THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
06/05/09 -- Vol. 27, No. 49, Whole Number 1548
El Honcho Grande: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
La Honcha Bonita: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Acknowledgement (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Turner Classic Movie Quadruple Feature
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
0, 1, 4, 15, 56, 209, ... (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
UP (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
SATURN'S CHILDREN by Charles Stross (book review
by Joe Karpierz)
Effort and Grades (letter of comment by Richie Bielak)
NASA Gross-Out (letter of comment by Mike Glyer)
Measure, WiFi, Grades, Taxation, THIS ISLAND EARTH, and
The Teaching Company (letter of comment by Guy Ferraiolo)
Old Age (letter of comment by Dan Kimmel)
Hugo-Nominated Novellas (letter of comment by Charlie Harris)
This Week's Reading (AIG publications, dictionaries,
library book sales, and Hugo-nominated novelettes)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Acknowledgement (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
This week's MT VOID is brought to you by the Pre-Owned-Humvee
Owners Exchange. Buy a used Humvee today. After all, there's a
little mindless primitive in each of us. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Turner Classic Movie Quadruple Feature (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)
Jacques Tourneur was a great atmospheric director who worked on
films produced by Val Lewton. On Friday, June 12, TCM will have
the following four atmospheric films, all horror films to varying
degree.
2:15 PM Curse of the Demon (1958)
An anthropologist investigates a devil worshipper who
commands a deadly demon. Cast: Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins, Niall
MacGinnis. Dir: Jacques Tourneur. BW-96 mins, TV-PG
4:00 PM Leopard Man, The (1943)
When a leopard escapes during a publicity stunt, it triggers
a series of murders. Cast: Dennis O'Keefe, Margo, Jean Brooks. Dir:
Jacques Tourneur. BW-66 mins, TV-PG, CC
5:15 PM I Walked With A Zombie (1943)
A nurse in the Caribbean resorts to voodoo to cure her
patient, even though she's in love with the woman's husband. Cast:
Frances Dee, Tom Conway, James Ellison. Dir: Jacques Tourneur. BW-
69 mins, TV-PG, CC, DVS
6:30 PM Cat People (1942)
A newlywed fears that an ancient curse will turn her into a
bloodthirsty beast. Cast: Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Tom Conway.
Dir: Jacques Tourneur. BW-73 mins, TV-PG, CC, DVS
==================================================================
TOPIC: 0, 1, 4, 15, 56, 209, ... (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Okay, we are going to talk about a little bit of mathematics here.
I promise there will be no hard formulae here. Everything should
be fairly simple. If you have questions, you can contact me, but I
doubt that will be necessary. This is not difficult and it is
fairly interesting.
I gave my students (and anyone else who saw the blackboard) the
problem of recognizing how this sequence
0, 1, 4, 15, 56, 209, ..
was extended and what would be the next number in the sequence. If
you want to try the problem itself,
STOP HERE.
Okay, the answer to the question is 780. If that helps you can try
to figure out how the sequence is extended. If you want to work on
that problem,
STOP HERE.
Okay, here is the answer. This is the sequence you get if you say
a(0) = 0, a(1) = 1, a(n) = 4*a(n - 1) - a(n - 2)
Put another way each number in the sequence is one quarter of the
sum of its predecessor and its successor. An interesting property
of this sequence is that if you square any term and subtract the
product of its predecessor and its successor you always get 1.
Some of the more alert will recognize that the definition is
reminiscent of the famous Fibonacci sequence. That sequence is
defined by:
f(0) = 0, f(1) = 1, f(n) = f(n - 1) + f(n - 2)
In fact this sequence, which to the best of my knowledge has no
special name has many of the same interesting properties as the
Fibonacci sequence. With the Fibonacci sequence, if you take the
ratio of each term to its predecessor the ratio quickly approaches
the Golden Ratio of (1 + sqrt(5))/2. This sequence we started with
also quickly approaches a constant ratio but it is 2 + sqrt(3).
Like the sequence this is not a particularly famous number and it
probably does not have a special name.
In fact, if you start with any two numbers as b(0) and b(1) and
extend by:
b(n) = b(n - 1) + b(n - 2)
the higher you go the closer b(n + 1)/b(n) will approach
(1 + sqrt(5))/2. And if instead you extend by
b(n) = 4*b(n - 1) - b(n - 2)
the higher you go the closer b(n + 1)/b(n) will approach
2 + sqrt(3).
