I think that I first read about the existence of this book when I was in high school I was intrigued by the premise and really wanted to check it out, but the library didn't have it available at the time and I moved on to something else. It wasn't until earlier this year that I saw it at Fred Meyer, bought it, and eventually read it. Conclusion: I really liked it and found it to be my favorite work by the author. Recommended and such. Blah blah blah. It's good. A bit silly in parts, but that adds to the fun.
One of the most striking things I've noticed about this novel is that much of the reception, at least these days, fails to separate the work from the author. Some readers seem desperate to find a way to read between the lines and find something terrible about this book. And I think I know why. A huge portion of Card's audience read some of his earlier books, especially the "Ender" saga starting with the 1985 Ender's Game. They were introduced to Card through those books at a young age, fell in love with them, usually turned away at some point due to the diminishing returns in quality of the sequels, and branched out to read other authors as they got older. They may or may not have known that Orson Scott Card was Mormon (it has nothing to do with most of his books). The years went by, the world wide web swelled in importance, and through it, Card's former fans discovered that he was actively campaigning against gay marriage and writing some intense vitriol on the subject of homosexuality (this was a major movement by Mormons at the time, with every Mormon I knew of doing at least a bit of rallying to stop gay marriage, and I'm convinced that there was some sort of church-impelled mandate going on, not that this would absolve the individuals involved). For this beloved author of their youth to write something they found so vile, Card's former fans felt betrayed. And that is what I'm seeing reaction to in recent reader reviews of Pastwatch. Commonly, there's an insistence that the book is Mormon propaganda or at least some sort of culturally conservative propaganda. Many facts in the book fly in the face of this interpretation, but the people imputing hidden propaganda messages on the book, published in 1995, are more interested in how scandalized they were by what Card was saying in 2009 than by the actual contents of the book.
Orson Scott Card has a talent for using language and selection of detail to make fictional technology seem like gritty realism. He skillfully gets into the heads of characters, exploring their emotional motivations, even while not fully fleshing them out. Beyond that, he's a competent writer, not one of the greatest of all time, but certainly not bad. And this is his best work I've read so far. It's full of plot holes and splits too little time between too many major characters, but it's a fun read with some compelling philosophy.
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
Monday, September 19, 2016
Crap from Facebook: September 19th, 2016
https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/the-reality-that-all-women-experience-that-men-dont-know-about-kelly-jrmk/
Every time I think about actually bothering to post something even vaguely related to feminism in this series, I cringe. Then I ask myself, "Is this one really worth paying any attention to?" It's clear that several of my Facebook friends strongly identify as feminist and are passionate about the general sphere of issues that entails. They wear their philosophy on their sleeves, I guess. And it occurs to me that they probably don't know the first thing about my position. This is, I've decided, a failing of mine. I'll have to do something about it, once I figure out how.
Anyway, the content in the link above isn't the most egregious thing I've seen on Facebook lately; not by a long shot. But it is notable because I saw it from several different sources, and I know that some of the people who shared the link diverge from each other sharply in other respects. They aren't people who I'd think have much in common, philosophically or socially. This Gretchen Kelly article struck a nerve with what I gather is a broad spectrum of people. And this is super weird to me because the whole article strikes me as insubstantial, practically rebutting itself. It shouldn't warrant a real response. That would be silly. So I won't do it! Nope, I won't even try. Instead, something else...
The article concludes by imploring men to listen. I humbly suggest something else, videlicet this: look. Look into her eyes. Yeah, that picture at the top of the article. The one with no caption or apparent relevance to the article itself. It's a close-up on part of the face of a girl with piercing blue eyes, her hair at least partially disheveled and sweeping a bit in front of her nose and eyes. Someone put it there for a reason. We don't know anything about the girl in the photo. I can't even tell how old she might be, although it's pretty clear just from seeing part of her face that she's rather young. I don't know enough about photography to specify the technical terms for what is going on here, but I contend that the angle, focus, zoom, placement of hair, and use of a youthful-looking model are tools that convey vulnerability. It's an image that was designed to evoke an emotional response. And it works. It certainly works on me. Seeing that picture at the top of the article, I feel a surge of sympathy for the nameless girl. She looks like she might be in trouble, and I find myself wanting to protect her from whatever it is that is troubling her. The people who set it up so that an image like that went on the top of that article are attempting emotional exploitation. Don't let them bullshit you. It's a cheap trick. See right through them.
In other news, there's this...
http://www.freepresshouston.com/voting-third-party-is-the-electoral-equivalent-of-sending-thoughts-and-prayers/
And here's this obligatory bullshit that comes around every four years. People who would vote for a third-party presidential candidate are told that such an action would be useless, wasteful, vainglorious, petulant, etc. As this article inadvertently demonstrates, there just aren't any arguments made to dismiss votes for third-party candidates in general that cannot just as easily be used to dismiss votes for candidates in either of the two major parties. The author tries a lot of shit-slinging, but bitch, I'm rubber and you're glue. Every argument he makes could be used to hoist him on his own petard. Go ahead and check. I'll wait.
Every time I think about actually bothering to post something even vaguely related to feminism in this series, I cringe. Then I ask myself, "Is this one really worth paying any attention to?" It's clear that several of my Facebook friends strongly identify as feminist and are passionate about the general sphere of issues that entails. They wear their philosophy on their sleeves, I guess. And it occurs to me that they probably don't know the first thing about my position. This is, I've decided, a failing of mine. I'll have to do something about it, once I figure out how.
