THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
05/16/08 -- Vol. 26, No. 46, Whole Number 1493
El Honcho Grande: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
La Honcha Bonita: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Getting Useful Information from Corrupted Sources (part 2)
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
HALTING STATE by Charles Stross (a book review
by Joe Karpierz)
Counting the Number of Numbers (letter of comment
by Dan Cox)
Mary Chesnut (letter of comment by Mike Glyer)
Inter-Library Loan (letter of comment from a non-member)
This Week's Reading (DREAM FACTORIES AND RADIO PICTURES,
HOLY COW, and "The American Civil War")
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Getting Useful Information from Corrupted Sources (part 2)
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Last week I discussed the Internet Movie Database ratings for
films. Some film critics have criticized those ratings as having
been rendered valueless because some people try to manipulate the
ratings. But similar crises of credibility apply elsewhere. In
the 1980s much of the public became disillusioned that some
standardized tests where giving skewed results because the
questions had a cultural bias. People have decided that they
could not trust tests like the SATs or IQ tests because these
tests are "racist" and "very ethnically-biased."
The question to investigate is just how biased are these tests
and perhaps even if this bias is such a bad thing. (Hold on.
That sounds like an inflammatory statement. Let me explain.)
Generally it is just a very small proportion of the questions
that appear to be biased. Yes, a question that has a picture of
a teacup may assume that the person being tested will recognize
what a teacup is. Not all societies have teacups. But still it
is only a small percentage of the people taking the test will
really not know what a teacup is. And these tests really are
intended to predict success in our culture. A Kalahari Bushman
may be an absolute genius on the Kalahari desert, but still may
have no idea how to function as a corporate employee. A test
that measures how well a person will function in our culture may
by definition have a cultural bias. Life and strategies for
success are culturally biased.
Wikipedia has also taken its share of criticism for factual
inaccuracies. Some of these issues were matters of opinion or
information from well-meaning people that was just wrong. Some
bits of misinformation were intentional from its self-chosen
contributors, much like the situation with the IMDB. The
Wikipedia organization has improved its review procedures, but
there still seems to be some anti-Wikipedia fears in the public.
Certainly the people who think that if they see it on the
Internet than it must be true are in for a shock. When they find
out that some of what they read on the Internet is false they
think that the Internet is what is at fault. This attitude is
much like saying that the phone company is responsible to be sure
that nobody lies to you over the telephone.
How much of a problem is misinformation on Wikipedia? In a
comparison with the respected Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia
was found to have 33% more errors in comparable material. There
will typically be four errors in Wikipedia for every three in the
Britannica.
http://tinyurl.com/58rps3
Considering the difference in price, Wikipedia is a bargain. And
if you are reading an article about Civil War weapons the
material is less controversial and so less likely to be corrupted
than material about Hillary Clinton. Wikipedia has taken steps
to counter the problem of misinformation with review and
moderation processes. Wrong information frequently is corrected
in minutes.
Information from Wikipedia and from the Internet Movie Database
can be a valuable asset. Wikipedia probably will not give
someone information as accurate as could be found by his doing
his own research. On the other hand, even if he does do his own
research he very likely will run against misinformation.
Depending on how he chooses his sources, Wikipedia may have the
greater accuracy. This may be more so with more recent Wikipedia
article refereeing.
A healthy skepticism is just good survival strategy, but it is a
mistake to decide that if a source like the IMDB or Wikipedia has
been found with some false information it can never be trusted
again. Most people generally do not react that extremely when a
weather forecaster has a wrong prediction. Using Internet
sources for information requires a little caution. This is
especially true when the information involves controversial
issues for which some people will have their own agenda. But
never trusting a source again is an over-reaction. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: HALTING STATE by Charles Stross (copyright 2007, Ace,
$24.95, 351pp, ISBN 978-0-441-01498-9) (a book review by Joe
Karpierz)
Charles Stross is a prolific writer in more ways than one--he
writes novels non-stop, and he piles up award nominations like
they're going out of style. He's done it again with his latest
Hugo-nominated novel, HALTING STATE. I've been saying for quite
a while now that whatever Stross writes is terrific, and HALTING
STATE is no exception.
The setting is Scotland in 2018. Sergeant Sue Smith has been
called in on a robbery case--nothing that's particularly unusual,
since cops get called on robbery cases all the time. Except this
one *is* unusual in that it takes place within a massively multi-
player online role-playing game. You guys who play "World of
Warcraft" and "Lord of the Rings Online" know what I'm talking
about. The victims, Hayek Associates, keeps a central bank for
its players within the game "Avalon Four", a place where you can
store your stuff for safekeeping because you've got way too much
to carry around with you. Well, this kind of robbery is supposed
to be impossible, but it obviously happened. The problem is that
once word leaks out that this has happened, Hayek Associates is
going to go down the tubes financially.
