Digital Sextant

by P.G. Wodehouse; narrated by Debra Lynn for Librivox

I enjoyed this story a moderate amount, but was somewhat hampered by its intense interest in cricket, given that my entire experience with the sport is defined by Lagaan.  Nonetheless, the novel was entertaining.

• It’s the equivalent of a boy who succeeds reasonably at most things, but kicks ass in a sport (the American version would be baseball, I think).  Think of The Natural, only without the tramp and the gunshot.
• This book didn’t have quite as much of the old Wodehouse linguistic gymnastics as the Jeeves and Wooster books do.  The character named Psmith (the p is silent), though, excelled nicely at the Dennis-Miller-like comparisons.
• Despite my relative ignorance of Cricket, I enjoyed the sporting descriptions quite a bit.  Makes me wonder how one learns to be a bowler, but such mysteries are the fruits of a healthy life.
• Despite the dearth of verbose characters like Bertie Wooster to make the dialoge snappy, there were still a number of amusing bits that I’d like to work into my own vocab: row (rhymes with how) means a fight; rag means a prank or good time; and I was happy to see the return of my favorite phrase, “give me the pip.”

Ms. Lynn’s reading was solid and enjoyable.  She modulated the pace well for this kind of book and made the humor work well.  I was a bit disappointed not to find my usual P.G. Wodehouse narrator behind the mic on this occasion, but I am surely a better person for having heard this other fine narrator.

The next podcast from my Writing and Rhetoric 2 class. In this one, I explain my approach to editing at the college level. Influenced by the U.S. swim trials right now, I use elite swimming as a metaphor for learning to edit at the college level. It works pretty well, I think.

Podcast below the break.

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Evolution, Intelligent Design, and a School Board in Dover, P.A.
by Gordy Slack

Another interesting book about the IDiocy in Dover. Slack doesn’t obfuscate his leanings (he’s a materialist with no belief in the supernatural at all), but also softens his perspective by explaining that his father is a born-again Christian Creationist whom Slack seeks to understand as the book progresses.

But mostly, it’s a blow-by-blow account of the Dover trial.

• Toward the end comes the most distressing bit of this whole affair, in my mind. In his chapter, “Liars for Christ,” Slack highlights the actions by the school board members who obfuscated their religious intent once they learned that it would seriously hamper the legality of introducing the material into the curriculum. They told lies in their depositions, and then again in the trial. The moment that most strongly illustrates this trend came when the ACLU deposed the Board in order to possibly file an injunction against the ID curriculum even starting. The board met and colluded and all conveniently forgot or denied that the word creationism and the religious motives were ever discussed, despite two published newspaper accounts to the contrary. Apparently it’s the lying that got most of them ousted from the School Board.
• Of course, I’m also rigorously opposed to the incursion of religious institutions into secular, government-run spaces. I always want to sit down with self-righteous folks like the Bonsells (leaders of this movement in Dover) and ask whether other religions would be welcome in their classrooms.
• The book was delightful to read from the perspective of a pro-evolution person, but it feels biased. The last book I’m planning to read on the subject, Monkey Girl, claims to be more balanced, but we’ll see. It’s hard not to see the folks behind this movement as outrageously caricaturing the Religious Right.
• The jerk in me wants to see anti-evolution folks barred from taking advantage of evolution-derived discoveries. See the Doonesbury below.
• When Scott Minnich of the Discovery Institute was testifying at the end of the trial, Plaintiff attorney Steve Harvey kept calling him “Dr. Behe,” implying that Minnich and Behe were so similar that he couldn’t keep them straight in his mind.
• My favorite line from the trial came at the end. Here’s Slack’s account:
  

  When the judge asks whether anyone has anything further to say, [defense attorney] Gillen pipes up.
  “Your Honor,” he says, “I have one question, and that’s this: by my reckoning, this is the fortieth day since the trial began and tonight will be the fortieth night, and I would like to know if you did that on purpose.”
  “Mr. Gillen,” replies Judge Jones, “that is an interesting coincidence, but it was not by design.” (181)

  I really like this bit for several reasons. First, it’s funny. Second, it reveals the depth of the religion at work in the defense. I can’t think why it would have been a smart move to highlight, yet again, at the end of the trial, the connection between the defense and religion. The only possible reason I can think of is to get some sort of wink wink nudge nudge from the judge that this was planned, but a blatant religious action on the court’s point would certainly have been grounds for a plaintiff appeal.

