THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
02/09/07 -- Vol. 25, No. 32, Whole Number 1427
El Presidente: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
The Power Behind El Pres: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
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Topics:
Correction
Je Ne Comprends Pas (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Pythagoras and the Law (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
Toddler Air Rage (letters of comment by Phil Merkel,
Daniel Kimmel, and David Leeper)
Translations (letter of comment by Charles Harris)
This Week's Reading (ON THE ROAD and FIFTEEN DECISIVE
BATTLES OF THE WORLD) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Correction
The letter of comment on cookies, warskiing, and electronic
vagabonds in the 02/02/07 issue of the MT VOID was mistakenly
attributed to Daniel Kimmel. It was written by Daniel Cox. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Je Ne Comprends Pas (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
While the name the Ian Fleming title CASINO ROYALE has been around
since JFK declared " Ich ben ein berliner!" ("I am a jelly
doughnut"), in that time has anybody but me noticed it is a
grammatical error? I has been a while since my French class but
shouldn't it be CASINO ROYAL? Don't adjectives have to agree in
gender with nouns? [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Pythagoras and the Law (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I run a program to help high school kids with mathematics. A
question that seems to come up often is whether real people ever
do mathematics. I expect the low end of these kids--probably the
ones asking for help--are going to have careers such as working
in lumberyards, running a cash register, being automobile
mechanics. These are jobs that all use mathematics, but only on a
low level. Certainly the students see that arithmetic might be
useful, though surprisingly few can do it with any proficiency.
But it is hard for them to see how something like the quadratic
equation or the Pythagorean Theorem is going to be of use to them
in the future. Actually, I can see how something as complex as
the Pythagorean Theorem can be used in a lumberyard, but it is
harder to tie it into cash registers or traditional auto
mechanics. But you never know. There was a drug dealer who found
that questions of mathematics and particularly the Pythagorean
Theorem became very relevant to his line of work.
In November 2005, a case came up to the New York State Court of
Appeals. It seems that one James Robbins was found guilty of
selling drugs. The sentence was made stronger because, as the
law had determined, he had been selling drugs within a thousand
feet of a school. It is illegal enough to deal drugs, but to
sell them so close to a school is considered worse and gives an
even stiffer sentence. You have probably seen signs all over the
roads that warn "Drug Free School Zone" to compassionately inform
poor unsuspecting drug dealers that they are entering the region
within a thousand feet of the school with stiffer fines. (I
don't know how much consideration has been given to putting up
signs on the reverse side telling people they are leaving the
school proximity zone. They could just put up a small sign that
says, "Leaving drug-free zone. Resume Drugs." (Aside: You know
I made that comment to a family member who happens to be a
Massachusetts State Trooper and he completely missed the humor in
it. I guess all humor is relative.))
The aforementioned Mr. Robbins had been selling drugs in
Manhattan at the corner of Eighth Avenue and 40th Street. And
there was, in fact, a school on 43rd Street between Eighth and
Ninth. The appeal did not contest the fact of the selling of
drugs. What was contested was the distance from the school.
Counsel for the Defense argued that it had been paced and there
is no way to get to the point that Robbins was standing and
delivering by walking 1000 feet. Any path to the point of Robbins
dealership would require going around buildings and the point was
outside of the distance of a 1000-foot walk from the school.
The law enforcement authorities had made the case that Robbins
actually had been standing within a 1000-foot radius of the
school. It seems they measured along the streets. One had to
walk from the school 490 feet to the corner of Eighth Avenue and
then 764 feet to Mr. Robbins's chosen place of business at the
corner of Eighth Avenue and 40th Street. Plugging this into a
calculator they came up with a figure that Mr. Robbins's ad hoc
place of business is actually 907.63 feet from the school.
