THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
04/09/10 -- Vol. 28, No. 41, Whole Number 1592
C3PO: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
R2D2: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
All material is copyrighted by author unless otherwise noted.
All comments sent will be assumed authorized for inclusion
unless otherwise noted.
To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe, send mail to mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
Topics:
Science Fiction (and Other) Discussion Groups
Talk Is Cheap (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Why Religion Was Invented (with Some Thought to Witchcraft)
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Sentence Structure (letter of comment by Fred Lerner)
Television (letter of comment by Sam Long)
Television, Beethoven, Remakes, and Jet Packs (letter of
comment by Kip Williams)
This Week's Reading (AN AFRICAN MILLIONAIRE, THE CONSUMER'S
GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE ENVIRONMENTAL CHOICES,
CYBERABAD DAYS, and THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORLD)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Science Fiction (and Other) Discussion Groups
April 6: PERSEPOLIS, graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, Middletown
(NJ) Public Library, film at 5:30PM (preceded at 5:00 by
short about animation), discussion of film and book
after film
April 18: THE BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE WRITING 2001 edited by
Timothy Ferris, selected online articles (see
http://leepers.us/ob_discussion_gen.html, Old Bridge (NJ)
Public Library, 7PM
May 13: THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH by Walter Tevis, Middletown (NJ)
Public Library, film at 5:30PM, discussion of film and book
after film
May 27: A MIRROR FOR OBSERVERS by Edgar Pangborn, Old Bridge (NJ)
Public Library, 7PM (postponed from February)
June 10: THE CIRCUS OF DR. LAO by Charles G. Finney, Middletown (NJ)
Public Library, film at 5:30PM, discussion of film and book
after film
July 8: RICHARD III by William Shakespeare, Middletown (NJ)
Public Library, film at 5:30PM, discussion of film and book
after film
==================================================================
TOPIC: Hugo Nominations
The Hugo nominations for this year have been announced and may be
found at http://www.aussiecon4.org.au/index.php?pagef.
==================================================================
TOPIC: Talk Is Cheap (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I was listening to the old Jimmy Rogers song that goes "She had
kisses sweeter than wine" and made myself a bet that Rogers never
tasted Mogen David. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Why Religion Was Invented (with Some Thought to Witchcraft)
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I was reading OUR KIND, a collection of essays by anthropologist
Marvin Harris. The essays are about the nature of humankind and
various aspects of the human mind. He asks if there are any
examples of religious-like or superstitious behavior in other
species. I would have thought even if he had examples they would
be rare. In fact, the example he gives is very common. If you put
a pigeon in a cage and whenever he pecks a lever a food pellet
drops, you train the pigeon to believe that food dropping has
something do to with pecking levers. That is a very natural form
of superstition and we do see it all the time. Humans probably
pick up the same sort of superstitions just by chance.
One explanation why religion is so firmly engrained in humankind is
that a religion has a certain survival value. Suppose your friend
is struck by lightning. You can assume that it is a purely random
event. He was hit just by chance. It is very unsettling to accept
that your friend just died by bad luck. It could have been you and
next time it might well be. That is a very debilitating
philosophy.
Instead it is easier to believe that some agency actually caused
the death. That sort of thinking can go two ways. Either it was
done by someone specific you know or someone unknowable. Neither
case is true, but by feeling you understand the tragedy you can
feel you can use this knowledge. Perhaps it will let you avoid it
in the future. That makes you feel a lot better. It gives you a
sense of security.
If you believe the death was caused by some entity you know then he
has to be stopped from doing it again. This is probably the basis
of a belief in witchcraft. "I have misfortune. He caused it by
magic. He must be punished so he does not do it to me again." If
it is someone you can get your hands on you can feel safe hating
and punishing that person. The Bible says "thou shall not suffer a
witch to live." That is in Exodus 22:17. And that instruction has
gotten a lot of innocent people murdered. (As of this writing, Ali
Sabat, a Lebanese television personality who predicts the future
has been sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia for sorcery.)
If, however, the person or entity causing the problem is someone
not so accessible for punishment the reasoning goes in another
direction. If you can't beat him, so you have to join him. Or at
the very least you have to appease him. So one creates a god who
one has some chance of appeasing. You codify the rules you think
will please him and there you have religious law.