Now I have just lied in the previous paragraph. I would say that
the ratio will *almost always* go to those special limits. There
is a special case where it will not. But if you stick to all
integers you will never run into that case. If you choose b(0) and
b(1) so that b(1)/b(0) = (1 - sqrt(5))/2 [please note the negative
sign] and then have b(n) = b(n - 1) + b(n - 2) you will end up with
the ratio of any term to its predecessor being (1 - sqrt(5))/2. In
other words you will have a geometric sequence with ratio always
being (1 - sqrt(5))/2. This is actually a negative number. If the
ratio is the tiniest bit off from (1 - sqrt(5))/2 then the
consecutive ratios will go to (1 + sqrt(5))/2.
On the other hand if you choose b(0) and b(1) so that
b(1)/b(0) = 2 - sqrt(3) [again please note the negative sign] you
will end up with the ratio of any term to its predecessor being
2 - sqrt(3). In other words you will have a geometric sequence with
ratio always being 2 - sqrt(3).
I would call a sequence extended by b(n) = C*b(n - 1) + D*b(n - 2)
a "Fibonacci-like sequence" because if C=D=1, b(0) = 0, and
b(1) = 1 you get the famous Fibonacci sequence. If you let C=4 and
D= -1 you get the sequence I started with. That is another
Fibonacci-like sequence. Most people learned in high school about
the Fibonacci sequence. It shows up all the time in nature. It
has many very intriguing properties. You might guess that the most
interesting and powerful Fibonacci-like sequence is the famous
Fibonacci sequence itself. It turns out this is not the case.
There is an even more important Fibonacci-like sequence with even
more interesting properties than the Fibonacci sequence itself has.
Try fooling around a little with the sequence you get if you let
b(0) = 0, b(1) = 1, b(n) = 2*b(n - 1) - b(n - 2).
One interesting property of this new sequence (like the sequence we
started with but not the Fibonacci sequence) is that if you square
any term and subtract the product of its predecessor and its
successor you always get 1. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: UP (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Certainly UP is one of Pixar's best films to date. The
reason is not that it has some of their best animation, though that
arguably is true. But their story values are may be improving
faster than their animation. UP is a story with genuine pathos on
themes of loss and of unfulfilled dreams. All this mixes with an
adventure story with a little bit of action. Kids will love this
film, but some of the notes of this film will definitely resonate
with adults. A bittersweet prolog really works to make this film a
much better story. Rating: high +2 (-4 to +4) or 8/10
Pixar is pushing the art of animation beyond all expectations.
Early on in UP we see a boy carrying a balloon. Now in our world
some balloons when inflated are opaque and some made more cheaply
are translucent. Pixar would have been excused if they had taken
the easy route and made the boy's balloon opaque. That would be an
easier effect to create. But this is a cheap balloon and we see
the background faintly through the balloon. That is just doing
things the hard way just to show the audience that the visual
images are better than they need to be. The animators were going
to extra effort just to show their virtuosity at creating visuals.
But their plotting and storytelling is more affecting than it has
been in any previous major animated film that comes to mind. Their
secret weapon is a prolog. The main character is Carl Fredricksen,
a man probably in his late seventies. The prolog shows him as
young boy enthralled by a world-famous explorer, Charles Muntz.
Carl finds a girl as fascinated by adventure as Carl is. They
become friends, then a couple, then husband and wife, then an old
husband and wife, then she passes away and leaves him lonely.
That's right, a character the viewer likes dies in the prolog.
Right now I can think of only four so likeable characters killed
off in previous Disney films and three are canines. It is a risk
to kill off someone the viewer likes, but it gives the entire film
resonance. When Carl mourns his wife, the audience does also. And
the film needs this resonance since somewhere in the back-story it
there it is about disappointment, loss, loneliness, and the choice
between values and dreams. Not that this is a grim story, but it
is a surprisingly honest and moving one.
Carl Fredricksen (voiced by the wonderful Ed Asner) is an old
curmudgeon and widower who lives in the same house he lived in with
his beloved wife. The two had always dreamed of the adventure of
going to Venezuela and seeing Paradise Falls on a certain mystical
plateau that was visited by the celebrated explorer Charles Muntz
(apparently the same plateau that inspired Arthur Conan Doyle to
write THE LOST WORLD). Now Carl's house is to be bulldozed to make
way for some big building, and Carl will be neatly filed in a rest
home. But he has another plan. He will float his house high in
the sky using several hundred helium balloons. He will harness the
winds and fly his house to the mystical plateau. He is flying
through the solitude of the sky when there is a knock at the door.
It seems he is not as alone as he thought. A boy Wilderness
Explorer (think Boy Scout) named Russell (Jordan Nagai) has been
taken with the house. Begrudgingly Carl takes the boy in and
together they fly to the plateau. The plateau turns out to be a
sort of magical place. It has giant birds like living
phorusrhacidae. Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer) still rules
the plateau and seems very active and spry. Carl is old enough to
need a cane with a stand, and Muntz must be at least twenty-five
years older, but somehow he is not. Most delightful are the Muntz
dogs who have been fitted with collars that allow them to talk,
though they still think like dogs. But Carl and Muntz are headed
for a clash of values.
