THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
09/24/10 -- Vol. 29, No. 13, Whole Number 1616
C3PO: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
R2D2: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Sub-Prime Loan (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
One Way To Think About Off-Shore Oil Drilling (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
WWW: WATCH by Robert J. Sawyer (book review by Joe Karpierz)
TEMPLE GRANDIN (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
Relationship Terms (letter of comment by Tim Bateman)
This Week's Reading ("After Borges: (The International
Legacy of Jorge Luis Borges)") (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Sub-Prime Loan (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I saw there was a course offered called "Learn What We Owe to the
Ancient Greeks". I am wondering how important that is and am just
trying to figure out how they could ever collect on that debt.
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: One Way To Think About Off-Shore Oil Drilling (comments by
Mark R. Leeper)
One of the people I discuss politics with on a regular basis is
someone who is very fearful that the United States government is
growing too big and has too many regulations. Now I have to admit
that I don't really know what is too much regulation and what is
not. Any rule that makes no sense and does more harm than good is
extraneous. However, one really has to look at the specific
regulations to decide if any particular regulation is a bad idea or
not. And worse than that, frequently it would take experts with
specialized expertise to know if a regulation is a good idea or a
bad one. And even more, even if two people have such expertise,
they may not agree. Like the economy, two experts may have very
different theories.
I took the easy way out and I gave my correspondent the Gulf oil
drilling as a place where it seems to me apparent that there was a
shortage of regulatory control. A great deal of damage had been
done with the BP oil spill and the after-the-fact investigations
seem to conclude (and BP admits) that unsafe practices had taken
place. I used that as an example.
The response I got was, "There are reams of regulations on off-
shore drilling and only one major accident in forty years (if I
recall correctly). You think the problem in this singular case was
under-regulation?"
My correspondent asks a fair question. I do not have the technical
knowledge of whether drilling is over-regulated or not. There can
be a lot of regulation, but it can be the wrong regulation. It is
quite possible that some aspects of drilling are over-regulated and
others are under-regulated. It is possible to just have the wrong
regulation. But effective rules have to be in place and then they
have to be enforced. It seems to me that the BP accident happened
because of either under-regulation or under-enforcement. I don't
know enough to know if the regulation really covered what went
wrong. But I would be willing to bet that almost certainly this
was not the first time such risks were taken. My friend continues:
"Or [was this a case of] just operator error & negligence? Can
government ever fix the latter? Do you think the total shut-down
is good government policy?"
It is difficult to know what to do about off-shore oil drilling
because the subject is foreign to most of us. But there are some
general principles that I think we can say do apply. I think the
way to think about the BP spill is to take an analogous case.
In an intersection that has been generally safe, a drunk slams into
someone else's car. Now let us ask the same questions, but about
this case. Is traffic over-regulated by the government? There are
lots of traffic rules and regulations. Some of them under many
circumstances do little to improve public safety. Who has not had
the experience of being stopped for a red light when there are no
other cars around? The light wastes time and does not help anyone.
The law just does not trust me to judge whether it is safe to drive
through the intersection or not. The sheer volume of regulation
does not tell me if we need more or less or if it needs to be fine-
tuned.
Is traffic in general under-regulated, over-regulated, or mis-
regulated? I just don't know. One has to look at the traffic
regulations on a one-by-one basis. I know I am not happy when I
have to stop for a red light that is doing nobody any good, but I
accept it as part of the overall package of law enforcement that
generally has made driving safe.
The car accident was certainly a case of operator error and
negligence. There have, however, probably been lots of infractions
of safety rules that did no harm before the one that did real
damage. Can the government ever end drunk driving? It sure tries
to do what it can to limit the practice with enforcement and spot
checks and driver education. Law enforcement tries to catch
violators before they can hurt innocent bystanders (or themselves).
I think most people believe that government efforts to curtail
drunk driving do make the roads safer. That is your government
stepping in and doing things. It could be smaller government if it
wasn't doing something about the inebriated behind the wheel, but
this effort is *needed*. Similarly there probably is a need to
heavily regulate off-shore oil drilling. My suspicion is that
drilling requires experts to inspect and make sure that it is safe.
And doing all this policing is an indispensible function of
government.
Stopping all driving would not be good government policy, but
controlling traffic as well as the government can is. To the best
of my knowledge nobody is suggesting permanently ending driving or
off-shore drilling. But each has to be made nearly safe before it
can proceed. Surely that is reasonable. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: WWW: WATCH by Robert J. Sawyer (copyright 2010, Ace,
$24.95, 352pp, ISBN 978-0-441-01818-5) (book review by Joe
Karpierz)
So, one thing that annoys me to no end during Hugo reading time is
that I have to shift my focus from my to-read stack to something
else, with that something else being the novels nominated for the
the Hugo awards that year. It gets especially aggravating when
most of those novels are not to my liking, as this year's crop was.
