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| 0380440652
| 9780380440658
| 0380440652
| 4.17
| 554,300
| Aug 30, 1951
| Oct 1966
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liked it
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Isaac Asimov’s first book of the Foundation series presents a distant future galactic Empire on the verge of collapse. Hari Seldon is a leading psycho
Isaac Asimov’s first book of the Foundation series presents a distant future galactic Empire on the verge of collapse. Hari Seldon is a leading psychohistorian, a practitioner of a new kind of science that blends psychology, mathematics, sociology, history, economics, and other fields to develop long-reaching predictions about society and events in the far future. His work has produced a fatal prediction that the Empire will collapse into ruin over the next centuries, a fate that is unavoidable. In presenting this to the rulers, he also makes clear his goal — to produce the Encyclopedia Galactica, an immense collection of all the knowledge required to rebuild and maintain society after imperial collapse. Given that a doomsday prediction surely won’t be taken well by the people of the empire, the ruling body still decides to take his carefully checked and rechecked predictions seriously. In a move that appears to be of their volition but that Hari has predicted, he is given a distant planet at the furthest reaches of the empire to continue his work. The many thousands of scientist/encyclopedists working on the project with him are moved to the planet, where they establish the Foundation. The story follows the next two centuries of intrigue and galactic turmoil. The book is broken into separate sections that each focus on an era in this early-imperial-fall. The establishment of the Foundation is examined, where we learn of the planet’s limited resources but intense intellectual and technological resources. Over time the workings of the Foundation form the basis of a galactic religion, with science as the source of its power and awe. The religious following is exploited for the purposes of political gain and power, and over time this religious influence is replaced with trade and the power of financial gain, all made possible by the Foundation’s work. The atomic power of ages past, which was once the lifeblood of the Empire, has become little more than a relic for most civilizations. But the Foundation’s capabilities keep this power source alive, and with it they draw unwanted attention. Risks of war loom on the horizon, as more powerful fringe kingdoms of the decaying empire look to take by force what the Foundation produces. To share more than this would be to share too much. It’s a terrific read, light on action, heavy on dialogue, world-building, and exposition. Asimov develops clever tensions and conflict that play out, in every case, according to the machinations of intelligent men who have, at some level, the interests of the Foundation in mind, or else their own interests at heart. These pivotal characters are able to plan for and see much larger contexts than others. In smart ways, in diabolical ways, in crafty and unexpected ways, the calculating heroes of the book account for details that others miss, or use Hari Seldon’s predictions to guide them, or take bold chances in order to gain advantage. Those we might see as villains are not so different, also manipulating the forces and people around them to their advantage. It sometimes reads like a detective story, other times an exercise in world-building and imagination, and other times like a political or war drama. A very promising start to a series that I’ve been meaning to read for two decades now. Its climax both ties up a splendid minor-epic, and sets the stage for a continuation that seems it will dwarf what we have already encountered. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Aug 18, 2024
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Aug 18, 2024
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 0735224900
| 9780735224902
| B076NVFT5P
| 4.24
| 46,638
| Jul 17, 2018
| Sep 04, 2018
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it was amazing
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The Coddling of the American Mind builds on the ideas Greg and Jon first wrote about in their article of the same name, published in the Atlantic in A
The Coddling of the American Mind builds on the ideas Greg and Jon first wrote about in their article of the same name, published in the Atlantic in August, 2015. I remember reading it just a few months later after I had finished my PhD in physics. I had been noticing a lot of the things they write about in this book, both on campus and in my interactions with friends and strangers. That article was part of my research into the problem that I am still fascinated with today. It was a bright light of reason addressing a problem that many of us had noticed but couldn’t describe. In the years to follow I became a big fan of Lukianoff’s and Haidt’s work more generally. I am happy to say that the book only improves upon their article in all imaginable ways. Although I loved the article, I wasn’t fully convinced by their underlying explanation — kids are less resilient, less intelligent, less capable, more over-reactive, all because of these various forms of coddling. I also didn’t quite buy the reasons for this over-coddling. Obviously the problem is real, and their characterization was right. But I wasn’t sure about the causes. After the book I am convinced. I find not only their assessment of the problem to be sharp and accurate and in many ways prophetic, I think they get the underlying causes right. There is strong evidence for it, anyway. The authors present the three great untruths that students of the last 11 years have seemed to embrace as their guides through life: The untruth of fragility (whatever doesn’t kill you makes you weaker), of us versus them (life is a battle between good people and evil people), and of emotional reasoning (always trust your feelings). A chapter is devoted to each. The whole book is underlined by insights from social psychology, a commitment to the intellectual virtues, and to the importance of freedom of expression in pursuing the truth. The book is not political, as Jon and Greg do not reside at either end of the political spectrum and make every attempt to admit their political biases, correct for them, and discuss the matter objectively. In the acknowledgements they name all the readers and researchers and helpers who made this book possible. One thing they were focused on was minimizing political bias. They had readers from the left, the right, from unspecified vantage points, all of whom interpreted certain events differently than the authors. This helped Greg and Jon sharpen their thinking, make better arguments, and ultimately produce a better book. I can’t over state how good it is. The analysis of the problem this book is about, a sort of convergence of cancel culture, safetyism, political correctness, righteous intolerance, is a contrast to what we see manifest in the problem itself — which is often a simplistic and univariable understanding of all issues. Jon and Greg attribute its source to six interacting trends: rising political polarization, rising rates of adolescent depression and anxiety, a shift to more fearful, protective, and intensive parenting in middle class and wealthy families, play deprivation and risk deprivation in iGen or GenZ, expanding campus bureaucracy and overprotection, a rising passion for social justice combined with a growing commitment to “equal outcomes” in all areas. Social media has exacerbated much of this. The authors examine the moral matrix, or consensual hallucinations that the young are participating in. Parents and teachers and professors have in some cases begun teaching a generation of students to engage in the mental habits seen in those suffering from depression and anxiety. Students began to react to words, books, and visiting speakers with fear and anger because they had been taught to exaggerate danger, use dichotomous or binary thinking, amplify their first emotional responses, and engage in number of other cognitive distortions. Cultures of self censorship emerged — vindictive protectiveness. This makes it difficult to have open discussions, practice critical thinking, and have civil disagreement. These patterns and behaviors interfered with the children’s intellectual development and that of those around them. We are seeing the impact now ten years later. I have known many of these people. Drawing from findings in psychology, the authors suggest that ultimately what will make you happier healthier and stronger is to seek out challenges, free yourself from cognitive distortions, take a generous view of others and look for nuance. Doing the opposite of these dooms one to failure. The book explores the fragility of certain young adults, and discusses how the concept of trauma has undergone concept creep in the age of safetyism to meet a subjective and lower standard. What was once an extreme experience that most do not have and which would be expected to cause anyone enormous lasting stress and anxiety and suffering is now a weakened form that includes just about any uncomfortable experience one can imagine. Everyone trusts their feelings as the most relevant guidepost in whether they have experienced trauma. The bloat of this word has only increased in recent years, and Lukianoff and Haidt were early to the game in their analysis. A growing tumor of the mind in young people is the idea that feeling emotional pain means they are in danger. “The culture of safetyism is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature and the dynamics of trauma and recovery.” “A culture that allows the concept of safety to creep so far that it equates emotional discomfort with physical danger is a culture that encourages people to systematically protect one another from the very experiences embedded in daily life that they need in order to become strong and healthy. This is what we mean when we talk about safetyism.” “Safetyism is the belief system in which safety becomes a sacred value — people are unwilling to make trade-offs demanded by other practical and moral concerns. Safety trumps everything else, no matter how unlikely or trivial the potential danger.” Protection against Microaggressions and trigger warnings produce greater fragility among students who are taught to perceive everything as harm and danger. This does the opposite of what cognitive behavioral therapy has shown is useful and productive. In 2013 students had worse attitudes toward free speech than administrators and were growing more hostile toward the idea of the expression of any ideas they found offensive. This was the first time in history university students were found to hold this attitude in greater numbers than faculty. The same year emotional reasoning was introduced by both the Department of Education and Department of Justice as a federal regulation on redefining harassment in broad and loose terms. We now interpret any feeling or sense of subjective discomfort as harassment or assault. Around this time two other sociologists noticed the change, Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning. Their 2014 essay on the victimhood culture explained some of the fundamental traits of this new zeitgeist still thriving today. I remember first reading that essay, and it was Jonathan Haidt’s work that introduced it to me. It was a profound reflection on this new culture, and on its contrast to the dignity culture of past generations. The book is filled with examples of students whose existence has been shaped by safetyism, false trauma, and victimhood culture. In the chapter on the Untruth of Us Vs Them, and black and white moralizing, they look at protests, claims of injustice, anarchy at schools like Yale and Evergreen and Missouri. I remember these events well. In protests a narrative is being constructed about what is wrong, who is to blame, and what corrective actions are needed. As Greg and Jon point out, reality is always far more complicated than activist narratives. Activist narratives often encourage black and white thinking in which people are characters, lionized as great or demonized as awful. The authors discuss the case of the 2015 Claremont McKenna College protests over a benign letter from the dean to a student who felt her race was underrepresented in positions of prestige. The chapter’s theme is events like this. A similar event occurred at Yale at the same time, with globs of stupid students erupting in fury in reaction to a thoughtful and well written email by Erika Christakis, suggesting students didn’t need their Halloween costumes policed by the university. She argued that free speech and the ability to handle offense like adults, being hallmarks of a free and open society, gave them the tools to handle disagreements themselves. Instead, the most arrogant and privileged and whiny kids on the planet turned this into cause for uproar. They went to her house, chalked threats in the sidewalk and formed an angry mob chanting for injustice veiled as justice. The mental prototype the authors present here as the models these students had for understanding the world have grown more prevalent in the binary world they create: people are either victims or oppressors. Herbert Marcuse’s Repressive Tolerance ignited decades of “progressive” intolerance with the notion that free speech and openness and rights are power structures to be toppled. This mindset is still in play among some on the further reaches of the left, viewing everything through the lens of power dynamics. All is not lost. As Greg and Jon I think rightly point out, this coddling is a problem of progress, not a terrible thing to have. Different social classes have different childhoods, each preparing them differently for adulthood. There has, in middle and upper class families been a shifting focus in childhood away from free play and experiencing danger and exploration toward safety and sedentary existence. Play deprivation and over-supervision. This is due in large part to the crime waves of the 1970s and 80s, which parents responded to by protecting their children in unprecedented ways. In school there has been a shifting focus for young kids from emotional and social development toward academic achievement, which is arguably less important at that age. Schools grow overly concerned with preparing students for standardized tests, and parents become overly concerned with keeping kids safe from imagined dangers blown up by media reports. Class division is seen in all of this — lower class kids may have a few advantages, with lower safetyism in their lives but obviously greater adversity overall. Middle and higher class students have worse coping abilities and are more fragile, with lower thresholds for what constitutes danger or harm. We see this with the abundance of so-called “trauma” in virtually every person under 30, when in fact their lives have been far safer, more benign and less prone to danger or trauma than any lives on this planet in the entire planet’s history. As the