THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
01/04/13 -- Vol. 31, No. 27, Whole Number 1735
Mr. Peabody: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Sherman: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Online Tour of the International Space Station
Why We Won't Be Seeing Robotic Cars Anytime Soon
Political Mystery (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
DECAY: Zombies Meet High-Energy Particles (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
Comments on THINGS TO COME (film comments by Mark R. Leeper)
UPRISING (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
WAR EAGLES by Carl Macek (book review by Mark R. Leeper)
LOST TO THE WEST by Lars Brownworth (book review
by Greg Frederick)
Star Travel and Space Colonization Return (magazine review
by Dale L. Skran Jr.)
LES MISERABLES (letter of comment by Pete Rubinstein)
THE HOBBIT (letter of comment by David Goldfarb)
Turner Classic Movies, Science Fiction Talks, Space News,
THE HOBBIT, and DEATH OF A SALESMAN (letter of comment
by John Purcell)
This Week's Reading (LANGUAGE: THE CULTURAL TOOL and GHOSTS
OF THE CONFEDERACY) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Online Tour the International Space Station
This is a 25-minute tour of the International Space Station pointed
out by Sherry Glotzer:
http://www.wimp.com/orbitaltour/
==================================================================
TOPIC: Why We Won't Be Seeing Robotic Cars Anytime Soon
According to one article, the problems are legal rather than
technical:
http://tinyurl.com/void-selfdrive
==================================================================
TOPIC: Political Mystery (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
The public is asking, "Is Congress up to fixing the deficit? You
do not really know. You do not want to know what Congress is
really up to. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: DECAY: Zombies Meet High-Energy Particles (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)
Well, okay, it appears that physicists working on the LHC, the CERN
Large Hadron Collider, the largest and most powerful particle
accelerator in the world, had just a little too much time on their
hands waiting for particle physics tests like looking for the Higgs
boson. They looked around the LHC and decided it looked like a
spooky enough place that a zombie move could be set there. They
wanted actors who would work really cheaply and looked a little
off-kilter. So they dredged the bottom of the barrel and came up
with Ph.D. physicists for actors. Scary. The film DECAY is
feature length, 75 minutes long.
http://tinyurl.com/mrl-decay
Read about it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_(film)
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Comments on THINGS TO COME (film comments by Mark R. Leeper)
[These comments were originally made while watching the 1936 film
THINGS TO COME directed by William Cameron Menzies and were sent to
a film discussion mailing list as part of an on-line discussion of
the film THINGS TO COME. A link to the film in YouTube is at the
bottom of this article.]
=====THE IDEAS
Adolf Hitler (who incidentally was a big fan of fantasy film--his
favorite film was KING KONG) used THINGS TO COME to show the
Luftwaffe what he wanted them to be able to do in bombing London.
The question of whether "war" toys were too much for children is
echoed today in the question of whether videogames are too violent.
Wells was prescient to see that pestilence would become a serious
threat again. In his time real progress was being made against
disease. But he probably never appreciated how ripping up the
earth would cause many of the pestilences.
The idea of tearing out all the wealth of the planet sounds a lot
more ominous today than it did in 1936. Wells never doubts that
strip-mining the planet and raping the environment may not be such
a great idea. Of course he was thinking that issues like global
warming were just engineering challenges without politics and
selfish opportunities getting in the way. Modern audiences may get
a chill from Wells' super-machines tearing out the Earth's wealth.
I think underground cities with artificial lighting would not be as
pleasant as Wells seems to think they would be. People really need
to see the sun. But Wells tells us this works as a little kid says
that life gets lovelier and lovelier. Somehow I doubt it.
Wells must have known by the mid-1930s that a gun was a bad idea
for space travel. It puts all the acceleration at the beginning of
the flight and that would be fatal.