Anyway, the content in the link above isn't the most egregious thing I've seen on Facebook lately; not by a long shot. But it is notable because I saw it from several different sources, and I know that some of the people who shared the link diverge from each other sharply in other respects. They aren't people who I'd think have much in common, philosophically or socially. This Gretchen Kelly article struck a nerve with what I gather is a broad spectrum of people. And this is super weird to me because the whole article strikes me as insubstantial, practically rebutting itself. It shouldn't warrant a real response. That would be silly. So I won't do it! Nope, I won't even try. Instead, something else...
The article concludes by imploring men to listen. I humbly suggest something else, videlicet this: look. Look into her eyes. Yeah, that picture at the top of the article. The one with no caption or apparent relevance to the article itself. It's a close-up on part of the face of a girl with piercing blue eyes, her hair at least partially disheveled and sweeping a bit in front of her nose and eyes. Someone put it there for a reason. We don't know anything about the girl in the photo. I can't even tell how old she might be, although it's pretty clear just from seeing part of her face that she's rather young. I don't know enough about photography to specify the technical terms for what is going on here, but I contend that the angle, focus, zoom, placement of hair, and use of a youthful-looking model are tools that convey vulnerability. It's an image that was designed to evoke an emotional response. And it works. It certainly works on me. Seeing that picture at the top of the article, I feel a surge of sympathy for the nameless girl. She looks like she might be in trouble, and I find myself wanting to protect her from whatever it is that is troubling her. The people who set it up so that an image like that went on the top of that article are attempting emotional exploitation. Don't let them bullshit you. It's a cheap trick. See right through them.
In other news, there's this...
http://www.freepresshouston.com/voting-third-party-is-the-electoral-equivalent-of-sending-thoughts-and-prayers/
And here's this obligatory bullshit that comes around every four years. People who would vote for a third-party presidential candidate are told that such an action would be useless, wasteful, vainglorious, petulant, etc. As this article inadvertently demonstrates, there just aren't any arguments made to dismiss votes for third-party candidates in general that cannot just as easily be used to dismiss votes for candidates in either of the two major parties. The author tries a lot of shit-slinging, but bitch, I'm rubber and you're glue. Every argument he makes could be used to hoist him on his own petard. Go ahead and check. I'll wait.
Monday, August 29, 2016
Into the Sea of Stars by William R. Forstchen
Mom, Rachel, Matt and I flew to New Jersey and visited Josh for a week. I read this one on the plane trips there and back. As cheesy 1980's science fiction goes, it was pretty good. I later realized that this is the same guy who wrote the Arena novel for Magic: the Gathering and also the same guy who wrote that famous "One Second After" book about the U.S. following and EMP attack. While Into the Sea of Stars isn't ever overwhelming, it's a fun read and I'll keep the author in mind for the future.
Wednesday, July 20, 2016
Crap from Facebook: July 20th, 2016
It takes a peculiar state of mind to see that something happened somewhere else and to say, "That didn't happen here, but some other, different thing did happen here, and when you wrote about the thing that happened somewhere else, you didn't mention the thing that happened here." I don't know whether the statistic mentioned here is true, but the author is disingenuous anyway...
- This appears to be a Canadian newspaper, but the author appeals to a U.S. statistic and then says "U.S. and Canada." No need to bring us up at all. You want to compare Canada to Pakistan, then do it.
- The homicide rate in Pakistan is much higher than in Canada.
- While I think "honor killing" is a stupid term, it does have some meaning. It refers to the killing of a person by that person's family due to cultural factors indicating that the victim dishonored the family. In some places, this is legal. In others the government turns a blind eye toward it. While that's all rather vague, it's far removed from the statistic presented that "three women a day are killed by their male partners" in the U.S.
- It's still the case that most victims of homicide are men. That didn't stop being true.
Thursday, June 2, 2016
The narrative progression of my (first) playthrough in Fallout 4
In 2077, a man speaks to his bathroom mirror, pondering the history of civilization. "War," he concludes, "war never changes."
210 years later, the man's wife stumbles out of cryogenic preservation into a nightmarish wasteland. She struggles at first, but begins learning how to build weapons, armor, and other tools. Dubiously named the leader of a militia organization, she slaughters hostile mutants, raiders, and other threats, uniting the small, vulnerable settlements in the area for the common defense. She joins three separate organizations that each have their own political goals, effectively becoming a triple agent. Later, as these groups come into conflict, she destroys two of the factions by attaching explosives to their infrastructure and killing everyone who gets in her way. And as she watches the last of these explosions, she remembers the world she lost and the world she found on awakening. "War," she concludes, "war never changes."
Yeah, I'm pretty sure war wasn't like that before...
210 years later, the man's wife stumbles out of cryogenic preservation into a nightmarish wasteland. She struggles at first, but begins learning how to build weapons, armor, and other tools. Dubiously named the leader of a militia organization, she slaughters hostile mutants, raiders, and other threats, uniting the small, vulnerable settlements in the area for the common defense. She joins three separate organizations that each have their own political goals, effectively becoming a triple agent. Later, as these groups come into conflict, she destroys two of the factions by attaching explosives to their infrastructure and killing everyone who gets in her way. And as she watches the last of these explosions, she remembers the world she lost and the world she found on awakening. "War," she concludes, "war never changes."
