WWII – Page 10 – SFFaudio

Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History: #42 Logical Insanity

SFFaudio Online Audio

Powerful podcasting, that’s what Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History was. Carlin used to put out the most powerful podcasts I’d ever heard. With episodes like Punic Nightmares, Ghosts Of The Ostfront, and Steppe Stories (now available as audiobook downloads). Half-way through them I’d be calling up friends and telling them “Hey, new Dan Carlin is out!” and then start telling them how awesome the show was.

And over the years I can’t say the show ever went bad – because it really never did – it just didn’t consistently hit the incredibly high highs that it had earlier. That is until just before this point this morning…

Dan Carlin's Hardcore History - #42 Logical Insanity

…where I realized that there was a new classic Dan Carlin out.

Carlin’s connective thread in this episode – that the insane choices of 20th century history are in fact a kind of horrific logic – delivered with fascinating historical evidence and illustrated with his incredible storytelling skill, shows the inevitable, frightening, awful logic of bombing cities full of people – even with nuclear weapons.

Carlin poses questions like. ‘In war, how many enemy civilians are you willing to kill in order to save one of your own people’s lives?’

And of course if that number is not equal to zero you’re down the path towards logical insanity.

Here’s the episode |MP3|

Podcast feed:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/dancarlin/history?format=xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #153 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Small Town by Philip K. Dick

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #153 – Small Town by Philip K. Dick, read by Gregg Margarite. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the short story followed by a discussion of it with Jesse, Tamahome, and Gregg Margarite!

Of Small Town Philip K. Dick wrote:

“Here the frustrations of a defeated small person — small in terms of power, in particular power over others — gradually become transformed into something sinister: the force of death. In rereading this story (which is of course a fantasy, not science fiction) I am impressed by the subtle change which takes place in the protagonist from Trod Upon to Treader. Verne Haskel initially appears as the prototype of the impotent human being, but this conceals a drive at his core self which is anything but weak. It is as if I am saying, The put-upon person may be very dangerous. Be careful as to how you misuse him; he may be a mask for thanatos: the antagonist of life; he may not secretly wish to rule; he may wish to destroy.”

Talked about on today’s show:
Gregg is getting better at girls, girls are always questioning you, horror, urban fantasy, The Twilight Zone, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Rod Serling, paranoid Verne Haskell, a lead quarter, the redistribution of wealth, playing god, “…and he rested and he made a sandwich”, god games, SimCity 2000, churches can’t be stopped, Microcosmic God, “shoved into the next dimension”, is it slipstream?, Stopover In A Quiet Town, transformers are the science, diorama, the train doesn’t run them over, “moral”, “extremely moral”, train guys, Lego, erector sets, Lincoln Logs, Meccano, matchbox cars, small towns can be hell, comic book stores, “urbane-al-ity”, is Verne the god of Woodland?, pet shops and mortuaries, little man, SFSignal’s Sword And Sorcery Panel suggest characters should be the focus, “Finished!”, world warping, John Carter, handwavium, “make out”, Beyond The Door, Dick’s faithless women, Clans Of The Alphane Moon, how risque were SF mags in the 1950s?, San Fransisco, Silvia is one of Dick’s most common female character names, a life sized diorama, The Tell Tale Heart, The Days Of Perky Pat, The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch, the game of Life, Barbie, chew-z, the documentary Marwencol (2010), “he wants love”, Mark Hogancamp’s world is open, living in a real dream world, Deja Thoris has a time machine, Jeff Malmberg, A Clockwork Orange, adding layers, “well done Jeff”, R. Crumb, Blade Runner‘s androids take photographs to take memories, “reality and consciousness are fluid constructs”, crazy vs. differently enabled, Esopus magazine, a world without irony, authenticity, people are complicated, Greenwich Village, cross-dressing, WWII.

Small Town by Philip K. Dick second publication in the April 1967 issue of Amazing Stories

Marwencol

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Bat Segundo Show #432 interview with Stephen Fry

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Bat Segundo Show, episode #432, has the host, Edward Champion, “basking in a pleasant tsunami of erudition” when he talks to Stephen Fry.