later chapters explain, many parents are trying to sculpt their kids into good candidates for universities by getting them involved in things no kid would choose to do, like community service projects, or other highly structured activities that do little to develop them as young people. Kids in turn have very little opportunity to pursue intrinsic fulfillment as opposed to the forced pursuit of their parents’ dreams. We see elevated suicide rates among teens in Paulo Alto and Boston, where these highly competitive schools are located. Kids aren’t resilient or prepared for everyday life, only prepared academically. They’ve lacked the opportunities to deal with real problems. Much of this prep parents are forcing on their kids will backfire and make them less able to thrive. Their kids grow up to be less competent adults. Less tolerant of risk and more prone to anxiety disorders. According to research by Steven Horowitz, this sort of fragility and incompetence has a negative effect on these kids ability to function in a democracy. They do not learn the art of association, the ability to develop institutions and norms that enable people with different goals and conflicting desires to resolve their problems without appealing to authority or third party intervention. Lacking these social skills is a threat to free liberal societies. It isn’t a stretch to say we have seen this come to fruition. Lukianoff noticed this on campuses in 2013 with increased “calls from students for administrators and professors to regulate who can say what, who gets to speak on campus, and how students should interact with one another, even in private settings.” I believe the major events at universities across the country over the last eleven years have borne this out. Jon and Greg put forward the consumerization theory of universities, which states that schools are turning into corporations offering services to customers, and the main service isn’t education but luxury. Students feel as though they should have control over their environment and experience like they would in a luxury vacation, and administrators reinforce this belief by pandering to them and handing over power to the students. Many Ivy leagues are closer to country clubs than institutions of intellectual development and learning. Administrators foster cognitive distortions in their students, moral dependency, and the concept creep of harassment and harm and danger. Social media is having disastrous effects on young people’s minds, especially girls. The shape shifting of social justice is a topic toward the end of the book. The concept of distributive justice is developed early on in children, who recognize the importance of proportionality. Those who do the larger share of work should get the larger share of rewards. At a young age they recognize this but don’t follow the intuition when it results in them getting the smaller share. But by adolescence most are able to apply it to themselves, understanding the importance of fairness. When fairness and equality clash, fairness tends to be valued higher than equality. This is based on naturally favoring fair distributions. The ratio of outcomes to inputs is the simple heuristic of equity theory, making sure that ratios are equal. Combining distributive Justice with procedural justice, the process by which decisions about distributions are made, allows one to use the idea of intuitive justice to convince people that someone is a victim or has not received what they deserve. The Civil Rights campaign was successful with its struggle for proportional-procedural justice by appealing to a common humanity identity politics rather than the common enemy identitarianism seen today. It did not try to force a new and esoteric definition of justice down everyone’s throats without convincing arguments, it demonstrated how the US was violating its own conventions of justice as expressed by the founding fathers but imperfectly realized. The authors are not merely pointing out the problem. Their final chapters offer practical solutions, first for parents raising resilient children, second for institutions, then for society. Almost every single one of these pieces of advice, including many I’m leaving out, also apply to adults, because many adults possess too few of these qualities. Unfortunately it may be too late for them. It’s not too late for children. Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child, teach the basics of CBT, encourage kids to engage in productive disagreement, teach them mindfulness, the principle of charity, intellectual humility, examine how their schools handle identity politics, give more recess and less supervision, cultivate intellectual virtues like curiosity, open mindedness, critical thinking, let them learn about civil disagreement through debate, promote reasoned discussion of homework and assigned readings, learn how to evaluate the legitimacy of sources, limit electronics device time. This is a magnificent book, a complete book, a book that excels at everything it set out to do. Its organization is one of the best I’ve seen in a book attempting to persuade its audience. The end of each chapter summarizes the key points of that chapter in order to drive home the arguments more fully. Every point and argument is backed by copious research. The appendix provides a useful guide for doing CBT. This is not a book by a couple of guys who want to complain about a growing fad ideology running wild, they are genuinely concerned about its impact, they have good reason to be, they understand the problem better than most who manifest the problem, and they have detailed, practical, and well-tested ideas for how to fix it. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 23, 2024
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Jul 29, 2024
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Jul 23, 2024
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ebook
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| 1078722978
| 9781078722971
| 1078722978
| 2.00
| 1
| unknown
| Sep 19, 2019
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it was ok
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Frank Reade was a character created for dime novels in the later 19th century by Harry Eaton. Frank is an inventor whose creations often entail going
Frank Reade was a character created for dime novels in the later 19th century by Harry Eaton. Frank is an inventor whose creations often entail going on some adventure. Over time the publisher of these stories decided they ought to be attributed to an anonymous author, at which point Harry left, and a writer named Luis P. Senarens took over, writing under the house name “Noname”. He wrote new stories about the son of Frank Reade, Frank Reade Jr., also an inventor. This dime novel, “Over the Andes with Frank Reade Jr, in His New Air-Ship, Or, Wild Adventures in Peru”, is one of his creations. Typical of the dime novels of the time, it is short, simple, and amusing. In this tale, Frank Jr. has built an airship. The publication date is 1894, a few years before the flights of the Wright Brothers, but after a long tradition of humans seeking flight with balloons, gliders, and air ships. Clearly inspired from such designs, Reade has built the first winged airship capable of taking humans great distances. He has two comic-relief assistants, both overt 19th century stereotypes: Barney, an Irishman, and Pomp, a black man. Both assistants talk in the exaggerated, silly vernacular one would expect to see a 19th century dime novel author attribute to each. Frank Jr. is unable to figure out where his airship, the Era, as he calls it, should travel on its maiden voyage, so Barney tells him of a friend who talks of a mysterious race of Incas living in the Andes mountains of Peru. This seems the perfect place to take the airship, as it is a location inaccessible by ground. This explorer tags along, but not before a detective, looking for a runaway murderer, comes to ask Frank for help. It turns out the murderer has conveniently run off to South America. Frank agrees to help. With this fully packed ship of five men, they set out for adventure. Although the story begins with fan fair and curiosity and the celebration of invention, as well as the anticipation of grand adventure, like a subdued, amateur version of an HG Wells or Jules Verne novel, it soon becomes a simplistic and minimal tale. This is to be expected, considering the medium. The plot develops quick, the action is brief, the sense of adventure is toned down as the narrator decides not to feed us much description or provoke us with awe. Things go about as planned with just a couple small conflicts or problems thrown in to shake things up, and resolutions happen before you can blink. The encounter of the Incan society in the Andes brings a slight sense of intrigue with it, but this fizzles out fast as the travelers seem to lose interest. The chase of the murderer falls into place in a strangely easy way, given the enormity of the region. A few unexpected detours and calamities later, things are wrapped up. There’s a scene toward the end that I think may be an early appearance of a trope that, to my knowledge, has no name. It’s the trope in which a person or persons fall from a great height and their comrades run to the edge, looking below in horror in fear of seeing their carcasses dashed to pieces. What they find instead are their friends dangling by a rope, capable of rescue. Maybe this appeared long before, but this could be the earliest example of it that I am aware of. This isn’t very interesting, but it came to mind while writing. Not a bad story. It has its moments of enjoyability and amusement. One will never lose sight of the fact that this is the equivalent of a serialized comic. Fun for a bit, but don’t look for too much. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 12, 2024
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May 17, 2024
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May 12, 2024
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Paperback
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| 0974166464
| 9780974166469
| 0974166464
| 4.21
| 73
| unknown
| Dec 15, 2004
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liked it
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The second volume of Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon comics covers the weekly installments from April 1935 to October 1936, picking up where the first col
The second volume of Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon comics covers the weekly installments from April 1935 to October 1936, picking up where the first collection left off. Once again, brilliant artwork by one of the era’s best comic artists. The structure is the same — quick plot development, lots of action and dynamic shifting of fortunes, wonderfully illustrated sequences and highly imaginative worlds, monsters, technology, and styles that blend medieval and dark age fantasy with exotic futurism. Flash has become king of the cave kingdom, winning the loyalty of the cave people, but his authority is not recognized by the witch queen of Mongo. Just as he and Dale are to be married, the witch queen Azura strikes, kidnapping Flash, Dale, and Zarkov. Azura wants to keep Flash for herself and attempts to kill his friends. Through heroism and bravery and daring and a stint of invisibility, he overcomes all her plots, and with the help of Zarkov and Dale he defeats her armies of magic men. Flash resists the death dwarves and by rescuing the queen who was once his enemy, receives her loyalty as king of the caves. War is declared on Ming, and Ming brings together people from distant lands to aid his war: the armored fire people and the ice giants. But Flash gains the aid of the hawk men and Aura and Barin’s tree people from the forest kingdom. The war is massive and over its course there is fire, devastation, battle with beasts, disguises, deception, daring, and clever traps aplenty. The art is stepped up a notch for many of these dramatic sequences, particularly in the battle scenes, which possess an awesome epic essence. There’s so much to feast the eyes on once the reading is finished. The war with Ming takes a detour as Flash and his comrades, on the run, plunge into the sea and find themselves drawn into more danger in the undersea kingdom Coralia. Flash, unconscious and drowning after the crash of their rocket, is rescued by the undersea people and his lungs are altered to breath water. The undersea queen Undina of course has plans of her own that are not aligned with Flash’s goals. So begins the final sequence of the collection, as the setting changes once more to a new and fantastical stage, and a bundle of adventures filled with some of the same ingredients we are by now familiar with: battles with beasts and man, trickery and deception, traps, bargains, and endless conflict. This sections sees a temporary escape from Ming, with events focused on Flash and his friends trying to survive and ultimately escape Coralia. Unfortunately, their lungs are now incapable of breathing oxygen, so it seems the underwater life is their fate… The collection is visually stunning, a satisfying read of pulp science fiction and fantasy during its glory days. I’m not sure how common color artwork was in comics of this time, but it makes the panels so vibrant and beautiful it’s hard to imagine them in black and white. I thought black and white was appropriate for the Secret Agent X-9 comics, given their noir spirit. But the Flash Gordon adventures cannot be effectively portrayed without such colorful and contrasting imagery. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 05, 2023
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Oct 08, 2023
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Oct 08, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 097416643X
| 9780974166438
| 097416643X
| 4.02
| 123
| May 2004
| May 01, 2004
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liked it
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Alex Raymond, just after beginning work with Dashiell Hammett on the Secret Agent X9 serial in late 1933, created his own character and universe as a