Either if you destroy a witch or follow a religion what are the
results? Do they give you the protection you want? Probably it
does nothing for your protection. It has no effect. However
having seen one close to you touched by disaster you accept the
possibility of a similar disaster visited on yourself. When that
same disaster does not strike you--how likely is it that you too
will be struck by lightning?--it makes you feel you are doing the
right sort of thing to avoid it. What is really happening is just
that a disaster like your neighbor experienced is an unlikely
event. But you codify the set of rules you live by and decide that
is a formula for success. And that is probably one way a religion
is generated.
Hopefully the rules correlate well with your natural sense of right
and wrong. You instinctively know that if people go around killing
other people it leads to a lot of unhappiness, so maybe you make
one of your religious laws that you should not kill one another.
Then again you still have laws like "Thou shall not suffer a witch
to live." Whatever good religions do, they also are the excuse for
a lot of pain and suffering. But the code of I think maybe we
create a code of religious laws so we feel we are doing something
to avoid disasters.
We also need to create a God to be the giver of these laws. My
opinion is that we form the belief in a personal God from very
early life experience. When you are newborn there is this big
thing that takes care of you, feeds you, and answers your
unhappiness with love. That is a concept that becomes part of your
very young mind. Later as you get bigger there is this woman
around who gets smaller relative to you. Perhaps you even disagree
with her on occasion. That cannot be the caring titan you
remember. The caring titan that loves you must be God. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Sentence Structure (letter of comment by Fred Lerner)
In response to Evelyn's review of STORIES OF YOUR LIFE AND OTHERS
by Ted Chiang, in the 04/02/10 issue of the MT VOID, Fred Lerner
writes:
Evelyn writes, "What really sums up the idea of the story, though,
is this: 'This meant the heptapod had to know how the entire
sentence would be laid out before it could write the very first
stroke. ... The heptapods didn't write a sentence one semagram at
a time; they built it out of strokes irrespective of individual
semagrams.'"
Don't we have something like this here on Earth? Germans often
place their verbs at the end of the sentence, which implies the
need for more advance knowledge of what they intend to say than is
required of an English speaker." [-fl]
Evelyn responds:
Ah, but Germans could say, "Don't English-speakers often place
their direct objects at the end of the sentence, which implies the
need for more advance knowledge of what they intend to say than is
required of a German speaker?" In truth, I did think of German
sentence construction, but it is not clear (to me, anyway) that
that requires any more forethought than English. [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Television (letter of comment by Sam Long)
In response to Mark's comments on television in the 04/02/10 issue
of the MT VOID, Sam Long writes:
I too have to wonder how, with hundreds of channels available on
cable TV, there is so often nothing that I (or you) would call
"see-worthy" on. I wonder whether Arthur C Clarke ever meditated
on this, and regretted having invented the geostationary
communication satellite.
Those shopping networks like QVC, HSN, etc.: they're nothing but
commercials you might say, but at least they're honest about it.
For my part, if I see an ad, or worse, an informercial, for a
product or service on TV ("but wait"), I wouldn't have it if they
paid me. My first reaction when I see one of those ads coming on
is to mute the TV and/or start channel surfing. I can think of
only one exception to this in the last few years: a handle with a
slip-on cloth pad for cleaning the inside of a car's windshield
that I saw on one of those "but wait" commercials. Even then, I
didn't order it--wouldn't have ordered it--from TV. I got the
identical item for a few bucks at the local Walgreen's--cheaper
than ordering it--and it works as advertised.
Do you remember the following little ditty--'tis the season, after
all--from MAD magazine back in the late '50s, I think it was? The
tune is "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear".
They came on April 15th, dear
To take away our gold:
Tax men, unmoved by plea or tear.
It makes your blood run cold.
O Income Tax, you break our backs;
The Government takes all.
A thief by any other name
Would never have such gall!
[-sl]
Mark replies:
All I can say about the cable problem is that there has been an
enormous explosion in the number of things I care nothing about.
Among them are objects sold on infomercials. Though I do admit
that some of them must work and I wouldn't mind spending a few
bucks on a device that would help cleaning the inside of a
windshield. The angle that you have to clean is one that nature
did not do a very good job of accommodating the human body to make.
Now here is where I get a huge army of indignant people to hate me.
As for taxes I think the complaints about how terrible the taxes
are I think are misplaced. I think I have fairly reasonable life
style and I have never felt the taxes I was paying were all that
bad in return for what I was getting. Sure I would like to pay
less and have more money, but I just don't feel that I have given
in to the kind of greed that so many Americans have given in to.