The real question was whether the law takes into account
obstacles. It turns out that mathematicians do not always
measure distances in the same way. They sometimes do use what
they have dubbed--appropriately enough in this case--"the
Manhattan Metric." That is a way to measure distance was
inspired by the streets and avenues of Manhattan. Using this
metric you measure distances rectilinearly. (That is not a messy
as it sounds.) The distance from (0,0) to (3,6) is considered to
be 9 or 3+6 because you would go from (0,0) to (3,0) going a
distance of 3, and then from (3,0) to (3,6). There is
incidentally also the "Washington Metric", which is inspired by
the roads of Washington, DC where roads come radially out of a
center point. You can use many different metrics to measure the
distance between points as long as you follow four fairly
intuitive rules: 1) The distance from any point to itself must be
zero. 2) The distance from any point to any different point is
positive. 3) The distance from point A to point B is the same as
the distance from B to A. And finally that detours cannot save
you distance. That is, 4) the distance from A to C has to be no
more than the distance from A to B plus the distance from B to C
for any point B. Actually, the real Manhattan does not fit the
third constraint if you travel by car. Sometimes in Manhattan
you have to go a lot further to travel from A to B than to travel
from B to A due to their lamentable practice of creating one-way
streets. (I always said that civilization started going downhill
with the invention of the one-way street. Until that point you
could always leave the way you came. With one-way streets They
(the big They) had a means of trapping you.)
Okay, with that diversion you may be wondering how the appeal
turned out. The magistrate opined that applicable metric should
be not how a person walks but as the crow flies, in spite of the
fact that crows do not generally buy drugs. If distance is to be
measured for the purpose of enforcing drug free zones around
schools the distance should be the metric most likely taught
within the schools. They will use everybody's favorite metric,
the Pythagorean Theorem. Entrepreneur Robbins was within a
thousand feet of the school. He got a small lesson in geometry
and he got the stiffer penalty. Q.E.D. (He probably preferred
the lesson in geometry to the stiff penalty. Though some of my
student may not think so.) [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Clint Eastwood shows us the battle of Iwo Jima from the
Japanese side, having three months ago given it to us from the
American side. This time he gives us a more traditional war film
that is anti-violence but pays homage to those men forced to be
violent. The film is based on the actual letters of one Japanese
commander who is forced to do his duty knowing it will mean his
death. Eastwood makes some stylistic mistakes, but the strength
of the underlying material comes through. Rating: high +2 (-4 to
+4) or 8/10
This is, of course, Eastwood's second Iwo Jima film. It is a
follow-up to his directly previous film, FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS.
He said in an interview on National Public Radio that while
making the first film he became interested in these letters by
the Japanese commander of the island and decided that there was a
movie to be made about him. As far as I am concerned, it is
actually a better film and very different in tone. FLAGS OF OUR
FATHERS was about exploitation and dishonesty. This is a film
about honor and courage. In spite of the necessary downbeat
ending, at the end of LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA one feels clean and
the previous film leaves one feeling a little dirty. Curiously,
that makes this the more traditional of the two war films. But
there might be good reason for the traditions. Actually, the two
films are mostly consistent in their respect for the fighting man
and are less positive on functionaries who did their service a
safe distance from the fighting, people who could be unfeeling
who could tell themselves it was in good cause.
In the closing days of the Pacific War General Tadamichi
Kuribayashi (played by Ken Watanabe) is the commander ordered to
defend Iwo Jima from the onslaught of Americans. The island
itself seems of little intrinsic value beyond simply being a
strategic objective, being it was actually Japan. Like Yamamoto,
Kuribayashi had been to the United States and was pessimistic
that Japan could defeat such an industrial power. At this point
in the war, that conclusion was rapidly becoming obvious to all
and all too obvious. Kuribayashi accepts the command fully
knowing that it is going to mean his death and the death of most
of his men. Knowing that fact reinforces his natural compassion
for the men serving under him. This makes him liked by the men,
but disliked by the junior officers who favor harsh discipline
for those lower in command. Kuribayashi's strategy it to take
men from digging trenches on the beach and had them instead dig
caves in the rocky hills of the island. This will simply slow
the Americans. He sees his responsibility is to protect the
Japanese children from the Americans, even if it is for only one
day.