Yeah, I'm pretty sure war wasn't like that before...
Wednesday, May 11, 2016
Cryptonomicon, The Caves of Steel, and War Dogs
Just a quick update on books I've read lately.
I'd already posted an excerpt from Neil Stephenson's Cryptonomicon here. I do like Stephenson's work and intend to read more of it. Seveneves is one of my favorite books ever. This one in, in many respects, is great too. But it's missing an ending! Same problem as The Diamond Age only worse. The novel doesn't even pretend to have a proper ending. It just stops going. I still enjoyed it, but that's a pretty serious flaw.
I read The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov while I was stuck on Vashon Island for work and realized that I'd left Cryptonomicon at home. I immediately recognized that it was one of Asimov's robot novels and that it must have taken place sometime before The Naked Sun. Classic Asimov and a real pleasure to read. I do remember The Naked Sun as being a bit better than this one, but it's still quite good.
Most recently, I read War Dogs by Greg Bear. I'm finding that Greg Bear's work is inconsistent, sort of hit-or-miss. This one would be a partial hit. I enjoyed it, but it seemed that Bear was setting up a whole world and then, rather than fleshing it out or really developing the characters, concluding everything by setting up a vague, unsolved mystery that the reader isn't really compelled to care about. I'm still interested enough to look for the sequel at some point, but compared to Eon and such, War Dogs just isn't impressive.
I'd already posted an excerpt from Neil Stephenson's Cryptonomicon here. I do like Stephenson's work and intend to read more of it. Seveneves is one of my favorite books ever. This one in, in many respects, is great too. But it's missing an ending! Same problem as The Diamond Age only worse. The novel doesn't even pretend to have a proper ending. It just stops going. I still enjoyed it, but that's a pretty serious flaw.
I read The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov while I was stuck on Vashon Island for work and realized that I'd left Cryptonomicon at home. I immediately recognized that it was one of Asimov's robot novels and that it must have taken place sometime before The Naked Sun. Classic Asimov and a real pleasure to read. I do remember The Naked Sun as being a bit better than this one, but it's still quite good.
Most recently, I read War Dogs by Greg Bear. I'm finding that Greg Bear's work is inconsistent, sort of hit-or-miss. This one would be a partial hit. I enjoyed it, but it seemed that Bear was setting up a whole world and then, rather than fleshing it out or really developing the characters, concluding everything by setting up a vague, unsolved mystery that the reader isn't really compelled to care about. I'm still interested enough to look for the sequel at some point, but compared to Eon and such, War Dogs just isn't impressive.
Saturday, March 26, 2016
Excerpt I like from Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (published in 1999)
Randy was forever telling people, without rancor, that they were full of shit. That was the only way to get anything done in hacking. No one took it personally.
Charlene's crowd most definitely did take it personally. It wasn't being told that they were wrong that offended them, though—it was the underlying assumption that a person could be right or wrong about anything. So on the Night in Question—the night of Avi's fateful call—Randy had done what usually did, which was to withdraw from the conversation. In the Tolkien, not the endrocrinological or Snow White sense, Randy is a dwarf. Tolkien's Dwarves were stout, taciturn, vaguely magical characters who spent a lot of time in the dark hammering out beautiful things, e.g. Rings of Power. Thinking of himself as a Dwarf who had hung up his war-ax for a while to go sojourning in the Shire, where he was surrounded by squabbling Hobbits (i.e., Charlene's friends), had actually done a lot for Randy's peace of mind over the years. He knew perfectly well that if he were stuck in academia these people, and the things they said, would seem momentous to him. But where he came from, nobody had been taking these people seriously for years. So he just withdrew from the conversation and drank his wine and looked out over the Pacific surf and tried not to do anything really obvious like shaking his head and rolling his eyes.
Then the topic of the Information Superhighway came up, and Randy could feel faces turning his direction like searchlights, casting an almost palpable warmth on his skin.
Dr. G.E.B. Kivistik had a few things to say about the Information Superhighway. He was a fiftyish Yale professor who had just flown in from someplace that had sounded really cool and impressive when he had gone out of his way to mention it several times. His name was Finnish, but was British as only a non-British Anglophile could be. Ostensibly he was here to attend War as Text. Really he was there to recruit Charlene, and really really (Randy suspected) to fuck her. This was probably not true at all, but just a symptom of how whacked out Randy was getting by this point. Dr. G.E.B. Kivistik had been showing up on television pretty frequently. Dr. G.E.B. Kivistik had a couple of books out. Dr. G.E.B. Kivistik was, in short, parlaying his strongly contrarian view of the Information Superhighway into more air time than anyone who hadn't been accused of blowing up a daycare center should get.
A Dwarf on sojourn to the Shire would probably go to a lot of dinner parties where pompous boring Hobbits would hold forth like this. This Dwarf would view the whole thing as entertainment. He would also know that he could always go back out into the real world, so much vaster and more complex than these Hobbits imagined, and slay a few Trolls and remind himself of what really mattered.
That was what Randy always told himself, anyway, But on the Night in Question, it didn't work. Partly because Kivistik was too big and real to be a Hobbit—probably more influential in the real world than Randy would ever be. Partly because another faculty spouse at the table—a likeable, harmless computerphile named Jon—decided to take issue with some of Kivistik's statements and was cheerfully shot down for his troubles. Blood was in the water.