Alex Raymond, just after beginning work with Dashiell Hammett on the Secret Agent X9 serial in late 1933, created his own character and universe as a challenge to the popular Buck Rogers. Flash Gordon was Raymond’s opportunity to put his high creativity on display. Volume 1 of the collection includes the first 16 months of the weekly serial, in full color. It’s cool stuff. Flash Gordon and Dale Arden, later to become his romantic interest, have their plane blasted out of the sky by a meteor falling off the planet Mongo that is heading on a crash course for Earth. They land near the lab of Dr. Zarkov, who’s been working on a rocket to fly into the planet and knock it off course. He forces the two of them onboard with him and they launch into the planet. Their crash corrects the planet’s trajectory, but leaves them stranded on what turns out to be an inhabited planet, ruled by the Emperor of the Universe, Ming. So begins their adventure. Dale is such a lovely lady that she’s kidnapped for marriage not only by the emperor, but by lesser kings and rulers who would have her for themselves. Flash’s athleticism, fearlessness, and quick thinking make him a formidable opponent for the people of Mongo, as well as a valuable ally to those fighting against the ruthless powers of Ming. Throughout his adventures he battles Monkey Men, Shark Men, Lizard Men, Dragon Men, Hawk Men, and befriends the kingdom of Lion Men. Although he’s the leading man, his allies, including Dale and Aura, princess and daughter of Ming, rescue him from life threatening situations, help him resolve disastrous events, and allow the story to branch off into interesting new directions. Their odyssey takes them all over Mongo, from the capitol city where Ming and his people hold rule, to the underwater city of the shark men, the floating city in the sky of the hawk men, and the distant unconquered kingdom of the caves. The settings are one of the main attractors in the story, each beautifully rendered and carefully designed. Because of the medium through which these stories were published, one page weekly serials, each installment is fast paced, the story develops over short bursts, with each segment setting up a scene, reminding us what came before, resolving some problem or difficulty, with quick scenes of action and clever use of the setting, and ending with a setup for a new cliffhanger. The art is ideal, just the right style for a sci-fi-fantasy pulp epic: colorful, realistic, imaginative, detailed, conveying a sense of grandeur and wonder. The quality noticeably improves by the later installments, just around the time when each week’s story is given an additional page, allowing for larger, more involved artwork. The coloring, too, takes on clear improvements in its depth, realism, and complexity. One can see the growing effort as the story enters its second year, leaving behind the simple but effective formulas from which it was born, trying out new stylish presentations, and also showing us new lands of Mongo, far away from the areas that have by this point become familiar. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 2023
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Oct 02, 2023
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Oct 02, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 0691229198
| 9780691229195
| 0691229198
| 3.64
| 1,472
| 2020
| Aug 24, 2021
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really liked it
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Lost in Thought is about the move from learning for the purpose of status seeking to learning for its own sake. It’s a philosophical examination of fi
Lost in Thought is about the move from learning for the purpose of status seeking to learning for its own sake. It’s a philosophical examination of finding meaning in an intellectual life, not from racing to publish the next paper or prove one’s intellectual dominance or superiority, but to quietly live a life of constant learning, exploration, reflection. Zena Hitz shares her own background in academia, which I related to more than I expected, and her search for purpose and satisfaction in her work. Her passion for knowledge and deep learning is obvious. She spent time searching for a stimulating, vibrant intellectual culture like what she experienced as an undergrad but never could find again. After 9/11 she reflected on the futility of her academic existence and wanted to make a difference, helping the poor and living without luxury. She became Catholic and lived for a time in Madonna House, a primitive Catholic commune. This, like many of her prior experiences, shaped her impression of the importance of an intellectual life separated from status, from social performance, from the disingenuous urge to please others or the self. Her book is a study of the contemplative life based not only on her experience, but the experiences of philosophers and scientists and thinkers, the worlds of novels, and characters from other forms of fiction. She distinguishes between instrumental uses of the intellect — motivated by results and outcomes, like a spy gathering intel, a Wall Street quant maximizing profit, a political activist supporting their cause, and the intrinsic value of learning, not as a means to an end but as something worth pursuing, what she calls hidden learning, withdrawn from the pressure to produce economic, social, or political outcomes. She points to mathematics, science, philosophy, and literature as examples, all of which have instrumental uses but like anything else can be enjoyed purely on their own merits, as a fulfilling thing to study and find beauty in. She aims to answer the question she anticipates many might ask: what good is it to learn if it is hidden, and not used for good or healing? Aristotle argued our ultimate end has to be for its own sake or our actions will be empty and vain. Hitz seeks the ongoing development of a rich inner life, through books and understanding and learning. Living to work is a futile existence, she argues. A redundant and unsatisfying life. Leisure must be used and not merely as rest to prepare us for more work. She discusses how we can use our leisure time to pursue intellectual life, even if we are short on time, or do not think of ourselves as intellectuals. Reading and contemplating for ninety minutes a week, for example, or setting aside 30 minutes a day. Manual labor is in fact quite fruitful to this, leaving the mind free to ruminate in ways other vocations may not. Contemplation in the form of learning is worthy for its own sake and worthy of time and resources. In cultivating an inner life, we set aside concerns for social ease or advancement, we instead follow self development without concern for how it appears to others. Inwardness and withdrawal manifest as thoughts and imaginings that are unspoken and invisible. Many examples of common humanity are shared through her study: an instructor teaching prisoners Shakespeare dissolves barriers between teacher and student due to the substance of material; WEB Du Bois finds in books a world without a color line division. Something beyond community produced by work is offered in the realm of the intellect. Bonds transcend time and space, to those dead or foreign or vastly different and removed from our familiar world. She addresses the perceived uselessness of intellectual life, in Thales and Socrates and others, addressing its popular perception as childish and empty. It is distorted by ideas of civic and economic and political usefulness. We do not see intellectual life clearly because of our devotion to lifestyles rich in material comfort and a sense of social superiority. We are fixated on the superficial and mundane and hollow. We are petty and shallow and infantile-we want the benefits of an intellectual life without the devotion to it or the sacrifices needed, like obscurity or poverty or lack of material wealth. She raises valid points about the sacrifices that should be made for true intellectual life. She looks at the self-serving wishful thinking of watered down, instrumental forms of intellectual life. Social justice and think tanks and entrepreneurship and economics and politics, and ways to flex a pseudo-intellectual muscle but never for the sake of intellectual pursuits, as means to an end. Hitz reflects on the self deception of social advancement. She evaluates Aristophanes’s play Clouds as a critique of wealth and empire and disdain for true knowledge. Its main character Strepsiades is a bundle of incoherent impulses. In her view, the Athenians were blind and self deceived if they took this as an attack on Socrates, which they did. Strepsiades represents the shortsighted simplistic man whose distorted view is that only things of practical value are of any worth. Wealth, Hitz remarks, should be seen as a tool, not a goal. The theme of redemption of the mind through philosophical discipline is visited over and over, primarily through Augustine’s Confessions, examining his journey of learning and questioning, his egoism, sexual preoccupation. Hitz contrasts the transformative discipline of philosophical search for truth with the love of spectacle and the news media and social media preferring outrage, shock, horror and unpleasant falsehoods over agreeable truths. Untrue sensationalist things spread fast and garner mountains of attention and become ingrained in the public subconscious. But the corrections go barely noticed, and don’t attract the same attention. “Love of spectacle wallows in novelty and negativity.” Our culture prefers the horror or thrill of shock and revelation rather than the quiet truthful correction. We also want to become the spectacle, and this gives rise to legions of bored, vapid addicts to outrage performing for each other on the internet, an endless theater of pretend people having pretend reactions to manufactured scenarios and piles of lonely outraged people clicking their approval and spreading this sentiment, to the detriment of reasonable discourse or creativity or usefulness. All our worst minds and natures are wrapped up in news media and social media, especially Twitter and TikTok and tumblr. She recognizes the necessity of creativity and producing art for flourishing. Experience itself is not a meaningful end or purpose, it must feed something deeper in us. “Unless we treasure something beyond our own bare experience, we cannot distinguish gazing at a mighty river from gazing at the TV channels changing one to the other, over and over again.” One who dwells at the surface of things is a mere spectator of spectacle. She takes us through the corruption of learning by the love of money or social success, and by politics. “When we attempt to produce just outcomes from the top down we shortcut the communion of the reader with the author, and so suppress the egalitarian community of learning… Worse, the longing for justice is reduced to a set of rules for the use of language or for which opinions can be expressed. The correct justice-promoting words become tools for gatekeepers, protecting a hierarchy in the end not obviously different from the one that prompted the revolution. Social justice becomes not only trivialized, but also emptied of content, used for purposes counter to its professed aims.” It is the emptiness of political speech and activist language games that have sucked dry any thoughtful project for justice. In her broader discussion of how knowledge is often treated as the learning and recitation of the correct opinions, she reflects on this practice within her own institutions, the church and the university. In universities, she argues, much of what is called education in the contemporary humanities is the cultivation of the correct opinions. The education supported by progressive activists, for example, seeks social and political results instead of the cultivation of free, thoughtful human beings. And the conservative mirror image of progressive activism, promotion of the correct opinions about free markets or economic liberty, also with aims for political results. Politics is in many cases a means of social advancement, and the recitation of learned platitudes aids this. Hitz calls this “opinionization”, “the reduction of thinking and perception to simple slogans or prefabricated positions, a reduction motivated by fear, competition, and laziness.” Those participating in this ritual show they belong to a tribe by parroting approved phrases and words. She offers what I think are compelling counterpoints to the diversity of opinion, often championed today in response to the rising illiberalism of progressives. As important as the diversity of opinion can be in certain areas, she argues, I think rightly, that opinions are often superficial and devoid of real inquiry. To engage in meaningful intellectual activity requires challenging opinions, having a stronger and more defensible basis for believing what we do. We often engage in debates with the intent to only further affirm what we believe rather than engaging in dialectic to have discussions that get at the fundamental substance of ideas and work out what is true. As Harlan Ellison said, “You don’t have a right to your opinion. You have a right to your informed opinion.” In true learning, we are not merely throwing around competing opinions. We develop discipline and seriousness, and discover why most opinions are without merit. Again and again she aims to convince the reader that the goals of intellectual life should be as separate from spectacle as possible. I think she succeeds in this. She contrasts the differences made in society by people like trash collectors who aren’t brought onto TV for their tireless and consistent efforts, and those who are glamorized and celebrated for making what amount to be much less significant or impactful differences, but that are flashy and attention grabbing. Often our notions of “making a difference” are superficial and disconnected from real human need. The ultimate use of the “useless” intellectual life is the self transformation into a reflective person, connected deeply with life and meaning and one’s relation to others, I would argue not only human but transcending species. It informs the way one thinks and operates and behaves day to day, in some ways small in other ways big and immediately impactful. The virtue of seriousness, as she puts it, requires our dedication to what is important and what is meaningful, an appreciation for the deeper substance and significance behind seemingly mundane ideas or observations or events, not that which is merely self-serving or fleeting, and provides the clarity to act in ways that promote the flourishing we want to ultimately understand. The more we read and learn and study and immerse ourselves in learning for its own sake the less self-congratulatory we may become, as our awareness opens up to the complexity of other lives and experiences and problems and ideas, the less tribal and pompous, the less vapid our interactions with others, the less self-involved we become. Paradoxically, the more we read and the more we experience through other eyes and ages, the less special we feel about our own erudition, and we become attuned to the obscure ways in which knowledge matters and is shared, recognizing it even in those who are inarticulate, uneducated, or as alien to us as possible. It may make us more sensitive to the forms of emptiness that reside within us and destroy any sense of smug superiority that we were once tempted to feel, while also filling some of that emptiness and changing its character. We learn to examine our own motives for what we do, as we try to untangle the truth from what we tell ourselves is the truth of our actions. The intellect, when not subjugated to lesser motivations and desires, provides an authentic “guide to life with its own integrity and independence.” We reflect on the sources of our thoughts, submit ourselves to challenges to alway become more clear-minded, more connected to what we learn and think about. We can seek to get to the bottom of reality and life and understand where meaning comes from. The exercise of the love of learning “uncovers a human being who is not reducible to his or her economic, social, or political contributions.” The intellectual life involves reaching out past the surface, questioning appearances, striving for what is not evident. “A human being is more than an instrument of personal or public benefit.” ...more |
