A Manifesto for the "Tea" Party (and other Right-thinking people)

The government is not to be trusted. Government involvement in anything whatsoever is dangerous and should be prevented at all costs. Corporations, on the other hand, are trustworthy and should be left alone to do whatever they want without interference from the government, because free, unfettered capitalism is the American way. If a corporation does do something blatantly harmful to the public, then it is the government's fault.

The current US deficit is the greatest menace to the future of the United States ever seen. It is an unbearable burden that will bankrupt the nation and destroy its power forever. The only thing as bad as the deficit is taxes. So we should eliminate the deficit and cut taxes. Cutting taxes will help eliminate the deficit, because everyone knows that if companies and the rich have a few extra dollars, they aren't going to save it or pay it out in dividends, but are absolutely guaranteed to invest it or spend it in a way that will stimulate the economy, and stimulate it so much that government revenues will magically increase by the hundreds of billions of dollars necessary to offset the tax cut. Spending by the government, on the other hand, never stimulates the economy. All money spent by the government goes into the Twilight Zone, not back into the economy.

The government should not be involved in health care, because it is untrustworthy and secretly wants to kill off all free-thinking Americans by putting them in front of death panels. Private health insurance companies, on the other hand, are perfectly trustworthy. They won't deny anyone coverage, unless they are a lost cause, or are too poor to pay for it. Likewise, America already has the world's best health system. You can ask all the wealthy foreigners who come here to take advantage of it. Their compatriots may have better life expectancies than the average American, but they have to stand in line for it. And who wants to live that long anyway if you have to live in a socialist country?

We believe in small government. The federal government should be shrunk down as small as possible and should be involved in as little as possible. The government shouldn't restrict businesses from making money any way they can, prevent oil companies from extracting oil from anywhere in US territory, tell coal companies they can't decapitate mountains and dump coal ash in rivers, or stop people from hunting or buying guns of any kind. It shouldn't be involved in education, funding art, or subsidizing unimportant energy industries like solar or wind (though it should keep giving huge tax breaks to oil companies so they'll drill more oil wells). We also believe in a strong defense, so we don't believe in cutting military spending, which in any case does not even make up quite half of total discretionary spending by the entire government. You can't have too many stealth bombers, nuclear weapons or missile defense systems. But other than maintaining a mighty military, the government should keep out of the people's lives, except to tap people's phones and check their library records in case they might be terrorists. And to make sure people don't smoke marijuana (regardless of whether their doctors recommend it), homosexuals don't marry, women don't get abortions, and scientists don't do stem cell research. And to search for, arrest, and deport illegal immigrants. And to spy on adherents of suspicious religions like Islam. Otherwise, we expect the government to leave everyone alone.

Global warming is a hoax, concocted by scientists, who are no more to be trusted than the government is. And anyway, the Earth is warming because of the sun, or volcanic activity, or some other natural cause. Or it would be, if it was warming, which it isn't. The only scientists that can be trusted are those who say that global warming is not being caused by humans (even though it's really a hoax). The word of these scientists should be accepted without question, at least as long as they are saying there is no anthropogenic global warming. If you learn of any such scientists (regardless of their actual field of expertise) beyond the few dozen we know about, be sure to send word.

Since global warming isn't real, there is no need to spend any money on less developed energy industries like solar power. Let other countries like China develop those industries; we don't want to have the government encouraging new ventures of that sort on the off chance it might generate jobs and make the US a leader in a growing field. It probably won't amount to anything anyway. Besides, we don't like or trust anything new. We'll just stick to good old fossil fuels. As mentioned above, we want oil companies to receive billion dollar tax breaks to drill for oil in our seas and wildlife preserves, and we don't want their hands tied by regulation. We're happy to take our chances with oil spills and exploding rigs as long as we can drill, baby, drill. Coal companies likewise should be allowed to extract coal any way they can. We aren't worried about any minor pollution from fossil fuel consumption; as long as our economy is strong, we don't mind living in a smoggy wasteland. And there are enough fossil fuels to last forever, or at least until most of us are dead, after which it'll be someone else's problem.

We believe that evolution is just a theory, and it should not be taught to children as if it were not questionable. The theory of intelligent design should be treated equally in biology classes, regardless of any shortage of so-called "evidence", which is the kind of thing those untrustworthy scientists are always going on and on about. By the way, if you can find any scientists (or anyone that can pretend to be scientists) who are willing to speak out for intelligent design, contact us immediately.

Illegal immigrants are a menace to our society, and should be treated like the criminal scum they are. Let's face it; sneaking into our country in search of a better life is a crime, just like murder, rape and assault. Anyway, illegal immigrants commit lots of those crimes too. Or at least so we hear, and since sounds like the sort of thing we'd expect of them, it must be true. But even if they are law-abiding, we don't want all these immigrants coming here; we were here first, and we don't want to share the country with any latecomers. In particular, the government should build a Great Wall of America from Texas to California to keep all the Mexican riffraff out of those states; after all, we robbed Mexico of that territory fair and square.