Randy had ruined his relationship with Charlene by wanting to have kids. Kids raise issues. Charlene, like all of her friends, couldn't handle issues. Issues meant disagreement. Voicing disagreement was a form of conflict. Conflict, acted out openly and publicly, was a male mode of social interaction—the foundation for patriarchal society which brought with it the usual litany of dreadful things. Regardless, Randy decided to get patriarchal with Dr. G.E.B. Kivistik.
"How many slums will we bulldoze to build the Information Superhighway?" Kivistik said. This profundity was received with thoughtful nodding around the table.
Jon shifted in his chair as if Kivistik had just dropped an ice cube down his collar. "What does that mean?" he asked. Jon was smiling, trying not to be a patriarchal conflict-oriented patriarchal hegemonist. Kivistik, in response, raised his eyebrows and looked at everyone else, as if to say Who invited this poor lightweight? Jon tried to dig himself out from his tactical error, as Randy closed his eyes and winced visibly. Kivistik had spent more years sparring with really smart people over high table at Oxford than Jon had been alive. "You don't have to bulldoze anything. There's nothing there to bulldoze," Jon pleaded.
"Very well, let me put it this way," Kivistik said magnanimously—he was not above dumbing down his material for the likes of Jon. "How many on-ramps will connect the world's ghettos to the Information Superhighway?"
Oh, that's much clearer, everyone seemed to think. Point well taken, Geb! No one looked at Jon, that argumentative pariah. Jon looked helplessly over at Randy, signalling for help.
Jon was a Hobbit who'd actually been out of the Shire recently, so he knew Randy was a dwarf. Now he was fucking up Randy's life by calling upon Randy to jump up on the table, throw off his homespun cloak, and whip out his two-hand ax.
The words came out of Randy's mouth before he had time to think better of it. "The Information Superhighway is just a fucking metaphor! Give me a break!" he said.
There was a silence as everyone around the table winced in unison. Dinner had now, officially, crashed and burned. All they could do now was grab their ankles, put their heads between their knees, and wait for the wreckage to slide to a halt.
"That doesn't tell me very much," Kivistik said. "Everything is a metaphor. The word 'fork' is a metaphor for this object." He held up a fork. "All discourse is built from metaphors."
"That's no excuse for bad metaphors," Randy said.
"Bad? Bad? Who decides what is bad?" Kivistik said, doing his killer impression of a heavy-lidded, mouth-breathing undergraduate. There was a scattered tittering from people who were desperate to break the tension.
Randy could see where it was going. Kivistik had gone for the the usual academician's ace the in hole: everything is relative, it's all just differing perspectives. People had already begun to resume their little side conversations, thinking that the conflict was over, when Randy gave them all a start with: "Who decides what's bad? I do."
Even Dr. G.E.B. Kivistik was flustered. He wasn't sure if Randy was joking. "Excuse me?"
Randy was in no great hurry to answer the question. He took the opportunity to sit back comfortably, stretch, and take a sip of his wine. He was feeling good. "It's like this," he said. "I've read your book. I've seen you on TV. I've heard you tonight. I personally typed up a list of your credentials when I was preparing press materials for this conference. So I know that you're not qualified to have an opinion about technical issues."
"Oh," Kivistik said in mock confusion, "I didn't realize one had to have qualifications."
"I think it's clear," Randy said, "that if you are ignorant of a particular subject, that your opinion is completely worthless. If I'm sick, I don't ask a plumber for advice. I go to a doctor. Likewise, if I have questions about the Internet, I will seek opinions from people who know about it."
"Funny how all of the technocrats seem to be in favor of the Internet," Kivistik said cheerily, milking a few more laughs from the crowd.
"You have just made a statement that is demonstrably not true," Randy said, pleasantly enough. "A number of Internet experts have written well-reasoned books that are sharply critical of it."
Kivistik was finally getting pissed off. All the levity was gone.
"So," Randy continued, "to get back to where we started, the Information Superhighway is a bad metaphor for the Internet, because I say it is. There might be a thousand people on the planet who are as conversant with the Internet as I am. I know most of these people. None of them takes that metaphor seriously. Q.E.D."
"Oh. I see," Kivistik said, a little hotly. He had seen an opening. "So we should rely on the technocrats to tell us what to think, and how to think, about this technology."
The expressions of the others seemed to say that this was a telling blow, righteously struck.
"I'm not sure what a technocrat is," Randy said. "Am I a technocrat? I'm just a guy who went down to the bookstore and bought a couple of textbooks on TCP/IP, which is the underlying protocol of the Internet, and read them. And then I signed on to a computer, which anyone can do nowadays, and I messed around with it for a few years, and now I know all about it. Does that make me a technocrat?"
"You belonged to the technocratic elite even before you picked up that book," Kivistik said. "The ability to wade through a technical text, and to understand it, is a privilege. It is a privilege conferred by an education that is available only to members of an elite class. That's what I mean by technocrat."
"I went to a public school," Randy said. "And then I went to a state university. From that point on, I was self-educated."
Charlene broke in. She had been giving Randy dirty looks ever since this started and he had been ignoring her. Now he was going to pay. "And your family?" Charlene asked frostily.
Randy took a deep breath, stifled the urge to sigh. "My father's an engineer. He teaches at a state college."
