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Tuesday, May 13, 2008
0 comments I'd like to start my review of Cory Doctorow's Little Brother with a disclosure. I haven't read Young Adult novels before (nada, zippo, not one), but I can't say it made the slightest difference: I wasn't stopping here and there to remind myself, 'okay, cut the author some slack, he's writing for teenagers for God's sake, so he can get away with this, or that gimmick.' I just read it like any other novel, and found it a lot more interesting and thought-provoking than many of the adult level audience novels I more regularly read...(Speaking of which, what would happen if you crossed Cory Doctorow with Ian McEwan...?) [shudder] The plot summary I'm going to crib from Chad Orzel: Pretty much, that's it: but a lot of the fun and suspense of the book is exactly how Marcus goes about his work. And that kept me turning the pages. Second disclosure: I'm not exactly in sympathy with all of the positions the author espouses; and it was an exercise in self-examination, as I read this romp about young revolutionary techno-geeks using every trick in the book to fight the agents of Homeland Security, to picture ...well, where I would fit in the plot if I was the same age. It was none too edifying to realize I'd probably fall into one of three scenarios: the little bookworm who
Doctorow's style: Chad mentions, for example, "...that there is not a subtle sentence in the entire book-- the Important Message is hammered home as hard as any message has ever been hammered home." I don't agree. Going back over some highlighted gems from my pages, I find little samples like this: I don't fold. I have a trick for staring down people like Benson. I look slightly to the left of their heads, and think about the lyrics to old Irish folk songs, the kind with three hundred verses. It makes me look perfectly composed and unworried. (p. 13)I think every kid figures something like this out, and it clicked with me as soon as I read it. (Only difference, I would look to the right side of their heads, and start thinking about Richard II, Act 5, Scene 5, "I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world...") I like Marcus's voice. Yes, he's a smartass--but not a complete smartass. Doctorow manages to educate the reader on various aspects of encryption and programming without ever stepping outside of the kid's natural tone. I don't consider myself a programmer, but I've had do enough tinkering in the various multimedia programs and my own web sites, to appreciate why programmers love to code. Making computers do what you want is cool. Some readers have complained about the 'deus ex machina' ending to the book (which I will not divulge), but again, I think this is not fair to the author, who sets up all of his plot twists with plenty of foreshadowing, so I read right to the end without a hiccup. I found only one false note (or rather, one note that didn't ring true at all for me). And that was the pitch to revive the 'generation gap.' At the first secret party to organize themselves, Ange stands out among the newbies and goes full throttle into a rant about the suspiciousness of anyone over age 25: "They forget what it's like to be our age. To be the object of suspicion all the time! How many times have you gotten on the bus and had every person on it give you a look like you'd been gargling turds and skinning puppies?" (p. 166) Okay, maybe Boston is different from San Francisco. Most of the time I see kids get on the T or buses with me, they're not getting any looks at all. They get loud enough you'll see every man and woman over 30 just keeping their head down and staring at the floor--too intimidated to say a word and just hoping they get off at the next stop. Like I said, a minor caveat. And I'm well over 25 anyway, so don't trust me. Labels: book review, science fiction 0 comments Friday, May 09, 2008
Scott Carson is back, with some 'warm' memories of life in academia. Okay, not quite so warm, but ...not surprising either. 0 comments Wednesday, May 07, 2008
When No News is Good News: Now, it might be thought an amazing coincidence if Earth were the only planet in the galaxy on which intelligent life evolved. If it happened here, the one planet we have studied closely, surely one would expect it to have happened on a lot of other planets in the galaxy--planets we have not yet had the chance to examine. This objection, however, rests on a fallacy: it overlooks what is known as an "observation selection effect." Whether intelligent life is common or rare, every observer is guaranteed to originate from a place where intelligent life did, in fact, arise. Since only the successes give rise to observers who can wonder about their existence, it would be a mistake to regard our planet as a randomly selected sample from all planets. (It would be closer to the mark to regard our planet as a random sample from the subset of planets that did engender intelligent life, this being a crude formulation of one of the saner ideas extractable from the motley ore referred to as the "anthropic principle.") 0 comments Tuesday, May 06, 2008