Iris Yamashita's screenplay, based on Kuribayashi's letters to
his family, gives us views into the lives of the serving men and
how they came to be serving on Iwo Jima. Once we are introduced
and have a feel for the characters, we see them plunged into the
inferno of war. The personal stories are affecting, though this
is a surprisingly familiar structure for a war film. Films from
the 1940s up to BAND OF BROTHERS have used it. And the soldiers
experience and personalities are not very different from those of
their American enemies. They are sympathetically portrayed. One
low-level American soldier is decidedly unsympathetic, but there
is a Japanese soldier who balances him off. The majority of
those on both sides are just decent people hoping to survive the
war and to get back to civilian life. There is something of the
same spirit here of Michael Shaara's book THE KILLER ANGELS (made
into the great film GETTYSBURG). As in Shaara, both sides are
seen as noble and the war is very unfortunate. What we see are
probably echoes of just about any war.
Ken Watanabe, playing General Kuribayashi, has been in Japanese
films since 1984, notably including the food comedy TAMPOPO.
However he did not get much attention in this country until his
title role in THE LAST SAMURAI. Since then he has been in BATMAN
BEGINS and MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA. The IMDB also says he is rumored
to be already cast for next year's WOLVERINE. He is fast
becoming this generation's answer to Toshiro Mifune. His is the
only face in the film that is likely to be familiar to Americans.
Both Iwo Jima films have the heavily muted colors all but
simulating monochrome. Color is used to highlight parts of an
image--especially the flames of explosions--but never the full
image. Selecting color values within a single scene like this is
effective once or twice, but it is becoming an all-too-familiar
device. Nobody is denying that lighting and color affect the feel
of a film, but this is a gimmick that calls attention to itself
away from the underlying material, and both of Eastwood's Iwo
Jima films used it. Also the muted colors are something of a
special problem in this film. The subtitles are in white and the
background is frequently nearly white making the titles less
readable. If Eastwood wanted to color something in the frame, it
should have been the subtitles.
LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA has some wrenching moments but overall it
strikes me as much less graphic than was FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS.
Overall Eastwood gives tone to the film by playing honor and
fatalism against each other. We rarely get a chance to see the
war from the Japanese side, particularly in the tragic final
weeks. I rate LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA a high +2 on the -4 to +4
scale or 8/10. [-mrl]
[Mark's review of FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS may be found in the
10/27/06 issue of the MT VOID, or at or at
http://www.geocities.com/markleeper/fathers.htm.]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Toddler Air Rage (letters of comment by Phil Merkel, Daniel
Kimmel, and David Leeper)
In response to Mark's article on toddler air rage in the 02/02/07
issue of the MT VOID, we got several letters.
Phil Merkel writes, "I enjoyed reading your piece on the child
who would not buckle (or perhaps the parents who wouldn't buckle
down?) and it made me wonder if the child who refuses to wear a
seat belt on a plane would wear one in a car? The
car belts are more restrictive for children on cars and I would
think it would be much less a problem on a plane with it's simple
lap belt." [-pm]
Dan Kimmel writes, " I agree with Mark's notion about being
responsible for your kids in transit. When my daughter was an
infant, we took the train from New York back to Boston and I
could see everyone giving us the fish eye when we
boarded. We made sure we had food, diapers, toys to distract
her, etc. When we got off the train in Boston one passenger
thanked us for having such a well-behaved baby. Of course my
wife and I were exhausted. However I want to add that while
people should expect parents to control and otherwise be
responsible for their kids, being a parent isn't a crime, and
adults who are looking for trouble when they see a kid board
should cool it. On a flight to Florida there was a mother and
toddler sitting behind me. While boarding was going on, the kid
started kicking my seat. I turned around, gave them both a big
smile, wished them a nice flight, and said, as pleasantly as I
could, that I trusted that junior would *not* be kicking my seat
for the rest of the flight. The kicking stopped." [-dk]
Mark replies, "This also happened to me recently, but the kicking
did not stop. Again it was origami to the rescue. I started
tearing pages out my magazine and folding figures. That at least
kept her amused. She kicked only very occasionally after that."
[-mrl]
And Dan concludes, "A little civility on both sides accomplishes
more than a sense of infringed entitlement. (Not that I'm
accusing Mark of this, just making an observation.)" [-dk]
To which Mark says, "I agree." [-mrl]
And David Leeper writes, "This is a sensible editorial like
Mark's many other sensible editorials. It's not surprising,
since I know he comes from a sensible family.... Mark has put
his finger on the much broader now-vs-then trend towards blaming
someone or something else for every mishap, large or small. What
might have caused such a trend? I hope Mark will put some ink
and intellect into that broader topic ..."