"And his father?"
"A mathematician."
Charlene raised her eyebrows. So did nearly everyone else at the table. Case closed.
"I strenuously object to being labeled and pigeonholed and stereotyped as a technocrat," Randy said, deliberately using oppressed-person's language, maybe in an attempt to turn their weapons against them but more likely (he thinks, lying in bed at three a.m. in the Manila Hotel) out of an uncontrollable urge to be a prick. Some of them, out of habit, looked at him soberly; etiquette dictated that you give all sympathy to the oppressed. Others gasped in outrage to hear these words coming from the lips of a known and convicted white male technocrat. "No one in my family has ever had much money or power," he said.
"I think that the point that Charlene's making is like this," said Tomas, one of their houseguests who had flown in from Prague with his wife Nina. He had now appointed himself conciliator. He paused long enough to exchange a warm look with Charlene. "Just by virtue of coming from a scientific family, you are a member of a privileged elite. You're not aware of it--but members of privileged elites are rarely aware of their privileges."
Randy finished the thought. "Until people like you come along to explain to us how stupid, to say nothing of morally bankrupt, we are."
"The false consciousness Tomas is speaking of is exactly what makes entrenched power elites so entrenched," Charlene said.
"Well, I'm sorry I haven't had the good grace to get nowhere," Randy said, now feeling just a bit surly for the first time, "but I have found that if you work hard, educate yourself and keep your wits about you, you can find your way in this society."
"But that's straight out of some nineteenth-century Horatio Alger book," Tomas sputtered.
"So? Just because it's an old idea doesn't mean it's wrong." Randy said.
A small strike force of waitpersons had been forming up around the fringes of the table, arms laden with dishes, making eye contact with each other as they tried to decide when it was okay to break up the fight and serve dinner. One of them rewarded Randy with a platter carrying a wigwam devised from slabs of nearly raw tuna. The pro-consensus, anti-confrontation elements then seized control of the conversation and broke it up into numerous small clusters of people all vigorously agreeing with one another. Jon cast a watery look at Randy, as if to say, was it good for you too? Charlene was ignoring him intensely; she was caught up in a consensus cluster with Tomas. Nina kept trying to catch Randy's eye, but he studiously avoided this because he was afraid that she wanted to favor him with a smoldering come-hither look, and all Randy wanted to do right then was to go thither. Ten minutes later, his pager went off, and he looked down to see Avi's number on it.
Charlene's crowd most definitely did take it personally. It wasn't being told that they were wrong that offended them, though—it was the underlying assumption that a person could be right or wrong about anything. So on the Night in Question—the night of Avi's fateful call—Randy had done what usually did, which was to withdraw from the conversation. In the Tolkien, not the endrocrinological or Snow White sense, Randy is a dwarf. Tolkien's Dwarves were stout, taciturn, vaguely magical characters who spent a lot of time in the dark hammering out beautiful things, e.g. Rings of Power. Thinking of himself as a Dwarf who had hung up his war-ax for a while to go sojourning in the Shire, where he was surrounded by squabbling Hobbits (i.e., Charlene's friends), had actually done a lot for Randy's peace of mind over the years. He knew perfectly well that if he were stuck in academia these people, and the things they said, would seem momentous to him. But where he came from, nobody had been taking these people seriously for years. So he just withdrew from the conversation and drank his wine and looked out over the Pacific surf and tried not to do anything really obvious like shaking his head and rolling his eyes.
Then the topic of the Information Superhighway came up, and Randy could feel faces turning his direction like searchlights, casting an almost palpable warmth on his skin.
Dr. G.E.B. Kivistik had a few things to say about the Information Superhighway. He was a fiftyish Yale professor who had just flown in from someplace that had sounded really cool and impressive when he had gone out of his way to mention it several times. His name was Finnish, but was British as only a non-British Anglophile could be. Ostensibly he was here to attend War as Text. Really he was there to recruit Charlene, and really really (Randy suspected) to fuck her. This was probably not true at all, but just a symptom of how whacked out Randy was getting by this point. Dr. G.E.B. Kivistik had been showing up on television pretty frequently. Dr. G.E.B. Kivistik had a couple of books out. Dr. G.E.B. Kivistik was, in short, parlaying his strongly contrarian view of the Information Superhighway into more air time than anyone who hadn't been accused of blowing up a daycare center should get.
A Dwarf on sojourn to the Shire would probably go to a lot of dinner parties where pompous boring Hobbits would hold forth like this. This Dwarf would view the whole thing as entertainment. He would also know that he could always go back out into the real world, so much vaster and more complex than these Hobbits imagined, and slay a few Trolls and remind himself of what really mattered.
That was what Randy always told himself, anyway, But on the Night in Question, it didn't work. Partly because Kivistik was too big and real to be a Hobbit—probably more influential in the real world than Randy would ever be. Partly because another faculty spouse at the table—a likeable, harmless computerphile named Jon—decided to take issue with some of Kivistik's statements and was cheerfully shot down for his troubles. Blood was in the water.
Randy had ruined his relationship with Charlene by wanting to have kids. Kids raise issues. Charlene, like all of her friends, couldn't handle issues. Issues meant disagreement. Voicing disagreement was a form of conflict. Conflict, acted out openly and publicly, was a male mode of social interaction—the foundation for patriarchal society which brought with it the usual litany of dreadful things. Regardless, Randy decided to get patriarchal with Dr. G.E.B. Kivistik.
