I hope five things really do make a post

I hope that one of these days I will regenerate enough brain to post about a bunch of things piling up in my head: Ada Lovelace, Babbage's childhood attempt to summon the devil, the manga I've been reading lately, etc. But that day is not today -- not if I want to also get my writing done at a reasonable hour -- so let's just get on to the reminders and such.

First, something unrelated to A Star Shall Fall: if you missed it over the holiday weekend, I'm the most recent guest on Jim Hines' "First Book Friday" series, talking about Doppelganger.

Second, tchernabyelo, you're the winner of the birthday giveaway! Since you clearly don't need to be introduced to the Lymond Chronicles, you can have your pick of either Fire and Hemlock, or Pamela Dean's Tam Lin, or (if you already know and/or have both of those books) something else entirely, which we can discuss in e-mail. Drop me a line at marie [dot] brennan [at] gmail [dot] com with your mailing address and your preference.

Third, kinderjedi is the winner of the Sirens discussion giveaway. Same instructions as above, except that your prize is a signed copy of A Star Shall Fall.

Fourth, if you envy kinderjedi their win, you have a until the end of the day Wednesday (where I think "end of the day" is defined in a vaguely East Coast U.S. fashion) to leave a comment on the BCS forum thread for "And Blow Them at the Moon," after which I will pick one commenter to receive a signed copy of the book.

And fifth, if you're curious about the book itself, Kelly at Fantasy Literature recently reviewed it, so you can see what she has to say.

Oh! Sixth! (Which makes this TOTALLY a post, even if the five six things individually are not all that substantial.) I will be doing a reading and signing at Borderlands Books on September 25th. That's in San Francisco, for those who are anything like local, and it starts at 3 p.m. I hope to see some of you there!

Charles Babbage and the Devil

Maybe I don't have enough brain to be sparing any for posting some of this stuff, but dangit, I want the change of pace.

So, Charles Babbage, who I mentioned last post. Difference Engine yeah yeah Analytical Engine sure we've all heard about those things. If you read 2D Goggles, you've also heard about his one-man war against street musicians, which is a bit less well-known.

Did you know that as a kid, he tried to summon the Devil?

True story, at least according to his autobiography (which is kind of this random string of anecdotes; he says at the beginning that everybody kept after him to write his memoirs or something, and this was the only way he could interest himself in the project). Apparently wee!Babbage began to doubt the existence of the Devil, because it just didn't make sense to him. Nor did it to a lot of Victorians, for that matter, as they started to get all scientific about their religion and demand that it make rational sense. Anyway, wee!Babbage questioned the existence of the Devil, and then he thought about all those stories where Faustus or whoever summons Satan to make a pact with him, and so wee!Babbage decides to do the same thing -- minus the pact. He's not out to damn himself, people; he's just conducting an experimental inquiry as to the existence or non-existence of the Devil. Failure to show won't prove non-existence, of course, but if the Devil poofs into his magic circle, well. Wee!Babbage can thank him for his time and send him away, question answered and immortal soul secure. Surely God won't hold a little Devil-summoning against him, not when it's for Science!

I have no intention of writing a "Babbage made a secret pact with the Devil" story -- though now that I think of it, "Babbage didn't make a secret pact with the Devil and that's why he was constantly pestered by street musicians" is kind of an entertaining concept -- but that anecdote amused me. Almost as much as the one about how he and a friend used to sneak out of the dormitory of their boarding school late at night in order to go study. And when one of the other boys wanted to join him they said no, he couldn't, because he would just want to play. Which led to hijinks involving the kid tying successively thicker bits of string between his thumb and the dormitory doorknob that wee!Babbage kept cutting with his pocketknife until the night the kid, determined to know when he was sneaking out, used a chain.

Wee!Babbage may have been a little crazy. It seems to have been endemic to the period.

Anyway, consider this the book report for Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, which mostly ended up being irrelevant to my research, but was an entertaining read.


Edited: Comments are now closed because of ridiculous ammounts of spam.

The Littlest White Belt Is Still a Ballet Dancer at Heart

In kobudo, I have begun learning bo (staff) kata. Shihan randomly had one of the senpai teach me the second bo kata last week; I'm trying to hold onto that sequence in my head just 'cause I don't want to forget it, but today one of the sensei mercifully retreated a step and taught me the much less complicated first kata.

But they both begin with the same preparatory movement, and this is where my ballet training reasserts itself with a vengeance. It's a bit complicated to describe, but there's a point at which the bo is held vertically in front of your right shoulder, with your right hand gripping it low and your left hand gripping it high, over your head. You lower the left hand in an arc, sweeping it outward rather than down the front of your body; then, when you begin the kata, you sweep it back up the same path to grasp the bo again, before moving into the first strike.

To all the ballet dancers who just said, "Oh, you mean like a port de bras" -- EXACTLY.

Guess whose arm immediately defaults to a gentle curve, whose hand turns to make an elegant line? If you pointed at me, give yourself a gold star! It's like when I try to say something in French, and my accent is so Spanish it would give your average Parisian a coronary. I've hunted down and trained out a lot of my ballet habits over the last two years -- in shizentai-dachi, I no longer rotate my foot outward into fourth position before stepping through; I'm learning not to tuck my butt under in shiko-dachi -- but wow, do I still go first to ballet assumptions when doing something new. It isn't even a simple matter of reminding myself before I begin the motion; if I don't keep my attention on my hand every inch of the way, it goes straight back to what it knows best.

(I'm kind of afraid of the expression on Shihan's face if he ever catches me doing that. I suspect it will be some flavor of baffled amusement, and I will want to sink through the floor out of embarrassment.)

Ah well. I've only been doing bo kata for two classes; I can't expect to lose the habit that fast. But I've opened up my own private betting pool for how long it will take.