Mark responds:
"We may be talking about two different things.
The now-vs-then change you are seeing is one of better
communication so we see it happening more often. It has always
been human nature to blame others. You might be able to get some
restitution from the blamed party. Even if not it is just human
psychology to find a scapegoat. A scapegoat with deep pockets is
even better in this age of easy lawsuits. And frequently natural
prejudices play a part. You cannot look at Jewish history and
not realize that Jews have been blamed for a lot that in
enlightened times we realize they could not possibly have been
guilty of (e.g., causing the Black Plague). When a woman spills
hot coffee in her lap it is natural to find someone else to
blame. (Incidentally, I believe Consumer Reports made a case
that McDonalds really was at least partially to blame serving the
coffee at a dangerously high temperature.) But I think that
probably most people prefer to blame others or to let others take
the blame.
In the case in the editorial, however, it was not somebody
blaming bad luck on AirTran but a complaint about airline policy
not being sufficiently tolerant of uncooperative children and
inconveniences they cause. They were not saying the incident was
AirTran's fault but that they did not like the way AirTran
handled the situation. A big part of that is the Kulesza's
attitude that other people have a responsibility to be tolerant
of the inconveniences they inflict on them because they are
parents dealing with an uncooperative child. They are denying
responsibility for their child's behavior and saying that the
behavior should be treated as just the other passengers' bad
luck." [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Translations (letter of comment by Charles Harris)
In Evelyn's comments on "A Dictionary of Received Ideas" in the
02/02/07 issue of the MT VOID, she wrote, "Krailsheimer does
indicate a couple of spots where he took liberties. For example,
he has 'SPICE: plural of 'spouse'; an old joke but still good for
a laugh,' with a note '[chacal/shakos in French].' 'Chacal' is
'jackal', but I cannot find 'shakos' in my dictionary."
Charlie Harris writes:
American Heritage Dictionary:
shakˇo also shackˇo (shak'o, sha'ko, shä'-)
n. pl. shakˇos also shackˇos or shakˇoes also shackˇoes
A stiff, cylindrical military dress hat with a metal plate in
front, a short visor, and a plume. [French schako, from
Hungarian csákó, from csákós (süveg), pointed (cap), from csák,
peak, perhaps from Middle High German zacke, tack, nail.]
The plural of a French adjective that ends in -al typically ends
in -aux (pronounced o).
If you like this sort of word-play and inventive translation, you
may enjoy the book I'm working my way through (hoping to finish
before the end of the decade): Douglas Hofstadter's LE TON BEAU
DE MAROT. This is the book I've mentioned before that is built
around *88* translations of the same little French poem. As
you'd expect from Hofstadter, its 600 pages contain *lots* more
than his ruminations on the challenges of translation. It
strikes me as a more disciplined, academic, nonfiction (mostly)
counterpart to the compulsively rambling TRISTRAM SHANDY (one of
my very favorite humorous books). I agree with both the rave and
the pan on Amazon. [-ch]
Evelyn responds, "Coincidentally, Hofstadter's book was mentioned
recently in a different context at our local book discussion and
after that I had already put it on my shelf to re-read!" [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
You know you have too many books when you find yourself figuring
out what clothes to get rid of to make room in the drawers for
books!
Our discussion group chose ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac (ISBN-10
0-140-04259-8, ISBN-13 978-0-140-04259-7) for our January book.
most of us found it close to unreadable, and certainly not
enjoyable. But at least two of us were stuck by this passage in
Part 2, Chapter 2: "When daybreak came we were zooming through
New Jersey wit the great cloud of Metropolitan New York rising
before us in the snowy distance. Dean had a sweater wrapped
around his ears to keep warm. He said we were a band of Arabs
coming in to blow up New York." And this was written a half
century before 9/11.