• My favorite discussion of this trial comes from Fred Callahan, one of the plaintiffs. He said “What am I supposed to tolerate? A small encroachment on my First Amendment rights? Well, I’m not going to. I think it is clear what these people have done, and it outrages me.” (175)

And please forgive me one more crucial passage from Slack.

Those who believe in the Revelation don’t believe the world itself can be saved, Moyers points out. For them, the world is destined to go up in smoke. Bring it on.

If such a significant percentage of Americans, and many in high places, believe that the end of the world is a good thing, and that it’s coming soon, what are the chances we will take steps necessary to curb global warming, for example, or address the Middle East conflagration that many believe signals the return of the savior? As a foundation for political policy in the perilous twenty-first century, the Revelation is several orders of magnitude scarier than frogs or boils.

No authority other than the Bible, or some far-out interpretation of it, needs to be cited to hold or spread this view. It has nothing to do with the kind of evidence that is at the bottom line of any good public policy — foreign, economic, or environmental. Popular disregard, even disdain, for demonstrable truth is the most dangerous thing that can happen to a democracy. And it is happening here. Not only tonight in Dover, but in Washington too, where the Bush Administration’s contempt for science and evidence-based policy is everywhere evident, including its inhibition of stem-cell research; its censoring of the Clean Air Act, climate change, and other environmental reports; and its depleting of NASA’s science budget to pursue vanity projects such as sending humans to Mars. If beliefs trump facts, politicians can launch wars that have no basis, imprison suspects without explicit justification, and quell efforts to explore solutions to long-term environmental problems. If belief trumps fact, in these days of very dangerous truths, we’re screwed. (94-95)

Yep.

You can go read lots of online raves about this film, you don’t need to take my word for it.  But Wall-E is pretty darn cool.  A few thoughts:

• While I think it’s a beautiful film, both from a narrative and from a visual perspective, I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it as much as I thought I would.  I will probably buy this eventually, but not with the fever I had for The Incredibles.
• The first half of the film, which involves nearly no dialogue at all, is pretty amazing.  The body language Pixar invests into this barely-anthropomorphic robot and its cute cockroach buddy is amazing.  The choice to make the eyes swivel made all the difference.
• I love that WallE’s startup sound is an old Windows sound.  And Eve certainly looks Mac to me.
• The plight of the humans reminded me of two of my favorite SF dystopias.  First, E.M. Forester’s “The Machine Stops,” is pretty much exactly what the humans in the Axiom are experiencing, except in Forester’s story, it’s an underground bunker (ala Fallout or Bioshock).  I’m also reminded of Paranoia, a delightful role-playing game in which your goal is to outlive the other players.
• And don’t forget Fred Willard as the CEO of Big N Large.

From Joss Whedon:

It is time for us to change the face of Show Business as we know it. You know the old adage, “It’s Show Business – not Show Friends”? Well now it’s Show Friends. We did that. To Show Business. To show Show Business we mean business. (Also, there are now other businesses like it.)

ONE WEEK ONLY! AN INTERNET MINISERIES EVENT!

“Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” will be streamed, LIVE (that part’s not true), FREE (sadly, that part is) right on Drhorrible.com, in mid-July. Specifically:

ACT ONE (Wheee!) will go up Tuesday July 15th.

ACT TWO (OMG!) will go up Thursday July 17th.

ACT THREE (Denouement!) will go up Saturday July 19th.

All acts will stay up until midnight Sunday July 20th. Then they will vanish into the night, like a phantom (but not THE Phantom – that’s still playing. Like, everywhere.)

Mark your calendars.

Dear Brendan,

You spoke, and we listened. We are keeping Profiles. Thank you for all the calls and emails telling us how important Profiles are.

We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused. We hope the next time you hear from us we will delight, and not disappoint, you.

-Your friends at Netflix

Dear Netflix,

Thank you much. It’s nice to do business with a company who listens to its customers.

