History is economics. More and more that's become my opinion after reading books like "The Box" and now "Cod," by Mark Kurlansky. Cod was easy to preserve and plentiful throughout the North Atlantic. Vikings followed the cod to Labrador, as did Basque fishermen later, "discovering" North America centuries before Columbus. The wealth of Boston was built on cod, fostering the rise of a powerful merchant class opposed to economic domination by the English. This later became the core of the American Revolution. Cod was an important leg in the "triangle trade" that brought slaves to North America and the Caribbean. At the same time, cod's nutritional value and easy preservation helped it power exploratory voyages to the Americas, Africa, Asia, and beyond. Its value was critical in numerous political conflicts and near-wars over the years. Then centuries of bounty slammed head-on into technological progress as the North Atlantic cod fisheries collapsed in the late 20th century, ending a thousand years of plenty.
"Cod" is one of those books that highlighted my ignorance. In our age of plenty, with miracles such as refrigeration, it's easy to forget how critical commodities like cod were. I wouldn't have minded maintaining my ignorance on how to prepare cod (yuck), but it was easy to skip those pages. It's a slim book, and lucidly written, so it's a quick read and easy to digest. Highly recommended. I look forward to reading Kurlansky's book "Salt."
Bill O'Reilly is a lying jackass, so I mostly don't mind that Home Depot will no longer advertise on his program1.
However, I was more than a little bothered by this sentence in the email from the Home Depot representative: "The Home Depot has a policy that prohibits the running of its advertising on programs that express strong opinions or political views." I mean, I understand, but it's still pretty depressing.
1
I'm reluctant to support anything that would inhibit someone from expressing her opinion, no matter how stupid.
Whenever I recommend something that fits into a genre to someone who isn't a fan of the genre, I always feel obligated to tack on an... acclaimer 1. Placing something in a genre always seems too limiting, and it's something I bump up into because most of what I read, watch, and listen to falls into a genre of some kind
2
. It's not enough to say that Tool is a metal band, or that "His Dark Materials," is a young adult fantasy trilogy, or that "X-Men 2" is a super-hero movie. It's not because any of those things are untrue, but rather they aren't sufficient to convey their qualities. Labelling is restrictive
3
. The label becomes the most prominent aspect of the work, when the message I want to convey is about the work's quality. That's what happens when you're on the outside looking in; you see the superficial similarities between the bad and the good, but can't see the deeper differences that make the good good. 90% of everything is crud
4
, but in unfamiliar genres we only see the 90%, while we're able to see the 10% in familiar ones. That 10% transcends the genre, whereas all the 90% has going for it is the genre.
I'm not sure how to get around this. I can't avoid using those labels, because they're useful. It's a useful starting point for checking stuff out
5.
Furthermore, we use different standards for different genres; I know I ask a lot more from comedy movies than I do for action movies
6
. It's not just a lowering; I think I (now) have higher standards for fantasy and science fiction than I do for "general" fiction. The labels provide a handy shortcut, where collaborative filtering (either formally through something like Amazon, or just conversationally) requires much more overhead. Maybe there's nothing to get around, and that's just the way it is.
1 What's the proper antonym of disclaimer? Acclaimer works well enough for me.
2
Strictly speaking, everything is a genre of some kind, but there are certain defaults that are sort of non-genres, the general body of works that we put genre works into in the first place in order to distinguish them. For books, it's "general fiction," novels set in contemporary or near contemporary times in our familiar environment, without fantastic elements or a mystery. For music, it's "rock/pop." I don't think there's anything like that for movies, but "comedy" and "drama" come pretty close.
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Not just in media works; the standard "what do you do?" question when people meet has the same feel.
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Sturgeon's Law, which was apparently a response to critics trashing science fiction because much of science fiction is trash.
5 Nobody can reliably say "if you like X, you'll like Y," but "if you like X, you should try Y" is still far more useful than trying to find things you like on your own, given how much people are cranking out these days.
I got named all the European countries in 2:51 and all the United States in 2:00. I got 151/192 on the UN members list before time ran out; that one's harder since it doesn't have an accompanying map. I counted ones where I didn't get the name exactly right (lacking the most of the time). There were about 20 that I really should have gotten, and the rest are small, obscure countries that I don't feel bad about missing (especially Pacific and Caribbean island nations).
