SF must be getting better

So, I was thinking; I've read a few really good SF books in the last couple of months. More good SF than I've read in a very long time. Here's my top 3 of the last five years, easy:

1) Old Man's War by John Scalzi -- Sort of like "Starship Troopers", except you get eternal youth, not citizenship, and the volunteers are all senior citizens.
2) Red Thunder by John Varley -- "Rocket Ship Galileo", only they're going to the Moon, instead of Mars. And the NazisChinese are reasonably friendly.
3) Survival by Julie E. Czerneda -- A scientist just wants to be left alone to study genetic diversity in salmon, but is drawn into a galactic mystery as entire planets are stripped bare of all organic life.

I'm not sure it's a coincidence that two of the three are obvious Heinlein homages (to be fair, there's more sex in "Red Thunder" than "Galileo", but the analogies are obvious). Still, they're all fantastic. Heck, I'll even add in another one:

4) Kevin J. Anderson's Saga of the Seven Suns. Definitely fluffy space opera, but Anderson has an extremely sneaky ending to the first book that, while not totally unexpected (to me; a friend was pleasantly surprised), was nicely evil.

Which army should you have fought in?

What can I say; I'm easily amused.

You scored as United States. Your army is the American army. You want your home front to support the G.I.'s in their pursuit to liberate world from more or less evil tyrants. Italy 69% Finland 69% Poland 69% United States 69% British and the Commonwealth 56% France, Free French and the Resistance 56% Japan 50% Germany 44% Soviet Union 31% In which World War 2 army you should have fought? created with QuizFarm.com

Traveling Wilburys

Er, I meant Traveling Mercies, a very funny and touching book by Anne Lamott, who no doubt has written other good stuff-- I haven't read anything else by her, but this is well-written enough, I find it hard to believe her other stuff sucks.

I'm much less than halfway through the book, but I had to blog this because of the very funny exchange she has with herself when trying to decide whether or not to let her seven-year-old son go paragliding for his birthday:

So what I needed to know up there in that beautiful valley was would a normal person—if there is such a thing as a normal person—feel that it was a good idea for a seven-year-old to paraglide in a harness with a tandem expert off a mountain fifteen hundred feet up.

Needless to say, there was no one around remotely fitting the description of a normal person; I was at a writing conference.

Lamott, p. 81

While she does write of her experience of converting to Christianity, it's handled carefully and thoughtfully, much more so than many others I've read. Fred Clark says, about writing about conversion experiences,

Stories of religious conversion -- or "testimonies," as we evangelical types call them* -- can be tricky. The convert wants to tell this story because she is convinced that it is important. Very important. But also deeply personal and, at some level, ineffable. Attempts to convey the ineffable often come across as kind of effed up.

He goes on to quote Lamott's description, a very quiet and almost resigned one, of her decision to become a Christian:

I hung my head and said, "Fuck it: I quit." I took a long deep breath and said out loud, "All right. You can come in."

Lamott, p. 50

It was this that made me want to read her book (this scene comes relatively early on in it). As in all effable descriptions of ineffable events, it either grabs you or it doesn't; somehow, for reasons I can't articulate, these two sentences said more to me than C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity or Augustine's Confessions. It's a moment of surrender, of giving in, that touches my heart in places I hoped I still had. Lamott says about her life prior to this moment:

I'd been like one of the people Ezekiel comes upon in the valley of dry bones—people who had really given up, who were lifeless and without hope. But because of Ezekiel's presence, breath comes upon them; spirit and kindness revive them.

Lamott, p.44

This process happens slowly; she doesn't immediately become "saved". I suspect she might claim she still isn't-- she describes continuing her alcoholism and drug use for a while afterwards, and even when she does become sober, she continues having affairs with married and unmarried men, and has a child outside marriage. Nowhere does she claim these are good things, though she doesn't explicitly condemn them as evil; they appear simply as steps along the path she's dimly beginning to see open before her.

I could probably recommend this book highly enough, but I don't think I could maintain my life whilst doing so. Lamott is an excellent writer, able to lay herself bare before her reader, with just enough humor and attention to detail to prevent that reader from feeling uncomfortably intimate with her. She also provides a great counterpoint to a lot of right-wing conversion stories, showing that it is possible to be a liberal Christian-- although she herself says several times that she doesn't consider herself a very good one-- which is something I, as someone who sympathizes more with the right wing than the left, am glad to see out there. Please read it.