Not disappointed anymore,

Brendan

Related: Dear Netflix…

Jenny and I had a little spree at Target the other day, compliments of our credit card rewards program (not as fiscally responsible as getting cash back, I guess, but those gift cards are fun), and among the other coveted but not absolutely necessary stuff we bought, I picked up Cooking Mama.  What a hoot.

The game involves chopping, pouring, stirring, shaking, and tons of other moves as you make your food.  A few thoughts, after a day or two of playing the game:

• Mama makes me laugh, a lot.  During the game she doesn’t do much, but when you finish she comments on your work — the funniest is when she says “I’ll help you” after you totally pooch the meal.  While attempting to make custard, I over-stirred and sprayed custard all over my workspace.  When the screen flashes to mama, she’s covered in custard.  Ha ha!
• The total is not more than the sum of its parts.  To make a meal, you go through a number of steps, each being a kind of mini game with points for speed and accuracy.  At the end, it totals up your points.  Unlike real cooking, though, a crucial failure will not ruin the whole meal.  Case in point, I made lasagna and did everything moderately well until I got to the oven stage (whose controls I’m still confused about).  At that point, I badly burned the food.  In real life, this would obviate the work I did previously, as a well-chopped burnt lasagna is still gross to eat.  In Cooking Mama, on the other hand, I still got a good rating.
• Like tennis and other games, the repetitive motions are often tiring.  The chopping sequence can be pretty tiring, and the meat grinding really made my elbow hurt.
• The game teaches you in a couple ways.  There’s a training sequence that works really well, and there are instructions before each step of each meal reminding you what you need to do.  Mama encourages you by saying things like “Good job!”  Her voice reminds me of the female voice-over person from Iron Chef.
• The best part is that Jenny likes this game quite a bit, so we’re enjoying playing it together.  We tried the cook-off mode but it didn’t work so well.  I’m not sure why.

I’m the chair of the Ray and Pat Browne Best Edited Collection award for the PCA this year, and I’m curious if anyone has any advice for software to use to manage my committee’s evaluation of the submissions.  I’m thinking of something that allows each member to log in and rate the various submissions, to add comments, etc.  This would greatly speed up our discussion and ease management of this task.

Any ideas?

Quick comments on tunes from the last week:

• 1: Meat Puppets - I find the name of this band disgusting. And there music is wrong for a cyberpunk joke. I think Ministry could pull off this name.
• 2: Me First & the Gimme Gimmes - These guys specialize in pop-punk covers of old songs. I particularly love their covers of “Stand by your Man” and “My Boyfriend’s Back.”
• Mephiskapheles - I only have the “Bumblebee Tuna” song, but if you don’t have it, you need it. Email me.
• 2: The Mighty Mighty Bosstones - I always wondered if these guys were from Boston, and somehow their name was originally a pun on the name of the town. But people kept pronouncing it wrong. Instead of “The Mighty Mighty Boss-tones” people would say “Bos-tons.” So they changes it. Like in That Thing That You Do, when the band is called the wonders but they spell it oneders and people keep pronouncing it oh-needers.
• 4: Mike Doughty - My favorite singer/songwriter. Haughty Melodic is perhaps my favorite disc that I’ve purchased in the last five years.
• 3: Ministry - One of the bands whose music provides the soundtrack for my high school years. Plus, “A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste” is a fantastic album name, and good advice among cannibals.
• 2: Moby - I like his music but find him, as a person, a bit on the creepy side.

Not too much music this week because I was working in Windows, where I just do a shuffle rather than the orderly but slow progress through the songs.

The next podcast from my Writing and Rhetoric 2 class.  In this one, I explain the idea of “convergence” as I understand its relationship to electracy, our coursework, and the Lawrence Weschler book we’re using as our guide.

Podcast below the break.

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By Lewis Carroll; Librivox recording narrated by Adrian Praetzellis

Now that I’ve listened to both of the books, I have to say I liked this one better. Through the Looking Glass has more of the stuff I’d come to expect in the Alice stories. I also found that, unlike the last story which I knew pretty well by itself, this one I knew mostly through cultural references to it.