I think "Conversations With My Agent" by Rob Long is the only book I read recently that I forgot in my recent roundup. Rob Long was a TV writer who somehow graduated in just two years to being showrunner of "Cheers" in its final seasons. Long writes a light, funny account of being trapped in "development hell" after the hit show ended
1
. It's a light book, even with some gratuitous padding, but you don't mind because Long is funny and makes you feel like you're there. If you've got a few hours to kill feeling cynical about Hollywood, pick it up.
1
Sadly, it looks by his resume that he's still stuck there, even though this book was published in 1996. According to his own site, he writes occasionally for magazines and newspapers, and has a weekly commentary on LA public radio.
159780018X978-1597800181Liz Williams's "The Snake Agent" is a surprisingly simple detective story in an occult near future Chinese Singapore franchise city where Heaven and Hell wage battles for souls. The lines between the worlds have blurred, and Hell is making a play to win for keeps, assuming the bureaucracy doesn't get in the way. Detective Inspector Chen is our hero on the case, a man troubled by his renouncing of his matron goddess for an undemonic demoness. It's a fine tale, but it's just a little too thin. Some books have too much exposition and too many detours, but this one could have done with more. It's decent. Maybe the sequels will do better.
So far this year, I have read 63 books totalling some 25,682 pages. Of those, there were:
21 historical fiction (the Aubrey/Maturin series)
18 fantasy
10 science/speculative fiction
5 contemporary fiction
3 general or miscellaneous non-fiction
2 mystery
2 economic history
1 technical non-fiction
1 history
1 auto-biography
In the 214 days of the year, that's an average of a book every 3.4 days, or about 120 pages per day. I guess that's a lot. No wonder I don't get anything (else) done.
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A friend lent me Mary Roach's "Stiff." It tells about all the things that happen to a body after someone dies, and the things that we as a society choose to do with them. We visit a body farm at the University of Tennessee, read about how mummies were steeped in honey and the liquid used as medicine in the Middle Ages, and how a Swedish environmentalist is leading a movement to compost bodies after death. Roach ranges far and wide, producing a book chock full of interesting if less than useful information. It's only a little bit gruesome and not at all depressing. Roach attempts to infuse the topic with humor, which apparently works on some readers. I didn't find most of the intentional jokes funny; maybe I'm just... what's the word? Humorless? Rigid? Inflexible? Nevertheless, there were a number of more subtly humorous parts, none of which come to mind right now, sadly. Anyway, it's interesting and thought-provoking and worth a read.
For the record, I've decided what I want to happen when I die
1
. The first priority is taking any and all useful transplantable parts. Liver, lungs, kidneys, heart, eyes, whatever. After that, I'd like my body to be used for scientific research, with the sole exception of weapons research. Crash test passenger? Sure. Lying in the sun in the soon to be operational body farm at Texas State University? Fine. Developing a more deadly bullet? No thanks. If there's anything left of me after that, I'll like my body composted (cremation uses too much energy), with an Indian mango tree and an American Elm (Updated: or a Vermont sugar maple) planted above. Just for the record.
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Another year, another pulpy Harry Bosch mystery from Michael Connelly1
. This one is called "The Overlook". There's not much to say. Connelly's writing isn't getting any better. It's kind of hackneyed
2
. There's a lot of "Bosch realized" and "Harry knew" when those are completely unnecessary, since we never have any other perspective. There are laughably bad bits like this:
Bosch hung up and immediately called Ignacio Ferras, his new partner. They were still feeling their way. Ferras was more than twenty years younger and from another culture. The bonding would happen, Bosch was sure, but it would come slowly. It always did.
Emphasis mine. It's definitely genre fiction that doesn't rise above the genre, but it only took a day to read, so I won't complain (more).
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I am a wimp when it comes to horror movies. This dates back to seeing "A Nightmare on Elm Street" at a sleepover in 3rd grade and was reinforced by "Event Horizon" in college. That movie freaked me out something serious. It was thus with some trepidation that I started Joe Hill's "Heart-Shaped Box." I nearly didn't continue after the first few pages, but I realized I was being silly, so I forged ahead. I'm glad I did.
"Heart-Shaped Box" starts with middle-aged rock star Judas Coyne buying a supposedly haunted suit from an online auction to add to his collection of occult and morbid artifacts. Caveat emptor, but this time it's because the buyer got what he paid for. The ghost is not a kindly one, and the haunting begins the clock ticking on Judas Coyne's life.