We DO need some education

I wonder, what did they call the classes where you were supposed to do physical activities? Mine were often called "physical education", but I can't think of one time I ever was educated in them. The first time I ever played flag football, the other kids told me to play "safety" (the 'teacher' just said, "you're playing flag footabll today"), but nobody would explain to me what that was; the most advice I got was, "Stay in the back and try to grab somebody's flag if they have a ball." I was 26 before I learned the offsides rule in soccer (known everywhere else as football). Nowhere did anyone ever teach a sport; it was always assumed that everybody knew how to play it already, even a "weird" one like field hockey (at least, to a kid growing up in rural Appalachia, field hockey is a weird sport).

I hated gym class, by whatever name it was called, as a kid, but I think I might have liked it better if someone had actually tried to teach something, instead of having everybody run around and just do something.

Thoughts of sports

I was thinking today of the time when I played Little League as a child, and the transition from T-ball, where the baseball sits on a nice stationary stand, a little over waist-high, and you know exactly where it is, and how to hit it, and even have a reasonable guess as to where it's going, to where the other team starts pitching to you. I had very poor vision (still do), and so I had really poor depth perception as a kid (heck, it's no better *now*). As a consequence, my hand-eye co-ordination was atrocious (except for videogames, but I mostly started playing those after I got glasses).

No matter how hard I tried (or my dad tried), I could not convince myself that the pitcher was not going to hit me with the ball. He was throwing it in my general direction, and I knew if *I* was throwing the ball, there'd be at least an 80% chance it wouldn't go anywhere near where I was aiming. Every time somebody pitched a ball at me, I ducked. I think I may have lasted an entire week after we started getting pitched at.

Even now, I'm terrible at most sports that involve throwing something, though I can essay a passable spiral with a football if somebody held a gun to my head. I'm really worried about if any of my kids (I don't have any yet, but I'm getting married in a couple of months, and so
these thoughts do pop up) get interested in sports, because I actively avoided them as a kid, and as a consequence, I know almost nothing about any of them. I think I was 26 before somebody finally explained the offsides rule in soccer, and while I can explain the icing rule in
hockey, I'm still a bit hazy on the reason for it.

TV is your friend... you love TV...

I completely agree with The Smallholder about the insidiousness of TV. I finally broke down last year and got cable, and then built myself a TiVO clone, at which point I found out that there is just too darn much TV I will watch out there. And a surprisingly high proportion of it is good. Given the choice, I will watch:

1. Any show where somebody builds something:
   
   
   
   1. Motorcycle-building shows
   
   
   2. House-building shows
   
   
   3. Major engineering project documentaries
   
   
   4. Monster Garage. Because damn. Seriously.
   
   
   
   


2. Any show involving power tools. especially if women are wielding them. This overlaps category A) above, but also includes:
   
   
   
   1. Home remodeling shows
   
   
   2. Home decorating shows
   
   
   
   


3. Any show which features large, heavy equipment requiring more gallons of gasoline per minute than my car uses in an entire year.


4. Any show where the cast could conceivably die.


5. Mythbusters


6. Almost anything animated, especially:
   
   
   
   1. Avatar, the Last Airbender
   
   
   2. Foster's home for imaginary friends
   
   
   3. Codename: Kids Next Door
   
   
   4. (God help me) American Dragon: Jake Long
   
   
   5. Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex
   
   
   
   

This is the problem: there is way too much good stuff on TV now, and there is even more stuff I want to watch, and further more that I will watch anyway. I found that trying to do so meant only that I got nothing done that I actually wanted to do-- learning woodworking and cabinetmaking, for instance, or practising music, or learning to operate the ridiculously expensive home recording equipment I bought a few years back. In other words, I was sacrificing my life, just so I could watch TV.

As a consequence, in my new house, we are not only not getting cable, or satellite, or HDTV (except perhaps in display-only mode), we are actively eschewing TV as anything other than a DVD playback mechanism. As my fiancee and I both have Netflix, that's a great rate-limiter-- we can never have more than 3 DVDs at a time to watch, so there's a lot of time that we can both use to devote to our hobbies and interests. In other words, to have a life.