Written in 1851, FIFTEEN DECISIVE BATTLES OF THE WORLD by Sir
Edward S. Creasey (ISBN-10 0-306-80559-6, ISBN-13 978-0-306-
80559-2) is a classic.
The battles are (briefly):
490 B.C.E.--The Persians defeated at Marathon.
413 B.C.E.--The Athenians defeated at Syracuse.
331 B.C.E.--Darius III defeated at Gaugamela (Arbela).
207 B.C.E.--The Catheginians defeated at Metaurus.
9 B.C.E.--The Romans defeated in the Teutoberg Forest.
451 C.E.--Attila the Hun defeated at Chalons.
732 C.E.--The Moors defeated at Tours.
1066 C.E.--Harold defeated at Hastings.
1429 C.E.--The English defeated at Orleans.
1588 C.E.--The Spanish Armada defeated.
1704 C.E.--The French defeated at Blenheim.
1709 C.E.--The Swedes defeated at Poltava.
1777 C.E.--Burgoyne defeated at Saratoga.
1792 C.E.--Foreign armies defeated at Valmy.
1815 C.E.--Napoleon defeated at Waterloo.
One thing that is noted by everyone is that all of these are very
Eurocentric choices. But even more than that, they are all
battles that reinforced (western) European dominance. Even
Teutoberg is seen by Creasy as leading directly to the
establishment of the British peoples. Creasy chooses Tours as
critical in halting the Arab invasion of Europe. But he ignores
the recapture of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1187 or the capture of
Acre in 1291, either of which could be cited as halting the
expansion of Europe into the Middle East and Asia. He ignores
the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. He ignores the
defeat in the Battle of Koan of the Mongols invading Japan in
1281.
[He also does not include Yarmouk in 636 which brought Islam
flooding out of Arabia and is arguably the most important. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Yarmouk -mrl] [And which
one rarely ever hears about. -ecl]
One might think that Creasy's critical turning points would have
generated various alternate history stories, but one would be
only partly accurate. Yes, there are stories based on most of
the early ones (though with Alexander, Carthage, and Joan of Arc
they are more general than based on specific battles) and for
Saratoga and Waterloo, but nothing for Syracuse, Tours, Blenheim,
Poltava, or Valmy.
Historian Joseph B. Mitchell has five more battles since 1851:
1863--Confederates defeated in the Vicksburg Campaign.
1866--Austria defeated at Sadowa in the Seven Weeks' War.
1914--German forces defeated at the Marne.
1942--Japanese defeated at Midway.
1942--Germans defeated at Stalingrad (now Volgograd).
For alternate histories, Vicksburg has been almost ignored, while
Gettysburg has inspired dozens of stories. Sadowa? Nothing.
The Marne? Most World War I alternate histories focus on either
the assassination or some obscure German corporal. And it seems
as though there are only a couple of stories on Midway and none
on Stalingrad. (One might argue that Mitchell should have chosen
Pearl Harbor, since without that we might have "sat out" the war,
and things would be very different now.)
By the way, in his chapter on Saratoga, Creasy quotes Alexis de
Toqueville, who had written fifteen years earlier. Even by
Creasy's time, it was a picture of the United States that was not
accurate, and certainly as a prediction of what would come was
fairly far off: "The time will therefore come when one hundred
and fifty millions of men will be living in North America, equal
in condition, one race, owing their origin to the same cause, and
preserving the same civilisation, the same language, the same
religion, the same habits, the same manners, and imbued with the
same opinions, propagated under the same forms. The rest is
uncertain, but this is certain; ...." (The United States
population was 150,000,000 in 1950.)
Creasy himself repeatedly refers to "Anglo-Americans", and says
things like, "They, like ourselves, are members of the great
Anglo-Saxon nation", and "our race is one, being of the same
blood, speaking the same language, having an essential
resemblance in our institutions and usages, and worshipping in
the temples of the same God." Again, even in Creasy's time this
was not accurate--even before the massive influx of immigrants in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the United
States had a fair percentage of German (almost 10% of the
population during the War of 1812), Scots, and Irish. And of
course there was a very large percentage of African-Americans,
which both he and de Toqueville ignored. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
The reason people blame things on previous
generations is that there's only one other choice.
-- Doug Larson