Pixar has gone past the point where they made animated films that
happened to be good stories. Now they are making good stories that
happen to be animated. I rate UP a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale
or 8/10.
As good as the story is there are still some bad plot holes that
should be noted. Perhaps the magic of the plateau is keeping Muntz
from getting very old, but Carl should have at least observed that
it was odd that a man who was out exploring the world when Carl was
a young boy is still alive and spry on the plateau. Also a
scrapbook is important to the plot, but it is not until the end of
the film that Carl does something with this book that he more
likely would have done years earlier.
A short animated film, "Partly Cloudy", is packaged with UP. The
idea seems to be that storks get the babies they deliver from
clouds. Some babies are easier to handle than others. The
animation is fine, but the story is just not very interesting.
"Presto", the film that came packaged with WALL-E, was considerably
better.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1049413/
What others are saying: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/up/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: SATURN'S CHILDREN by Charles Stross (copyright 2008, Ace,
$24.95, 323pp, ISBN 978-0-441-01594-8) (book review by Joe Karpierz)
So, whether or not Evelyn intended her remark in the May 29th issue
of the MT Void to be a reminder to me, I was jolted into
remembering that I had finished SATURN'S CHILDREN a couple of days
ago (it being May 29th as I write this), and that I needed to write
the review for the VOID before I moved on to the next novel in my
annual survey of the current year's Hugo-nominated novels.
Those of you who read my reviews know that my reviews of Stross's
works have generally been favorable. I've always enjoyed his fast
paced, breakneck storytelling style. I've enjoyed the weirdness of
them all, and I've loved the straightforward style of books like
those found in the "Merchant Princes" series. This time, however,
I've found a Stross book that I just couldn't get into at all.
Let me start out by saying that I really wanted to like this book.
Aside from liking Stross's stuff in general, what I had heard about
the book before I bought it made it sound interesting. I bought
the book at Denvention in 2008. I was milling about Larry Smith's
table with the book in hand waiting my turn to hand in the cash
when a woman with a Scottish accent asked "Would you like that
autographed?" I said, "well, sure", after which she called
Out, "Hey Charlie, come here, this gentleman would like you to
autograph his copy of your book", after which I did have to pay for
it before he autographed it (I was going to buy it, of course, but
now I had to speed up the process :-)). After the autograph, we
had a several-minute conversation in which we compared our blood
pressure problems. Stross's issue with blood pressure issues are
well documented--mine, not so much.
So, I really *was* predisposed to liking this novel.
Sigh.
Okay, the story goes something like this. It's several hundred
years in the future, and all of mankind is gone--gone as in
perished. The race of man (or woman, or child, or whatever) is no
more. All that's left are robots--all kinds of robots: all sizes,
all shapes, all manner of purpose--you name it, there are robots
that either look like it, do it, feel like it, whatever. In this
case, our protagonist is a female sex robot.
Can you already see the problem with this? Now, I don't
necessarily need to identify with a character or characters in a
novel in order to enjoy it. However, I am neither female, a robot,
or have sex as my primary occupation (although that might be
enjoyable for a while, under the right circumstances).
Anyway, these robots have gone on doing what their human masters
once told them to do, things like building cities, colonizing other
planets, etc. *And* they've developed their own hierarchical
society, with humanoid "aristos" at the top, and slave robots,
controlled by slave chips, at the bottom of the totem pole, doing
exactly what they're told--and they don't even look remotely human
in some cases.
Our herione, if you will, Freya, leads a drab and boring life,
since she can no longer fulfill her original purpose. She's about
to commit a sort of suicide and is interrupted in the process. She
makes an enemy that day, the Domina, and leaves the site of the
near-suicide event wondering what will happen next. Shortly, she
receives an offer from the Jeeves Corporation to transport and
deliver a very controversial and secret package to Mars. Since
it's the best offer she's had in a long time, she accepts. As a
result, she finds herself involved in a very complicated plot that
involves no less than the reconstruction of a real human being, and
the use of that human to rule the solar system.
Yeah, it's gets a little weird from here. One part of the story
that I have yet to mention is that all the robots are descendents
from a matriarchal or partriarchal template robot. Thus, Freya has
many siblings wandering around, the nastiest of which is named
Juliette. Freya and Juliette's matriarchal template is Rhea, who
has long since passed on. Aside from slave chips, there are memory
chips, which allow a "sib's" memories to be transplanted to another
of her lineage in order that those memories be absorbed and
experienced. As a result, there can be multiples of various bots
roaming around (count the number of Jeeves in this book and get
back to me), many of which can have some of the same memories even
though they didn't experience those memories.