In an otherwise engaging profile of British thespian and former director of the (new) Globe Theatre Mark Rylance, we learn yet again how unexposed to critical thinking a number of modern artists are. In 1989, Rylance played Hamlet and Romeo four times a week each, in R.S.C. productions in Stratford-on-Avon. While acting there, he began to think about the authorship question. He thinks now that Shakespeare was likely a front for a small band of writers, perhaps headed by Francis Bacon, which included, among others, Lady Mary Sidney.I know many theatre professionals are not that computer savvy, but you would've thought someone Rylance's age would've at least been curious as to whether anyone ever did an analysis of Shakespeare's writing compared to the usual suspects supposed to have written in his stead. But no, I guess not. Cue The Place 2 Be... 0 comments Friday, May 02, 2008
 Apopos the story today that Barbara Walters, promoting her new book, told Oprah that she had an affair with former U.S. Senator Edward Brooke (the first African American senator and a Republican one at that), I went back to the archives to find this shot of my father (right) interviewing him (left) on Channel 5 back in the mid 1960s when the Boston Herald Traveler also owned the then WHDH-TV station. I recall my dad telling me Brooke was (is) a good man (and a good source), and Brooke factors in his (as yet) unpublished memoirs. Update: Dan Kennedy, weighs in: Maybe it's because I'm old, but my first reaction was: "I knew that." It sounded very familiar to me when we talked about it on "Beat the Press" yesterday on WGBH-TV (Channel 2). When I started searching, I found this line from a March 5, 2000, Globe profile of Brooke by staff writer Sally Jacobs: "A regular at the lavish parties at the Iranian Embassy, he did the hustle with Elizabeth Taylor and squired Barbara Walters about town." 0 comments Could Mike Behe jump ship? Larry Arnhart writes: As I noted in my first post on Ben Stein's movie Expelled, the absence of Michael Behe was remarkable. After all, Stein interviewed most of the "senior fellows" at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. So why didn't he interview the most famous one and the one who has been the leading scientist for "intelligent design"? Interesting to consider whether this might lead eventually to Behe rethinking his whole commitment to the Discovery Institute. Imagine the ID movement's worst nightmare: Michael Behe and Ken Miller on the same side, touring the country in support of good science education. 0 comments Thursday, May 01, 2008
Amy Welborn has a thoughtful post, the gist of which is (if I read her right), that culural Catholicism, the traditions and approach to the faith born of specific cultures and times, is dead. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. And it may explain why, when I received a brochure from the Carmelite Monastery in Wyoming, soliciting donations, I found myself laughing out loud at the snap shots of heavily cowled monks driving tractors (how the hell could he see where he was going?) and playing touch football. All I could think of was Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It just looks beyond parody. Not that I'm against retreats from the rat race of everyday modern life. Or dedicating your life to prayer, work and the ascetic life. Far from it. But it seems to me this is exactly what Amy's talking about. Why automatically think the solution to a problem in Wyoming in 2008 is to dress up like people in Europe from 2012? Too many groups and movements in the Church are thinking culturally first (hey--let's go back to doing it the way medieval monks did it) rather than thinking the Gospel through in terms more respondent to our culture here and now--and creating something wholly new. At least rethink the cowls? Anything wrong with taking a cue from the Chinese and donning simple, plain outfits they wear in the rice fields? Or maybe something wholly new? 2 comments Wednesday, April 30, 2008
PZ Myers, with more on how he was suckered into appearing in Expelled. We were not indulging in metaphysical speculation — we were actually addressing the stated purpose of our interviews, which we were told were specifically about the intersection of science and religion, not about the scientific validity of intelligent design. We would have given very different interviews if we'd been asked about ID; that's a subject both of us can discuss at length without mentioning religion at all, as the primary objection to it is that it isn't science, and good science refutes it. It's a little annoying to be constantly told that we were straying from the central premise of this movie, when we were actually doing our best to address the subject of the nonexistent movie for which we were told we were being interviewed. [bold emphasis mine]The most damaging thing about this propaganda film, is that now even among scientists, there is misunderstanding, a misunderstanding that was deliberately intended by the cynics and spinmeisters behind this production. "We sit in high places and fan discord" ought to be the motto of the ID movement. Along with "Science leads you to killing people." When Christians deliberately make cynical arguments in bad faith, they scandalize their religion. This film will haunt creationists I hope until the day the ID movement dwindles out of existence. Saint Augustine once said "God doesn't need my lie." No, but I would venture that He does suffer for it. Speaking of Augustine, this might be a good time to flash his lament. 0 comments Dan Kennedy on Roger Clemens' latest woes:
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