• I love the jabberwocky poem, but it makes me think of Jabberwocky, the Gilliam film about a knight errant (or a page-boy errant? It’s been a long time). Doesn’t the Jabberwocky also show up in The Fisher King? I need to see that movie again … Netflix’d … queued.
• The Tweedles are very entertaining, and I enjoyed listening to the poem about the Walrus and the Carpenter, which I’ve of course heard about quite a great deal. I wonder whether the Tweedles are supposed to understand its indictments of religion, and whether the fact that they engage in noble battle (over a broken rattle) is a criticism of their atheism.
• I loved “Haddock’s Eyes,” the poem the White Knight recites for Alice. Check it out: Haddock’s Eyes
• When the White Queen is prattling on about butter and jam, explaining to Alice that she can have them “every other day,” meaning “every day that isn’t today,” I couldn’t help but remember Carol Channing singing “Jam Tomorrow Jam Yesterday” in some made-for-tv Alice movie.  In watching it again, I can’t believe that I remember it.  Dear Lord.
• I think these stories will be indelibly connected in my mind with home improvement projects now. I listened to this book while working on the bathroom.

Praetzellis does a great job with the book, developing interesting and believable voices without straining himself. As I said above, I liked “Haddock’s Eyes” the most; the effort involved in learning the song and singing it well shows a skill that makes me want to read Praetzellis’ other recordings. (He’s working on The 39 Steps right now. That would be a good ‘un!)

Good ol’ YouTube. Here’s the Carol Channing song:

by Greg Egan

A solid collection of hard sf stories.

• Luminous - lots of cool ideas here.  The main thrust is the idea that there is some realm of mathematics where the usual algebra doesn’t work.  Huh.  Strange and cool simultaneously.  The opening sequence is a tense battle between an organ harvester and a potential harvestee.  Excellent.
• Riding the Crocodile - Egan imagines a far future that seems to be the end result of a world who started out like Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.  The main characters think and live in decades and centuries, and have technology to match.  I don’t understand the title of the story, though.
• Dark Integers - Another story that follows from “Luminous.”  Also delightful.  Both of these stories make me think of Eric Zenk, my long-lost grad school mathematician roommate.  The contemplation of vast numbers in untenable and incomprehensible forms brings me fondly back to his ruminations in our apartment, instrumental music blaring, pacing in and out in front of the white board.
• Glory - A strong indictment of competitive species foibles; feels a lot like a LeGuinn story.
• Oceanic - Not to be read if you’re squeamish or prudish about sex.  The sex stuff comes a bit out of nowhere, by the way.

Paul R. Potts, a reviewer on Amazon with an awesome name, commented that the cover for this book is for shit.  Or, in his words,

It looks like it is trying to be evocative, even erotic, with arms and legs and what appear to be Curta calculators (look them up!) over some kind of logo, but why do the limbs appear to be amputated, and what’s with the blue floating brain? (Note: there are no giant blue floating brains or amputated limbs to speak of in these stories). I was embarrassed to have my co-workers see this book cover. Even an abstract fractal or a cliched rocket ship or alien landscape with three moons would be far more attractive than this depressing Photoshop train wreck.

You go, Paul.

by Laurie R. King; narrated by Jenny Riley

The third novel in a series (but the first we’ve read) about Mary Russell, Sherlock Holmes’ young wife.  An entertaining series that reminded me very much of Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody mysteries.  Russell has the same intrepid spirit and emancipated ways.  The mystery is moderately interesting, but truth be told the end was a bit flat for my taste.  It’s really about the characters more than anything else.

• King does a pretty good job with Holmes, I think, but I’m not a purist.  I wonder what hardcore Holmes fans think of this series.  See also: The Final Solution
• I particularly enjoyed Russell’s matter-of-fact ability to shift and navigate the various personae that she adopts during the course of the investigation.  The balance between her inner feelings and her attempts to play the mousy secretary she’s pretending to be provides much of the entertainment of the story.
• LeStrade comes off well in this book, as he usually does in the Doyle stories.  Not at all like in the television show, where he blusters and raves as Holmes solves all the mysteries.
• This story inclines me to return to Doyle to see about Mycroft, as I’ve only read about half of the original Doyle stories.