So, Elaine of Dietrich-Brunner Associates gets called in. She's
a forensic investigator specializing in financial issues. DBA is
called in because they're associated with Hayek as their insurers
or auditors or whatever (the details fade when I write a book
review more than a week after I've finished it--real life gets in
the way now and again). Elaine needs someone who can help her
out--an expert in game programming. So one Jack Reed gets called
in as a contractor to help out, which is a good thing for him
because he'd just been mysteriously let go from his last
position. And what they find is completely mind-blowing and out
of their league.
Needless to say nothing is as it appears. As I've stated, this
started out as a simple bank robbery investigation, but it turns
into something much more when Jack and Elaine track down someone
who is trying to sell the stolen (virtual) goods. The suspect
spills the beans a little more than he plans, and we find out
that this whole thing is much, much bigger than anyone can
imagine, and yet the whole thing is started by a simple human
emotion: greed. And it's more like world domination than it is a
bank robbery.
This is a terrific near-future projection of our current
technology. The idea of using MMORPGs as a setting for a crime
is interesting and intriguing, if not original. The technology
of CopSpace, kind of like MySpace for the police, is a real
possibility. The whole of Scotland being so connected by the
internet that when the security encryption keys are compromised
everything is brought to a screaming halt can be easily
envisioned by folks today. While we're not quite there yet, a
lot of the stuff that Stross is postulating could be happening in
the next decade or two. And it's very frightening.
The only thing that was a drawback is that it got a bit too
complicated for me to follow near the end--maybe I was just not
in the right frame of mind for it, but I found myself flailing
about a couple of times going "huh?". Truly, however, I liked
this book. I think it's yet another worthy Hugo nominee from
Charles Stross.
Next up: BRASYL, by Ian McDonald. [-jak]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Counting the Number of Numbers (letter of comment by Dan
Cox)
Dan Cox wrote an extended discussion of counting large sets that I
thought was a little large to include in the MT VOID, so to find
it go to:
http://www.geocities.com/markleeper/Cardinality.htm
It also contains an account of my first date, which does fit into
the subject, oddly enough. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Mary Chesnut (letter of comment by Mike Glyer)
In response to Evelyn's comment on THE LOVELY BONES in the
04/25/08 issue of the MT VOID ("whoever copy-edited it did not
catch that the name of the Confederate diarist is 'Mary Chesnut',
not 'Mary Chestnut'"), Mike Glyer writes, "I guess it's inevitable
that someone with my abysmal copyediting skills would have managed
to own a copy of 'Mary Chesnut's Civil War' for years without
realizing there's no 'T' in the middle of her name...*sigh*."
[-mg]
Evelyn responds, "If I had a dime for every book or author whose
name I have misspelled in our catalog, *in spite of having the
book in front of me when I'm typing*, I could buy a really fancy
drink at Starbucks. Start with 'Allan Quatermain', which I
spelled as 'Quartermain' for years!" [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Inter-Library Loan (letter of comment from a non-member)
In response to Evelyn's comments on the reading list for GREAT
BATTLES OF THE ANCIENT WORLD in the 05/09/08 issue of the MT VOID
("but if you were in a position to get books from a college
library, you probably wouldn't be taking this course"), someone
forwarded an observation from a friend: "You can get books from
public college libraries with your local library card."
Evelyn responds, "I can get books via inter-library loan from
Middlesex County College, but I that I would have to drive to
Rutgers to check books out from there (even assuming I could),
and that's about an hour (or more) each way. I may see if I can
check their catalog for some of the books, though, as an
experiment." [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
DREAM FACTORIES AND RADIO PICTURES by Howard Waldrop (ISBN-13
978-0-972-05474-4, ISBN-10 0-972-05474-X) is a collection of
Waldrop's stories about movies and television. Waldrop once
responded to Barry Malzberg's comment that Malzberg's early
ambition was to make a living as a science fiction writer--and he
failed. Waldrop said, "I'll go him one better. I tried to make
a living in science fiction writing short stories." As a short
story writer, Waldrop is first-rate; it is just the economics of
the market that keep him (or almost anyone) from making a living
at it.
[Some of our readers may be wondering what a Radio Picture is.