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| 0393312763
| 9780393312768
| 0393312763
| 4.22
| 12,969
| Sep 22, 1994
| Jan 17, 1995
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it was amazing
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This is another of many books I’ve had for ages that I finally got around to reading later than I should have. Having been a long time admirer of Kip
This is another of many books I’ve had for ages that I finally got around to reading later than I should have. Having been a long time admirer of Kip Thorne’s work I was sure it’d be good. It was, of course, excellent. Kip Thorne is a theoretical physicist, one of the leading experts on general relativity’s applications to black holes and astrophysics. The book tells the story of how this field came to be, how it grew out of our evolving understanding of Einstein’s revolutionary impact on physics, and it brings to life the stories of dozens of the significant scientists around the world who were, and still are, involved. I expected an enjoyable explanation of GR and black holes intended for the public, but did not expect it to be just as much, if not more, a history and a storytelling experience that conveys the excitement of doing theoretical physics research, the power of discovery, the thrill and challenge of tackling difficult problems. Thorne starts by explaining the relevance of Einstein’s special and general relativity in a world that was understood in Newtonian terms. This revolutionary work and its phenomenal predictions, and even more phenomenal validations, would pave the way for the most productive century of physics the world had ever seen. Throughout the book, Thorne makes complex ideas simple, and the figures strewn throughout offer fantastic visual aids for almost every concept he breaks down into simplified, non-mathematical explanations. Even early on we see a huge cast of important physicists, lest we mistakenly believe Einstein was the only one pumping out revolutionary ideas. His were the most vital and impactful, but alongside him and long after, others carried the torch, sometimes in different directions, and produced rapid, radical, and significant discoveries. World War II played a role in black hole research I was not previously aware of. With the nuclear weapon developments of the US, and later Russia, theoretical physics reached a place of sophistication and frightening power, as well as comprehension of new, never before seen things. This would have massive repercussions on the direction black hole research took over the next decades. The tensions between the US and Russia were not reflective of the relationship between US and Soviet theoretical physicists, who became colleagues over the seas, friendly competitors in a race no longer of weaponry but of understanding astrophysical phenomena. And they became collaborators on difficult problems. Eventually, the US, Russia, and Britain dominate theoretical black hole and GR research. The prominent scientists from these nations comprise the main cast of the story. And because knowledge like this requires focused mentorship to begin, it may be no surprise that many of the most relevant scientists in this field go on to teach and train students who become the best in the field, and who then train the next generation of the best in the field, until we have a few small communities of somewhat incestuous but powerful theoretical physics researchers, who all know each other on a first name basis. Thorne gives a lot of space to the interplay between scientists, like Chandrasekhar and Eddington’s disagreements about the fates of stars, or Einstein’s reluctance to believe the predictions that fall out of his own theories, because his intuitions differed from Schwarzschild’s discovery, which points to black holes. This pattern holds throughout the entire 20th century, with physicists disagreeing about critical pieces of theory, like Zwicky’s predictions about neutron stars meeting fierce resistance for not being rigorously argued, or the post-World War II era seeing Oppenheimer proving Landau wrong, or his battle with Wheeler over whether stellar implosion produces black holes. Or Thorne’s own bets and disagreements with Stephen Hawking. John Wheeler, by the way, probably wins the prize for producing both the highest quantity and quality of expert students to go on to shape the field (his student Robert Wald wrote the main text book from which I learned the mathematics of general relativity, but the Soviet theorist Lev Landau wrote maybe the most influential set of theoretical physics text books ever conceived, from which I also learned some GR), and also for shaping the field himself. The satisfying thing about these episodes, and the dozens of other disagreements between high profile and high quality scientists, is that it illustrates the way science is done, particularly theoretical physics. While giving plenty of space to these giants and their disagreements, he gives more space to their work, their background, who they are as people and scientists, and why their work matters. He fits it all into the wild and quickly changing world of theoretical general relativity research and black hole speculation. This aspect of the book is my favorite, because most of the physicists that star in this cosmic tapestry are legends to me, titans I learned about in college and graduate school. They’ve always been more than names to me, but they manifested mostly in their ideas and their contributions, the final products of their discoveries. Here, they are breathing people struggling against uphill challenges, unlikely odds, obscure concepts, unfamiliar territory, and the facts of their lives come into play, almost inevitably showing us something incredible. To me, most of the people in this book were already heroes, but now they’re heroes whose stories I know better. Thorne untangles these dynamic scenes and noteworthy, high caliber science dramas while also taking the time to patiently explain the relevant physics concepts, like wave particle duality, the uncertainty principle, the curvature of spacetime, nuclear fusion, cosmic radio waves and synchrotron radiation, white dwarfs and neutron stars and supernovas, vacuum fluctuations, quantum foam, black hole evaporation, entropy, interferometry, hyperspace, worm holes, a hundred other things. He has a way with making highly mathematical and complicated ideas understandable for lay audiences. He shows the revelations that experimental physics and observational astronomy brought to bear on theoretical astrophysics, and how these disciplines combined forces with relativity to pursue the holy grail of GR, finding the elusive black holes in our real universe. Thorne’s characterization of the Golden Age of gravitational physics research is one of epic intellectual successes and battles, an age of heroism. The novel methods devised by physicists to detect gravitational waves becomes the focus at one point, and Thorne discusses the development of these ideas and his own work with LIGO, the gravitational wave detector he helped devise and for which he would go on to win the Nobel Prize in 2017. To give acknowledgment to the vast breadth of ideas or people Thorne discusses at length would take me too much time. Thorne is a modest man who, for the whole book, gives credit to everyone but himself, except toward the end. He outlines some of his insights and publications and his work, and I loved his reflections on solitude and its importance to his work, his lengthy calculations, his clarity of thought. But he gives far more attention to those who came before, to the exemplary physics minds of the 20th century who paved the way for others, and the others who came to mastery and thus paved the way for the future generations, and he shows over and over how each generation of physicists cooperated, competed, and struggled, to leave their followers with a more exciting, more challenging, and more profound set of questions and tools for understanding some of the most remarkable physical phenomena in the universe. ...more |
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| 0739467352
| 9780739467350
| 0739467352
| 4.04
| 421,950
| May 09, 1997
| 2005
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liked it
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Guns, Germs, and Steel is an ambitious book that attempts to explain the differences in human societies around the world and throughout history as a f
Guns, Germs, and Steel is an ambitious book that attempts to explain the differences in human societies around the world and throughout history as a function of ultimate causes. These ultimate causes, in Jared Diamond’s view, are geographical. He lays out some convincing arguments and his research is far reaching, dynamic, deep. Proximate causes for some societies dominating other societies, like the Spanish conquering Mesoamerica, or the English colonizing North America, are the items in the book’s title. Guns, germs, steel, technology, writing, complex social structures and institutions. The ultimate causes of these proximate causes span back thousands of years. Geography, climate, and their effects on the distribution of domesticable plants and animals go a long way toward explaining why some areas in the world were more suitable for the development of farming, or why hunter-gatherers prospered for thousands of years instead of settling into sedentary communities. Diamond also argues that the primary axes of the continents plays a big role. The east-west span of Eurasia may have led to an easier diffusion of animals, plants, writing, and other resources, than would the north-south axes of all the other continents. His reasoning is that the varying climate zones in a north-south continent pose greater challenges for plants and animals. His research covers an impressive range of areas, like geography, biology, archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, discussions of social organization, of economics, of diseases, and various complex factors outside of human control that ultimately directed human flourishing. It’s a respectable breadth and depth for such a difficult thesis. I find the greatest value in this book to be its patient discussion of all manner of seemingly unrelated concepts and historical forces, and how they differed across the planet. The close look at language evolution and how this can be used to piece together the spread of people and the heritages of various groups was fantastic. So too were the sections on the development and spread of writing, and of religion. The discussion of social stratification as it developed through increasingly complex societies, from band to tribe to chiefdom to state, was done exceptionally well, and I would have liked to see more time spent on this. I have my complaints, though. Diamond addressed most of these complaints in his Epilogue, and in his later Afterward from 2017. This tells me that my complaints weren’t from a misreading, and also that he anticipated his critics and is aware of the perceived shortcomings in his book. But I should repeat that it is an ambitious book with many qualities to it, and despite the complaints I’m about to make, it deserves equivalent levels of praise. In his preface, Diamond makes it clear this book will not be merely a scientific and historical study, but will serve a political purpose. He wishes to show that the disparities among human societies are not due to intrinsic differences in intelligence or genetic superiority, or any racist reasons. He is responding to the racist explanations for why white people conquered the American Indians, or took African slaves. This is commendable, but I take issue with his approach. First, he claims that suggesting there could be any differences among human populations that might account for their different levels of flourishing is a loathsome and racist idea. I don’t think this is true. Differences don’t necessarily mean superiority or inferiority. At the end of multiple chapters, he says, in so many words: “So you see, the reason people X did very well and people Y did not do so well is not due to any differences between people X and Y, because that is racist, but because of geographical differences.” While he does make strong cases for the geographical and otherwise natural causes for these differences, he fails to account for human difference at any point in the book, across all of history. He states, early on, that he aims to offer explanations that will prove intelligence and genes have nothing to do with it. The problem is that he never explores why intelligence and genetics should never be considered, or why other social factors, like social customs, cultures, social institutions, will not be considered. He briefly touches on this in the Afterward, but not in a satisfying way. The impression one gets is that he wants to ignore these aspects, and that if intelligence or genes really did play a role, at any point, then we could not rely on him to tell us. He treats human development as deterministic, ruled entirely by geography. This is not a major flaw, since his goal is to look at ultimate causes. Ostensibly, even if intelligence differences did exist, we should assume ultimate causes could explain why those arose in the first place. Adding to this relatively minor gripe is a more serious one. Diamond, who has spent a lot of time in New Guinea doing field research in biology, refers to the New Guinea people throughout the book as a sort of modern day test case for various hypotheses he considers. In his prologue, shortly after claiming that talking about genes and intelligence is racist and loathsome, he says he believes New Guineans are on average more intelligent and genetically superior to Eurasians. This is mind blowing for a lot of reasons. It obviously contradicts the foundations of his whole thesis. But his reasoning behind this statement is absurd. He claims that because Eurasians live in more densely packed societies and our children have flashy mind-rotting technology, our society has not selected for intelligence or good genes like the New Guineans’ has. He fails to acknowledge the many millions of people who do not live in dense cities, or the countless other social factors that might affect intelligence aside from how children amuse themselves, like the entire rest of human history that would have had a greater impact on our genes than the last few decades. Given the book he is writing and the arguments he is making, it isn’t clear why he thinks what he does. This wild claim comes off as an attempt at being politically correct, at the expense of integrity. His political goals compromise his scientific and historical aspirations, weakening the book. It is relatively minor, but it is noticeable. In politics, the goal is never to figure out the truth and to reveal that truth through careful