We believe in the Constitution of the United States of America. The Constitution is a perfect, flawless document, because the Founding Fathers were perfect human beings and didn't make any mistakes. Look at that clever three-fifths rule for example. If you lived in a state with 100,000 free citizens and 500,000 slaves, the state would have as many representatives as a state with 400,000 free citizens. That means each of the free men would get have the equivalent of 4 votes in selecting members of the House of Representatives. Cool, huh? Not that we think slavery was good or anything. No, of course not. But a lot of the Founders had slaves, so it can't have been that bad either.... Anyway, the federal government should not do anything that was not spelled out in the Constitution, and we should interpret what is in there the way the Founders intended, which we can easily do because we can go back in history and read their minds. For example, when they wrote about a right to bear arms, they obviously meant that anyone who wanted to should be able to walk into a store and buy automatic weapons with armor-piercing bullets. When they said that a citizen's freedom of speech may not be abridged, they clearly meant that corporations are people and their right to spend millions of dollars on elections cannot be restricted. They also meant that anyone should have the right to call the President a communist Islamic fascist, if the President is a liberal. The Founders would have thought it was okay to compare our current President to Hitler, because we know they would have disliked him too. But they did not mean that people could say anything critical about our military involvement in a foreign country or the conservative government that took us into it to save us from the possibility of our tough guy image being damaged. The Founders clearly would have held such criticism to be unpatriotic and borderline treason.

We also believe that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. They did not mean to create a separation of church and state when they wrote the First Amendment, only intending that the government should not favor one Christian denomination over another. The Founders were all devout Christians who would never have thought of questioning Jesus' divinity and were suspicious of Muslims, Jews and atheists. We can prove that the Founders were fundamentalist Christians (and that they were pro-business, anti-regulation capitalists) through a number of quotes that we found somewhere and have attached their names to (The Right's Library of Fake Quotes By Steve Rendall: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4053).

As mentioned above, we believe in the right to bear arms. And we're not talking muskets here. Assault rifles, semi-automatic weapons, armor-piercing bullets, silencers and so forth are all obviously protected by the Second Amendment. Anyone who wants to should be able to get a gun, without any waiting period or licenses, even if they are foaming at the mouth and muttering about the people who are going to get it as they do so. What's more, they should be allowed to carry their guns, openly or concealed, anywhere they go. That way if someone starts shooting, everyone else can pull out their guns and start shooting too.

We firmly believe in judicial restraint. Judges should not legislate from the bench. They shouldn't try to protect people who might possibly be terrorists from torture. They shouldn't make any rulings unfavorable to business. They shouldn't try to protect the interests of minority groups if the majority decides to deny the latter their rights by democratic vote. If they want to declare corporations to be people, however, that's okay, since as explained above that's what the Founders intended.

Marriage is between a man and a woman, and any attempt to allow same-sex couples to marry will completely destroy the family unit. The mere existence of same-sex marriage will cause heterosexual unions to disintegrate. Normal families will disappear. And as stated above, the courts should not defy the will of the people and give gay couples the right to marry. If the people of a state vote specifically to deny homosexuals the right to marry, the courts cannot go against that. It's just like segregation and anti-miscegenation laws. Everyone knows the courts had nothing to do with ending those things; they ended because the people of those states were against them. You can ask any of the older Southern members of our movement; they'll tell you they were all anti-segregation, because like the rest of us, they all love black people and all other minorities (except gays and Muslims).

The current US president is a socialist, a communist, a Muslim, and a fascist, and he is bent on destroying America. He wasn't even born in the US, so he is not legitimate. Sure, liberal liars claim that all their so-called "evidence" proves that none of these things are true, but why should we believe any "facts" if they come from liberals. We don't need any "evidence" supporting what we say about him, since we have plenty of rumors and innuendo, and that's good enough for us. In fact, we're beginning to think he might be the Anti-Christ. The fact that he is part black has absolutely nothing to do with our hatred of him, since, as stated above, we love black people (at least as long as they stick to suitable activities like rap and sports).

If you, like us, are a patriotic American who wants to take our country back from the tax-happy, anti-business, tree-hugging, gay-loving, peacenik hippie communist terrorist sympathizers, come to join our movement. Together, we can turn back the clock to a time when America was strong, corporations were unrestrained by regulations, taxes were low, we prayed to God in school, we weren't being overrun by illegal immigrants, homosexuals were considered mentally ill, everyone was a good White Anglo-Saxon Protestant or was kept safely locked away in a ghetto, and we felt free to blow any foreign country that gave us trouble to hell. Together, we can restore American greatness!

[Edited 2010/10/02]

I wonder, should I have more confidence in the ability of most people to see the blindingly obvious, or (if this should somehow end up being read by a significant number of people) should I expect people to be quoting from it with a straight face? Just in case, for anyone uncertain of my real opinions, I'd suggest that you read a few of the other entries in my blog.

What I've Been Reading – 2010, Part 4

Dhalgren by Samuel Delany

Last month I read Samuel R. Delany's novel Dhalgren, which is a very strange and yet fascinating work. Science Fiction – The Illustrated Encyclopedia characterized it as "perhaps the most difficult SF novel that has still sold in large numbers". While I have read a few other SF novels that I recall taking a similar amount of extra effort, such as J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World and Stanislaw Lem's Solaris (the latter in particular being well worth the effort), it’s certainly true that Dhalgren is not an easy read – not to mention the fact that it is considerably longer than most other novels, science fiction or not. It begins with a bizarre, dream-like sequence (indeed, later in the novel it's made clear that the protagonist half believes it to have been a dream), followed by the protagonist's entry into Bellona, the weird city that serves as the setting for the rest of the novel. Bellona has suffered an unexplained disaster that has caused most of its population to abandon it and prevents any radio or television signals from getting in or out. Most of the rest of the country has forgotten it, but it has attracted a number of free spirits, army deserters, and social misfits, who live there along with the remaining original inhabitants. But as eventually becomes clear, there is much more to the city's oddness than simply being half empty and inhabited by strange characters. Weird, impossible phenomena occur, like two moons appearing in the sky – and in different phases. Space and time themselves seem to be distorted, though to what degree is not always clear, due in part to the issues the protagonist from whose perspective we see things has.