And what about that human replication? Well, it's got something to
do with the Pink Goo, the stuff of replication. The goo appears to
be outlawed, and there are goo police (I kid you not) to control
the spread and usage of the stuff.
I just had a problem with the whole thing. Maybe it was my mood
when I read this book, but I couldn't get my head around a few
things: Why would the robots continue doing what the humans told
them, knowing full well that humans no longer existed and were not
likely to ever come back? Why was the idea of recreating a human
such a bad thing for a (robotic) society that was built by humanity
and for humanity? And why did Stross have to make it so
complicated to keep track of all the characters. The fact that
they kept shifting identities made my head spin. After awhile, I
found it a chore to read the book.
The book is dedicated to Heinlein and Asimov; indeed, it starts by
presenting the Good Doctor's Three Laws of Robotics (if you don't
know what those are, shame on you--back to science fiction school
for you), and there are a lot of places where it reads like a
Heinlein novel, but the comparison doesn't hold up for too long,
for to me, this novel became boring and tedious.
I wanted to like it--really I did. But I just couldn't.
Next up, ZOE'S CHILDREN, by John Scalzi. [-jak]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Effort and Grades (letter of comment by Richie Bielak)
In response to Mark's article on effort and grades in the 05/22/09
issue of the MT VOID, Richie Bielak writes:
In the "Real World (tm)" effort is often rewarded more than
results. For example a friend send me the following [excerpt from
a] job posting for a C++ programmer:
------------------------
No other time commitments will be possible-as candidates must be
able to work 80 hours per week to complete rush projects.
Estimate that it may be over the course of a year around 10 to 15%
of the time, but when a project needs to be completed that is
behind schedule and is critical, it might take two weeks straight
of this kind of work to finish it off.
On a regular basis, candidates must be able to sustain 60 hour
weeks, and when things get slow, it is down to 50 hour weeks. Make
no mistake, it is hard work; but it is with the best and brightest
in the field.
------------------------
Clearly they do not want anyone who could solve their problems in
10 hours a week by using Python, instead of C++.... ;-)
My reply to my friend was that "the best and the brightest" would
not work 80-hour weeks.... [-rb]
==================================================================
TOPIC: NASA Gross-Out (letter of comment by Mike Glyer)
In response to Mark's comments on NASA and water in the 05/29/09
issue of the MT VOID, Mike Glyer writes, "Remember W.C Field's
comment about refusing to drink water because ... you know what
fish do in it." [-mg]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Measure, WiFi, Grades, Taxation, THIS ISLAND EARTH, and
The Teaching Company (letter of comment by Guy Ferraiolo)
In response to the 05/29/09 issue of the MT VOID, Guy Ferraiolo
writes:
[Mark wrote], "Protagoras of Abdera (ca. 490-ca. 420 B.C.E.)
said, 'Of all things the measure is Man, of the things that are,
that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not.'
I think even he is stretching things. For you, gentle reader, the
measure of all things is yourself. For me it is me."
I think you misunderstand this quote but don't feel too bad, so
does Daniel Robinson who does the Teaching Company philosophy
course. Both you and he see it as "An individual person is the
measure of all things" and I am completely convinced that is
incorrect. I see this statement properly re-expressed as "Evaluate
all things from a human perspective" instead of trying for an
absolute. So we can't judge things from the perspective of a
dolphin or an ant colony or the gods (to take an ancient Greek
slant). What do I mean? From the viewpoint of an ant colony a
Greek city might be unendurable chaos, from the viewpoint of an
eagle, unendurable regimentation. Given the irreconcilability of
these viewpoints there really isn't any choice but to take the
human view.
I really meant it when I said don't feel too bad about this gentle
criticism. Robinson certainly has heavy-duty academic credentials,
is extraordinarily articulate and seems quite knowledgeable but he
takes this, to me, mistaken tack more than once. I thought that
was odd but apparently this is the way smart, educated people take
the meaning of that quote. I myself didn't think much of it until
perhaps a few years ago when I was thinking about some big question
topic and I came to the conclusion the human perspective was the
only one that mattered to me and that lead a new appreciation of
this position. BTW, I'm not being coy about the actual topic I was
pondering, that I cannot recall. My appreciation of Protagoras,
however, is enduring.
[In response to Evelyn's comments on Wifi]: I'm glad to hear you
got a working router/wifi setup going! Yes, I like [Panera's] food
too. The breakfast sandwiches are very good.
[In response to John Purcell's comments on grades]: I think the
NCLB thing was another Bush administration botch. They often did
things I saw no justification for at all. The truly scary part was
when they did something that I agreed with, in principle, but did
it in a way that was so broken it failed of its purpose and
discredited the principle too.