reasoning and evidence. Politics is about forming narratives and convincing people to accept your narrative, and leaving out details that will not directly support your desired conclusions. One quickly gets the impression that Diamond is more interested in dispelling racist oversimplification and myths, even if it means oversimplifying in other ways, than he is in exploring the full, complicated picture of human development. He seems to be aware that mentioning intelligence or genes or adaptability is not automatically racist, because he does this without condemning himself. Yet, he claims that giving any attention to these factors in explaining disparities, even as a proximate cause, would be racist. That’s an argument for another day. This is a very tiny part of the book, and I don’t want to imply it contaminated the rest. But it sets a strange tone and makes his motivations harder to see as scientific rather than political. The reason this matters is because we find that by the end of the book, after he gives special attention to each continent and offers a much needed exploration of localized characteristics, and further condemns the idea that we should look to human beings as having autonomy, his explanations do not fulfill his early promise. That is, the Fertile Crescent being the origin for many of the good things that humans would later depend on, or the head starts that certain regions possessed, do not explain why certain sections of the globe excelled and others did not, or why some became conquerors and others were conquered. Intelligence or genes wouldn’t explain these, but we know that there are complex forces behind these things that demand closer scrutiny. The advantages granted by geography, in the end, turn out to not answer the question that Diamond is hoping to answer. They seem to answer part of if, and make for good reading. But it is not enough. Without looking closer at humans, we are missing a lot. Second, some of his explanations, while there is truth in them, seem to gloss over a lot of important things. I find the primary axis argument unconvincing. In explaining why North America was a land unfriendly to the spread of food and animals and writing and ideas, because of its mountains and deserts and forests, he seems to neglect the mountains and deserts and forests of Eurasia, which would pose similar barriers to diffusion. When he discusses a continent that historically had trouble, he looks at the worst parts of that continent, and compares them to the nicest, most hospitable parts of the “good” continents. He treats Eurasia as the only continent that was hospitable for human flourishing, and makes a lot of apples-to-oranges comparisons to other continents. This is not a fair analysis. To say he oversimplifies is accurate but unfair as a criticism. Given the difficulty and size of this topic, simplification is unavoidable. But at times he seems to oversimplify in misleading ways, leaving out things I know matter, and other times seeming to give inordinate attention to a thing that in the end is clearly not that important, but that he believes will help his thesis. An example is the insistence on treating Eurasia as a single unit of society. It’s justifiable to treat Europe and Asia as the same continent, but the reader notices early on that if he treated Europe and Asia separately, which would be justified given the barriers and differences between them, most of the apparent benefits he attributes to this continent shrink. Given the hugeness of Eurasia and its vast expanse over many mountains and unforgiving terrains, it is odd to treat it as a single large Zone whose people all had the same benefits. In Diamond’s simplified view, if China had thirty domesticable species of mammal, this somehow benefited England more than it benefited Egypt. If Spain had a Mediterranean climate hospitable to many plants, this somehow benefited Japan more than it benefited Ethiopia. He is lumping so much under one roof, when it’s clear these things are not really shared continentally, that it seems like an artificial categorization designed to stack the deck in favor of his thesis. He never looks close enough within the continental borders to work out how such significant differences arose in neighboring countries or societies, which is a critical misstep when trying to present a thesis like this. There are other gripes I have, but I’ve already given more time to them than my praise. I don’t want to further the impression the book was riddled with errors or problems, because it isn’t. This is, all things considered, a well researched, finely written, expansive study of an important topic. It’s informal, patient, sufficiently detailed considering its diversity, and Diamond puts forward many good arguments and pieces of evidence for most of his hypotheses, even if they have not all been tested or confirmed. He refers to a number of case studies that point to his ideas being true. He makes some enlightening connections between ancient conditions and consequences playing out today. ...more |
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| 1848632177
| 9781848632172
| 1848632177
| 4.00
| 6
| Dec 01, 2011
| Dec 01, 2011
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liked it
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The American Comics Group collections of pulp comics from the mid-20th century are good to dive into from time to time. This collection includes the f
The American Comics Group collections of pulp comics from the mid-20th century are good to dive into from time to time. This collection includes the first five issues of Adventures into the Unknown spanning the Fall of 1948 to the summer of 1949. It’s hard to read these without feeling a sense of immersion into the mind of a post-war American teen escaping the mundane. The inclusion of the original ads from the first printings helps with that, as you read cheesy advertisements directed at the insecurities of boys and girls hoping to grow up to be perfect specimens of attraction or success. The comics are standard horror and supernatural fare, like ghosts, hauntings, witches, curses, monsters, demons, regional folklore and superstition, and the occasional surprise, like time travel. The same handful of artist-authors are featured over all the issues. Art and writing are good, with noticeable style differences among the artists, and some pretty involved and attractive panels that capture the imagination. It’s easy to imagine being a 1940s teenager getting lost in the images and letting their imagination run away, because I was a 2020s adult closing in on 40 doing the same thing, with a childlike wonder. The stories vary in quality, and given their brevity and the medium, don’t tread too far from a predictable path. But they’re a fitting way to celebrate Halloween and explore the old days of horror before it became a part of pop culture. The focus on the chosen subject is something I admire about these pulp comics. Each magazine had a specialty, like horror, science fiction, fantasy, western, crime, or adventure. So you knew you’d be getting a lot of stories revolving around certain themes and visuals. You got exactly what you wanted. These ACG collections are worth tracking down for anyone interested in the genre comics of the mid-century, or interested in exploring some of the early forms of these genres before they took on the forms they have today. ...more |
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| 0394717732
| 9780394717739
| 0394717732
| 3.92
| 12,974
| 1931
| May 1972
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really liked it
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In the Glass Key, Ned Beaumont is a racketeer working for the politician and possible crime lord Paul Madvig. Madvig has plans to marry the daughter o
In the Glass Key, Ned Beaumont is a racketeer working for the politician and possible crime lord Paul Madvig. Madvig has plans to marry the daughter of the Senator, and soon her brother is found dead in the street by Ned. A complicated mess of political intrigue and cover ups and plotting by combating political factions erupts. Ned is given permission by the District Attorney to act with the authority of the DA’s office while looking into the murder, so strong is Madvig’s influence over everyone in the city with ambition. Ned Beaumont may be Dashiell Hammett’s second best protagonist, right behind the Continental Op of Red Harvest and the Dain Curse. He’s durable and smart and determined and doesn’t waste time, but he’s not one to sympathize with, and hard to figure out. It’s a bleak story with seedy, rough people, no one worthy of trust. The Glass Key is Hammett peeling away the dirt and grime and self-interest and antisocial impulse of corrupt politicians. In this story everyone close to power is corrupt, willing to go down whatever path is necessary to obtain more of it, secure it, protect it from slipping out of their hands and into their enemy’s clutches. The mystery of who murdered the Senator’s son comes off as secondary to the picture of corruption and violence and madness that characterizes the city. It isn’t about solving the killing as much as it is about the power plays and manipulation of knowledge and the deals that can be made. Yet, the mystery is at the center of everything, and while Beaumont is screwing with the DA’s investigation, in hopes the evidence doesn’t point to Madvig, others are interested in figuring out the truth, and some are invested in Madvig taking the fall. There’s no police procedural, there are no good guys, it’s never clear where the threads may be going. The Glass Key is unique among Hammett’s novels in that there are few redeeming characters, and yet it is not unique in that Hammett once again develops an intriguing little world of crime and strange people who give it depth and ugliness and curiosity. ...more |
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| 0425019225
| 9780425019221
| 0425019225
| 3.35
| 148
| 1961
| Jan 01, 1970
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In James Blish’s The Star Dwellers humankind has achieved interstellar travel through a novel concept called a Haertel field. This field dampens inert
In James Blish’s The Star Dwellers humankind has achieved interstellar travel through a novel concept called a Haertel field. This field dampens inertia, creating what is known as a Standing Wave that a vessel rides upon through space with no local velocity. It is a bubble in spacetime, a topological conform that “rejects” the entire universe so that you travel independent of it, without moving. In this way, faster than light travel is possible. There are a few other dazzling scientific concepts central to the book, like the Nernst generator, a fusion device that produces a ship’s energy, and a cosmic ray sail that about halfway through the story allows two astronauts to travel through space powered only by cosmic radiation. Most impressive of all is the alien race motivating much of the story. Humans are now a space-faring race whose sophistication in organization and military and travel are noteworthy. They have discovered many alien races spanning the spectrum of intelligence and advancement. While relatively advanced themselves, humans are not at the top, and are currently being observed by more distant and far older races. Whether humans will pass the hundred thousand year tests they are being subjected to and be welcomed into the galactic federation is a question that won’t be answered for some time. While more technologically capable than ever before, Blish uses colorful exposition and dialogue to show ways in which the race still has far to go, and much more to figure out about their place in the universe. Nothing profound is put forward, nothing of grand discovery is attempted, but we have a thoroughly memorable and imaginative story, full of thought and well-placed ideas, a real pleasure to read. It is with this backdrop that three human ships travel deep into the Coal Sack, a dark region close to the galactic center, and encounter a previously unknown form of life: pure energy. The life forms reside in outer space, living in nebulae, where stars are born. The energy beings attempt to fuse with the ships. One ship is destroyed, another is disabled, and the third sees its fusion core invaded by the being, who otherwise seems harmless. This ship returns to Earth with the “Angel” onboard, and this entity’s power is soon understood. He is referred to as Lucifer, the fallen angel, and communication is made possible through a transceiver and the being’s unfathomable ancient intellect. Lucifer is studied while he enjoys the enormous amounts of energy he is able to absorb from the fusion core, and in turn he grants an unprecedented level of free energy to humanity. The disabled ship, however, drifts lost in the Coal Sack, and a small team of men are sent to find it and to hopefully open more diplomatic relations with the Angels. So begins an imaginative yarn about two cadets and a seasoned scientist-hero who travel to the farthest reaches of humanity’s maps of space to explore the stellar nursery that is the birthplace of what we come to learn is the universe’s oldest race. Their primary mission is to recover their lost ship and possibly rescue survivors. The events of the team’s voyage through space and the level of thought Blish puts into the minutia of their travels lends it an air of believability and realism. He has a way with constructing a scientifically plausible context and explanation for many of the book’s concepts while grounding everything in a setting and plot that make these things matter beyond superficial flavor. The Angels first came into existence 20 minutes after the Big Bang. They are pure energy and exist among the stars and dust and radiation of the cosmos. They are capable of instantaneous communication with one another across many parsecs. They are immortal and rational and possess their own religion and culture and civilized organization, which, as events play out, we see hints of but never the full picture. With the grandness of the events and pieces of this story it can be easy to lose track of the kinds of questions and problems Blish is digging into. These resonate long after the Cold War and will continue to as long as relations with other nations and people are wrought with tension and confusion and conflicting motives. In Blish’s universe, however, these problems are much more interesting. ...more |
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Aug 31, 2022
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Paperback
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| 042501956X
| 9780425019566
| 042501956X
| 2.33
| 6
| 1971
| Feb 01, 1971
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liked it
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Dav Garnett isn’t a well known name in sci-fi. This obscure novel won’t get anyone to re-evaluate his status or to take a deeper dive into his output,