The protagonist of the story is almost as strange as the city it takes place in. Though he remembers quite a bit of his past, he doesn't remember his name, or the names of his parents. After arriving in Bellona he gets the nickname Kid (or Kidd or the Kid), which is what he is known by through most of the novel. He wears only one sandal (later a boot), and his other foot is always bare. He has spent time in a mental institution and still seems to have some mental problems. At times he seems to hallucinate, and at other times he blacks out on the passage of time (to him it seems only a day has passed, while others tell him it's been several days). However, though he himself often questions his sanity, it is not always clear whether some of these problems really are in his own mind, or are caused by the city itself. For instance, early in the novel there are several instances where a door he remembers being on one side of a street seems to shift to the other side the next time he encounters it. It seems that this perception on Kid's part might be a hallucination, but later his friend Tak, who for the most part is one of the most clearheaded people in the city (despite his penchant for taking men who have just come to Bellona home and seducing them), tells Kid that he often finds that things in the city seem to have shifted around. Even Kid's problems regarding the passage of time may not be entirely in his head, as I'll explain below.

Soon after arriving in the city, Kid obtains a battered notebook which someone has filled with slightly disjointed observations. He starts using the blank left hand pages to write poems, which he is continually polishing and rewriting. He meets a girl named Lanya with whom he starts a relationship, and he spends a period of time working for a dysfunctional middle class family, with tragic results. He meets a famous visiting poet, and through him ends up having his poems published in a book, which becomes the most widely read book in town (in part because it's the only book to be published in the town, though also because many feel the poems capture the feel of Bellona). The book of poems is published by a man named Calkins who has a large house up in the better part of town. The somewhat mysterious Calkins (who we never actually see) is the publisher of the town’s newspaper, which he dates idiosyncratically (one day may be dated Tuesday, February 12, 1995, and the next might be Saturday, April 1, 1919).

Eventually Kid falls in with the scorpions, who are gangs of young people that wear a type of chain that, when turned on, create a light image of a creature like a scorpion, dragon, or spider that envelops the wearer. Though they have a rather dangerous reputation among the other residents, the scorpions are not quite as fearsome as they seem, for the most part living peacefully and communally in abandoned houses – though they do occasionally engage in violence. Kid forms a relationship with a young scorpion named Denny, with the two of them and Lanya forming a ménage à trios. As a side note, there is a lot of sex in this book. Though I've read one or two books that might have as much, I don't think I've read any that had quite so much variety, often described fairly graphically (Delany himself is supposedly bisexual, which I can well believe).

The first six sections of the book, covering the first 620 pages, are told in third person narration from Kid's point of view, and while certain passages, especially those reflecting Kid's notebook, are similar to stream of consciousness, for the most part the narrative is reasonably straightforward. The events occur and are described in an apparently linear fashion, though the events themselves are often strange and as mentioned there are occasional disjointed passages. The seventh and last section, covering the remaining 150 pages, is purportedly a typescript someone made from Kid's journal. It takes up more or less where the previous section left off, but as many of the pages in the notebook had come loose and the typescript was seemingly made from a bunch of pages that were somewhat out of sequence, with some missing, the episodes described are no longer in their proper order. As Kid used the margins of the notebook to add extra thoughts, this section is full of marginalia, usually but not always connected with the main text it appears beside. As the writing on the original pages often continued onto subsequent pages that were missing when the typescript was made, many passages are cut off in the middle of a line. Descriptions of some events are missing entirely, though we know they took place because of references elsewhere. In a few places Kid lapses into gibberish.

Finally, in this section it becomes clear that not only are the descriptions of events not in order, but time itself is out of joint. There are contradictory indications of the sequence of certain events, and ultimately the novel is circular. This is made obvious by events at the very end of the book. Without going into precise detail, I will describe one event which gave this away to me (though there had been other clues that I noticed when I looked back). When Kid enters the city at the beginning of the book, he encounters a group of girls leaving and talks to them briefly (though in the dark he doesn't see them clearly). One gives him a bizarre weapon called an orchid (made of seven blades curving forward from a wrist band) that he carries throughout much of the story. At the end of the story, a group of people, mostly male, leave the city and meet a girl going in. They have a conversation almost identical to that between Kid and the girls at the beginning. In flipping back to the latter to check this, I realized that the group of girls Kid meets going in are a group that are described as disappearing from the city in the last section of the book.

What's more, many of the passages that Kid reads out of the notebook that he gets at the beginning – passages that were already in the notebook when he first got it – appear word for word in the last section of the book. In other words, it seems as if Kid himself wrote the original passages in the notebook. The book begins in the middle of a sentence; "…to wound the autumnal city". It ends with "…I have come to…", and in one passage of gibberish in the last section of the novel the entire sentence ("I have come to to [sic] wound the 'autumnal city") appears. So the novel ends as it begins (as supposedly James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, which I haven't read, does), making a loop. Indeed, one critic has said it acts as a Moebius Strip.

Unsurprisingly, Dhalgren (which ultimately sold in the neighborhood of a million copies) elicited a wide range of opinions. Many critics both inside and outside the science fiction praised it highly, and it has received far more critical attention from people attempting to explain various aspects of it than the average science fiction book gets (comparable instead to the attention given to some of Ursula Le Guin's work, or the novels of Kurt Vonnegut). Others hated it, among them prominent writers like Philip K. Dick. Even its fans often admit to not understanding it; William Gibson wrote a forward to one edition in which he said: "I have never understood it. I have sometimes felt that I partially understood it, or that I was nearing the verge of understanding it... Dhalgren is not there to be finally understood. I believe its 'riddle' was never meant to be 'solved.'"