The bizarro approach to double taxation of dividends managed to do
it exactly wrong. The idea was that dividends were not a
deductible expense to the corporation and were taxable income to
the individual this created a disincentive to pay return on
investment in the form of dividends. This was particularly bad
policy, so the story goes, because dividends, as the distribution
of the profits of the company of which the investor/shareholder is
a part owner, are the most natural way to reward that ownership.
And it was claimed, not implausibly, that a lot of the more
esoteric and tenuous financial structures built around corporations
were, in fact, attempts convey returns that would have naturally
been delivered as dividends except for that pesky double taxation.
Okay, I understand not all of us will agree with this, but it is
not a claim that dividends should be completely free of tax nor is
it entirely irrational. There are two ways you could solve this
problem, assuming you think it is a problem. You could make the
dividends a tax-deductible expense to the corporation and taxable
income to the individual or vice-versa. It seems to me the first
approach is the right one. The corporation is merely a conduit, so
the money disbursed as dividends is not income. The person is the
beneficial recipient. To the extent you think an income tax is a
good idea, this where it should be imposed. Also, my experience,
limited though it may be, is there is far more scope for legal but
dodgy accounting in a corporation than for a person. The
combination of this dodginess and the individual's position as the
beneficiary seems conclusive.
Given this, what did the Bush administration do? You have three
ways to answer this: be familiar with the actual facts of the case,
guess based on the length of my discursion, guess based on the
perversity of the Bush administration. The answer: they made it
taxable to the corporation and tax-free to the individual. This
lead to the spectacle of very wealthy individuals receiving
completely tax-free income! And to criticisms, valid, that this
was unfair. And to the criticism, invalid, that removing double
taxation was a scam to allow the very wealthy to enjoy tax-free
income. Whew! It takes a lot of bone-headedness to get that bad a
result from something that, I think, made sense in principle.
Back to the NCLB Act. American education is seriously screwed-up.
The problem is not money. This is shown by comparison to other
countries, we spend more and get less. It is also shown by
comparisons within the US. There is sometimes a negative
correlation of educational success and spending. Spending more
gives poorer results. There is also less absolute but, to me,
still convincing evidence in the comparison of the present with the
past. It seems that education is not as effective as it once was.
So, what to do? The existence of a large and politically powerful
lobby, the NEA, means that local efforts usually cannot succeed.
The combination of disciplined voting and legal campaign
contributions have been quite effective at squelching reform. That
leaves dangling federal funding for success. And there has to be
an at least somewhat ungimmickable way to judge. Therefore: the
test. And therefore: teaching to the test. But isn't this a bad
thing? Don't we want school to be a journey that the teacher and
student take together where Daniel Robinson will float in and,
right about Protagoras or not, lead the student, in a manner not
unlike Socrates would, to right thinking and the considered life?
The student will think for him or herself and this will go beyond
the stale limits of a multiple choice test. If the choice were
between this fantasy and NCLB, I agree, it would be better to have
the fantasy. Unfortunately, that is not the choice on offer. The
choice is teaching to the test or Jeff Spicoli (of Fast Times at
Ridgemont High). The choice is teaching to the test or stark,
cold, staring ignorance. Some people, those who teach at the
library or those who are involved in admitting students to
university, know that our education is failing.
However, I am completely willing to accept that the way the Bush
administration actually implemented NCLB is harmful. If someone
can come up with something other than NCLB I'd be willing to try
it. I am not willing to listen when the proposer also claims
either that there is no real problem or that the problem is solely
or principally the amount of money.
There is a quip about American education and there was an attempt
to preserve the identity of the quipper but I confess I have
forgotten the name. The quip was that American education is the
equivalent of Soviet agriculture. This was particularly on-point
because it is saying that the endeavor has all the natural
advantages but has been destroyed by malign government policy.
After all, saying American education, or Soviet agriculture, is the
equivalent of Antarctican agriculture doesn't say the same thing.
No one expects much of Antarctican agriculture.
Another bit of ranting. I felt that immigration needed reform.
The cruel and it seems spiteful way the Bush administration dealt
with that is another example of their inability to get it right
even starting from a reasonable basis.
And one final pirouette: the real answer to the double taxation
question is quite simple. No taxation, no income tax! :-) I mean
that sincerely but I include the smiley because I'm fairly certain
others may not agree. I can provide a Ron Paul URL if you need it.
:-)
[In response to John Purcell's comment, "Also I want to reread THIS
ISLAND EARTH."]: Keep an eye out for an interesting take on the
Fermi problem.