Dav Garnett isn’t a well known name in sci-fi. This obscure novel won’t get anyone to re-evaluate his status or to take a deeper dive into his output, but it’s an entertaining story. It certainly deserves more recognition. If you look at it a certain way, you can almost see some early traces of the ingredients of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, or Spaceballs, not as consistently clever as either, but with plenty of mirth and merriment. The story shifts direction often enough to give it the appearance of an author who wasn’t sure what he was going for, but knew he wanted a big cast of characters, space travel, galactic exploration, robots, robo-tax-collectors, robocops, secret agents, detectives, pleasure planets, religions, human sacrifice, space pirates, and huge extragalactic creatures frozen in time. And he managed to wrap it all into a moderately enjoyable book that other authors of his time, like Thomas Pynchon, would have turned into a slobbering mess of 900 pages of mostly-overwritten stream of consciousness waste. Trillionaire William Ewart is running from tax collectors and alimony collectors and others who are on his trail. As a means of escaping Earth he takes his large ship, the Demon Star, far off into space on the pretense of an archaeological dig on some distant planet. To make this story believable he brings along (against his will) an actual archaeologist who, it turns out, has never done field work. He has a whole crew of intriguing characters: one of his wives—a princess who hates him and is scheming to get away from him, his slave-servant, as well as his own brother, who he also owns as a slave and has serving as steward of the ship, a Catholic priest, a lawyer for one of his wives he’s locked up somewhere on the ship, a news cameraman hired to document their voyage, and there are more than a few castaways who are either working among the crew or in hiding on the ship, like a special agent who is hunting a pirate named J.G., and a detective looking for evidence that can get one of Ewart’s other wives a divorce, as well as a few ladies, strippers most likely. Over time it seems as though half the crew are either there against their will, or without Ewart’s knowledge. As if this isn’t a big enough gallery of fascination, the warp drive on the ship has been recalled, due to ships equipped with this particular type having a tendency lately to vanish. The Demon Star continues to use this recalled technology. The captain and engineer are worried. Something could go very wrong at any moment. Ewart and his crew land on a planet on which the priest is to take up missionary work, where they watch a ritual human sacrifice by the humans who have colonized the planet and developed their own new religion. Ewart, being a slight psychopath, is unmoved by the ritual, but the priest and some of the other crew are disgusted and make a rescue of the woman about to be sacrificed, not without some violence and death and sophisticated feats of heroism by the secret agent, who ends up saving those of the crew who haven’t already been killed by the planet’s residents. The priest and Ewart’s slave-servant are left behind. After some high tech trick, this agent is able to get Ewart under his control, and to divert the Demon Star to his chosen mission. This takes them to some seedy joints far out in space, and eventually has them fighting for their lives under the surface of some barren planet. Ewart, once the focus of the story, takes a back seat to the agent’s mission. Ewart’s princess wife is a virtual non-entity in the book, but her people have come to try to rescue her, and being a very warlike people, they find that absolute destruction of everything in their path is the most suitable means of securing her safety. Oh, and some time ago Ewart had a deadly machine constructed that would hunt him down and kill him, because he was so bored with his existence of plenty and success that he wanted a little adventure. He thought he destroyed the machine by dropping it into a volcano a while ago, but in its dormant state it is virtually indestructible. This machine has awakened, and has found his ship. So there’s a lot going on. Garnett handles some of it splendidly, some of it strangely, as though certain threads or subplots need not develop any further, some things wrap up abruptly, like he’s running out of time or steam, and yet, a few times we are thrown onto a new course that promises and delivers on new wild (and sometimes mild) moments of adventure. It’s almost like three or four stories in one, none of them complete, as if they’ve had important parts cut out so they can fit together into one story. The end result is a good minor space opera worth reading. ...more |
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1
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Aug 21, 2022
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Aug 27, 2022
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Aug 27, 2022
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| 3.90
| 2,395
| 1961
| Aug 1974
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really liked it
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Time is the Simplest Thing is a saga of telepathic space travel, common human ignorance and savagery, and a high caliber story of conspiracy and fear.
Time is the Simplest Thing is a saga of telepathic space travel, common human ignorance and savagery, and a high caliber story of conspiracy and fear. After mankind has failed to traverse the stars physically, the newly evolved telepaths prove to be the only ones capable of exploring other planets and systems. The organization Fishhook employs telepaths to project themselves thousands of light years away, exploring alien planets, and even taking technology and discoveries from these places to be appropriated on Earth for the benefit of humankind. Ocassionally even encountering alien entities unexplainable to the rest of the world. Humans wouldn’t be humans if a large portion of the population wasn’t deathly afraid of the telepaths, and suspicious of Fishhook, imagining nefarious intentions behind this mysterious organization. And so this is the setting we have, a world in which telepaths, who offer mighty and magical things for the prosperity of humanity, are treated with disgust and violence. One of these Fishhook telepaths becomes bonded with an alien life form he encounters, and upon returning to his body after the excursion, recalls what he was once told by a colleague: If you make contact, don’t wait around for Fishhook to find out. Run. And so he runs, and thus begins the odyssey of Shepard Blaine’s fleeing from a shadowy megacorp, and a rapidly unfolding story about a bigger conflict, a stranger mystery, and competing plots for the fate of all telepaths on an Earth that is hostile to them. This is the only book by Simak I’ve read, but it’s a terrific one. Perfectly paced, with tight prose that has just enough imagery and feeling and sensory exposition, subtle worldbuilding, a convincing and yet amorphous narrative that seems to redirect the story at various points until all the directions make sense at once. Telepathy plays a central role throughout the book, and is executed in a way that predicts modern modes of communication. Some of Simak’s other inventiveness foreshadows a great deal about human habits and leisure. It’s got an intensity to it that’s grounded in realistic human hatred and confusion, made more magnificent by the alienness that grows increasingly important as things progress. This alien element that has become part of Blaine is almost a story in itself, an escape into the universe and into nonhuman ways of knowing. A great book that builds and builds, never loses control or focus, and hints at cosmic wonders and perseverance and hope even in chaos. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 2022
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Aug 10, 2022
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Aug 04, 2022
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Paperback
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| 0143036254
| 9780143036258
| 0143036254
| 4.00
| 37,049
| 1776
| Sep 06, 2005
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really liked it
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Rarely do passion and principled rationality come together in such a measured combination to create as persuasive a work as Common Sense. This landmar
Rarely do passion and principled rationality come together in such a measured combination to create as persuasive a work as Common Sense. This landmark pamphlet is not only of major historical, political, and philosophical relevance, but almost 250 years after it was unleashed it serves as an example of how refined, compact, and persuasive writing can be powerful if the right mind and pen are behind it. What passes for popular “revolutionary” and “anti-oppression” social-political non-fiction in contemporary American society is usually a poorly reasoned embarrassment. That embarrassment is magnified when comparing it to a work like this, which transcends politics and parties and ideologies (Paine wishes for the extinction of the names Whig and Tory) and that argues on the merits of ideas, pitting the competing ideas against one another, reasoning carefully and with a keen awareness of all the moving parts that complicate the issue. It’s impressive how well Paine marries robust and thoroughly argued principles with a lively, conversational tone that spends just enough time on each point to have an impact. Even if one knows nothing of American history, the reader can feel the urgency in Paine’s writing. He provides the broad scope context and gives a survey of the atrocities committed by England, offers a hopeful vision for America, unpacks the invalidity of the monarchy with logic that the most loyal subjects of the king were unable to refute, and forwards his case for the immediate declaration of independence from English rule. He builds a vision of government from first principles, and shows how the English constitution has failed. He addresses the arguments of his contemporaries who wished for reconciliation with England instead of independence, and lays out his case for the need of independence and self-rule, with an entirely different system of government. As all great thinkers and persuasive writers do, must do, Paine addresses counter-arguments and critics of his ideas. In his Appendix, released with, I believe, the second edition of Common Sense, Paine remarks on the King’s Speech, which coincided with the release of the pamphlet. This speech, he remarks, demonstrates the king’s savagery and aggression, and unfitness to rule a continent thousands of miles away. Paine calls the time of his writing the ideal time to fight for independence, as there is enough expertise remaining from their last war, still enough generals and military might to carry forward into battle, and now, unlike then, their numbers are greater. He reasons that if they wait too long, although their numbers will be greater, their military expertise will have vanished along with all they had learned in recent skirmishes. Waiting too long might make liberty harder to achieve. He addresses the testimony of American Quakers, who have written in support of staying under English rule, in favor of pacifism. Paine shares their want for peace, but presents the reader with a compelling case for why this is not, and has not been, possible under the arm of Britain. He calls the Quakers partial ministers of their own acknowledged principles, publishing their cries for peace and non-violence in America, but shying away from making the same calls directly to Britain, who has been ravaging America with violence for some time. If they truly want peace and an end to violence, Paine argues this fight for independence is the only way. We learn about Thomas Paine in school and are taught the gist of his writing, but it’s great to finally read this one and see what a well-written, strongly argued show of intellect it was. ...more |
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1
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Jul 14, 2022
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Jul 15, 2022
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Jul 14, 2022
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Paperback
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| 1684222087
| 9781684222087
| 1684222087
| 4.12
| 19,294
| 1844
| Apr 16, 2018
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liked it
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These essays are unlike anything else. They’re a glimpse into the workings of transcendentalism, into the mind of its most noteworthy poet-advocate. E
These essays are unlike anything else. They’re a glimpse into the workings of transcendentalism, into the mind of its most noteworthy poet-advocate. Emerson has a mystical, romantic, esoteric way of writing about all manner of things. I appreciate many of the sentiments he expresses, his celebration of individualism, self-reliance, solitude, mental or “spiritual” fortitude, his embrace of nature, of poetry and philosophy and art and a connection to history, to reality, and to things beneath the mundane, unseen to the eye, his joy for intellectualism and tranquility and the unnamable qualities of life that he has somehow given names and descriptions to, as well as his criticism of conformity and the forces and opinions and motives of society. I’m confused by his delivery. At times I wonder if he means everything he says, or if he on occasion says things just because he’s in a strong flow, carried away by his own momentum. Given his love for the things mentioned, and his almost metaphysical disposition as a poet, it may be no surprise he finds math cold, science lifeless, facts untrustworthy, empiricism worthless. His writing style reflects this aversion to reason and logic. It is all from the gut and a state of trancelike riffing, rarely a carefully worded, straight forward organization of thoughts. Since he does not bother to persuade, but only to express, I can only read along and differ in opinion here and there, while nodding along and pausing occasionally to reflect on the moments of wonder, on his lyrical might. What he lacks in persuasion and reason he makes up for with hardy, feeling, romantic, poetic, insightful, and reflective musings. Many good thoughts and ideas abound. He can appear disorganized and lost in a stream of consciousness instead of focused, but maybe it was only me who was lost in his current. We get a lot of strong and beautiful passages full of sage wisdom and sound thinking, sometimes profound observations, on top of passages that do nothing to convince the reader to share his perspective, but still suffused with awe. Like Nietzsche, he does not reason so much as he intuits. I think I see where Nietzsche gets it from. Emerson also reminds me of Spinoza, in his vague allusions to a god that seems to be synonymous with nature or the universe, but somehow still personified. And as I reached the end of the book and began to detect some hints of ancient Chinese thinking, he brought Mencius into the fold, as fitting a philosopher for him to refer to as any. He urges his reader to see the glimmers of genius that have shone in others in the past, in great thinkers and writers, like Homer, Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, and to see them also in ourselves. He encourages one to see themselves as an active participant in the world and to see history and experience and friendship as part of the vastness of existence and the self. Emerson writes a manifesto against conformity to society, to live one’s life even around others as though they were steeped in solitude and able to live according to their own opinions and values. Ones who are seeking amusement or escape in world travel instead of self realization and growth, he supposes, will find neither. His observations on the “improvements” in society being no improvement for man are astute. For every gain on one side it recedes on the other, losing old instincts while acquiring new art, becoming weak while becoming civilized, becoming ignorant of the universe around him while inundated with new tools and luxuries. This collection overflows with dense substance to go over again and again, to unwrap and consider. It isn’t always compelling, sometimes it seems as though he rambles a bit too long, though not without some grand cavalcade of ideation, but when it’s good it’s very good. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 13, 2022