"How many slums will we bulldoze to build the Information Superhighway?" Kivistik said. This profundity was received with thoughtful nodding around the table.
Jon shifted in his chair as if Kivistik had just dropped an ice cube down his collar. "What does that mean?" he asked. Jon was smiling, trying not to be a patriarchal conflict-oriented patriarchal hegemonist. Kivistik, in response, raised his eyebrows and looked at everyone else, as if to say Who invited this poor lightweight? Jon tried to dig himself out from his tactical error, as Randy closed his eyes and winced visibly. Kivistik had spent more years sparring with really smart people over high table at Oxford than Jon had been alive. "You don't have to bulldoze anything. There's nothing there to bulldoze," Jon pleaded.
"Very well, let me put it this way," Kivistik said magnanimously—he was not above dumbing down his material for the likes of Jon. "How many on-ramps will connect the world's ghettos to the Information Superhighway?"
Oh, that's much clearer, everyone seemed to think. Point well taken, Geb! No one looked at Jon, that argumentative pariah. Jon looked helplessly over at Randy, signalling for help.
Jon was a Hobbit who'd actually been out of the Shire recently, so he knew Randy was a dwarf. Now he was fucking up Randy's life by calling upon Randy to jump up on the table, throw off his homespun cloak, and whip out his two-hand ax.
The words came out of Randy's mouth before he had time to think better of it. "The Information Superhighway is just a fucking metaphor! Give me a break!" he said.
There was a silence as everyone around the table winced in unison. Dinner had now, officially, crashed and burned. All they could do now was grab their ankles, put their heads between their knees, and wait for the wreckage to slide to a halt.
"That doesn't tell me very much," Kivistik said. "Everything is a metaphor. The word 'fork' is a metaphor for this object." He held up a fork. "All discourse is built from metaphors."
"That's no excuse for bad metaphors," Randy said.
"Bad? Bad? Who decides what is bad?" Kivistik said, doing his killer impression of a heavy-lidded, mouth-breathing undergraduate. There was a scattered tittering from people who were desperate to break the tension.
Randy could see where it was going. Kivistik had gone for the the usual academician's ace the in hole: everything is relative, it's all just differing perspectives. People had already begun to resume their little side conversations, thinking that the conflict was over, when Randy gave them all a start with: "Who decides what's bad? I do."
Even Dr. G.E.B. Kivistik was flustered. He wasn't sure if Randy was joking. "Excuse me?"
Randy was in no great hurry to answer the question. He took the opportunity to sit back comfortably, stretch, and take a sip of his wine. He was feeling good. "It's like this," he said. "I've read your book. I've seen you on TV. I've heard you tonight. I personally typed up a list of your credentials when I was preparing press materials for this conference. So I know that you're not qualified to have an opinion about technical issues."
"Oh," Kivistik said in mock confusion, "I didn't realize one had to have qualifications."
"I think it's clear," Randy said, "that if you are ignorant of a particular subject, that your opinion is completely worthless. If I'm sick, I don't ask a plumber for advice. I go to a doctor. Likewise, if I have questions about the Internet, I will seek opinions from people who know about it."
"Funny how all of the technocrats seem to be in favor of the Internet," Kivistik said cheerily, milking a few more laughs from the crowd.
"You have just made a statement that is demonstrably not true," Randy said, pleasantly enough. "A number of Internet experts have written well-reasoned books that are sharply critical of it."
Kivistik was finally getting pissed off. All the levity was gone.
"So," Randy continued, "to get back to where we started, the Information Superhighway is a bad metaphor for the Internet, because I say it is. There might be a thousand people on the planet who are as conversant with the Internet as I am. I know most of these people. None of them takes that metaphor seriously. Q.E.D."
"Oh. I see," Kivistik said, a little hotly. He had seen an opening. "So we should rely on the technocrats to tell us what to think, and how to think, about this technology."
The expressions of the others seemed to say that this was a telling blow, righteously struck.
"I'm not sure what a technocrat is," Randy said. "Am I a technocrat? I'm just a guy who went down to the bookstore and bought a couple of textbooks on TCP/IP, which is the underlying protocol of the Internet, and read them. And then I signed on to a computer, which anyone can do nowadays, and I messed around with it for a few years, and now I know all about it. Does that make me a technocrat?"
"You belonged to the technocratic elite even before you picked up that book," Kivistik said. "The ability to wade through a technical text, and to understand it, is a privilege. It is a privilege conferred by an education that is available only to members of an elite class. That's what I mean by technocrat."
"I went to a public school," Randy said. "And then I went to a state university. From that point on, I was self-educated."
Charlene broke in. She had been giving Randy dirty looks ever since this started and he had been ignoring her. Now he was going to pay. "And your family?" Charlene asked frostily.
Randy took a deep breath, stifled the urge to sigh. "My father's an engineer. He teaches at a state college."
"And his father?"
"A mathematician."
Charlene raised her eyebrows. So did nearly everyone else at the table. Case closed.
"I strenuously object to being labeled and pigeonholed and stereotyped as a technocrat," Randy said, deliberately using oppressed-person's language, maybe in an attempt to turn their weapons against them but more likely (he thinks, lying in bed at three a.m. in the Manila Hotel) out of an uncontrollable urge to be a prick. Some of them, out of habit, looked at him soberly; etiquette dictated that you give all sympathy to the oppressed. Others gasped in outrage to hear these words coming from the lips of a known and convicted white male technocrat. "No one in my family has ever had much money or power," he said.