This was a very satisfying book. It is thoughtful and complex, with layers slowly revealing themselves. The pace steadily ratchets up as we discover what was originally a simple ghost story is in fact an intricate plot pulling together years of mistakes and worse, both by Coyne and others. He is haunted by both real ghosts and figurative ones, which converge to offer a chance at redemption. The characters are real, flawed people, who gradually reveal more of themselves to us as the plot unfolds. "Heart-Shaped Box" is one of those genre novels that transcends the genre. I'd even argue that it wasn't really horror, since I wasn't afraid (YMMV). Regardless of what you call it, it's a fine book. Highly recommended.
I was too harsh on Michael Connelly's "The Overlook." Everything I said was true, but I should have also mentioned that the plot was pretty decent. He even managed to make a solid and necessary political statement.
Following up on Home Depot cutting their ads from Bill O'Reilly's program... I disagree with nearly everything Bill O'Reilly says, but the solution is not to keep him from saying it. The solution is to refute him. I want to see Bill O'Reilly get pwned publicly for being an imbecile. That way the message gets out to the people who believe the same things. Without people spreading stupid ideas, it's a lot harder to get people who share them to pay attention to better ideas. It seems like people spreading stupid ideas have the advantage, but I think that's just because they've adapted to the medium better at this point in time. It's easier to use a new medium when your ideas are shallow and simple; it's hard to articulate many good ideas even in familiar media. Home Depot isn't the problem; they're responsible to their shareholders, and their shareholders don't (and shouldn't) care if people have stupid reasons for boycotting their stores. This is a problem for the rest of us, and there's only one solution: respond patiently and thoughtfully.
I can't find the fire in me to get angry about what the Bush administration does anymore. It's not that I have other things that take my attention. I've just lost the ability to be outraged.
Every President has caused outrage for something. Most Presidents have made at least one egregious violation of American principles. Nixon had Watergate. Reagan had Iran-Contra. So far, Bush has:
Launching the Iraq War under false pretenses
Abu Ghraib
Guantanamo
Warrantless wiretapping
Extraordinary rendition
Valerie Plame (by association)
Signing statements
US Attorney firings
Torture
And those are just the highlights, just the mistakes that violate American principles rather than simply demonstrating incompetence. When other Presidents screwed up like that, they'd bob and weave and try to tap-dance around it. They'd try to play down the controversy and play it cool. Not Bush. He'll either assert that he's right, lie, or ignore it. Then another scandal will erupt, and we'll forget about the previous one.
That's why I can't be outraged anymore. It's overwhelming. It's like the circuit in my brain that handles that emotion doesn't work anymore. It carried too much for too long, and now it's blown out. I'm sure I'm not the only one. If it was intentional, I'd say it was a brilliant and audacious strategy. At least I can take comfort in knowing that Bush has probably motivated more people than have burned out.
A protagonist with amnesia makes it easy to start a film franchise. You don't have to bother with introducing everyone, something that hurt the first "X-Men" movie. "Casino Royale" dodged it too, but that's because they didn't have to establish James Bond, just differentiate the new one.
If you have the cash, it seems like it's going to be a good time to pick up a recent used car. $150 billion worth of adjustable rate mortgages are set to reset to a higher rate in October. The next 11 months will see an average of $30 nillion worth resetting every month (source). That's roughly 500,000 households in October and then another 100,000 per month, or a million and a half over the next year. Those people are going to have to cut out other things to keep their houses, and I'm sure a lot of them bought nice cars in the last couple of years.
"There is a way to be good again." That is the fundamental idea behind Khaled Hosseini's debut novel, "The Kite Runner." The story begins with our narrator, Amir, as a young boy in pre-chaotic Afghanistan. His best friend is the Hassan, the servant's son, a slightly younger boy whose devotion is almost too much, a dedicated faith in Amir that he will betray. They live under the care of Amir's larger-than-life father, a successful dynamo of a man to whom Amir is a source of constant disappointment. The boys grow up, and the evils and dangers of the world shatter their stable lives. Afghanistan descends into violent chaos, and they are separated forever. Amir escapes from Afghanistan, but not the shame of failing his friend. He gets a chance at redemption, if only he knows what to do with it.
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I didn't particularly like "The Kite Runner." I'd like to expand on that, but it's not really something I can explain. It was certainly a good book, but it just didn't grab me, and I don't know why. Lots of people liked it, though, so maybe you will too.
If it was Randall Stross's intent to convince me that Thomas A. Edison was an unlikeable, mendacious, egoist whose true successes were heavily-reliant on others or even realized mostly by others, he succeeded admirably. "The Wizard of Menlo Park" presents a thorough portrait of Edison the promising inventor and incompetent businessman.