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Jul 21, 2022
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Jul 13, 2022
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0061315419
| 9780061315411
| 0061315419
| 3.55
| 564
| 1970
| Jun 23, 1970
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liked it
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I can’t say I’ve ever had any interest in anarchism as a political philosophy, but I’ve been curious if any political philosopher has taken it serious
I can’t say I’ve ever had any interest in anarchism as a political philosophy, but I’ve been curious if any political philosopher has taken it seriously enough to write about. It’s not a subject I would have sought out, but when coming across a small book on it at a used bookstore it seemed like my question had been answered. Despite its title, In Defense of Anarchism is not a book about anarchism. Only its last four pages give any discussion of anarchism as a political philosophy, as a theoretical, Utopian model grounded in real instead of fantasy political ideas. It is a rather brief and nuanced, but unconvincing discussion. Most of the book looks at a more interesting problem: the author’s search for political harmony between individual moral autonomy and the legitimate authority of the state. He lays out his conceptions of authority and autonomy and shows how complete personal autonomy is not compatible with submission to the complete authority of state power. It is difficult to realize what legitimate authority might look like and under what circumstances we can call authority legitimate. And once we recognize such an authority, one cannot submit to it without sacrificing their own autonomy, which Wolff holds as the supreme importance. “The defining mark of the state is authority, the right to rule. The primary obligation of man is autonomy, the refusal to be ruled.” He observes many of the obstacles we might encounter in realizing both this authority and in a perfectly rational autonomy. So how do we resolve this conflict? He moves straight to what he calls the only feasible solution for such a problem and centers his study around democracy. He discusses unanimous direct democracy, which requires impossibly restrictive conditions that make it hardly applicable to any real society. Only if all its members are in strong agreement about most of the matters of importance can this model work. Then he looks at representative democracy, with all its well-known strengths and its well-discussed weaknesses, such as the forfeiture of any direct say in political matters, giving up autonomy to a representative who was likely elected before many issues of importance were known, and so who can never fairly represent anyone they are expected to. He visits over and over again the question of how we may be asked to obey laws which we had no say in, and reflects on the reality of modern politics and legislation, in which no voter can be expected to be informed enough to participate at a meaningful level with representatives. His outlook is not as bleak as it may sound, though. Wolff proposes an idea for instant direct democracy, in which citizens have attachments to their TV sets (written in 1970, so today this would probably be tied to cell phone) that allow them to vote directly and immediately on the issues they care about. While this could have chaotic consequences at first, he argues that over time it will level out, folks will recognize their immediate impact through voting, and may increase citizen involvement in political matters. It doesn’t solve the problem of people voting impulsively and without careful consideration, but he hopes this sort of thing will be mitigated over time. He then discusses majoritarian democracy, borrowing from Plato, Locke, and Rousseau and a few others to get into its complexity. He takes a lot from the Social Contract to examine how this model might work, and comes away unconvinced, I think rightly so. He picks apart some of Rousseau’s flawed conclusions, tracing them to what he believes are simple confusions. He points to errors in how decisions on important issues would manifest, creating an irrational and inconsistent body of ideas that do not reflect the desires of rational citizens. Despite seeing majoritarian democracy as the only legitimate way in which the citizenry rule themselves, Wolff claims the citizenry does not truly remain free and self-ruled while submitting to the majority. The majority, he probably rightly posits, is more often wrong than right. Right answers are usually only adopted by the minority early on. So after finding all forms of democracy inadequate to fulfill the goal of total individual autonomy, and providing good if imperfect arguments in support, Wolff admits he is at a loss for a solution. “If autonomy and authority are genuinely incompatible, only two courses are open to us. Either we must embrace philosophical anarchism and treat all governments as non-legitimate bodies whose commands must be judged and evaluated in each instance before they are obeyed; or else, we must give up as quixotic the pursuit of autonomy in the political realm and submit ourselves to whatever form of government appears most just and be efficient at the moment.” He chooses not to follow the latter course, because he supposes it would have us swearing allegiance to benevolent dictatorships or majoritarian tyrannical democracies. In his view, we cannot give up moral autonomy. I agree, but I haven’t been convinced that he has explored all possibilities, or with enough care. He closes by offering his Utopian Glimpse of a World Without States. Instead of providing a strongly reasoned thesis based on most of what he has already discussed, he outlines a rough idea of how common problems in an anarchistic world (economy, defense, traffic safety, city reconstruction or social organization more generally) might be overcome. He admits that he has not solved anything and that his vision is incomplete, and there is more to be figured out. This is him laying the groundwork for what I assume was a longer and more complete book. Still, he offers a sane and rational analysis of some basic problems in political philosophy. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 11, 2022
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Jul 13, 2022
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Jul 13, 2022
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Paperback
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| 4.16
| 177,926
| Apr 28, 1985
| May 2010
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did not like it
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What Victor Hugo said about Alexandre Dumas, “He creates a thirst for reading,” can’t be said about Cormac McCarthy. In Blood Meridian he makes readin
What Victor Hugo said about Alexandre Dumas, “He creates a thirst for reading,” can’t be said about Cormac McCarthy. In Blood Meridian he makes reading a chore, a crawling, tedious punishment one must endure for agreeing to let someone else choose their next book to read. I know he is loved by a lot of people, and almost everyone I know who’s read this book says it’s great. His style isn’t for me. The whole execution isn’t for me. I can see how Faulkner and Hemingway fans would like him. I really don’t like Faulkner or Hemingway. He sometimes creates vivid scenes and sometimes has grand prose, with epic images and descriptions and powerful metaphors and similes. These moments separate themselves awkwardly from the rest, from what is typically a plodding, grueling yarn, and while they might offer a brief view of grandness, they mystify what is already a labor to get through. A lopsided narration that never flows well, never gives clarity or context. His normally detached and lifeless exposition gets in the way of effective storytelling. When he brings in the impressionistic narration, despite being expressive and artful, it often robs the story of clarity, immediacy, impact, and a lot of times its coherence. It leaves me bored and tired. The occasional ambitious prose seems out of place and inappropriate for the trivial things that are given this treatment. Sometimes he gives fullness and life to a scene but more commonly he coasts by on feeling and sensation rather than substance, and that feeling, the tension, every aspect of the story is ‘understated’ and undercooked, some of my least favorite traits of certain 20th century American literary efforts. When it isn’t undercooked it’s heavy-handed. The narration every so often dips into stilted grammar to give an “authentic” old west character to the telling, but this is inconsistent and unconvincing. So the main impressions I fluctuated between while reading this were ones of boredom and annoyance, with rare moments of almost-entertainment and then extended disappointment. Cringing and eye-rolling, most of the ride. The story of Blood Meridian is dry, despite its visceral and chaotic violence and intense attention to cruelty. He builds an apocalyptic and nihilistic old west, one of death and misery, devoid of character or dynamism or believability even after suspension of disbelief, loosely based on historical events but about as concerned with historical accuracy as the commercially successful westerns of the mid-20th century. It is a mythical west that is characterized by a constant throbbing sickness and darkness with no contrast, peopled only by wild lawless psychopaths or timid things waiting to be destroyed. It sounds more interesting than it is. At times it seems an accomplishment, but like an improvised song that is always blasting all its instruments at once in a cacophony, it soon becomes a droning mix of this and then this and then this, a dull monotony where no scene or part possesses any real power or differentiates itself from anything else. After a while it feels formulaic, but it’s as if McCarthy is trying to obscure that formula with distractions and diversions that will eventually lead back to some pointless scene that his formula requires. Characters are little more than one dimensional tools for moving along the tale, but are not serviceable enough to drag it at a tolerable pace. These characters never bloom into something worth the attention, their only serviceable aspect is that you loathe them deeply, and want to see bad things happen to them. They continue to exist and thrive and prosper by bloodshed and misanthropy. They seem like symbols or representations rather than fleshed out beings, from the dialogue to their actions. No thought seems to inform their actions, no understanding of consequence or impact. It may sound as though this is a model for psychopathy, but in psychopathy one's actions tend to at least be self-serving. The actions here serve nothing, not even the utilitarian purpose McCarthy created them for. These faceless entities are tools McCarthy uses to construct vignettes of violence, but they cannot maintain a story. He seems to realize this, which is why everything is disposable and gets used up and thrown away and fades from memory fast. This can work, especially in a story that is more about sensation than coherence. But it doesn’t work here. It comes off amateurish and sloppy. The judge is the only thing in the story that almost takes on full character, but he is a teeth-grinding character who makes my eyes hurt every time he opens his mouth to spit out pseudoprofundity and drawling half-thoughts. The story becomes a series of brief, heavy scenes that feel disconnected from one another, banal half the time, inconsequential and barely worth the attention given them, existing for indulgence of the writer rather than pleasure of the reader, never fusing into a satisfying whole that realizes the epic that McCarthy was probably trying to write. I don’t know his vision, but the final product is underwhelming with some passable qualities that I was only able to appreciate after extending some undeserved charity. Comparisons made on the back cover to Homer, Dante, and Melville are off-point. These guys are titans of peerless and timeless talent, and I hold each in the highest regard. McCarthy can’t hold a candle to the burning suns that are these writers. He hasn’t the vision, the imagination, the soaring literary powers, the cosmic encyclopedic mastery of language and form and content, the storytelling ability, or the spirit of the epic flowing through him. He is simply of earth and they are of a higher place. So to claim his work is like a blend of all three writers is one of the most baffling things I’ve heard about any book from the 20th century. This isn’t a criticism. No living writer approaches what these writers did, it is hyperbolic to compare McCarthy’s work to theirs. Remarks like this are not just misplaced praise, they are obtuse and wrong, and there is a good reason most fiction worth reading doesn’t have covers filled with praise from newspapers and magazines. Either this guy hasn’t read Blood Meridian, or he hasn’t read Melville, Homer, and Dante. The reason I’m focusing so much on the prose/style of Blood Meridian is because it’s the only quality of the book that possesses a touch of literary value, even if it’s not a style I find a lot of value in. There is at least a noticeable amount of effort put into this. Arguably the story has as much literary value as a snuff film, so I’m not going to spend too much time belaboring its emptiness. I’m also not going to get into how bad the dialogue is, or how eye-rolling his punctuation is. There are things McCarthy does well, and every few pages I was reminded that he has a deep interest in what he writes and in the world he makes, he is putting his blood and guts into this, and he has a wealth of ideas and insight. He has a highly fictitious understanding of this era and this region’s history, but it is one that makes good fodder for badly told tall tales. I can’t say he isn’t a serious writer. It’s just that almost nothing he writes impresses me beyond his skill at generating a poetic couple sentences every now and then, or squeezing every bit of juice he can from a metaphor or stretching a simile to its breaking point. Early on I was almost enjoying the story but hated the prose. As time went on I came to hate the story and developed a slight appreciation for the prose. Very slight. Overall it's just not a good book. The only way I can see one framing this as a good book is to extend it benefits you wouldn't extend to other works, and the only reason I can think of for extending these benefits, like patiently indulging the author's aimless rambling and tiresome prose and itchy style, is because you went into it wanting to like it, maybe because you've been told it is special. If you applied this same patience and indulgence to every book you read, you'd find that everything is a masterpiece. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 31, 2021