So, after I get done reading the nominees and sending in my vote,
and after I read a portion of the magazine to-read stack that has
piled up, I get to go back to my book to-read stack.
One of the other unfortunate things that occurs at the same time as
Hugo reading is that Rob Sawyer comes out with another book. Don't
get me wrong--as you all know I always look forward to another
Sawyer novel. It's just that they tend to be released in April of a
given year, and I've already started reading Hugo nominees. So,
Sawyer's book goes to the stack to be read as soon as I'm done
trudging through nominees.
Hey. I'm done trudging. I read Rob Sawyer's latest novel.
Alright, I'm making progress.
(And some of you may be thinking, "Wait a minute. Hugo voting
ended at the end of July. This is mid-September. It couldn't have
taken you THAT long to read the book." You're right. It didn't.
After I submitted my ballot I went with my daughter on vacation out
to see the Baseball Hall of Fame. Then we came back and spent two
frantic weeks getting ready to take her to college in Colorado.
Then we took her to college. Then I hurt my back and I couldn't
sit at the computer at home--the chair is awful--to even type the
thing. So, doo-doo occurred, as it were. :-))
WATCH is the second installment of the WWW trilogy. As everyone
knows by now, the hook here is that the World Wide Web gains
consciousness. Its name is Webmind, and it has as its first and
main friend in the world, Caitlin Decter. Caitlin, if you
remember, is the teenager from WAKE who was blind but has gained
sight through the miracle of a medical procedure. The side effect
is that she can "see" the web, visualize it. She has nurtured the
emerging consciousness and become its friend. She helps it learn
about the world, learn about humanity, and basically learn about
her and her family. And she thinks it can be a force for good, one
that can make a positive change in humanity. Basically, Webmind is
a child, Caitlin is the parent, and she's helping it grow up.
But there are others out there who are not so sure about Webmind
being a friend to humanity. There's a government outfit called
Watch that monitors the internet and the web for threats to the
United States. Watch doesn't think Webmind is friendly--Watch
thinks Webmind is dangerous, and they want to eradicate it. They'd
also like to know how it came into being, but that's secondary to
getting rid of it.
And so the story of Caitlin and Webmind continues. But it's not
only those two that we're following. Remember Hobo, the hybrid
critter that can paint? He's back, along with his human companions.
The story of the mass murder of Chinese people that have the bird
flu is still hanging around. One wild theory is that Webmind has
been pushed into being by the shutdown and restart of internet
connections to China during its (China's) attempt at controlling
information about the flu.
This novel is a *lot* about growing up. It really is. It's about
Webmind learning about the world, learning about helping humanity.
It's about momma Caitlin letting Webmind know when he's overstepped
his bounds, but encouraging him to explore them. It's about
Caitlin learning how to deal with high school, and getting and
dealing with a boyfriend. And my, oh my, isn't she quite the
protective mother when it comes to dealing with Watch's attack on
Webmind.
This is really a cool book with a lot of cool ideas. It's a book
that tells the tale of a bunch of humans dealing with a technology,
an entity that they don't understand. It's about a government
dealing with things the only way they know how--by trying to get
rid of it. And just what about that hybrid chimp and the Chinese
bird flu?
Sawyer goes into just the right amount of depth in talking about
these issues and much, much more. As usual, he tells a story about
the affect technology and the unknown has on humanity. And, above
all, he tells a *story*. Meaning this in a good way, I want to say
that substance is *not* sacrificed for style, as in so much of the
SF that is hitting the market these days. I've said it a whole
bunch of times before, and I'll say it again--Robert J. Sawyer is a
terrific storyteller with a clear, concise writing style. WWW:
WATCH is the latest example of his craft--and I eagerly look
forward to the completion of the WWW trilogy in WONDER. [-jak]
==================================================================
TOPIC: TEMPLE GRANDIN (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Made for HBO, this biopic is the best film so far this
year. This is a story of Temple Grandin, a doctor of animal
science, a college professor, and a person with autism. She has
used her individualized condition to reexamine livestock handling,
to redesign animal handling mechanisms, and to shed new light on
the autistic mind. Clare Danes gives a hypnotic performance and
director Mick Jackson keeps the film as visually interesting and
full of ideas. Rating: +3 (-4 to +4) or 9/10
I had a special reason for wanting to see the film THE SILENCE OF
THE LAMBS when it was released. I had seen the film MANHUNTER, the
first film with Hannibal Lecter as a character. In it, the
detective is talking to Lecter (played by Brian Cox) and Lecter was
drawing deductions from clues that had been found to the identity
of another serial killer. Lecter says that blood looks black in
moonlight and uses that obscure fact as a clue. The whole film was
about how only a psychopath can get inside the mind of a
psychopath. I wondered if that was a fictional assumption or if it
was true. TEMPLE GRANDIN, a film on much the same subject, is a
factual biography of the title character. Temple Grandin is a
world-famous expert on autism and on cattle handling. Her
expertise of autism comes firsthand. She herself is autistic and
at the same time she is a genius. And while it is probably
impossible for someone not autistic to get into the mind of someone
who is, this film makes a valiant attempt at showing visually
Grandin's particular type of autism. But this is not a film like
Lifetime Television's disease of the week. While telling the story
the film repeatedly gives us visual explanations of how Grandin's
autism works. Showing the inner workings of the mind of a genius
has not been done so well since A BEAUTIFUL MIND and is done
considerably better here.