=====THE SCRIPT
The film is really three stories of the future with a little
connective tissue. The stories are:
-- Everytown going to war at the start of World War II (1940)
-- Everytown rescued from the rule of a warlord by a world
organization of engineers, ruled by science (1970)
-- The rebellion against science and progress (2054)
Wells had no ear for how people really talk. Who says "A plane
once more!"?
Convenient that just The Boss dies from the Gas of Peace. Why he
dies and nobody else does is never explained. In the script he
does not die.
It is not clear why Theotocopolis wants to put an end to progress.
He seems to just oppose progress out of stubbornness. There are
such people but they protest progress in the name of religion or of
fear of change.
John Cabal is called an "Air Dictator." He talks about how there
are to be no more bosses, but he himself will be remembered as a
dictator.
I really like the final speech. The same issue is still with us
today. And we usually undervalue science.
=====THE LOOK
The kid we see at the beginning looking at Christmas gifts is just
so apple-cheeked and cute he gives people heartburn.
The model work is a little obvious. Still the effects scenes are
imaginative. There are enormous planes on a small SPFX budget.
I think Cabal's huge helmet is actually part of the plane in flight
and then it seems to detach when he leaves the plane. It is
unclear why he would need such a large helmet, but I guess it just
looks impressive in the art design.
Matte paintings are used extensively.
Director Menzies shows us what I assume is real industrial
machinery, but with special effects visually blows it up to huge
proportions to give it the feel of huge mega-machines that dwarf
people. Perhaps they were inspired by the huge turbines that were
built at places like Hoover Dam.
There is great techno-porn in the transition sequence and beautiful
machine design. People who like this techno-porn should find THE
TUNNEL (1935) about building a trans-Atlantic Tunnel. See the link
below.
Hyatt Hotels adopted the many-floored atrium for the design of many
of the early Hyatt Regencies.
Fascinating planes and helicopters. I have never seen hobby
models. Costumes seem silly.
=====THE SOUND
The score by Arthur Bliss has become a popular piece of classical
music played by symphony orchestras. You can find a recording of
the THINGS TO COME Suite on YouTube. See the link below.
The soundtrack has been muddled because Britain used a system of
recording sound that used degrees of lightness or darkness on the
soundtrack of the film. The resulting recording degrades with time
as the celluloid ages. In the United States the sound was encoded
in the width of a white band in the soundtrack. The American
approach is a much better way to encode sound and American films of
the same time still have crisp sound. BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN and
KING KONG are older than THINGS TOO COME, but the sound is much
crisper and clearer. In a sense it is like the difference between
analog and digital.
The enemy pilot sounds British.
Ralph Richardson was just a young actor here. He became one of the
giants of British cinema. Theotocopolis is played by Cedric
Hardwick who narrated the latter part of the George Pal WAR OF THE
WORLDS.
=====PERSONAL REMINISCENCES
The shooting script of the film was published in book form in 1935
where it somehow found its way to the Springfield, Massachusetts
Public Library. I eagerly read it the day that THINGS TO COME was
to be shown on the local TV late show, some time around 1963. The
script is available on line. See the link at end of this article.
In the early 1960s I made a note on my calendar for Sept 21, 1966,
to observe that it was the date mentioned in the movie. It was a
Wednesday, by the way.
Film script: http://www.scifiscripts.com/scripts/thingstocome.txt
THINGS TO COME Suite: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPPB90N_4nk
THE TUNNEL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAX7s0K4Zgg
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: UPRISING (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: In Egypt January 28, 2011, there was to be a moderate
afternoon demonstration against the tyrannical president Hosni
Mubarak. Three hours and then home for dinner was the plan.
Things did not go quite as planned. Right under its leaders the
demonstration transformed from a short protest to a popular
revolution. UPRISING producer/director Fredrik Stanton's
electrifying account of the Arab Spring revolt of the people of
Egypt against the dictatorial president Hosni Mubarak and his
corrupt regime. He tells the story with interviews and narration
of the people involved. The story is uplifting but overshadowed by
more recent events in Egypt. Rating: high +2 (-4 to +4) or 8/10
Fredrik Stanton, who produced and directed UPRISING, is a political
scientist, author of the book GREAT NEGOTIATIONS: AGREEMENTS THAT
CHANGED THE MODERN WORLD and a fellow of the Foreign Policy
Association. This is his first time at using the medium of cinema.
