Captain Future's Log

Upcoming in Site Crime...

A book I'll be getting to in a day or two put me onto a website called Viridian Design, apparently the web face of a futurist organization in which Bruce Sterling, otherwise known as a science fiction/cyberpunk author, is a principal.

There are all kinds of neat things about this site but I'm especially enjoying Sterling's "Viridian Notes," which are like blog entries of a special kind. The entries that knock me out are documents---speeches, news stories, etc.---with Sterling's interpolations, which are both stunningly funny and on the mark cogent and insightful.

He's very good on climate crisis matters, for instance his slice and dice of a Guardian story on the so-called Pentagon report on sudden climate change here, which is even more hilarious--and his comments more perceptive--a couple of years later.

Or a more recent note, a speech by Al Gore on global warming. Apart from being bracingly clear-minded about what's really going on, Sterling's comments are unusually witty by net- snark standards---pithier versions of what we really think when we hear or read this stuff (and in this piece, Sterling is generally sympathetic to Gore's points; in fact the post is a kind of extended lament that this guy isn't the president).

For example, after Gore begins his speech with the pro forma announcement that we must address this crisis now, Sterling writes, "I also wonder why politicians always say "the time to act is now," even when it's crystal-clear that the proper time to act was quite a long time ago.

I'm bringing this to your attention because I hope you'll get as much of a charge out of reading this as I did. And also because I plan to steal this technique, and this constitutes fair warning, if not fair use.