This book also marked a return to one of my favorite things Jenny and I do together, which is to read books aloud.  It came from our Florida days, when we would take car trips of 18 hours or more.  I like listening to books on tape, and can pretty much drive forever if I have one to listen to.  Jenny gets sleepy listening to them, but can read for as long as her voice lasts if she’s reading aloud.  The result, we read a huge chunk of the Amelia Peabody series aloud during our trips back and forth.

Since Avery’s been born, however, we haven’t done as much of that since she doesn’t like it.  (We’re hoping when she gets a bit older and can follow sustained stories, we can start again.)  This week, though, I’ve been mudding and painting in our bathroom, and since Jenny’s seven months pregnant, she can’t really help much.  Also, paint fumes are a no-no.  So we put the speaker from the baby monitor in the bathroom with me, and the transmitter in the living room with Jenny, and she read the book to me as I worked.  It kicked ass.

By Robert Crais; narrated by James Daniels

Crais crafts a solid, thrilling detective story with a little bit of procedural, a whole lotta action and badass dudes, and a likeable main character.  A good book to listen to while doing something else (like, say, mudding drywall).  A few thoughts:

• I generally don’t like stories that put kids in danger, and this is a kidnapping.  That said, it’s handled in a way that didn’t give me too many of the willies.
• The production of this audiobook was pretty intricate.  There was some exciting, b-movie thriller music at the beginning and end of each CD, a cool voice filter whenever someone was talking through a phone, and nifty stereo effects during the Vietnam flashback sequence (with Vietnamese shouted convincingly in the background).  This made me want to see if there are radio plays or other more produced CDs I can request; I have requested 5 of them or so.
• When I was in high school and would regularly take long-day trips or even weekend trips with my nerd bowl team, I enjoyed buying men’s action novels, particularly Mack Bolan stories.  In reading one of these treasures, I cracked the spine and a page fell out.  When I gave the novel to another teammate, I didn’t mention the missing page and he didn’t notice it, so we made a habit of removing pages to see if people would notice.  I mention this because the main character’s partner, Joe Pike, reminds me a lot of Mack Bolan.
• The main detective in this story is a pretty nice guy with no major personality flaws, so that’s a nice change from the stereotype.  His name is Elvis, too.
• I have no idea what the title means or what it refers to.  Someone else who has read this book, please let me know.
• Spoiler in white text, highlight to read (Double spoiler, also spoils the Denzel movie, Man on Fire): Very early on in the novel, I made the clear call that the money-grubbing wealthy asshole ex-husband of Cole’s girlfriend (and father of the kidnapped boy) was behind the kidnapping.  I had much less suspicion about it in the Denzel movie.

James Daniels does a great job with the reading, giving Pike a vicious, throat-shredding growl of a voice and managing the other voices pretty well too.  He doesn’t do female voices very convincingly, but that’s no big deal for me.

By H.W. Brands.  Narrated by John H Mayer.

Going into this book, I knew very little about Old Hickory.  To tell you the truth, I often confused him with Stonewall Jackson.   A few notes about this blustery Unionist:

• Fought in the revolutionary war at fourteen (?) or so, as a messenger first and later as a soldier.  His mother and brothers died during the war and left him on his own.
• He was quite a hothead, fighting in several duels and exchanging severe words with folks all the time.  He would often, in letters and angry words, accuse people of being poltroons.  Apparently a poltroon is a cowardly person.  Aww man, I thought it was going to be an ethnic slur with the connotation of cowardice.
• When he was in his early twenties, he got a substantial inheritance (approx $40k by today’s reckoning) from an uncle in England.  He gambled it away on cards and horses in three months.
• AJ’s prime motivation was to the Union.  But aside from keeping the Union together, he was a “state’s rights” guy.
• On the day of his inauguration, he shook as many as 10,000 hands.
• Brands spends a lengthy passage explaining that Jackson’s frightful temper might have been from the fact that he suffered from nearly constant “bowel complaints.”
• Despite his awful record of stealing land and chasing off Indians, Jackson adopted two Indian boys as his own and raised them with his family.