He tells the story of the January 2011 revolution against Hosni
Mubarak and the Mubarak regime. The story is told
straightforwardly with witnesses--many of whom are from leaders and
coordinators of the events; some are victims of the violence--
giving interviews and narrating over footage taken of the
remarkable incident. Stanton uses this straightforward approach
gambling that the excitement of the events themselves will grab his
audience. He tells a story that is compelling and exhilarating.
Hosni Mubarak was the vice-president of Egypt under Anwar Sadat and
was sitting just next to Sadat when Sadat was assassinated in 1981.
Immediately Mubarak declared martial law in Egypt. Generally, that
is supposed to be a temporary measure to restore order in a crisis.
But three decades later in 2011 Egypt still suffered under martial
law and was still a military police state maintaining power against
the will of the people, suppressing the people with torture and
other human rights abuses readily employed. During those thirty
years the United States supported the Egyptian government as a
practical expedient, necessary at the moment but also alienating
the Egyptian people.
The people survived as well as they could for three decades under
Mubarak. But in that time the Internet came to Egypt and the
government found they could not suppress it. With social media
people could communicate their dissatisfaction to thousands with
the Egyptian government helpless to stop it. In 2011 the Internet
started communicating something else, the news that in Tunis
popular protest had led to the toppling of that government.
Egyptians started looking around and asking themselves, "Why not
here?" Protests took to the street, particularly after the brutal
murder of well-known Internet personality Khalid Said.
On the Internet there was announced what was to be a short protest,
possibly three hours, but the leaders were themselves amazed at the
many thousands who turned out to show their dissatisfaction. As
word spread the thousands became tens and then hundreds of
thousands. Christians and Muslims put aside their differences in
camaraderie to form a common movement. The movement came from all
classes and both genders. What started as an afternoon
demonstration turned into full-fledged revolution. This is the
story of how the modest protest overcame violent resistance to
become a revolution that in a few short days toppled the government
of Egypt. Egypt now has a new president, Mohamed Morsi.
The effects of an afternoon anti-Mubarak demonstration have changed
Egyptian history for all time. The bitter irony--too recent to be
discussed in the film--was that after the events of this film Morsi
declared himself to be above the law and having unlimited powers
"to protect the nation." The good news is that protesting worked a
second time and Morsi relinquished most of that declared power, but
the story continues.
The January Revolution is a story of our time. It could not have
happened ten years earlier. The protests were organized and
publicized using the social media. They were inspired by the
similar events previously in Tunisia. That news would have been
choked off from the Egyptian people in a time not much earlier.
The importance of the Internet in this revolution cannot be
overstated. This story is an important lesson for political
leaders around the world and shows the way technology is changing
politics. I rate UPRISING a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 8/10.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2192002/
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/uprising_2012/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: WAR EAGLES by Carl Macek (ISBN 978-1-932-43174-2) (book
review by Mark R. Leeper)
In 1939 Merian C. Cooper, the producer and director of KING KONG,
was at MGM working on a Technicolor special effects film that was
intended to far outdo KING KONG. The film being made was to be
called WAR EAGLES. The plot was to involve a lost race of Vikings
who ride eagles the way cowboys ride horses. The Vikings riding
the soaring eagles were to war with an unnamed Germanic country
that was using airships to bomb the United States. The airships
had rays that crashed airplanes by interfering with their
electrical systems. And an American hero and his Viking friends
were riding/flying eagles, animated by Willis O'Brien, to fight the
menace. That was how the movie was planned.
However, that year World War II broke out and Cooper, a life-long
adventurer, left filmmaking to join the Flying Tigers in China.