Note: I'm not saying TV sucks-- quite the opposite: I'm saying I'm weak. If it's there, I will watch it, so the only alternative that gives me any chance at life is to not allow it there, or to severely restrict it. This doesn't mean that watching TV is evil; it's just not the choice I'm making.

Why I Don't Get Paid to Opine

Cliff May wrote a post on National Review's The Corner group blog that contained a brief note complaining about how hard it is to immigrate to Brazil. I wrote him a brief note explaining why that was the case (as it turns out, he knew this): Brazil has a law that states that whatever Brazilian citizens have to go through to get to a given country, that country's citizens have to go through to get into Brazil. Cliff pointed out in his personal reply, quite sensibly, that Brazil has nothing near the security considerations that the US does, and therefore it can rightly be considered a rather childish tit-for-tat response.

All this is well and good, but here is where I develop a great deal of respect for Mr May: I responded (still correctly) that if security were our reason for implementing those measures, then we needed to take another look at them, because they were (by and large) ineffective at accomplishing the stated goal. Instead of getting tied up in what had become a rather off-topic rant (I tend to get a bit... animated... when it's a subject I care about), he simply (and politely) responded something to the effect of, "Good points."

I wish I had been as courteous in my emails to him.

A similar event occurred earlier, when a now-departed talk show in Denver was hosting a show on the Columbia disaster, and I called to mention that some friends of mine had done the math and proved there was no way it could have gotten to the International Space Station, and that even if they had, it would have condemned them to a slow death instead of a quick one, as we couldn't have rescued them in time anyway. The problem was, all I had was my friends' word on it, and there was no reason for the host to trust them, even if I did. He very deftly let me speak my piece, and then moved on. I can't convey (it's been so long) how classily he did so, but let me assure you that it was very well-handled. This is why I don't get paid to do stuff like that-- I would have gotten into an argument, rather than handled a crank (which is all I was, to him) politely, and moved on.

Godsmack singer ambushed by Arthur Magazine for supporting US military

I found this article via http://www.boingboing.net/ -- Jay Babcock, editor of "Arthur Magazine" basically did an ambush interview yesterday with Sully Erna, lead singer and lyricist of rock band Godsmack. It starts off fairly normal, but quickly degenerates into a nigh-incoherent rant by the interviewer about Godsmack's letting some of their songs be used by military recruiters in TV advertisements.

I don't necessarily endorse a lot of what the US military has done, and especially in cases like Abu Grahib and other sites where our military has tortured prisoners under the pretext of extracting information from them (as if anybody is fooled by terms like "coercive interrogation techniques" or believes that useful information is extracted that way). We've also made some relatively bone-headed decisions in the past. But Erna is, in the interview, being fairly respectful of the military, and acknowledges the existence of some problems (though he wasn't prepared to talk about them, since he thought he was doing some publicity for the band's new album).

A relatively mild snippet (some profanity, but I can understand it, giving the amazingly one-sided interview technique):

Jay Babcock: [incredulous] YOU DIDN’T THINK THE MEDIA WAS BEING CONTROLLED BY THE MILITARY?!?

Sully Erna: Well, it could be. I don’t know.

JB: YOU DIDN’T LOOK INTO IT?

SE: Listen. Are you a fucking government expert?

JB: I’M NOT TELLING PEOPLE TO GO JOIN THE MILITARY AND THEN NOT KNOWING WHAT THE MILITARY IS DOING.

SE: I don’t tell people to go join the military!!
JB: YOU DON’T THINK USING YOUR SONGS –THE POWER OF YOUR MUSIC, WHICH YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT—HAS AN EFFECT ON THE PEOPLE THAT HEAR IT WHEN IT GOES WITH THE VISUALS THAT THE BEST P.R. PEOPLE IN THE WORLD USE?!

SE: Oh man, are you like one of those guys that agrees with some kid that fuckin’ tied a noose around his neck because Judas Priest lyrics told him to?

The full interview is at:
http://www.arthurmag.com/magpie/?p=1244

Read it, and weep.

Review: Dracula [audiobook]

I recently finished listening to Dracula, by Bram Stoker, as read by Alexander Spencer and Susan Adams, released by Recorded Books Company. I'm mostly going to review the audiobook production here, though the book itself is of no small interest in its own right.