[In response to Evelyn's comment "And since we just finished the
course 'The Story of Human Language' at home: I particularly liked
this course. McWhorter has a bigger but DVD-only one. Since I
listen primarily when walking or driving I find the DVDs not very
useful. Still, I liked McWhorter. He refers to Lynn Margulis at
one point and I was thrilled since it was just this making of
connections between disparate sources that I was looking for when I
started my educational efforts. If you're not familiar with
Margulis you should know that she is responsible for the
realization that mitochondria are the descendants of symbiotic
bacteria. She has a whole theory about this and has written
several books. Of the two I've read 'Acquiring Genomes' is the
best. It contains some of the strangest, most disturbing biology
I've ever come across. Anyone who wants to write SF about aliens
should read it. What is actually here on Earth is sometimes very,
very, very weird. She teaches at Amherst. Also, she was Carl
Sagan's first wife. [-gf]
Mark replies:
I guess my feeling on the Protagoras quote is that he could have
been saying what you interpret him as saying, but I think not. At
least if I interpret correctly your interpretation it is not mine.
You seem to be saying that we are limited in how we perceive
reality. We cannot see the world as an ant or an eagle would.
That is true as far as it goes, but I would not say that the phrase
"Of all things the measure is Man" has that same meaning to me.
You make it sound like a piece of expedient despair. You think he
is saying that we cannot see the world as an ant or an eagle can so
we have to see it only as a human. My interpretation of the quote
is more saying more like even if a calculation tells you that a bee
cannot fly, if you see a bee flying that you should accept your own
observation rather than an abstract calculation. The calculation
does not really tell you about reality any better than personal
observation does. If evidence you yourself find in the ground says
that a fossil is 100 million years old, don't immediately believe a
book that tells you it can be only a few thousand years old. In
the case of my story, if innocently using a theatrical term makes
you a racist (which I do not believe), then being a racist is not
always a bad thing. It can be innocent. I see Protagoras as
actually saying something that is self-affirming.
As for not being able to view reality as an ant or an eagle does, I
am sure that is true. For that matter I cannot view reality even
as Evelyn does and at times we see things frustratingly
differently. But this does not mean one should not try. I cannot
see reality as an ant does, but I find it hard to believe the ant
does not resent it when being burned by the sun with a magnifying
glass. I believe I share enough reality with the ant that I can
see why harming the ant is wrong. It may not hurt any human to
harm the ant, but it is still wrong. Humans are not the measure of
the morality of harming an insect. So I neither agree with how you
interpret Protagoras based on this translation, nor do I like what
Protagoras would be saying if your interpretation was correct.
As for the No Child Left Behind Act, what is there to say but
"perhaps." [-mrl]
Evelyn notes, "It is not surprising Guy also liked the McWhorter
course--we took it on his recommendation!" [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Old Age (letter of comment by Dan Kimmel)
In response to Mark's comments on age in the 05/29/09 issue of the
MT VOID, Dan Kimmel responded, leading to this set of exchanges:
Dan: First, happy belated birthday, Mark. Second, as someone who
will be turning a youthful 54 this summer let me say, "You're old!"
Mark: Uggghhhh! Only compared to you young whipper-snappers.
Dan: Seriously, as long as you have your health I'm convinced it's
a matter of attitude and being engaged in the world. I know a guy
in his 80s who's more aware of what's going on around him than some
of my college students.
Mark: Actually so far so good. I do drink a cocoa (almost) every
day with a lot of cinnamon. Cocoa is good for cardiovascular and
cinnamon for blood sugar. The other thing is that my recreational
drug of choice is dietary capsaicin. Fiery piquant food is
actually very healthy, and every month they seem to find new good
effects it has. That would not be surprising if there was a
particular brand name on them so someone specific was profiting.
But nobody is making a fortune by exaggerating the value of chili
peppers. They just seem to be a very healthy food.
http://tinyurl.com/lsctg2
A lot of people don't enjoy really spicy food. And they might be
better off slowly building tolerance. I don't know. But I have
loved fiery food as a matter of taste. The health benefits were a
side-benefit.
Dan: That said, I'll take this platform to tell you and your vast
worldwide audience that as you get older it's crucial that you
adjust your attitudes about your health and getting check ups.
People our age should see a doctor at least once a year.
Mark: Because I am on drugs for asthma I have to see a doctor at
least every six months.
Dan: You should probably be getting your eyes checked each year.
Mark: I do let that go every two or three years. Maybe I should do
it more often.
Dan: If you're over 50 and haven't had a colonoscopy yet, why the
hell not?
Mark: About a month ago I had my second.
Dan: It's far less painful than a root canal and it could save your
life.
Mark: There is no pain. Period. Nausea during the prep, perhaps.
Inconvenience for the two days preparing, yes, but it is not
painful. Just a bit disgusting.