So would I recommend it? It depends entirely on the taste of the individual reader. Certainly those who dislike anything other than a straightforward tale, expect to have all mysteries (or even most of them) explained or have a problem with sex that is not heterosexual or monogamous would do well to steer clear. I personally found the book very intriguing and somewhat frustrating (I do generally prefer to have all the mysteries cleared up at the end of a book). I'm glad I read it, and I may read it again someday, but I wouldn’t want to read a lot books like it, certainly not on a regular basis. There's no doubt, however, that it's an unusual reading experience.


Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

The next novel I read was a well-known classic, Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. This novel superficially has very little in common with Dhalgren, but there are a few points in common. The most obvious is that they were both controversial, and sex was a primary reason for this. There are no graphic sex scenes in Madame Bovary, but she commits adultery, which was something of a taboo topic. What’s more, there is confusion, if only in the mind of Madame Bovary herself, between spiritual and physical ecstasy, resulting in accusations of blasphemy. In fact, Flaubert was prosecuted for "immorality" and "irreligion", though he was ultimately acquitted.

Madame Bovary is far from an admirable figure, and in fact there are no truly admirable characters in the novel, at least among the main characters. Madame Bovary is shallow and self-centered, and is unable to separate fantasy (as represented by the romantic novels she reads) from the reality of mundane everyday life. She believes she cannot be happy unless she is swept off her feet and carried off to exotic lands, and as a consequence she is almost constantly unhappy, except early in her affairs when she is able to convince herself that what is happening is like the stories she has read. In fact, as I read the novel, she made me think of Don Quixote, and later when reading the critical supplement at the end of the book I learned that several critics have made the same comparison. She is not delusional to the point of obvious mental illness like Don Quixote, but the result is nearly the same. She despises her husband because of his ordinariness and lack of competence, and while not unintelligent, she has no self-control, spending extravagantly to gratify her various impulses. She doesn't even truly care for her lovers, just for the way they can satisfy her desires.

Madame Bovary is not a cheerful book; it's full of not very lovable people, and the end is not a happy one, at least for most of the characters. But Flaubert's skill as a writer is what makes the book a classic, and while I can't claim to be able to fully appreciate his stylistic ability, especially in translation (that's not a criticism of the translator, just recognition of the inevitability of something being lost in translation, particularly in the case of a writer like Flaubert), there were many standout passages, making it obvious why many admire the book. Flaubert himself once wrote that "there is no such thing as a beautiful idea without beautiful form, and vice versa." He was said to constantly write and rewrite passages, searching for the perfect combination of words (in this, if nothing else, he is like Kid in Dhalgren). Despite this, he was cynical about the ability of words to really convey anything properly; in one passage in Madame Bovary explaining the inability of her lover to truly understand her, he says: "…no one can every express the exact measure of his needs, his conceptions or his sorrows, and human speech is like a cracked pot on which we beat out rhythms for bears to dance to when we are striving to make music that will wring tears from the stars." From the descriptions of him in the critical supplement, including ones by people who knew him personally like Emile Zola, Flaubert was a somewhat obsessive and occasionally contradictory character, but nonetheless widely admired, and Madame Bovary was the main foundation for much of that admiration.

Leiber, Cherryh and Moorcock

After reading two relatively "heavy" books in a row, I wanted some relatively light reading for a time. Accordingly I decided to return to Fritz Leiber's tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser by reading The Swords of Lankhmar, the first book included in the omnibus The Second Book of Lankhmar. As I have discussed Leiber's tales previously, I will just make a few observations here. One is that The Swords of Lankhmar is unusual in that it is a full novel rather than a collection of stories gathered in chronological order (internal chronology, that is). Also, though he is writing fantasy, Leiber makes a commendable effort to provide scientific explanations for fantastic things. When the Gray Mouser shrinks due to a magic potion, he leaves a puddle of slimy pink liquid on the ground, bordered by a gray powder, corresponding to the matter that he has lost from his flesh, clothing and weapons. Likewise, Fafhrd quite intelligently asks a female Ghoul (a human-like creature with flesh and organs that are entirely transparent, making them look like living skeletons) he meets and becomes romantically involved with how she can see, given that light passes straight through her eyes. Whether her explanation, or Leiber's explanation for the geology of the Sinking Land, is completely sound scientifically I couldn't say, but at least he makes the effort. The episode with Fafhrd and his Ghoul lover is also notable for Leiber's aside that the sight of them together was "one to touch the hearts of imaginative lovers and enemies of racial discrimination in all the many universes". And once again his heroes stand in contrast to characters like Conan in that they are less superhuman (though the way they are able to fight off a crowd of people out for their blood at the beginning of the novel is almost Conan-like); they are occasionally foolish, usually lustful and greedy, somewhat sexist (though unlike nearly all of Conan's lovers, their lovers are often a match for them, mentally and in the case of Fafhrd's Ghoul lover, even physically) and yet prone to generous impulses. All in all, they make a pleasant if not always politically correct diversion.