First, the voices: As the story is told almost exclusively through increasingly improbable journal entries (given the choice between writing down much of what was written, and getting some sleep, I think I'd almost always get the sleep), there is almost no narration. As a result, both Mr Spencer and Ms Adams are almost always speaking in the voice of one of the characters, and by and large they both do an excellent job with managing the multiple voices, even in heated conversation. There is one glaring exception, however-- the American, Quincey Morris.

Let me be the first to say that, if asked to do any sort of British accent, much less an identifiably regional one (say, Brummie or Cornish), I would do a horrible job. But then again, I'm not an actor, so I wouldn't put myself in that situation in the first place. Spencer's Morris seems to wanter all over the landscape, accent-wise, from Texas (which is where he is supposed to be from) to Georgia, Louisiana, a brief jaunt up the Appalachians to Virginia, and at least from time to time could well have been mistaken for a Yankee. This should just be a minor quibble, but every time Quincey spoke, or wrote, I was hugely conscious of the fact that I was listening to a British actor read the part. I suppose it's a compliment, in a way, that the rest of the readings were so transparent (though, as an American, I cannot comment on the various accents of the British characters, other than to say they were distinct and not obviously bogus) that I found this one exception so jarring.

Next, the presentation itself. I think that, as an audiobook, Dracula works far better than as a book. The book's plotting and pace have rightfully been derided as pedantic and slow, but when read aloud, I got a much better sense of how the characters felt, and the way they missed clues which were obvious to the reader seemed less implausible. The story still lagged towards the middle, and the ending still felt far too abrupt, but overall, the pacing held up better when read aloud, I felt, than when read from a book. Also, several characters felt better-drawn-- Renfield's psychosis, and occasional transformation to sanity were clearer and easier to follow when you heard his voice change from low-class to a very refined RP-style delivery.

If you felt disappointed by the book in the wake of the very sensational movies based off of it, I can wholeheartedly recommend this audiobook version.

Shoggoth Girl

As I'm listening to the audiobook version of Shopgirl, I'm unable to shake the conviction that Steve Martin, as a writer resembles no-one else so strongly as H.P. Lovecraft. In no way is the similarity so superficial as what they write about, their characters, or their language. No, it's something oddly meaningful, and significant only in its absence. This is that they both avoid dialogue in such a way that is can only be deliberate.

Unlike Lovecraft, Martin is actually able to write dialogue, but he does not seem to take great pleasure in doing so, avoiding it in the main. Conversations between his characters are less often recounted as described: "And then he told her about his life", instead of him actually telling her (and the reader) about it. The whole story takes place from an almost aggressively third-person viewpoint, the distance of which seems to reflect the distance all the characters feel from each other. Maybe that was his point, I'm not sure, but it seems at times that every scene, every action is narrated from a curiously personally impersonal viewpoint. Here's a sample:

Where his insight comes from as he courts her, even he doesn't know. It might have been that he was ready to grow up, that the knowledge was already in him, like a dormant gene. Whatever it is, she is the perfect recipient of his attention, and he is the perfect recipient of her tenderness.

I don't want to dislike it-- and in fact, I don't dislike it, not really; I just feel, like the characters in the book, vaguely unsatisfied; not displeased, just not fulfilled. I just wish Martin would show me these things, not tell me. I almost feel as if, listening to the audiobook, that Martin is summarizing the actual story, as if I'm getting the Cliff Notes version of the novel he was afraid no-one would publish. But then he will come up with a small, but simple line that is all too representative of life as some have lived it, a line that rings true enough in its banality that it comes as close to touching something meaningful within me that I wish he'd spend more time exploring it and less time writing it:

How is it possible to miss a woman that you kept at a distance so that, when she was gone, you would not miss her?

A movie of this came out a while back; I suspect I might enjoy it more than the novella it's based on.

Google Maps are SchWEET

I had absolutely nothing useful to do at work today, so I learned something new (always a good thing to do, if you ask me-- a day you learn nothing is a day wasted). I taught myself the Google Maps API, and produced a map of the churches in the diocese of Colorado Springs. The maps API is really easy and fun to work with, and I was surprised at how much it reminds me of X11/Motif programming, both in terms of how you respond to events, and how you create graphical objects.