After all one of the basic facts about radio is that there were
no pictures. Older readers may remember that there was a major
film studio called RKO and their started with a banner called the
film "An RKO Radio Picture." RKO Pictures was also known as
Radio Keith Orpheum Pictures. It was formed when RCA, the Radio
Corporation of America bought up the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater
chain and started making movies for it. It was an odd name for a
studio since radio would be a stiff competitor for audience
attention against the Hollywood studios. The RKO logo showed a
giant radio antenna broadcasting over the earth. Certainly until
that late 1940s with the advent of popular television radio
technology had little to do with cinema. -mrl]
HOLY COW by Sarah MacDonald (ISBN-13 978-0-7679-1574-8, ISBN-10
0-7679-1574-7) is the story of a journalist's stay in India, and
her quest for religion, or spirituality, or God, or something
like that. What is not clear is when or how she decided this was
a spiritual quest--that was not why she went to India to start
with, yet it is clear that this becomes her goal, or why else
would she be so diligent in seeking out every possible religion
to find out what they have to offer.
That quibble aside, it seems as though every attempt by MacDonald
to find something meaningful in India runs up against what can
only be termed "loonies". This includes the Jews, who seem to be
all Israelis or Americans, and more interested in hugging,
dancing, and smoking hash than in anything that I would consider
an expression of Judaism. After reading this section, though, I
end up basically discounting all her other encounters with the
extremes of each religion. (Trying to get the essence of
Hinduism by attending the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad is, after all,
like trying to understand the essence of Christianity by standing
in St. Peter's Square on Easter Sunday, or understanding Islam by
making the Hajj.) HOLY COW does give you a sense of India, but
often a somewhat deceptive one.
We recently listened to the Teaching Company course "The American
Civil War" by Professor Gary W. Gallagher, and I have a few
comments (No surprise there, right? :-) ). An observation he
made in one of the early lectures on the causes of the Civil War
was that the North perceived the South in certain negative ways,
and vice versa. For example, the South saw the North as
uncultured, unrefined, and greedy. Whether these perceptions
were accurate or not, Gallagher said, is rather beside the point:
in generating conflict, perception is more important than
reality.
Although the South maintained (even after the War) that their
secession from the Union was legal and not in violation of the
United States Constitution (Thaddeus Stephens wrote a very long
and turgid work arguing this point), the Confederate Constitution
explicitly forbade secession! I can see where the Confederacy
would want this clarified, but it's ironic that the "gentlemen's
club" argument seen in the film GETTYSBURG is completely negated
by this. (The "gentlemen's club" argument goes like this: The
states are like men who have joined a gentlemen's club. After a
while, the club starts making rules about how the gentlemen's
private homes may be run. Not only that, but the club refuses to
let anyone resign from it.)
Gallagher notes in a closing lecture that no Confederates were
tried for treason after the Civil War, and gives as possibly the
main reason that no one wanted to actually argue in a court of
law as to whether secession was legal. We had just finished
fighting a bloody war which de facto determined it was not, and
having a court rule on it at this point was either superfluous or
incendiary.
The first Confederate Presidential election was held in 1861 for
inauguration in 1862. In my comments on the alternate history
film C.S.A., I noted a possible mistake: there would not have been
a Presidential election in the CSA in 1880, because the
Presidential term specified in the CSA Constitution was six
years. This had assumed an election in 1860 (which is wrong in
any case--secession was not until 1861). An election in 1861
would theoretically have placed *all* the elections in
odd-numbered years. However, it is not clear whether that cycle
was intended to be implemented from the beginning or only after
the "War of Northern Aggression" was over. Assuming the latter
to be the case, to have an election in 1880 would imply an
election in 1868. (Anything later would imply a much, much longer
Civil War than anyone expected.) In fact, 1868 would give Davis a
full term plus a few months, and might be considered a reasonable
time to start.
Gallagher also emphasized that to determine the true causes of
the Civil War, one needs to read contemporary accounts, that is,
what people said about the causes in 1861, not what they said in
their memoirs twenty years later. When the Confederates wrote
their memoirs, slavery in the United States was dead and was
reviled by all our world allies. It was not, therefore, in the
Confederates' best interests to attempt to paint their cause as
an attempt to maintain slavery--even though that was what they
all said in 1861, and what featured most prominently in the
Articles of Secession ratified almost unanimously by the
Confederate states. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
(Nowadays) every housemaid expects at least
once a week as much excitement as would have
lasted a Jane Austen heroine throughout a
whole novel.
-- Bertrand Russell