hope of reopening communication with the outside universe, and what he would not understand about the more conventional culture he travels to.

The idea of inventing new physics is still appealing, especially physics that could let us leave our little blue dot and see the wide universe. Do you ever look at the stars and want to go visiting? I sure do.