Lots of fun!

Artificial is sometimes better than Natural

I just read an article at Inside Higher Ed about two sites-- Ratemyprofessors.com and Rate Your Students. But I'm not interested right now in the article itself, though there is plenty of meat there, both in the use of sites like Ratemyprofessors.com and in the (perceived) need of professors to respond in kind. No, I'm interested most by this comment, by Larry:

While, indeed, it is pathetic, the combination of these two sites should us the truth about humanity. This is the way most people really talk when they are not forced to pretend to be enthusiastic about everything. Perhaps if people didn’t see the need to be “congenial” or use “social skills” all the time, humans could interact with each other on a much more meaningful level.

This attitude-- that social skills or congeniality suppress meaningful interactions-- is by no means an attitude that is exclusive to Larry, and in fact at one time I shared it. But over time, I have come to the conclusion that those social skills and occasional forced congeniality are precisely what enable meaningful interactions in the first place. It's not by accident that nearly every etiquette manual I've read describe them as social lubricants. They grease the wheels of interaction so that we don't spend all our time fighting about the precise definition of "is", and can get on to the more substantive matters we originally intended to discuss.

This is not a new idea, and I'm certainly not claiming any originalty in expression for myself here. I find it more interesting how my own perspective on this has changed over time than any real or imagined deficits in Larry's argument.

Let the Flamefests Begin! (Firefly vs. Buffy)

So, having just recently finished watching Firefly, I have come to a realization about the fundamental difference between creator Joss Whedon's two major TV creations: Buffy and Firefly. I'm sure this observation has been made many times, but as a semi-determined avoider of some sorts of fandom, I haven't seen it before, so I will dispense my wisdom forthwith:

Buffy is, at its roots, an adolescent show. The characters are adolescents, even when they have putatively become adults, and the problems presented them (and their solutions) are fundamentally adolescent. When Buffy was based at Sunnydale High, it worked pretty well, somewhat less so once it left. Buffy herself did, eventually, learn to work with others, but even in the end, I would argue, her perspective was that of the lone wolf, the single Slayer, who may have used others in her work, but fundamentally did her work on her own. This idea, that one can exist on one's own, even when taken in an admirable direction ("I will suffer so that you don't have to") is an adolescent mindset.

Firefly is, by contrast, a fundamentally adult show, even though some of its characters are more childish than others (I still want to be Jayne when I grow up). The characters are not only interdependent, but recognize that (well, except for Jayne, who is still my hero, but not because of this), and try and live within that interdependence, instead of striking out on their own. Even for Jayne, the most independent of the bunch, independence is largely presented as a weakness, and the one time he tries to exercise it, it almost gets him killed. Life in a relatively small ship like Serenity is almost by definition an exercise in interdependence, and Whedon nails this, both in the attitude of his characters, and in the tone of the whole all-too-brief series.

Fullmetal, Full story

I can't agree enough with Timothy Burke that Avatar is one of the best shows on TV right now. It's a great mix of kid's escapism, combined with realistic drama that takes itself seriously, but doesn't treat itself too seriously, if you catch my drift.

I cannot stress enough that if you like Avatar, you must check out Fullmetal Alchemist. It's hard to convey just how good this show is without sounding like Gene Shalit reviewing Sleeping Beauty, but the last four or five episodes broadcast have convinced me it deserves a place in drama next to Faust and Macbeth.

The subtlety with which the characters are drawn is masterful. In fact, there is no such thing as a minor character in this show-- this show puts Chekov's dictum about drama to shame by making even the anonymous bartender you meet in episode 1 serve at least double duty. The plot-- ye gods, every time you think it can't get any more complicated, it does, but it never feels artificial. All actions are drawn directly from the personality of each character, and I've yet to see a scene that didn't ring true (except for one very wrong explanation of the human body, but that's another story, and may yet be salvageable).

I'm going to have to buy the DVDs and watch each episode at least twice, I think, to grasp all the subtleties, but this is clearly one for the record books.

In Support of Hypocrisy

To the proverbial alien, just arrived on Earth, it would seem that our biggest ethical problem today is hypocrisy. Any proposed standard, normative or descriptive, is instantly scrutinized and criticized for hypocrisy and consistency-- one could easily come to the conclusion that the measure of an idea is not if it has any merit, but whether or not it is self-consistent. But to that, I reply, "Bah!"