"I think that the point that Charlene's making is like this," said Tomas, one of their houseguests who had flown in from Prague with his wife Nina. He had now appointed himself conciliator. He paused long enough to exchange a warm look with Charlene. "Just by virtue of coming from a scientific family, you are a member of a privileged elite. You're not aware of it--but members of privileged elites are rarely aware of their privileges."
Randy finished the thought. "Until people like you come along to explain to us how stupid, to say nothing of morally bankrupt, we are."
"The false consciousness Tomas is speaking of is exactly what makes entrenched power elites so entrenched," Charlene said.
"Well, I don't feel very entrenched," Randy said. "I've worked my ass off to get where I've gotten."
"A lot of people work hard all their lives and get nowhere," someone said accusingly. Look out! The sniping had begun."Well, I'm sorry I haven't had the good grace to get nowhere," Randy said, now feeling just a bit surly for the first time, "but I have found that if you work hard, educate yourself and keep your wits about you, you can find your way in this society."
"But that's straight out of some nineteenth-century Horatio Alger book," Tomas sputtered.
"So? Just because it's an old idea doesn't mean it's wrong." Randy said.
A small strike force of waitpersons had been forming up around the fringes of the table, arms laden with dishes, making eye contact with each other as they tried to decide when it was okay to break up the fight and serve dinner. One of them rewarded Randy with a platter carrying a wigwam devised from slabs of nearly raw tuna. The pro-consensus, anti-confrontation elements then seized control of the conversation and broke it up into numerous small clusters of people all vigorously agreeing with one another. Jon cast a watery look at Randy, as if to say, was it good for you too? Charlene was ignoring him intensely; she was caught up in a consensus cluster with Tomas. Nina kept trying to catch Randy's eye, but he studiously avoided this because he was afraid that she wanted to favor him with a smoldering come-hither look, and all Randy wanted to do right then was to go thither. Ten minutes later, his pager went off, and he looked down to see Avi's number on it.
Sunday, March 20, 2016
Everything written by Terry Goodkind
As of a few days ago, I've read every work published by author Terry Goodkind (I just checked to make sure). I think I started reading my first book by him in 2013, but I really cannot remember anymore. In my previous entry, I noted that I have a hard time motivating myself to actually type up detailed reviews of the books that I've read, even when there's so much I want to say. That's never been more true than it is with Terry Goodkind. That's why, as far as I can remember, there were no previous posts here even mentioning him. I kept thinking, "I'll wait until I'm caught up on all of his books, then write one giant post detailing all of my thoughts." Well, that's not this post, and it's now out of the question.
By now, if I were to seriously try to write about everything I find interesting in these books, it'd easily surpass 100 blog posts. I find these books absolutely fascinating, and to some extent, I'm wondering if some of the notions I have about some aspects of the books are thoughts no one else has ever had. That might seem naive or overly bold on my part, but these stories are sufficiently well-written, sufficiently detailed, and sufficiently strange that I find myself pondering them a lot, the themes and characters and implications nagging at my mind, especially right after finishing a book. But when I look at what others say about them, the commentary seems superficial. People who like the books seem to fall into one of the following camps...
Well, I've already said it, but I find Goodkind's work fascinating. He's written 17 books. I've read them all and intend to reread them all. I also intend to buy the ones I don't already own (which is still most of them, at this time). Some day, there will be more posts here about these books. I just need the time and the energy. And I need to collect my thoughts. It's been a wild ride.
By now, if I were to seriously try to write about everything I find interesting in these books, it'd easily surpass 100 blog posts. I find these books absolutely fascinating, and to some extent, I'm wondering if some of the notions I have about some aspects of the books are thoughts no one else has ever had. That might seem naive or overly bold on my part, but these stories are sufficiently well-written, sufficiently detailed, and sufficiently strange that I find myself pondering them a lot, the themes and characters and implications nagging at my mind, especially right after finishing a book. But when I look at what others say about them, the commentary seems superficial. People who like the books seem to fall into one of the following camps...
- Fantasy genre readers who are looking for something that presents a different take on fantasy, something novel, falling outside what are seen as hackneyed tropes of the genre. They're willing to overlook the preachy nature of much of the latter books in the series, or they find it an interesting change of pace from typical fantasy fare.
- People who embrace the values and messages presented in the series. Actually, that's pretty much limited to those that buy into the "objectivist" Ayn Rand school of philosophy and politics. Actually, that might be limited to Terry Goodkind himself. I'm exaggerating a bit, but most objectivists seem to be rather picky about their own evaluations of things, and even if they're broadly sympathetic to Goodkind's ideas, they probably find something in the series to set them off. Still, it would seem that Terry Goodkind surely has some objectivist fans.
- Me.
- Fantasy readers who found the shift from the more subtle, detail-driven narratives of the early books to the increase in objectivist preaching a turn-off. They might have interpreted Goodkind as falling into the trap of diminishing returns in sequel-writing.
- Readers who are picky about some non-philosophical issue in the books, such as the tendency to repeatedly deliver information from earlier books, or the intense descriptions of violence and gore, or the lengthy monologues.