Dan: In fact anyone who's been through it will tell you the worse
part is not the exam but the day or two of "prep."
Mark: Eeeeeeyup!
Dan: (They told me I could drink all the lemonade I wanted. I
*hate* lemonade.)
Mark: How do you feel about lemon drops? I made a discovery and
you are the first non-Leeper I can share it with. Drinking the
electrolyte is the worst part. But I was allowed lemon drops.
Anyway, get a hard candy that is allowed and put it in your cheek.
Now when you have to drink the electrolyte you roll it on your
tongue, put it back in your cheek, take a slug of electrolyte, and
immediately roll the candy back on your tongue. Repeat as
necessary until the disgusting drink is gone. It is much less
nauseating than drinking the electrolyte straight (albeit flavored)
like I did last time.
Dan: I don't use lemon drops or ginger ale either. What I finally
found was allowed that I could drink was cranberry juice. (I did
ask to make sure.)
Mark: Well, I was talking about just the experience of getting the
electrolyte down. For that you don't really want another beverage.
The electrolyte is hard enough to get down. I wanted something
that gave me a lot of flavor without filling my stomach. I am
really surprised the let you drink cranberry juice. Part of the
rule for me was ingest nothing that was red. I could have Jell-O,
but not red Jell-O. I guess they didn't want to see anything that
might be confused with blood.
Dan: I know. I was surprised to. Apparently the difference (I'm
making an educated guess here) is that the Jell-O has red food dye
whereas the cranberry juice is its natural color. Perhaps it
passes through quickly. My problem was that most of what they said
I could have I don't eat. I don't eat Jell-O as a rule, but if I'm
going to have it, it's going to be the red "flavor." I ended up
with chicken broth and cranberry juice.
Evelyn: Supposedly taking a swig of ginger ale after drinking the
electrolyte helps. And now there is also white cranberry juice.
Dan: I plan to be around for a long time. The one sentence I never
want to hear is, "If only we had caught that sooner."
Mark: That was how I felt about the mouse that got into my house.
:-)
Dan: Okay, now back to our regularly scheduled program.
==================================================================
TOPIC: Hugo-Nominated Novellas (letter of comment by Charlie Harris)
In response to Evelyn's comments on Hugo-nominated novellas in the
05/29/09 issue of the MT VOID, in which she says, "My voting order:
'The Erdmann Nexus', 'Truth', 'The Political Prisoner', 'True
Names', no award, 'The Tear'", Charlie Harris writes, "That's
pretty depressing: The *best* of the *Hugo-nominated* novellas is
"Okay, but nothing special." :-( [-ch]
Evelyn responds, "Well, there you have it." [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
I own a few books published by AIG. I mention this because I'm
hoping to find out they're incredibly valuable, but I suspect they
are only marginally more valuable than AIG itself, given that they
were distributed in the New Yorker magazine. One is a selection of
Aesop's fables, one is Gracian's "Art of Worldly Wisdom", and one
is "Well-Versed: Poems for the Road Ahead". All are sixteen pages
long and consist of advisory tales, maxims, or poems. The poetry
book has such poems as Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" and
Rudyard Kipling's "If". What's great is the blurb on the back: "In
life, there is no substitute for experience. The same goes for
your money. 85 years of helping families and businesses worldwide
means you can rely on the AIG companies. Over 50 million customers
know that for long-term financial solutions, the AIG companies can
help steer you and your family in the right direction." Right. It
doesn't make you eager to trust their choice of literary advice
either.
[Well, they built themselves to be so big that they could not be
allowed to fail. And they still are up there fat and happy. I
suppose that was a kind of wisdom. -mrl]
I wrote a few weeks ago about THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN and the
creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, but there were a couple
of things I forgot to mention. First, this was an early example of
distributed processing, with people all over the world doing the
same task with different books, and then a team bringing together
the results. Also, the decision to make the Dictionary descriptive
rather than prescriptive was crucial. In general, English-language
dictionaries are descriptive, while French-language dictionaries
are prescriptive.
[The difference is that "descriptive" dictionaries document the
language as it is used. "Prescriptive" dictionaries define how the
language ought to be used. -mrl]
I picked up a brochure titled "Latin Literature" at the library
recently, but it didn't list anything by Ovid or Plautus, so how
reliable could it be? (Okay, there *was* a silhouette of Latin
America on the cover.) I notice they include Brazil as part of
Latin America. Perhaps not surprisingly, in Spanish the term is
"Hispanoamerica" and does not include Brazil.
"When a people [are blocked from creating their own homeland, and]
find themselves persecuted by aliens under legal forms, they will
invent some means outside the law for protecting themselves; and
such experiences will inevitably result in a weakening of respect
for law and in a return to more primitive methods of justice." The
goal, apparently was to "frighten the [aliens] into better conduct"
and to aid the leaders of the people "to regain control of
society."