Actually, I just like saying, "Bah!" But in this case, it's also how I feel.

The pursuit of hypocrisy above all else is the occupation of those little minds who are incapable of judging whether or not an idea is worthwhile on its merits. Instead, they pick it apart like buzzards, looking for any flaw they can find, any slight gap they can wedge their beaks into and shatter it like glass. If they can't have an idea, they feel, why then, neither should anyone else!

Not only do I obviously abhor this position, I contend that hypocrisy is not only good, it is necessary to the adult mind. Whether or not you are a fundamentalist Christian or an atheist, I believe you will concede that human beings are imperfect-- one look at the Top 40 charts should lay to rest any lingering doubts you may have-- and that we also should nonetheless strive to improve ourselves. This will inherently set one up for charges of hypocrisy, and a darned good thing it does. If we can always live up to all our ideals, then as far as I'm concerned, that's a sign we've set our sights too low. We must always strive to improve, and the only way to do that is to set our goals past where they are now-- otherwise, all we do is stagnate and decay.

We must always hold ideals we cannot match, but we must concomitantly refrain from berating ourselves for not living up to them. Instead, we must take time periodically to soberly reflect on our ideals, and our shortcomings, and attempt to address the latter to achieve the former. For most religious people, once a week services provide an ideal environment for this sort of reflection, buoyed by a sense of community support. Atheists can meditate and reflect in communities as well, though I confess to ignorance about what sorts of communities are out there to support them.

Sure, there are evil kinds of hypocrisy-- the father who preaches pacifism while abusing his family at home, for instance-- but I think there are always more fruitful avenues to argue against an idea that mere hypocrisy on the part of any of its proponents. And if not, why then I would argue that that hypocrisy is itself irrelevant.

Thoughts on modern Evangelicism

My friend Natalie just posted about this article about Ted Haggard and the New Life Church in Colorado Springs. I read the article, and her thoughts about it, and I have a few of my own to offer in reply.

First, about the pastor himself. Though it wasn't mentioned in the article, one of his more odious events was where his church baptized a few dozen Jewish kids whose parents left them at a church-run day camp-- without their consent, or that of their parents. A few kids were scared they weren't Jewish any longer. Personally, I was struck by his claim that Catholics, and countries dominated by Catholicism, look backwards, and don't innovate or create new things. And I suppose he has a point, so long as one ignores almost all the history of Western civilization, which was largely dominated by the Catholic Church, even after Luther, for hundreds of years.

That Gallileo fellow, always looking to the past, you know. And Copernicus-- might as well have been a historian for all the new discoveries he encountered.

As for the free market approach to spirituality, I read it as saying that where faith is freely chosen, and information about it is freely available, then that's a benefit for evangelical Christianity-- drawing a parallel between a free market allowing the best product to come to the fore, and a free market in spirituality allowing the best faith to rise to prominence. I didn't see that he suggested compromising the tenets of evangelicism; in fact, the article specifically mentioned more popular pastors who were more popular specifically because they watered down their message.

Humility as an attribute of Christianity seems to come and go over time. Matthew 6:2 says,

Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

A quick skim of the Pauline books of the New Testament shows him very strongly urging his followers to not claim any glory in themselves, but rather to lay it all at the feet of God, for much the same reasons as those Natalie lays out. I went looking for a real firebrand cite from him, along the lines of "convert those unbelievers now!" and frankly, haven't found anything quite so strong.

The key to understanding evangelical Christians for those who aren't them is to understand that, at base, they're motivated by love. That's not to say they can't do some monstrous things-- some of the stories I've read of gay "re-education" camps a truly terrifying-- but the core of their religion is a knowledge that they're going to heaven, and unless you believe what they do, you're not. And given the choice between letting you burn for eternity or enjoy the bliss of Heaven, well, the choice isn't really a hard one to make.

The problem, of course, lies in cases where what they say conflicts with what science is teaching us about the world we live in; in those cases, they claim that science is wrong, and their theology is right. Ironically, it was St, Augustine who first (to my knowledge) proposed that God might have created the earth's creatures first as a sort of "primal seed" that later evolved into the flora and fauna of (then-) modern times, but try and tell that to the kids today, and they won't believe you.