MGM scrapped the WAR EAGLES project without Cooper. For years the
film that might have been has been legendary and the subject of fan
curiosity. In 2008 Carl Macek, a producer of the Robotech TV
series, took what was known of the WAR EAGLES plot and wrote a
novel, also called WAR EAGLES, consistent with what he knew. In
2011 David Conover and Philip J. Riley wrote the non-fiction WAR
EAGLES: THE UNMAKING OF AN EPIC, which included finding more about
the plotting, much of which unsurprisingly was quite different from
Macek's version.
Macek's novel has become an artifact of a period before the
plotting had been better researched. The novel, Macek's first, is
written in a very pulpish style with one-dimensional characters.
There are some anachronisms. For example, characters discuss radar,
which existed at the time but was a military secret and would not
likely be in common knowledge.
Macek's main character in his version of the story is Brandt.
Perhaps somewhat based on Merian C. Cooper, Brandt is an Army Air
Force pilot who tests a new plane endangering FDR who is giving a
speech at the Worlds Fair. Having his flying privileges taken
away, Brandt leaves the service and goes to work for a private
aircraft company. On a publicity and exploration flight, going
from pole to pole, he crashes his plane in unexplored territory and
finds a lost race of Vikings who have tamed and saddled eagles to
fly. Brandt has little trouble winning over the Vikings he
discovers and they become close friends. The Vikings speak English
and apparently Brandt wonders how this became their main spoken
language. It is left as a loose thread and I don't remember it
being picked up again. It was, no doubt, just an author's
expedient.
One thing does become clear from Macek's novel. There is no real
personality character who would have been animated for WAR EAGLES.
We care about King Kong and Mighty Joe Young in their respective
movies. They are each really the main characters of their films.
In WAR EAGLES Brandt breaks and befriends the largest of the
eagles. "Lindy", as the big eagle is named (for Charles
Lindbergh), might have a little personality, but it is unlikely
Cooper and O'Brien could have done much to make Lindy much of an
audience attraction. Eagles are just too different from humans.
And though there are dinosaurs present in the lost world of Vikings
and eagles, they make only a brief appearance. The flying humans
on eagle-back may be an interesting image for a few minutes of
film, but Macek fails to make the story of any real interest and
molding the images into a compelling story that could stand beside
THE WIZARD OF OZ and GONE WITH THE WIND that same year would
probably have been nigh onto impossible.
People interested in film history might find some interest value in
Macek's molding of the touches into a novel, but the book is pallid
entertainment by itself and is perhaps a misleading look at what
the result of the Cooper-O'Brien project. It is not really
recommended. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: LOST TO THE WEST: THE FORGOTTEN BYZANTINE EMPIRE THAT
RESCUED WESTERN CIVILIZATION by Lars Brownworth (ISBN 978-0-307-
40796-2) (book review by Greg Frederick)
I have read a number of books covering the Eastern Roman Empire,
known to us today as the Byzantine Empire. This is one of the best
on the subject. It begins with the founding of a divided Roman
Empire under Diocletian who was wise enough to realize that the
empire was too large for one man to govern. He split it into a
western half and an eastern half. The eastern half consisted of
present day Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Israel, and Lebanon. The
western half consisted of Spain, Eastern North Africa, France,
Italy, England and the Balkans. Each half had an Emperor and one
Co-Emperor.
Diocletian kept the eastern portion for himself to rule and
appointed an old and faithful drinking buddy, Maximian, to rule the
western half. Diocletian also realized that past Emperors were
considered first citizens after the example set by Augustus. This
made them too vulnerable to be over thrown by powerful generals
with the approval of the mob. Diocletian decided to link his
position with religion by making himself a god and make this less
likely.
Constantine, a son of Maximian, eventually fought his way to
control of the entire Empire and stopped the persecution of
Christians. He thought that the Empire needed a new capital which
was not connected with so many years of pagan religions and the
site of Constantinople (present day Istanbul) was nicely situated
to take advantage of the lucrative trade routes and was also very
defensible due to the geography. Constantine became a Christian
late in life but he maintained control of the bishops in their
decision making process as a supreme ruler and also linked his
power to religion.