Sadly, this best film so far this year is ineligible for any
Oscars. That is because it was made for and premiered on HBO. It
did win seven Emmy awards including Outstanding Made For Television
Movie, Best Directing, Best Lead Actress, Best Supporting Actor,
and Best Supporting Actress. Clair Danes's performance is the best
of her career, probably by a wide margin. Also great is David
Strathairn as the most inspiring high school teacher since OCTOBER
SKY.
The film opens during the pivotal summer when Temple is nineteen
years old and will be starting college in the fall. She is
spending the summer on her aunt's farm. This is much a mixed
blessing for all concerned. Temple can be very hard to deal with
and harder to understand. She has a broad set of eccentricities
that will frequently send her into tantrums. For example, she
often refuses any food but yogurt and jello, and she cannot walk
through automatic doors.
Temple thinks not in terms of words but in visual images. We are
told and see that any object she sees brings a flood of related
images from her past. But she is also extremely mechanically
minded. She redesigns small mechanisms like the farmyard gate.
Temple also has a phenomenal understanding of animals and has the
odd ability to place herself into their minds and see things from
their perspective. That story would be remarkable enough, but
director Mick Jackson places us in Temple's mind. Contacts with
simple objects bring staccato collages of images to the screen.
When Temple is thinking mechanically we see labeled schematics of
the devices she is planning. The film continues showing her
education and career and fills in her past with flashbacks.
Through her life she suffers prejudice and misunderstanding as well
as facing her own personal demons with fear of people, her own
confusion, bewilderment, and horror. Nevertheless she is able to
turn her personal genius and perspectives into a doctor's degree
and an influential career. Her eloquence combined with her autism
sheds new light into the brains of the autistics. As a personal
story this is a fairly good film and quite engaging. But for its
visual presentation of ideas of science on the screen it is very
nearly unique.
This is an exceptional film and could very likely be my best film
of the year. I rate it a +3 on the -4 to +4 scale or 9/10. The
film TEMPLE GRANDIN is now also available on DVD. Oliver Sacks
does an extensive case study on Temple Grandin in the title article
of his book AN ANTRHOPOLOGIST ON MARS.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1278469/combined
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/temple_grandin/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Relationship Terms (letter of comment by Tim Bateman)
In response to Evelyn's comments about relationship terms in the
09/17/10 issue of the MT VOID, Tim Bateman writes, "Yes, we do need
the word 'concuñado' in English, if only to stop people referring
to Shy Di and Fergie." [-tb]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
I have recently completed reading my way through the syllabus for a
course at Pennsylvania State University titled "After Borges: (The
International Legacy of Jorge Luis Borges)" and taught by Professor
Djelal Kadir in the fall of 2007. As described, "Readings range
from Borges' declared precursors such as E. A. Poe, Franz Kafka,
Macedonio Fernández, and successors such as the Italian Italo
Calvino, the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, the Chinese writer Yu
Hua, the American novelist Paul Auster, the German Gerhard Kopf,
the Spanish (Catalan) writer Enrique Vila-Matas, the Brazilian Luís
Fernando Veríssimo, the U.S. writer Oliver Sacks, the Serbian
Danilo Kis, the Moroccan writer Tahar ben Jellun, the French writer
Michel Rio, among other authors that the participants in the
seminar may wish to explore in conjunction with the Borges corpus."
I will not be including all my comments here, since they run about
15,000 words. They can be found at
http://leepers.us/evelyn/reviews/jlb_legacy.htm. However, I have
been (and will be) including some excerpts now and then.
A course description and reading list may be found at
http://complit.la.psu.edu/faculty/kadir/fpath.html. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
If indeed, as Hilbert asserted, mathematics is
a meaningless game played with meaningless marks
on paper, the only mathematical experience to
which we can refer is the making of marks on paper.
--E. T. Bell