I followed this with C. J. Cherryh's novel Merchanter's Luck, a story set, like the other books of hers that I’ve read, in her Alliance-Union universe. This is a far future where humans have expanded into far into space, settling in space stations and eventually habitable worlds strung out among the stars, with their ties to Earth eventually loosening to the point that contact is minimal. The routes between the stars are traveled by merchant spacers who carry goods from station to station. Cherryh has written many books in this series, but the only ones I've read previously are the much longer Downbelow Station and Cyteen, plus the more distantly connected Chanur trilogy. Downbelow Station is an action-packed adventure tale featuring complicated political maneuvering, ending by creating the balance of power that serves as the background for many of the later tales. Cyteen takes place on the eponymous central planet of the somewhat fascistic Union, and is an interesting account of an attempt to replicate a genius, not only by creating a genetic clone, but also by recreating the environment and events of her childhood. The Chanur trilogy takes place in a more distant area of the galaxy inhabited by intelligent alien races. It centers on a ship which ends up taking on a refugee alien of a hitherto unknown race that calls itself “human”. This series is notable not only for creating believable alien races, but for making them the focus of the story (we only learn what the human thinks from the little he is able to convey as he slowly learns their language). Merchanter's Luck, which takes place soon after Downbelow Station and includes appearances by some of the characters of that novel, is less of an epic tale than any of the above, but is gripping nonetheless. It also has some psychological elements, as one of the two protagonists is a young man whose family were massacred when he was a boy, except for two others who died subsequently, leaving him the sole owner of a starship, often flying it completely alone when he is unable to find temporary crew, accompanied only by his ghosts and the voice of his cousin, programmed into the ship's computer. When he has the opportunity to take on a more trustworthy crew, his solitary habits and deep-seated distrust of others creates problems. The story is fairly short (around 200 pages) but fast-paced. Basically, it's an entertaining way to spend a few hours.

Next I read The Sailor on the Seas of Fate by Michael Moorcock, which is the second book (by internal chronology) of the Elric series. Elric is the rightful emperor of Melnibone, a land inhabited by race of beings similar to humans, but more powerful and almost completely lacking in human emotions like regret and compassion (they quite casually inflict very barbaric tortures, and rarely show any concern for others, even of their own race). Elric is exceptional in that he does feel such emotions to some degree. He is also an albino, and physically weak without special drugs. Despite this, he is a powerful sorcerer and a skilled swordsman. What's more, he wields an extremely powerful sword called Stormbringer. This black blade is semi-sentient and often seems to murmur to itself. It sucks the souls out of those it strikes, consuming them and transferring energy from their souls to Elric. However, it sometimes gets out of Elric's control, striking those he does not wish to strike, with tragic results.

In this novel, Elric has recently left Melnibone to travel in the human kingdoms, as he believes that understanding the up and coming human powers is necessary if the decadent, decaying realm of Melnibone is to have any chance of surviving, and also because his unusual (for a Melnibonean) ability to feel human emotions made him restless at home. When feeling hostile humans, he meets a mysterious ship that sails between worlds, on which he meets several individuals who, like he himself, are incarnations of a being known as the Eternal Champion. It seems that virtually all the heroes featured in Moorcock's fiction are incarnations of the Eternal Champion, despite superficial differences. In this book, Elric meets Erekose, Hawkmoon, and Corum, all of whom feature in other Moorcock novels (though other than Elric, the only one I’ve read any stories of is Corum, when someone lent them to me in high school – my impression at the time, accurate or not, was that they were grim and depressing). After facing a pair of beings that threaten all the worlds that they come from, Elric parts company with the others, and has further adventures in attempting to return to his own world, the last ending in misfortune.

As might be guessed with his sinister sword, his unpleasant antecedents, and his ill-starred life, Elric is a much grimmer hero than Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser or Conan. There is no question he is a very memorable character, but his adventures are much bleaker and so not as much fun to read about. Also, while Moorcock's scope is broader than many other fantasy writers in that his tales of many different worlds are all in a sense tied together, his individual worlds don’t seem to be quite as detailed as those of Leiber and Howard, not to mention Tolkien (though to be fair, I haven’t read as many of his books – even in the case of the Elric stories, I’ve only read the first three books, all of which are on the short side). However, despite these downsides, anyone interested in fantasy should read at least some of the Elric stories, as they are sure to make an impression.

The Sea (1994)

When I first visited the Philippines in 1994, I took a passenger ferry from Manila to Cebu, an island in the middle of the country. The voyage took about a day. This was the first time I'd been on a boat out of sight of land (with the exception of a much shorter trip in Thailand), and as I sat on the deck looking out over the sea I was inspired by the experience to write the following in my journal of the trip. I generally have great difficulty writing lyrically; this is one of my few attempts at doing so. Whether it was successful is another matter. Perhaps it just proves that I should stick to what I'm good at.

The sea is a vast rippling plain, stretching out endlessly to the horizon. Above it hang clouds in their myriad shapes; ephemeral, delicate islands in their own sea of blue. Occasionally a boat skims its lonely way across the surface, leaving a faint trail like that of a sidewinder moving through the desert or like a man moving through time. For though trails are left in their wake, sometimes narrow and almost indistinguishable, sometimes broad and powerful, in the end all fade away, swallowed by the trackless sea. So, too, do all of our lives and the traces of our passage we leave behind eventually dwindle into nothing as if we'd never been. Sometimes the sea rages, ravaging all before it, just as in the passage of time there occur cataclysmic events which wipe the slate clean, leaving little or nothing of what had been, no matter how imposing.

In the distance rises an island, immobile and unfading, just as our world remains after we go. Or is it truly permanent? No, one day the island and the whole world will crumble to nothing, worn down by the waters of time.

Soon it will be time to go back in, back to the world of humanity, back to reality. Or perhaps that is not reality after all. Perhaps reality lies not in the human world of passion, pain, and endless striving for things that will not last, but with the endless sea.

Food for thought

Though as usual there is plenty going on the world worth commenting on, I haven't had time to write anything substantial myself. Instead I'm providing links to some interesting articles and opinion pieces that have appeared over the last month.