The philosophy that I can make better use of my money than the
government can just falls down many places. I would like to see
education improved and there is only little I can do along those
lines without giving the money to the government and having them
spend it for me. The infrastructure of this country is falling
apart and I could not do a whole lot about it without being in
partnership with the government. Most countries pay a lot more in
taxes than out country does.
It is human nature to want more and pay less. That is why we have
so many Americans going so far into debt. Speaking for myself I do
very little on long-term credit. I do use a credit card, but only
once have I paid interest on a credit card. That was when the
company I worked for misplaced a mail bag and the mail was delayed.
And that doubled the number of times I ever paid interest in my
life. The other was my mortgage. But people have wanted to get
more and more on credit and created their own financial problems.
I would say even now that my taxes are not bad and I have gotten
value for the tax money I have spent. Sure there is some wastage
in what I spend. There is wastage whenever a lot of money is
involved in anything. And it should be fixed. But A thinks too
much money is being spent on B, and B thinks too much money is
being spent on A, and so both A and B hate the taxes and think that
they are allies in the anti-tax movement. I have been looking but
have seen no reasonable and coherent ideas coming out of the anti-
tax movement that even the anti-tax movement could all agree on.
As Charles the II says in THE LIBERTINE "Anyone can oppose--it's
fun to be against things--but there comes a time when you have to
start being for things as well." And the anti-tax people are
really good at being against things and really bad--to the point of
incoherence--at being for things. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Television, Beethoven, Remakes, and Jet Packs (letter of
comment by Kip Williams)
In response to various items in the 04/02/10 issue of the MT VOID,
Kip Williams writes:
TV,
I determined years ago, is a vast wonderland. There is too much of
it for me to even keep up with just the really good stuff. As a
result, I try to avoid commitment to a series that requires me to
stick with the show lest I miss an important inflection somewhere.
Auto-dialing
is something I used once, for a specific purpose. I used to tape
movies off of SPN, one of the first cable services I knew of. They
specialized in black and white Public Domain movies, including
Wheeler & Woolsey. It was to tape one of these that I set my VCR
confidently -- confident because of all the stations, they never,
ever deviated from their announced times. If a movie was to be on
from 11:17 to 2:06, I could set a timer for 11:16 to 2:07 and have
the whole movie plus two minutes of ads. Ah, and what boring ads
they were. Wretched jewelry offers and kitchen gadgets for which
the phrase "well, don't answer, because we'll also throw in..."
were invented.
So one day I went to look at the movie I'd taped the night before,
and there was no movie. Just the ads. All the dumb junk they
advertised (over and over) during the movies, and none of the
movie. It was the dawn of cable shopping networks, with cheerful
idiots pimping rotating jewelry with the outward manners of sleazy
televangelists. I was so pissed off I put their number in my modem
and had it start trying to connect. I stopped fairly soon, though,
because it wasn't the fault of the drone at the other end.
Beethoven
fanciers can also find a treat at the BBC, where Andras Schiff has
a series of lectures on all 32 of the Beethoven piano sonatas. Each
is about 45 minutes -- he spends two whole segments on the famed
Hammerklavier. They can be streamed online or downloaded and put in
a player.
http://music.guardian.co.uk/classical/page/0,,1943867,00.html
The Thing
remake--I had missed the nuance that the pilot was made a singular
hero instead of the scientists. Well, that's Hollywood for you.
Point taken.
Jet Pack
and other solo flying devices may be seen at the Army
Transportation Museum at Fort Stewart, near my old home of Newport
News, Virginia. Though the place is in need of some money for
upkeep, it still has a terrific collection of vehicles (including
hovercrafts, a flying wing, and something that looks like an
Imperial Walker). Inside, they have a video of a jet pack being
tested, as well as a hideous contraption that's like a small
platform you stand on and grasp a pair of handlebars, and below
that is a wooden propeller with six-foot blades. I have no idea
whether they ever got a volunteer to stand on the blasted suicide
machine.
Steve Stiles was stationed at the base, and says he used to get
away from it all by ducking into one of the train cars and chilling
for a while.
Dang,
that's a lot of stuff. Good issue! [-kw]
Mark responds:
I am much like you on TV. Friends recommend series and I will
watch an episode and, like the 21st-century guy that I am, I have
a hard time committing.
The Beethoven site looks really good. Pete Brady, if you are
reading this you probably want to check this site out. (I am not
sure this is from the BBC, however. It appears to be from the
newspaper "The Guardian".)