Edison was a workaholic who procured well over a thousand patents to his name, but was unable to translate those inventions into true successes. Much of the development work was done by his extensive teams of assistants, but the Edison legend was born early in his career, so the work was presented as his alone. His ego led him to make bold pronouncements of the perfection of his inventions when they were barely-working prototypes, most notably with the phonograph and light bulb. His ego blinded him to business opportunities, such as the vast potential of musical entertainment when his goal with the phonograph was as a dictation machine.
Oddly, Stross omits mention of two seemingly important inventions mentioned in Edison's biography on Wikipedia: the telephone carbon microphone and the fluoroscope, an X-ray machine. Even stranger, Stross subtitled the book "How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World," when Stross seems to think his only true innovation was being a celebrity genius (which was an accident more than anything else). The book's apparent goal and its actual value seem at odds here. Stross demonstrates how Edison relied heavily on his assistants, how he frequently chose bad ideas over good ones, how he thought himself an able businessman in spite of frequent failure, and how many of his ideas were being worked on simultaneously by others (the light bulb, electrical distribution, and the phonograph, for example), and how again it was others who actually perfected them. In some ways, what I took away from the book was that what was so remarkable about Edison was how the legend of Edison, a recent historical figure, is so different from the reality. It is a worthy book, but that incongruity is certainly confusing.
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Back in 2005, Alaska (of course) Representative Don Young changed the contents of a billafter the House and Senate had passed it. How is this even possible? Every single job I've had has had a system for preventing exactly that kind of thing, even when it was just a music web site.
Scientists appear to have discovered a protein that can erase memory. They have not indicated they know of any way to control what gets erased, either in kind or quantity. At present, it has only been demonstrated with rats, as there are obviously enormous ethical issues there. However, there are those who have no ethical issues whatsoever.
Assuming a similar effect can be produced in humans, how long is it before a criminal gang 1 uses this to wipe out someone's memory? Maybe someone who is informing for the police? The standard tactic is to kill them, but that is messy, dangerous, illegal, and alerts the police. However, if the informant shows up at a hospital with no memory of who he is...
We don't even have a criminal category this kind of thing fits in; it's certainly an assault, but so much more, and in some ways it's a murder, but the victim is still alive. This is freaky stuff. Even if this particular research path turns out to be a dead end, it seems likely that something like this will someday be discovered/invented.
1 Or a particularly ruthless secret service, which one might consider the same thing.
Both the military and police forces are investing heavily into so-called "non-lethal" weapons. The most famous example of this is the Taser, which has in fact resulted in some deaths 1. It's hard to object to "non-lethal" or "less lethal" weapons in principle. They definitely sound like an improvement. The problem arises when you realize that the world is not static.
The benefit of "less lethal" weapons is that they provide an alternative to guns. When a police officer would normally use her gun, she can use a Taser instead, incapacitating rather than killing. What isn't so beneficial is when the Taser becomes a substitute for other things as well. Nobody thinks of verbal engagement as a weapon, but it's often the most useful way for a police officer to defuse a potentially dangerous situation. On the other hand, a Taser is unequivocally a weapon. It hurts. It burns. But it does not (usually) kill, and often doesn't leave any marks. The consequences of using a Taser inappropriately are (understandably) considerably less than using a firearm inappropriately. Instead of using persuasion, which is frustrating, hard, and not guaranteed to work, a police officer can just use the Taser. It has a known effect with a known cost. That makes it easy to use, not just in situations where it is appropriate, but also insituations whereanother approachmight be better.
The fundamental problem breaks down into two parts. One, police may be more likely to use the weapon because of its reduced lethality and evidence of use. Two, those who might have been inappropriately assaulted have an uphill battle making their case because it is harder to prove injury. The courts are generally reluctant to override the judgment of a police officer in the heat of the moment. Even more concerning are "crowd control" weapons, which have a history of use against peaceful orderly protests as well as riots, as those are more often a deliberate choice by law enforcement officials rather than the panic or misjudgment of a single officer. There is an inherent restraining effect in police batons and especially firearms because the injury is obvious and lethality likely. "Less lethal" weapons have no such built-in restraint.
There is no clear solution here. These weapons can be used appropriately and achieve police goals at reduced risk to both officers and citizens. However, using these weapons without clear protocols for use and effective accountability mechanisms at the organizational level is a recipe for abuse. Technology can help with some of these issues, from the cameras mounted in police cars to memory chips embedded in the Tasers themselves recording their use. This is only useful insofar as police oversight is effective and responsive; technology cannot be a panacea.