In A.D. 476 the Western part of the Roman Empire fell to
barbarians. While Western Europe fell into the dark disarray of
the feudal system and the Middle Ages; the Byzantine Empire was a
shining beacon of civilization. There were advances in
mathematics, art and architecture. Schools helped to improve these
fields and education was provided for both genders. Virtually
every level of society was literate.
The Byzantine emperors established the first uniform set of civil
laws which are the basis of all modern legal practice. Starting
with Emperor Justinian they took the civil laws of ancient Rome and
compiled them in a logical order and established a practical method
of application. The Byzantine Empire preserved the ancient
knowledge and literature of the Greeks and Romans which was lost to
Western Europe during the Dark Ages. Many in Western Europe even
lost the ability to read or write except for some in the Church.
The Byzantine Empire existed from around A.D. 325 until the
conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by the Ottoman Turks. In its
over 1000 year history it prevented Western Europe which was
fractured into the feudal system of the Middle Ages from falling as
easy prey to the much better organized and disciplined Arab Islamic
forces coming out of Arabia. And later it stopped the Ottoman
Turks also until it succumbed to the Turks in 1453.
After the fall of Constantinople the stored knowledge of the
Greeks, and the Romans was disseminated to Western Europe which was
awakening from its slumber during the Dark Ages to the dawning of
the Renaissance which this stored knowledge helped to create.
Also, Western Europe started to develop into an aggregation of
nation states which were developing advances in many fields and
became more able to defend themselves from the advance of the
Ottoman Turks.
I would recommend this book to all interested in the history of
this period. [-gf]
[The following podcasts may be of interest to people reading this
book:
http://12byzantinerulers.com/
http://thehistoryofbyzantium.wordpress.com/
-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Star Travel and Space Colonization Return (magazine review
by Dale L. Skran Jr.)
I have often lamented the decreased and lower quality of print
media coverage on space related topics, and especially those with
longer time horizons than the next NASA probe to Mars. Thus, I was
especially pleased to see in the January 2013 issue of NATIONAL
GEOGRAPHIC and the January 2013 issue of SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN a
couple of really good space-related articles that dared to take the
longer view of things.
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN puts forward "Starship Humanity," one of the
best and most realistic articles on space colonization I've seen in
a long time. Written by Cameron Smith, an evolutionary biologist,
the article has a delightfully long-term perspective, as well as a
good deal of wisdom to dispense about space colonization. Smith
assumes that, as a given, we will occupy all the plausible
habitats. We will colonize not just the surface of Mars, but also
build free-floating O'Neill space habitats and interstellar
generation arks. He then proceeds to consider the biological
implications of doing so, and ends with a meditation on the
inevitability that each branch of humanity will diverge
genetically. This is an article on the nuts and bolts of the
biology of space colonization by a real expert that is well worth
your time.
Smith closes with a final section titled "Where to Begin?" that
lays out a three-part plan for the re-invigoration of work toward
space colonization. The third of these points calls for an X-prize
for the first livable habitat off the Earth. He concludes with a
sentiment I have long agreed with, and which I shall quote here:
We must be immensely bolder than our bureaucracies. Failing that,
in time we will become extinct, like everything else on Earth. As
H. G. Wells wrote about the human future in 1936, it is "all the
universe or nothing."
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC has a long history of good space coverage for
the mass audience. Articles on space in "Nat Geo" fueled my
interest in space as a young boy in the 1960s. As time has gone
by, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC has covered space rather less, and seemed
to become more political, focusing, perhaps understandably, on
environmental issues. Thus, I was extremely happy to see in the
January 2013 issue a special issue titled "Why We Explore." There
are a number of interesting articles, but "Heading Off to the
Stars" caught my eye, with a beautiful cover by Dana Berry showing
a starship either leaving the solar system or arriving at a new
world.