The hideous contraption you mention sound like a flying platform.
I seem to remember ones that did not look like this, but there is
one you can see at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI-4ygOrgJ4.
Thanks for writing. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
My copy of AN AFRICAN MILLIONAIRE by Grant Allen (ISBN-13
978-1-6164-6014-3) is one of those books for which Dover used to be
known: a facsimile edition of an older mystery long out of print.
In this case, the original publication was in 1897, and the Dover
price in 1980 was $4.50. (Now it costs $12.95 from Coachwhip
Publications; Dover no longer publishes it.)
This is a collection of twelve stories, which really form a
continuous story (so I guess this might be considered a fix-up
novel, though this was no fixing up involved). The stories are
narrated by Seymour Wentworth, secretary to Sir Charles Vandrift.
Vandrift is the title character, and he is the target of confidence
trickster Colonel Cuthbert Clay, which appears in the stories under
different names and with different disguises. After a while, the
stories become predictable and the reader can figure out what is
going on well before Vandrift--in fact, soon enough that the reader
begins to think that for a millionaire, Vandrift is pretty dense.
THE CONSUMER'S GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE ENVIRONMENTAL CHOICES: PRACTICAL
ADVICE FROM THE UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS by Michael Borwer,
Ph.D., and Warren Leon, Ph.D. (ISBN-13 978-0-609-80281-6 has a
title that is almost longer than their "Seven Rules for Responsible
Consumption". Basically, their take is that you should stop
worrying about the small stuff (e.g., disposable paper cups) and
concentrate on the more effective items (e.g., buying an energy-
efficient refrigerator).
Their seven rules actually can be collapsed into one. The first
three ("Give special attention to major purchases", "Become a
weight watcher", and "Analyze your consumption quantitatively", all
really say the same thing: size matters. Major purchases are going
to account for more energy use/pollution than minor ones, heavy
purchases more than light ones, and larger usage more than smaller.
"Don't worry or feel guilty about unimportant decisions" may be
good advice but it doesn't do much for the environment. "Look for
opportunities to be a leader" is only effective in conjunction with
the first (collapsed) rule. As they note, "Buy more of those
things that help the environment" only works if you do this to
substitute for a more damaging item--buying a pair of shoes
recycled from old tires is only effective if you buy them *instead
of* a pair of leather shoes. (There are some exceptions--for
example, replacing a perfectly good showerhead with a water-saving
one is probably a good idea.) "Think about nonenvironmental
reasons for reducing consumption" is back to reducing consumption,
which was the first (and now only remaining) rule.
What it all boils down to is that you need to reduce your
consumption by some non-trivial amount. When you move, it's more
important to live closer to work and have low-maintenance
landscaping than to avoid paper plates when you barbecue and obsess
over paper vs. plastic bags.
CYBERABAD DAYS by Ian McDonald (ISBN-13 978-1-59102-699-0) is a
collection of short stories (well, probably closer to novelettes)
set in the world of McDonald's RIVER OF GODS, the India of 2047.
India has split in several warring states. What is interesting is
how McDonald has managed to address so many current issues:
"Sanjeev and Robotwallah" is about combat by telepresence (not
unlike the film SLEEP DEALER), class and ethnic differences in
"Kyle Meets the River", genetic engineering in "The Dust Assassin",
gender imbalance in "An Eligible Boy", and so on. All of these are
played out in the Indianized world of the future. For example,
McDonald doesn't write about "A.I.", he writes about "aeai" (just
as people in India have names like "Vijay"). And people watch
"tivi". McDonald manages to capture the feeling of India. He
lives in Belfast; either he travels a lot or he spends his days
watching Bollywood movies.
Simon Winchester does a lot of research and is usually fairly
reliable but in THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORLD by Simon Winchester
(ISBN-13 978-0-06-093180-9), he makes a basic error. He is writing
about the 18th century view of the age of the earth and how William
Smith changed that, and observes that Smith was born March 23,
1769, which he says was 5772 years, four months, and sixteen days
since Bishop Ussher's origin date of October 23, 4004 B.C.
Actually it's *5771* years, etc. (though Winchester does adjust for
the Julian-to-Gregorian shift). Winchester has forgotten that
there is no Year Zero in our calendar. (Maybe as penance he should
write his next book about calendars and Dennis the Short.) [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Obscurantism in an academic subject expands
to fill the vacuum of its intrinsic simplicity.
-- Richard Dawkins