Among the many subjects discussed in this delightfully wide ranging conversation are Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, how to write essays for exams, the Oxford manner, the ethics of the French Resistance, absolutism, and Brave New World.

|MP3|

Podcast feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/segundo

Posted by Jesse Willis

CBC: Nazi Eyes On Canada

SFFaudio Online Audio

There’s one segment of Nazi Eyes On Canada, episode 5 “Alameda” (Saskatchewan), available via Relic Radio’s Orson Welles: On The Air podcast.

|MP3|

This is one of the strangest and oldest alternate history radio programs I’ve ever heard |READ OUR REVIEW|.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Commentary: How (and why) I make ebooks out of paperbooks

SFFaudio Commentary

When you’ve got an old paperback book that’s coming apart at the spine, with pages falling out all over the place it’s time to consider making it immortal. In order to do that, in a reasonable period of time, you must kill the book. That’s the hardest part of the process. The actual transformation is pretty easy.

To do it I use a Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 which came with Adobe Acrobat Standard 9. Here are three videos I put together that show the process of turning a paperback into an ebook:

And here’s a PDF |SAMPLE| of the result.

Update:
John writes in to say:

I read your recent post about digitizing print books with interest. I wondered if you might be able to expand on your process a bit, as it seemed to me like a few steps were missing from your video.

Indeed, here are my answers to some specific questions:

How do you actually sever all the pages from the book?

Most of the time this can be done just with your hands, at least with paperbacks and old magazines. The only tools I’ve ever needed to use are flathead screwdriver, to pry up staples found in some mags from the 1960s and 1970s, and scissors which I’ve used to trim out glued edges. If you’re doing a hardcover with sewn binding you’d probably be able to do it with just an X-Acto knife.

When you run the pages through the scanner, does it scan both sides of the page simultaneously? Or do you have to scan them all twice?

The Fujitsu ScanSnap is not only superfast, it’s also supersmart, it scans both sides at the same time (technically the term is “duplex”).

If so, how do you collate them so the pages are all in the right order?

The bundled software, called ScanSnap Manager, allows you to customize the named output files. I usually have them just come out as 001, 002, 003, etc..

How long does it take you to digitize a single book?

Lets see I’ve just scanned the February 1976 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction which has 128 pages (64 leaves). In the scanning itself I set a stopwatch. It took 1 minute 30 seconds to scan the entire mag. The software took another 45 seconds of processing. And I spent about 30 seconds correcting orientation on a few pages. So under three minutes for 128 pages

Have you tried this on hardcovers as well, or just paperbacks?

I don’t think I’ve done more than a couple of hardcovers, they were really easy though as they were essentially unbound already.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LAMLradio (a podcast about LEGO)

SFFaudio Online Audio

Me with a simple MOC LEGO race-car:
Jesse with Lego sculpture

A LEGO Classic Space Wafer Fighter:
Lego Classic Space - Wafer Fighter

My students with an afternoon of swooshable LEGO creations:
Jesse's students with an afternoon of LEGO creations

LAMLradio is a podcast about LEGO! As you can see by the images above I’m a big LEGO fan. I still have all (or almost all) of my LEGO back from when I was a kid. LEGO is a great toy because it allows you to build your own toys. But it’s more than a toy. In fact when I was talking to a professional artist last fall I was trying to convince him that it was a form of art. I’m not sure what art is, but I am sure that LEGO is a medium for sculpture.

If you’re not convinced check out this interview with one such LEGO artist known for his Maschinen Krieger ZbV 3000 LEGO creations (a style of kitbash art from Japan begun in the 1980s and inspired by WWI, WWII, the American space program, Star Wars, Blade Runner and The Road Warrior).

LAMLradio #103 – An interview with .Tromas of Prince George, BC (about Ma.K LEGO creations) |MP3|

Podcast feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/lamlradio

Selected LEGO jargon:

Classic Space – LEGO with a space theme produced between 1978 and 1987.

Diorama – A large LEGO scene or a LEGO scene built on an irregular base.

Vignette – A small LEGO scene, usually built on a base 8 studs long by 8 studs wide.

MOC – (an acronym, My Own Creation) – Any LEGO creation designed and built by a LEGO fan without instructions. Pronounced “mock.”

Swooshable – A quality that allows a LEGO creation to be picked up and flown around a room as the builder makes flying noises.

Posted by Jesse Willis