The actual article titled is "Crazy Far" with the subtitle "To the
Stars. Do we have the right stuff to go?" by Tim Folger. The fun
begins with a three-full-page foldout illustration of a starship in
an alien solar system, followed by a two-full-page illustration of
the inside of a starship modeled on an O'Neill colony, both created
by well known SF artist Stephen Martiniere. Folger provides a
great survey of the exciting things happening in the world of
space, including the SpaceX Falcon 9 reaching the space station for
the first time, Virgin Galatic's space tourism efforts, and
Planetary Resources plans for asteroid mining. This is coupled
with solid technical material on the kind of technologies, ranging
from nuclear pulse (Project Orion) to nuclear fusion to antimatter
to solar sails that might allow us to someday travel to the stars.
Folger's final paragraph contains a dollop of wisdom worth
repeating, "The task isn't figuring out right now how to design a
starship; it's continuing to build the civilization that will one
day build a starship." He concludes with a quote from one Les
Johnson, a NASA engineer tasked to look into planning a 20 year
mission to the edge of interstellar space:
If we [in 500 years] have fusion power plants, and space-based
solar panels beaming energy down, and we're mining the moon, and
have an industrial base in low Earth orbit--maybe a civilization
like that could
do it.
Here's a New Year's Resolution for you--do something to make that
future civilization more likely. You could do worse than reading
these two articles, and then joining the National Space Society
(http://www.nss.org) and the Planetary Society
(http://www.planetary.org). Happy New Year to all! [-dls]
==================================================================
TOPIC: LES MISERABLES (letter of comment by Pete Rubinstein)
In response to Mark's review of LES MISERABLES in the 12/28/12
issue of the MT VOID, Peter Rubinstein writes:
Odd that you mention the 1934 version. I just saw it last week for
the first time. It was a bit slow in places, but well worth
watching. It did take most of the day to watch, though, as it was
nearly five hours long. [-pr]
==================================================================
TOPIC: THE HOBBIT (letter of comment by David Goldfarb)
In response to Evelyn's comments on THE HOBBIT in the 12/28/12
issue, David Goldfarb writes:
Katie points out that Bilbo is described as rich, and the Tooks
even richer, and they all seem to be treated sympathetically
enough. And Bilbo profits by his journey, as well. [-dg]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Turner Classic Movies, Science Fiction Talks, Space News,
THE HOBBIT, and DEATH OF A SALESMAN (letter of comment by John
Purcell)
In response to the 12/28/12 issue of the MT VOID, John Purcell
writes:
A very eclectic batch of items this week, Mark and Evelyn, a few of
which warrant some feedback.
First off, Valerie and I enjoy watching classic movies on TCM. A
recent one was "We're No Angels" (1955) starring Humphrey Bogart,
Peter Ustinov and Aldo Ray. It surprised us at how well Bogart
played in this Christmas comedy. There was a recent version of
this made in 1989, starring Sean Penn and Robert De Niro, with Demi
Moore and Hoyt Axton, but that flopped at the box office and had a
completely different storyline. I much prefer the original: much
funnier and better acted.
[Actually Bogart was good at comedy, particularly with a good
director. The classic example is THE AFRICAN QUEEN. -mrl]
Hey, very cool that Ginjer Buchanan is coming to lecture at the Old
Bridge, NJ Public Library on March 2nd. A few weeks after that,
George R.R. Martin will be here at Texas A&M University's Cushing
Library of Special Collections on March 22nd, which is also my
birthday. It is also the first day of Aggiecon 44 at the College
Station, TX Hilton Hotel and Convention Center, and Martin will be
making an appearance at the convention as a "very special guest."
That should result in quite the large turn-out for the con. I am
already looking forward to that weekend!