The greatest worry I have is not with these weapons, but the apparent increase in the divide between the public and the police, as evinced by the militarization of the police. Police officers will naturally want to act with as much power as they can in order to safeguard themselves, but that greatly increases the consequences of mistakes. The police are "peace officers," not military. The motto is "to serve and protect," but too often the police seem to see citizens as an enemy.
1 It's worth noting that Taser themselves don't call it "non-lethal", though they do imply it when contrasting their product against "lethal force" as illustrated by an semi-automatic pistol.
If you'd like to get on this whole weblog thing, go right ahead. Just don't tell anyone about it until you know you're going to stick with it. A weblog with just one post is worse than no weblog at all. A common pitfall is that you have a lot to say, but don't realize that's years worth of expression that's all been bottled up. Once you've gotten all that out, what are you going to do? There are no doubt millions of weblogs that lasted a week or even a few months, ending once their creators ran out of things to say 1 . Make sure you give it a couple of months and a few dozen posts before you even think about telling people about it. And above all, do not make your first post about starting a weblog.
I've come up with a rule of thumb: if you see something scary on the front page of the news, you can safely ignore it. The media cares most about unusual events. Terrorism. SARS. Septuplets. Celebrities. They don't cover plain old car accidents, influenza, single births, or my neighbor's house getting robbed of $1000 in DVDs and tools. There's even a journalism cliché about it. Remember that the next time we have "Summer of the Shark."
This phenomenon has given me the idea 1 to start a site that would focus entirely on the ordinary dangers. Heart attacks. Car accidents. Natural deaths. In order to avoid being mind-numbingly boring, it would present a condensed version of the national news: 812 people were diagnosed with cancer on August 22, 2007. Just for comparison, I would include "0 deaths from terrorism," "0 cases of SARS," and the like. I'd call it "Dogs Bite Men" 2.
Big Faceless Organization produces software for businesses. That's their real name. I did a little bit of research to make sure it wasn't a joke; it seems like a real thing.
We saw "The Bourne Ultimatum." It was good. There were no cheesy moments like that awful line from "Live Free or Die Hard" that I saw in the trailer:
Mac: You just killed a helicopter with a car!
Korben Dallas: I was out of bullets.
Or the even worse:
Mookie: Did you see that?!?
Hudson Hawk: See it? I did it.
That movie probably had more gunshots and explosions in a single scene than the whole "Bourne" trilogy. "Bourne" had real characters. "Bourne" had development. "Bourne" had intelligence. There were elements that were at least clever and possibly even brilliant1. Even Jessica liked it. If you haven't seen it, you have to see the first two first, and preferrably not long before. We watched them a couple of weeks ago to get Jessica caught up, and it helped. Too bad about the shaky-cam, though.
1 Cryptically, so as not to spoil: haircut, splashing in the water, and (the best), "you look tired."
Until recently, that there were both books on evolutionary biology and the philosophy of evolutionary biology. I wanted the former. With Daniel Dennett's "Darwin's Dangerous Idea," I got the latter. Boy does he go on. And on. And on. He would do well to use simpler prose.
One thing he does make clear is that evolutionary biologists have worked too long and hard on evolution for the theory to fall beneath the puny slings and arrows that Creationists often deploy. Disagreement is usually on the precise mechanics; you don't see anyone arguing against gravity because scientists have yet to find a graviton. There are other disagreements, including some disbelief that such a mindless process as natural selection could yield the results we see, but those tend to be as vague and poorly articulated as the Creationists, only with something else pulling the strings.
It's unfair to criticize this book for being a mostly philosophical book rather than scientific. He certainly does go into the science, but primarily from the perspective of game theory, algorithms, and the like, rather than deploying evidence. This isn't the book to read if you want an overview of the current state of the art in evolutionary biology. It's more of a niche book, aimed at those who want to delve deeply into the more speculative and philosophical implications of evolution by natural selection. I personally found it tiring, but I guess it's the thing for those who like that sort of thing.
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Paul Neilan dedicated his debut novel thus: "To my parents, who I hope will never read this book." That's as good a warning as any of what to expect from "Apathy and Other Small Victories." The book is bizarre and profane, with its protagonist Shane being an unlikable, unfriendly, hostile anti-hero. I note all those things as a warning lest you expect something else and are shocked 1. If that doesn't scare you off, you should read it, because it's funny. Sometimes really, really funny, other times only mildly so, but definitely worth the few hours it will take to read this slim novel.
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1 By my standards, it's not very shocking, but I've learned my standards are different from other people's.