One thing I really appreciate about having been raised Catholic is that we were taught to question everything-- within limits, but those limits appear to be broader than any other religion allows. Heck, even with my strongly agnostic leanings I was allowed to get the Agnus Soli Dei, the Boy Scout's Catholic medal (not for any achievement; it's more like a merit badge in religion). I didn't lie about my questions, and I didn't claim I believed anything I honestly didn't, but I also openly disagreed with some of the things I was taught. I can't imagine that happening in an Evangelical church. We were also taught that God gave us minds for a reason, and that we were meant to use them to discover the wonder and mystery of the nature of the universe we live in. In the case of an apparent conflict between science and religion, the error was generally held to be in the person perceiving the conflict, as clearly God wouldn't deliberately tell us one thing (religion) and do another (nature).

The writer's biases, or possibly just ignorance, do come into play now and again; in one passage, he bemoans the broadening of the term Spritual War into a context that includes not just the church, but the overall society. Perhaps he didn't know that the Jesuits were originally referred to by their founder as a "battalion for Christ", and were themselves known as "Soldiers of Christ" (the title of his article) for many years.

The blog I am a Christian Too has a different analysis, and one perhaps better grounded in theology than mine.

Will Blogs Replace TV?

One of my favourite blogs, University Diaries, recently pointed out a short article on George Gilder's recent prognostication that TV will die, and be replaced by blogs. While it's a nice idea, sorry, it ain't gonna happen.

Blogs, as a rule, comment on existing things; rarely do they create on their own (though the exceptions, such as Hitherby Dragons are among my favourites). This isn't a criticism; we have a need, in our hyper-aware society, to have commentary to set events, both fictional and real, in a context so that we can understand them for what they are meant to be.

TV, though Lord knows it has some serious problems, does create some wonderful new shows (though I confess sometimes that I'd prefer to watch them on DVD), both fictional and non-. Of course it creates a lot of drek, but Sturgeon's Law applies everywhere.

I digress. The point is, blogs can perhaps replace the Sunday morning pundit shows, and much of the commentary on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, et. al, but they won't replace, say, Picket Fences, or Monk, or Fullmetal Alchemist-- the experiences they create are so totally different in character, I just don't see how it can happen. Frankly, most Americans do not read for pleasure (incredible to believe, I know, but it's true), so why would they all of a sudden start? People want more than the passive, couch-potato-oriented entertainment they've had in the past, but that doesn't mean they're going to run to books or blogs.

No Room to Hide

I have ranted before about the over-partisanization of politics, but I thought I'd just like to take a short moment to whine about the difficulty of being a moderate in today's political climate. Not the difficulty of making up one's own mind about issues without the benefit of a party to tell me what to think-- no, the problem de jour is conformity. I t hought high school was bad, but man, that's nothing compared to politics.

It seems as if I cannot agree with one position of one party without having all the others imputed to me, regardless of my actual beliefs. "You believe in limited government? Then you must be anti-abortion, you unfeeling conservative SOB!" "You think the war in Iraq has been mismanaged from the start? You must believe in tax-and-spend big government!" It's as if we have collectively lost all ability to separate out various positions, and can only relate to politics in terms of "Republican" or "Democrat".

Not that I'm a fan of Balkanization of political parties either, though I do think a few healthy third parties (or fourth, or fifth or... you get the idea) would do us good. The situation we have in the US is not perfect, but neither are parliamentary systems such as Canada's, where a minority party can form a government after building a large enough coalition with other parties. The main difference is that in the US, we build our coalitions before the elections; in parliamentary systems, they build them afterwards. I fear that too many parties, on the other hand, would lead us into an increasingly fragmented society. Perhaps that was the framers' intent, when they defined powerful states and a relatively weak federal government, but it's not what we've lived with these past 6 or 7 decades, and I think the dissolution of our national identity is a shame.

I don't have a solution; all I can offer are platitudes such as, "Have lunch at least once a week with someone you disagree with politically" (which I highly recommend; it's easy to forget your opponents are human). I beg you, at least try to honestly consider the concept that the other side has real and valid reasons for what they believe; they're not just rapacious corporate barons/elitist intellectual Marxists.