- People who take issue with Terry Goodkind pushing objectivism in his books.
Well, I've already said it, but I find Goodkind's work fascinating. He's written 17 books. I've read them all and intend to reread them all. I also intend to buy the ones I don't already own (which is still most of them, at this time). Some day, there will be more posts here about these books. I just need the time and the energy. And I need to collect my thoughts. It's been a wild ride.
The "Garrett P.I." series by Glen Cook
Way back at the beginning of 2014, I picked up Cold Copper Tears at the library so that I'd have a book to read on the bus (I was out of school by this point, but I didn't have a car, so when I did travel anywhere, it was usually by bus). It was on a whim, because it was small enough to fit in my laptop case with my other junk, and I was curious to see some of Glen Cook's work outside the "Black Company" series. I enjoyed Cold Copper Tears and resolved to read the whole series some day. If that one book was an indication, I thought I'd like these books even more than the Black Company ones. I did see some of the later books in the series on library shelves, but the problem was finding the first entry in the series: Sweet Silver Blues.
At some point, I was going to try to borrow the books in this series that KCLS didn't have through interlibrary loan, and then I didn't. I forget what the deal was with that. Well, unrelated to all this, last year, there was some item that I wanted to buy, and none of the places I normally shop would have it. Then I used Amazon to pick up some Christmas gifts for family, and I thought, "I have money and can also order this thing I want for myself." And from there, it was another step to realizing that I could just buy old, used paperbacks of this whole series of books, and it would only be a small fraction of my total order. Yes, buying books instead of checking them out from the library. Crazy, I know. I rarely think in terms of it, but having a decent job and making money, instead of trying not to look at my pile of debt that wasn't getting any smaller, creates a contrast between my life back then and my life now. Digression. Oops.
So I bought the whole series and started it shortly after finishing Seveneves (another book that I bought). This coincided almost perfectly with the new year, although I may have started reading Sweet Silver Blues a day before or a day after January 1st. I was actually finished reading all of the books by late mid-February, but it took until now to post this because I'm lazy.
I love this series. I want to write a lot about it, but I just can't bring myself to finish long, detailed reviews of books, part of why this blog entry is so late. If I can find the time, I'll write other posts with more detail. Oh, I suppose that I should at least note the names of the books...
1. Sweet Silver Blues
2. Bitter Gold Hearts
3. Cold Copper Tears
4. Old Tin Sorrows
5. Dread Brass Shadows
6. Red Iron Nights
7. Deadly Quicksilver Lies
8. Petty Pewter Gods
9. Faded Steel Heat
10. Angry Lead Skies
11. Whispering Nickel Idols
12. Cruel Zinc Melodies
13. Gilded Latten Bones
14. Wicked Bronze Ambition
At some point, I was going to try to borrow the books in this series that KCLS didn't have through interlibrary loan, and then I didn't. I forget what the deal was with that. Well, unrelated to all this, last year, there was some item that I wanted to buy, and none of the places I normally shop would have it. Then I used Amazon to pick up some Christmas gifts for family, and I thought, "I have money and can also order this thing I want for myself." And from there, it was another step to realizing that I could just buy old, used paperbacks of this whole series of books, and it would only be a small fraction of my total order. Yes, buying books instead of checking them out from the library. Crazy, I know. I rarely think in terms of it, but having a decent job and making money, instead of trying not to look at my pile of debt that wasn't getting any smaller, creates a contrast between my life back then and my life now. Digression. Oops.
So I bought the whole series and started it shortly after finishing Seveneves (another book that I bought). This coincided almost perfectly with the new year, although I may have started reading Sweet Silver Blues a day before or a day after January 1st. I was actually finished reading all of the books by late mid-February, but it took until now to post this because I'm lazy.
I love this series. I want to write a lot about it, but I just can't bring myself to finish long, detailed reviews of books, part of why this blog entry is so late. If I can find the time, I'll write other posts with more detail. Oh, I suppose that I should at least note the names of the books...
1. Sweet Silver Blues
2. Bitter Gold Hearts
3. Cold Copper Tears
4. Old Tin Sorrows
5. Dread Brass Shadows
6. Red Iron Nights
7. Deadly Quicksilver Lies
8. Petty Pewter Gods
9. Faded Steel Heat
10. Angry Lead Skies
11. Whispering Nickel Idols
12. Cruel Zinc Melodies
13. Gilded Latten Bones
14. Wicked Bronze Ambition
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
Crap from Facebook: March 16th, 2016
https://medium.com/all-about-women/grant-every-woman-the-confidence-of-a-mediocre-white-man-e6f9b9d0cc5f#.1gk9jy1nf
Well, Tyler linked to this. I'll spare him my commentary on his own FB link, since I think that's what he'd want.
I won't dissect this thing. It's a funny read. Not too much to say about it. Well, there is one thing that's of interest. This almost reads like it's satirizing itself. The whole thing is an exercise in preposterousness. It seems like I could say, "No one is going to take this seriously." But they do, don't they?
Well, Tyler linked to this. I'll spare him my commentary on his own FB link, since I think that's what he'd want.
I won't dissect this thing. It's a funny read. Not too much to say about it. Well, there is one thing that's of interest. This almost reads like it's satirizing itself. The whole thing is an exercise in preposterousness. It seems like I could say, "No one is going to take this seriously." But they do, don't they?
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