the way the future wasn't

I think what I find oddest about this article in the Guardian is how old-fashioned it feels. It's like stumbling across an article about how flying cars and jetpacks are starting to get really popular, or how the Martian landers have discovered, not just evidence of traces of prehistoric water, but mirror-surfaced formal canals. It's an artefact from an Asimov future that somehow wound up in the strange Dick-and-Ballard construct we currently inhabit.

The system is based on the work of Professor Stephen Hawking, author of A Brief History of Time, who argued that such was the ability of computers to digest information and come to conclusions about future behaviour that, given enough computer power and data, human judgments could be predicted.

You see, that's scientists for you. Just as you think they're really spending all their time reviewing curry houses, they pull a Hari Seldon.

Hi Neil,

Just a heads-up for those of us in the not-so-frozen north,
Magnetic Fields will be at the Pantages Theatre, 710 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis on Thursday, June 24. Showtime is 7:30. If you don't want to pay the Ticketmaster inconvenience charge, tickets are also available at the State Theatre boxoffice, the Electric Fetus or Let It Be records. Tickets on sale 3/24 at 10:00 a.m.
I really loved what Alan Moore had to say about Julie Schwartz...we should all be so lucky to live a life so well, or to know someone who has. Thanks for sharing it.

Mary Zieska

Consider it mentioned. I think I'm probably going to be their support act for that gig, as well, if the timing can work out.

To the UK tomorrow, for a week of WOLVES IN THE WALLS...