Perhaps not surprisingly, I am at least mostly in agreement with nearly all the opinion pieces I link to here. This might lead some to think that I only read things I agree with (as many people do). While I wouldn't deny that I am somewhat more likely to read something with a slant that I find sensible, I do fairly often read things I disagree with, sometimes quite strongly. In fact in some instances it's probably fortunate that I don't have high blood pressure -- at least not yet. As it is, I do try to steer away from commentary I strongly disagree with, since it is rare that those with more extreme views make any points that I find logical, and it irritates me to read them. On the other hand, I don't mind reading commentary that I mildly disagree with, if it's rational and well-argued. Even if I am not completely persuaded by it, I will come away with food for thought. But in any case, if I included any links to anything I mostly disagreed with, however well thought out, I would fell obligated to rebut the key points. I don't have time for that, and so, this time around at least, I'll just link to things I don't feel compelled to argue against. As my opening comments indicated, this doesn't mean I agree with every little thing these writers say, or that none of the supposed facts that are presented here are at all contestable. It just means that the problems are minor enough that I have no problem passing over them.

Here's the longest and the most recent of the articles, one which paints a scary picture of the power politically active wealthy people have in the US, especially ones who don't mind bending the rules a little:
Covert Operations
The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.
by Jane Mayer
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer

A couple of informative pieces on Social Security (I was actually half inclined to think Social Security might need substantial changes until I read these, now I think the only change warranted is raising the cap on the payroll tax):
The myth of the Social Security system's financial shortfall
August 08, 2010 Michael Hiltzik
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/08/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20100808

Attacking Social Security
By Paul Krugman
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/opinion/16krugman.html

An interesting editorial by the guy who was budget director under Reagan (that's right -- he's definitely no radical lefty):
Four Deformations of the Apocalypse
By David Stockman
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/opinion/01stockman.html

Some biting pieces on the US Senate's failure to act on climate change (Friedman's not exactly far left either, btw):
Who Cooked the Planet?
By Paul Krugman
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/opinion/26krugman.html

We're Gonna Be Sorry
By Thomas Friedman
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/opinion/25friedman.html

Some interesting pieces about the intersection between Christianity and politics/society (the first article also contains a link to an article on Woodland Hills Church in Minnesota that's worth reading, and the second proves that I do sometimes look at Fox...):
Congregations Gone Wild
By G. Jeffery MacDonald
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/opinion/08macdonald.html

Anne Rice Quits Christianity -- 10 Thoughts On Jesus and the Church
By Rev. Bill Shuler
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/08/08/rev-shuler-anne-rice-christianity-quit-christ-pharisees-god-love-forgiveness/

And finally a little bit of history about conspiracy theories and other nonsense:
Why Obama is not first 'imposter' president and won't be the last
By John Blake, CNN
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/08/09/president.imposter/index.html#fbid=7J0H26K4R0s&wom=false

Religious prejudice and xenophobia

I've noticed that the issue of a plan to build a community center containing a mosque near the former site of the World Trade Center in Manhattan has been in the news a lot in the US lately. This strikes me as yet another thing that should not really be an issue at all, and wouldn't be if it weren't for some people who, while talking obsessively about patriotism and such things, seem to lack even a basic understanding of the principles which are the US's main claim to any sort of moral high ground relative to its enemies (never mind for the moment that in the past the rather large gap between principles and actions has tended to seriously erode that moral high ground).

A major impetus to the settlement of what is now the United States was a desire among members of religious groups that were discriminated against in England to find a place to practice their religion. The Puritans commonly known as the Pilgrims settled Massachusetts for this reason, as did the Catholics who settled Maryland. People from non-English speaking countries who belong to persecuted religious groups, such as French Huguenots, also came to the US for the same reasons. Freedom of religion was considered vital by the leaders of the early US (see, for instance, the quote from George Washington that I mentioned in a previous essay stating that he didn't care if workers were Jews, Muslims, atheists, or any type of Christians, as long as they worked well).

Now we have a bunch of people in the US who want to deny adherents of a particular religion, in this case Islam, the freedom to establish places of worship, not only near the WTC site, but in other places around the country. How much more blatant a violation of the principle of freedom of religion can there be? In the case of the New York Islamic community center, the critics talk about Islamic triumphalism and insensitivity. While one might just possibly be able to make a case for saying establishing a mosque so close to the WTC site is slightly insensitive, even this requires certain questionable arguments. We should keep in mind that the WTC was not attacked by Islam itself; it was attacked by violent extremists who happened to be Muslim. The people who are planning to build the mosque represent a much more peaceful, tolerant type of Islam (attempts to tie them to Islamic extremists seem dubious at best). If no mosque should be built in the neighborhood of the WTC site simply because the 9/11 attacks were committed by Muslims, does that mean no churches should be allowed near the sites of massacres or other atrocities committed by those who were supposedly Christian? If so, there would be lots of places all over the world were churches shouldn't be built.

Those who plan to build the Islamic community center have emphasized their desire to make it a place where people of all religions will feel welcome, a place of reconciliation where Muslims and non-Muslims can get to understand each other better. What exactly is bad about that? The problem with Islamic extremists such as Osama bin Laden is that they are completely intolerant of differing opinions and ways of life. If Americans reject all Muslims, even peaceful ones who want to improve understanding with those of other religions, how are they better than the Islamic extremists?

What's more, as is pointed out in a recent article in Time (http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2011400,00.html), the community center will not even be at the actual site of "Ground Zero" but several blocks away. The argument that it is insensitive to build a mosque at the site of the tragedy would make more sense if it were actually going to be built there. It's not like the time when Hindu nationalists in Ayodhya, India tore down a mosque and wanted to build a Hindu temple on the exact same site (which they claimed was the site of the birthplace of Rama). As I pointed out above and the Time article further explains, while religion was unquestionably a major excuse for the attack, the attackers don't really represent their religion, and this is not ultimately a conflict between religions. And since the mosque won't even be on the site of the attack itself, to call its construction "Islamic triumphalism" is absurd. As the article points out, there is not a single legal reason to deny permission to build the community center, and those who protest against it are going against one of the major principles that the US was founded on.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a large minority of Americans with this kind of irrationally intolerant attitude. A similar phenomenon is seen in the movement among some, even in the US Congress, to deny citizenship to babies born in the US if their parents are there illegally. Whatever one thinks of what their parents have done (and despite anti-immigrant rants about them being "criminals", it's not like they are murderers or rapists), the children certainly aren't to blame. Punishing children, whether by denying them citizenship, medical care, or education, for the deeds of their parents is frankly reprehensible. One can only hope such xenophobic attitudes, like the religious intolerance exhibited by anti-mosque protesters, do not become too common among the American public.