Sounds like the Middle East, doesn't it?
Walter Lynwood Fleming is apparently considered to be a balanced
historian when it comes to describing Reconstruction. Yet he was
able to write the above in THE SEQUEL OF APPOMATTOX (1919) (no
ISBN), along with a lot more that portrays the North as almost
entirely in the wrong, the South almost entirely in the right, and
the Ku Klux Klan just another social club that occasionally played
on the "superstitious fears of the negro" to maintain order. Yes,
it is depressing to read about the Northern Radicals, but it is
also depressing to read about how caring the former slave-owners
were of their former slaves, how much the former slaves loved their
old masters, how if the North had just left the South alone
everything would have been peachy, and how much all these attitudes
and more were still perfectly acceptable fifty years after the
Civil War.
Finishing the book sale season was my own library's Friends of the
Library book sale. It is the smallest of the sales I attend every
year, and were it not only three miles away in a library I go to
all the time anyway I would not even bother. (One reason for the
smallness is that the FotL has a good-sized on-going book sale.)
In spite of the (lack of) size, I did find a few items. There was,
for example, an Agatha Christie collection available only in a
British edition (the price sticker indicates it was purchased in a
Swiss airport). I also got a crime fiction anthology, a satiric
mystery novel called THE EGYPTOLOGIST, and a VHS two-cassette set
of the old Republic serial MYSTERIOUS DOCTOR SATAN and another of
THE MASKED MARVEL.
But the best find was the Teaching Company course "The History of
the English Language" (36 courses on 18 audiocassettes, complete
with booklets). Because they priced each of the three clamshells
separately, it cost a total of $3. When I found it, I did the
happy dance. When I realized just how cheap it was, I did the even
happier dance. It seems like a great follow-on course to "The
Story of Human Language" and, being on audiocassette, perfect for
our road trip later this year.
Returning to Hugo-nominated short fiction, here's my take on the
novelettes:
"Alastair Baffle's Emporium of Wonders" by Mike Resnick is good
enough, but it is yet another story of growing old, and one does
begin to tire of them. It is also yet another story of what one
would suppose to be sleight-of-hand to be real magic (hardly a
spoiler--you could see that coming a mile away), and again, this is
not fresh.
"The Gambler" by Paolo Bacigalupi: This story of the future of news
(or is it the present?) is on a topic I follow because my brother
is a journalist. The protagonist, an investigative reporter
covering government and related areas, describes his situation
thusly: "It seems that the only people who are reading my story are
the biologists I interviewed. This is not surprising. When I
wrote about bribes for subdivision approvals, the only people who
read the story were county planners. When I wrote about cronyism
in the selection of city water recycling technologies, the only
people who read were water engineers." Instead, we discover that
thousands of times more people are following the story of "Double
DP the Russian mafia cowboy rapper ... [who] is accused of
impregnating the fourteen-year-old daughter of his face sculptor."
At one point, the protagonist's editor tells him, "No one reads a
depressing story, at least, not more than once. And no one
subscribes to a depressing byline feed." This is a depressing (and
realistic--which is why it is depressing) story, but apparently it
did find some readers.
[But none of them read it more than once. -mrl]
"Pride and Prometheus" by John Kessel: It seems like everyone is
doing a riff on Jane Austen this year--Benjamin Rosenbaum and Cory
Doctorow in a small way in "True Names" and John Kessel here. But
where Rosenbaum and Doctorow just throw in a passing reference,
Kessel manages to capture the feeling of Austen (and Shelley) for
the duration. This was a story I nominated, so it is not
surprising that I like it.
[Leave us not forget the non-nominated PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND
ZOMBIES by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. -mrl]
"The Ray-Gun: A Love Story" by James Alan Gardner: Gardner takes a
classic science-fiction idea--kid finds alien artifact that gives
him great power--and brings it up to date. Why aren't more people
writing traditional stories like this?
"Shoggoths in Bloom" by Elizabeth Bear: People who aren't riffing
on Jane Austen seem to riff on H. P. Lovecraft. This did not quite
capture Lovecraft's atmosphere (at least for me), and the whole
racial issue seems tacked on. I don't know--maybe it has some
meaning related to the story, but if so, I missed it. In a short
story (or novelette) one must exercise an economy of themes and not
try to cover too much ground, and this seemed to ignore that rule.
My voting order: "Pride and Prometheus", "The Gambler", "The
Ray-Gun: A Love Story", "Shoggoths in Bloom", "Alastair Baffle's
Emporium of Wonders", no award (though positions one and two are
really close) [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself
is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in
the right places.
-- Samuel Butler