Here, Sir, Please Have Another

Tycho's recent rant on the topic of subscription software has a lot to do with why I haven't gone for MMORPGs. The fact that, when you get right down to it, they're really fancy GUI MUDs is another, but I digress. I like the social aspect of them. I like the fact that that social aspect is not geographically-limited. I even like the properties they represent-- I'm a shameless whore for anything with the words "Final Fantasy" or "Dungeons and Dragons" on the box. I just can't get over the idea, foolish and outdated though it seems these days, that when I buy a game, that means that I can play the game whenever I want, without having to cough up even *more* money.

This isn't just gaming's fault-- Anti-Virus software, as he noted, is just as evil, and large enterprise customers have been renting their software for decades now. What worries me, though, is the DRM built into new computers and consoles that comes right out and says to my face that once I've bought a title, all that means is that I have entered a brave new world of financial torment.

Now, I'm mostly not worried right now-- I don't run Windows at home, and most of my gaming these days is console-based, by which I mean I own a PS2 and a Gamecube, neither of which have any significant chunk of online gaming. I worry, though, that with the PS3 and Xbox 360 (and somebody should REALLY point out to Microsoft that 360 degrees takes you right back where you started, which is maybe not the IDEAL sort of association you want for a brand-spanking new console) the default assumption will be that a disc is just the install process for a virtual vacuum hose extending into your wallet.

I dunno-- maybe it's possible that consumers will revolt against software rental as a generic way of life. Perhaps MMORPGs are inherently the sort of games that lend themselves to a subscription
model. After all, while Halo is nicer with Live, you can still have plenty of fun with it completely disconnected from everything. If it's a matter of, "Here's your game, have fun with it, oh and by the way, you can give us $$$ and we will let you have even MORE fun", then
I'm all for it. And hey, maybe consumers will revolt-- after all, DivX (the pseudo-DVD format, not the codec) failed because consumers didn't like the idea of buying something that they didn't really own.

No matter what happens, I have my Legend of Zelda disc, and nobody can take that away from me. Now all I need is Super Mario Brothers for the GC, and I'm set.

Goin' to Da Movies

I love movies, but I hate going to them. Costs are skyrocketing upwards ($9.50 for one adult ticket? Please, people, this is insane!) and the quality isn't going up at the same rate, to put it mildly. So naturally, I found myself more than a touch confused to discover that there are not only one, but two movies out now that I not only wanted to, but actually went out to see. So here are a few thoughts:

Howl's Moving Castle

I don't remember who I'm ripping off by saying this, but I feel kinda heretical saying this movie is merely pretty good. The plot meanders about uneasily, and without a great deal of speed, but it's so very pretty, and most of the voices are very good -- Billy Crystal in particular, failed spectacularly to offend with his portrayal of the fire demon Calcifer. I enjoy everything Miyazaki has ever done, but this is not his best work by a long shot. I strongly recommend reading Diana Wynne Jones' excellent book instead, and catching this one on video (assuming it's even still in theaters, which is unlikely by the time anybody reads this).

Mr & Mrs Smith

I like a lot of things Brad Pitt has been in, but I can't offhand think of a movie Angelina Jolie has appeared in that I really liked-- except maybe this one. It was smart, sassy, fun, and all around a ticket worth buying. You know the story from the trailers, I suspect-- wealthy suburban couple John and Jane Smith are slowly spiraling towards divorce when they each discover the other is a highly-paid assassin and start to kill each other, which naturally rekindles the ebbing spark in their marriage.

Hang on a second, I need to pause to assimilate the idea that I'm recommending Angelina Jolie over Hayao Miyazaki.

Okay, I'm over it. Anyway, there are a few relatively glaring continuity errors, but the movie itself moves so fast that unless you're incredibly anal like me, you'll hardly notice them-- heck, even *I* didn't notice all of them-- and some of them have rationalizations that aren't too big of a stretch to overlook. Most importantly, it's a movie where a lot of shit blows up. And by a lot, I mean that if this couple are having problems, you want to move to a nearby continent until it all blows over. Also, it doesn't wildly insult your intelligence, and the comic relief is almost always impeccably timed. I do wish they hadn't given away all of Eddie (Vince Vaughn)'s good lines in the trailers, but they were still funny in the movie, though less so than they should have been. It's probably the best summer movie I've seen in a long time.