Update (2010/08/25): A good piece on this issue and the ironic effect it may have on American support for the war in Afghanistan can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/opinion/22rich.html . One point the writer made was that the project is not a mosque but an Islamic community center containing a prayer space. Some fairly objective seeming reports, however, do refer to the prayer room as a mosque, and I haven't seen anything detailed enough to make clear which characterization would be more accurate, so I haven't edited out my references to a "mosque". But it is worth emphasizing that the building will be a community center with many functions that will be open to all, with the mosque (or prayer room) only one part of it.

I have seen a number of conservatives deny that anyone is contesting the right of Muslims to build a mosque at the site, asserting that their opposition is purely based on the belief that the site is inappropriate because it is insensitive. However, a lot of the comments from and signs carried by opponents clearly target Islam in general (not to mention the fact that anti-Muslim right wingers have been protesting mosques in places like Tennessee, which is a long way from the WTC site), so this assertion seems rather disingenuous. Furthermore, it is worth asking (as many have) exactly how far away from the WTC is far enough to satisfy these opponents. Two city blocks in NY is quite far, and there's already a mosque four blocks away. Some also bring up the Carmelite convent that the Catholic church agreed to move away from Auschwitz after Jewish protests, but that was right next to Auschwitz, not two blocks away.

Some also liken the project to building a Japanese monument near Pearl Harbor, but this is also a questionable analogy. First of all, it was Japan as a nation which attacked Pearl Harbor, while Islam as a religion was not responsible for 9/11 (despite what some might claim), except in the same sense that Christianity as a religion is "responsible" for massacres by its own fanatics. Furthermore, while a Japanese shrine dedicated solely to Japanese dead or something along those lines on the site of Pearl Harbor itself might be objectionable, a Japanese-government-funded museum dedicate to peace and clearly condemning the Japanese role in the conflict located next to the site would be acceptable. There should be even less objection to a community center aimed primarily (but not exclusively) at and funded by the local Japanese-American population (which is a very large percentage of the overall population in Hawaii) and that's essential what this project resembles.

None of the above means that Islam itself doesn't have its problems, at least as it is practiced by many of its adherents (even more moderate ones), or that care should be not taken to try to prevent the spread of any of those more questionable practices through whatever source, including places such as this community center. But then the same applies to Christianity and Judaism, whose more fundamentalist adherents sometimes try to impose their views on, for instance, same-sex marriage on the community at large. As long as there is no evidence that the community center in question is to be run by extremists (and vague claims of money ties are hardly evidence, as Jon Stewart points out: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-19-2010/extremist-makeover---homeland-edition), there is no reason it shouldn't be established in the place proposed for it.

What I've Been Reading - 2010, Part 3

Of the variety of books I've read or finished reading in the last few months, the first was a novel called The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Gibson and Sterling are both well-known authors of the branch of science fiction commonly called cyberpunk (Gibson was the author of The Neuromancer and the originator of the term "cyberspace"). While computers play a major role in The Difference Engine, however, it is not a novel based in the future, but an alternate history novel, based on the premise that Charles Babbage successfully completed his Difference Engine, a mechanical calculating machine he was designed to calculate advanced equations, and his more advanced, programmable Analytical Engine. Babbage produced several such designs in the mid 19th century, but they were never built, due to funding and Babbage's own eccentricities. Just a few years ago, an actual Difference Engine was produced using Babbage's original plans (with adjustments for minor errors) and 19th century manufacturing tolerances, which proved that his machine could actually have been built.

In the novel, the successful manufacture of a working computer has led to a technological revolution that has radically transformed Britain and the rest of the Western world. Britain is the world's leading power, with only France as a major rival, having ensured that the United States splintered over slavery. The government is dominated by intellectuals and scientists, led by Babbage and Lord Byron, who is prime minister. Other powerful individuals include Byron's daughter Ada Byron (Lovelace), who works with Babbage and is a brilliant "clacker"(programmer), though also a gambling addict (much like the real life Ada Lovelace, who was a skilled mathematician and writer of what many consider the first computer program, but was also fond of gambling), and Lords Thomas Huxley and Charles Darwin. A number of other historical figures appear or are mentioned in the novel, including Sam Houston, Benjamin Disreali, John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelly in some cases in roles quite similar to those they played in real life and in other cases quite different, though generally believable based on their views and personalities. Like in Wolfe's Book of the New Sun and Zindell's Neverness books, distinctive words are used for objects and professions, in this case often analogous to but not identical with those of the 20th century, e.g, "clacking" (programming), "kinotropy" (cinematography), "linestreaming" (streamlining) and "gurneys" (coal and steam powered vehicles).

The novel follows three major characters (the third, Laurence Oliphant, was a real person) through the transformed society of late 19th century London. Though in many ways technological progress and meritocracy have seemingly resulted in a better world, there are evidently many hidden flaws and injustices, and even a sinister undercurrent in the use of citizen-numbers and other Engine-based information to identify individuals -- and in some events, erase any evidence of their existence. The novel is not particularly profound, but it is an entertaining read and a creditable imagining of the way things might have been.