Like Dale Skran, I like to keep up on what's happening in space
news. I get weekly e-bulletins from Space.com and the Nasa Weekly
Digest, and also have those websites Dale listed in my favorites
file. This past year certainly had a number of remarkable
achievements in space, such as Curiosity's landing, the asteroid
images, the exo-planetary search, to say nothing of even more
astonishing images courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope. The next
few years, federal budget willing and through the efforts of SpaceX
and other commercial space efforts, should be very interesting to
follow. We shall see how things develop.
A few weeks ago I saw THE HOBBIT in 3-D and thoroughly enjoyed it.
The movie zipped right along, no mean fit since its run time was
listed at 170 minutes. Sure didn't feel like a three-hour movie!
This was definitely a movie experience worth the price of
admission.
Before I sign off, I should mention that I have taught DEATH OF A
SALESMAN in my Literature class many a time. Evelyn covers it very
well here, and I recommend watching Dustin Hoffman's turn as Willy
Loman (1985). I think it's one of Hoffman's best acting efforts of
his career, and the production also features the late Charles
Durning as Willy's brother and a very young John Malkovich as Biff.
An excellent production, available on DVD, of course.
And that does it. Thank you for your weekly VOIDing, and I hope you
two have a very prosperous and enjoyable New Year. [-jp]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
The premise of LANGUAGE: THE CULTURAL TOOL by Daniel L. Everett
(ISBN 978-0-307-37853-8) is that language develops as a tool and so
all its characteristics can be attributed to that function. If a
language has no words for counting, it is because the users of that
language have no need for such words. If they needed them, the
words would be invented. (Or as it turns out in some cases, when
people think that a language has no word for some concept, they are
just wrong.)
Everett bases a lot of his conclusions on Piraha, an Amazonian
language that he learned while a missionary to the Piraha people.
While his examples o support his thesis, I am cautious about
believing it, since in the past people have put forth theories with
supporting evidence from languages they had learned, and only later
it was discovered that they had learned them imperfectly. (For
example, it was said that the Navajo had no way to conceptualize
time the way we do because the Navajo language lacks the words for
it. The former turns out to be false, and in fact the latter is
not entirely true either.)
For those who like language oddities, Everett gives us "garden path
sentences" which mislead the reader:
- The old man the boat.
- The man whistling tunes pianos.
- The cotton clothing is made of grows in Mississippi.
- The complex houses married and single soldiers and their
families.
- The man returned to his house was happy.
- The government plans to raise taxes were defeated.
And what Everett calls "ambiguous sentences", but are really
ambiguous headlines:
- Prostitutes appeal to Pope.
- Complaints about NBA referees growing ugly.
- Hospitals are sued by 7 foot doctors.
GHOSTS OF THE CONFEDERACY: DEFEAT, THE LOST CAUSE, AND THE
EMERGENCE OF THE NEW SOUTH by Gaines M. Foster (ISBN 978-0-19-
504213-9) makes an good companion book to Edmund Wilson's PATRIOTIC
GORE. Wilson looks at how the South's post-Civil-War attitude
towards the war and towards itself was reflected in its literature
of the period. While Foster does look at some of the writings of
the time, he concentrates on the organizations formed to remember,
to memorialize, and to interpret the war. So many were formed, in
fact, that Foster provides a page of "Frequently Used
Abbreviations" so that you can be reminded that the SCV is the Sons
of Confederate Veterans while the UDC is the United Daughters of
the Confederacy. However, it does not include USCV, the original
acronym of the SCV, standing for the United Sons of Confederate
Veterans. In the text Foster explains that after the USCV formed,
they were horrified to discover that there was another USCV--the
United States Colored Volunteers--and immediately changed their
name and acronym.
Indeed, the one aspect of the book that makes it difficult to read
is the constant use of acronyms that are too close to each other
and references by last name only to three different Lees, two
Johnsons, two Johnstons, and so on. This is obviously not entirely
Foster's fault, but one wishes he would use full names more often.
[-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Men enter local politics solely as a result of
being unhappily married.
--C. Northcote Parkinson