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Aug 06, 2021
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Jul 31, 2021
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||||
| 006096975X
| 9780060969752
| 006096975X
| 3.88
| 2,949
| Jan 01, 1993
| Jan 01, 1993
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liked it
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Aside from the Goosebumps books and the Scary Story books from Stephen Gammell and Alvin Schwartz, this was probably my favorite book as a kid. I stil
Aside from the Goosebumps books and the Scary Story books from Stephen Gammell and Alvin Schwartz, this was probably my favorite book as a kid. I still have it and page through it every now and then. What a nice time that is.
...more
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Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jan 1993
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Jul 18, 2021
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1606993135
| 9781606993132
| 1606993135
| 3.41
| 68
| 2010
| Feb 28, 2010
|
liked it
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A nice collection of underground mini comics from the late 70s to the early 90s. I knew nothing about underground mini comics when I picked this up ye
A nice collection of underground mini comics from the late 70s to the early 90s. I knew nothing about underground mini comics when I picked this up years ago. Finally decided to read through it. It features interviews with many of the artists who were 'big' in the underground American comics scenes, none of whom I know. Some of the interviews are really interesting and informative, especially for a person who knows nothing about this stuff. A lot of the comics are pretty good, too. The writing is nothing special, sometimes it's stupid, sometimes funny, sometimes absurd, but the art is usually high quality. These drawings span the gamut from traditional, to comic-y, to surreal, to grotesque and perverse. The better ones tend to be the ones with no words, no story, just great drawings to spin the wheels of your mind to. The DIY ethos is discussed at length by every artist who is interviewed, and that spirit is clearly one they hold to strongly.
...more
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Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 28, 2021
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Jul 19, 2021
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Jun 28, 2021
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0670063274
| 9780670063277
| 0670063274
| 3.91
| 11,027
| 2007
| 2007
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it was amazing
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The Stuff of Thought is Steven Pinker tying together intricate concepts and scientific studies and familiar experiences to make sense of a complex and
The Stuff of Thought is Steven Pinker tying together intricate concepts and scientific studies and familiar experiences to make sense of a complex and hugely interesting subject. In this book he looks at language, his specialty, particularly the English language, but also languages in general with shared features across cultures, and uses its various elements and parts and nuances to offer compelling insights into human nature, our minds, how we perceive the world and interact with one another. And he does all of this like the expert scholar he is, with absolute clarity of thought, coherence, scientific rigor, hundreds of illustrative examples, countless studies and novel theories, and intelligently connects these myriad ideas in surprising ways that seem to reveal things that are not obvious or intuitive about human communication and behavior. Pinker examines how our semantics relates to reality, emotions, and social relations, where words come from and how they evolve to become the familiar forms we see today, but also what factors may have caused these evolutions, and what we can learn from that. He goes deep into a study of verbs, which end up being a lot more interesting than I ever would have thought, and examines how we learn proper usage, and the unexpected but highly involved logic that many of our grammatical structures follow, even if we are not aware of it, and even if it does not seem that this logic was a conscious decision by anyone. He explains some of the more far out theories on language, like extreme nativism, radical pragmatics, and linguistic determinism, which is an extreme version of Whorfianism. John McWhorter’s The Language Hoax was a great book about this topic, but Pinker gives it a pretty thorough treatment here, as well, dispelling many myths and breaking down the bad ideas tied up in it. He compares and contrasts these competing models, arguing against them for their weakness and incompleteness and internal contradictions, but highlighting their positives and the ways they scratch the itch of scientific curiosity. Ultimately, he favors a more robust model for thinking about the problems these models try but fail to explain, called the theory of conceptual semantics. It does not have the weaknesses or contradictions of the other models, and explains all the phenomena they attempt to. Pinker then lays out the mental conversions in our use of language, how we treat so many concepts as being spatial (like time) even when they physically are not, or even the more abstract concepts we use which we try to present in ways that make sense to us. He works out the detailed particulars concerning our treatment of temporal and spatial and the nonphysical, the very subtle nuances in how we speak of events or durations or handle the interactions of objects that we may rarely or never think about but that, once made aware of, we can’t help turning over in our heads. In one of the most interesting and eye opening chapters he takes us on a world tour of humanity’s use of metaphors, and all the various shapes it can take, how it can clarify our thinking and help us solve problems and think about things in new ways. In similarly captivating chapters he explores the complexity of names, the strangeness in naming fashions and conventions throughout history, what names and words mean to us, why certain words that seemingly serve a need do not exist, despite our best efforts to make them catch on. He then goes into our use of profanity and discusses the history, but more importantly, the psychological and sociological and even philosophical components of profanity and what it says about our universal nature. Finally, he analyzes the game theory aspects of language and how our negotiations in various encounters manifest themselves, how we might think about them more critically, and as he has throughout the entire book, drives his points home with amusing, illustrative, and thoughtful examples and excerpts from comics, movies, other scientists, philosophers, poetry, and fiction. Each chapter is filled with elaborate and complex but clear and well researched science, information, studies, and illustrative examples, and is entertaining and enjoyable all the way through, while never sacrificing the intellectual completeness that Pinker’s work is based on. As the show of a real master in his craft, he manages to link all of these parts together into a cogent and consistent whole. As I have with each of his books, I learned a hell of a lot, and was forced to think seriously and deeply on a lot of interesting ideas that provide a stunning way of comprehending the neat complexity of reality. It's interesting to point out the extreme contrast between this book and a book I read alongside it, The Postmodern Condition by Jean-Francois Lyotard. There could not be a more radical contrast between two books that are sort of looking at similar topics. One is written by a highly knowledgeable and rational scientist who knows his subject, who is excited about relating outstanding knowledge and ideas to his readers, and who therefore writes coherently, carefully, intentionally, develops his ideas from fundamentals and builds them into true wonders and insights, and provides a truly compelling way to understand the world that is thoroughly validated by experiment and scholarship. The other was a philosopher whose grasp of the subjects he writes on is shaky at best, and whose convoluted writing, sometimes outright false claims, fumbling through his subject and obscuring his point with hundreds of misused words and misrepresentations is a direct reflection of what comes off as bad thinking, and who offers nothing very worthwhile in the intellectual realm as far as I could tell. Pinker is always a breath of fresh air, but especially so after reading certain other kinds of scholarship. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 17, 2021
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Jan 31, 2021
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Jan 17, 2021
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Hardcover
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Philip of Macedon
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Books:
american
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| 4.17
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liked it
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Aug 18, 2024
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Aug 18, 2024
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| 4.24
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it was amazing
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Jul 29, 2024
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Jul 23, 2024
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| 2.00
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it was ok
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May 17, 2024
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May 12, 2024
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| 4.21
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liked it
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Oct 08, 2023
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Oct 08, 2023
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| 4.02
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liked it
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Oct 02, 2023
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Oct 02, 2023
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| 3.64
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really liked it
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Jun 18, 2023
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Jun 10, 2023
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| 4.22
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it was amazing
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Dec 23, 2022
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Nov 24, 2022
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| 4.04
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liked it
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Dec 10, 2022
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Nov 03, 2022
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liked it
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Oct 31, 2022
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Oct 13, 2022
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| 3.92
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really liked it
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Sep 17, 2022
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Sep 07, 2022
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| 3.35
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liked it
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Aug 31, 2022
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Aug 31, 2022
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| 2.33
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liked it
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Aug 27, 2022
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Aug 27, 2022
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| 3.90
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really liked it
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Aug 10, 2022
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Aug 04, 2022
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| 4.00
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really liked it
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Jul 15, 2022
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Jul 14, 2022
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| 4.12
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liked it
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Jul 21, 2022
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Jul 13, 2022
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| 3.55
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liked it
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Jul 13, 2022
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Jul 13, 2022
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| 4.16
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did not like it
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Aug 06, 2021
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Jul 31, 2021
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| 3.88
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liked it
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Jan 1993
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Jul 18, 2021
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| 3.41
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liked it
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Jul 19, 2021
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Jun 28, 2021
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| 3.91
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it was amazing
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Jan 31, 2021
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Jan 17, 2021
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