I also read a collection of short stories about the Templar knights called Tales of the Knights Templar, edited by writer Katherine Kurtz and assembled in more or less chronological order from early days of the order in Palestine during the Crusades up to modern times. The stories contain varying degrees of the fantastic, in some cases being essentially historical realism but in other cases involving mysticism, time travel, magic, and other supernatural elements. They are generally sympathetic to the Templars, and in many cases make use of the (in reality highly improbable) idea that they had some kind of hidden knowledge. All in all, an interesting diversion, though basically light reading.

Much less light, but just as entertaining, was The Urth of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. This is a sequel to his Book of the New Sun, narrated by the same character, Severian. As I don't want to give away too much to those who haven't read the previous book, I will simply say that the sequel resolves certain mysteries from its predecessor, including exactly what the New Sun is and Severian's relationship towards it, as well as the origin of the Claw of the Conciliator, and is a dramatic example of the idea that sometimes you need to (virtually) destroy something in order to save it. There is a bit more obvious science fiction in this book, as it more heavily involves space and time travel, but it is still, as Wolfe himself calls it, science fantasy rather than "hard" science fiction. Like in the other book, not everything is clear, as we only see things through Severian's eyes, and he does not always spell things out, even assuming he understands them perfectly himself. Severian, despite the role he plays, remains an imperfect character (as he says himself, "a bad man trying to be good") and sometimes he does not explain his own actions clearly. However, The Urth of the New Sun is a helpful aid to understanding the complex Book of the New Sun, as well as being a worthwhile tale in its own right.

An entirely different sort of character is the prototypical sword and sorcery hero, Conan of Cimmeria, who features in a collection of the original stories of Robert E. Howard entitled The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian. This book contains close to half of Howard's Conan stories, with most of the other half appearing in second anthology and a few more in one covering all of Howard's best known characters, including Kull of Atlantis and Solomon Kane (who featured in a recent major film). The stories in this anthology are from Howard's original texts, without the latter additions by other writers that appear in many Conan books.

Howard's Conan is a character of more depth than he appears to be in later portrayals (at least according to several critics -- I haven't read the later extrapolations myself), being somewhat melancholy and prone to brooding. He is not completely flawless, nor is he unintelligent or ignorant. But he does at times seem almost superhuman, as he is frequently described as succeeding in feats far beyond the abilities of normal humans, not to mention surviving wounds that would kill most people several times over (one can imagine him as a major inspiration for the concept of "hit points" in games like Dungeons and Dragons). Aside from his fighting skills, he is a skilled sailor, thief, and leader of men -- in fact there seems to be little he can't do. It is easy to imagine that Fritz Leiber and his friend Harry Fischer to create Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser as more human heroes in contrast to characters such as Conan, as they are said to have done.

Conan is also proud of the fact that he is a barbarian, in contrast to weak and untrustworthy "civilized" men. Howard clearly sympathizes with the barbarian viewpoint as he conceives it, though not in the sense of a noble savage, but more as being somehow purer and less corrupt. Nevertheless, Howard's idea of the barbarian is still somewhat stereotypical, as indeed many of his characters are. His women are generally weak and helpless (not too mention underdressed); a few are at least somewhat more capable and strong-willed ones, such as the princess in "The Black Colossus", but nevertheless are essentially dependent on Conan. The most notable exception is the pirate queen Belit in "Queen of the Black Coast", who is a powerful and ruthless leader in her own right, but even she feels an irresistible attraction to Conan that leads her to surrender leadership to him, or at least make him her equal. Howard also makes use of (whether he believed it or not) a completely erroneous concept of evolution, with peoples in his Hyborian Age evolving separately from apes and in some cases even "regressing" to apedom, none of which is actually possible. He seems to have subscribed to the idea that racial purity is somehow superior (when the opposite is actually true); the fact that Conan is a "pure-blooded" Cimmerian is emphasized, and while some "mixed" races are portrayed as being accomplished, the implication is that this is in spite of mixed origins rather than because of them. Most disturbingly, he had an obviously racist view of blacks, who are always physically powerful but extremely savage and almost subhuman. Of course, given that Howard was a Texan writing in the early 20th century, his racism is no more surprising than that of Margret Mitchell (author of Gone with the Wind), but in both cases it can be disconcerting to see on the page.

Despite these obvious problems, and the fact that a few of the stories were more clearly churned out using a formula in order to sell, Howard's Conan stories are exciting and fun to read. Having read this volume, I don't necessarily feel compelled to try to obtain a complete collection of Howard's work or even of his Conan stories, but I would like to obtain or at least read some of the other stories that are generally cited as being his best (including those featuring other characters). While heroes such as Frodo, Severian, or even Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser might have more depth or at least seem more realistic, it's easy to see why Conan has a hold on the imaginations of many and remains highly influential.

Speaking of influential, another one of my recent reads was a novel generally considered one of the most influential of the 20th century, To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. A greater contrast to Howard's Conan stories is hard to imagine (though the two authors have at least one thing in common -- they both committed suicide). To the Lighthouse doesn't have a conventional plot, but rather focuses on the thoughts and feelings of a family spending the holiday on an island in Scotland and their guests. Interior monologues (particularly based on the perceptions of the characters as they observe their surroundings) feature heavily, so like in James Joyce's Ulysses, it is sometimes hard to distinguish what the characters think from their actual thoughts and actions (though generally To the Lighthouse is not as difficult in this sense as Ulysses, in part simply because it is much shorter, but also because it doesn't have the dramatic shifts in style that Joyce employed). Rather than telling a tell in the usual sense, the book explores the characters' relationships to each other, including their sometimes contradictory thoughts about each other, as well as women's relationship to men in the society of the day and the struggle to create, as typified by Lily Briscoe's attempts to paint.

The family at the heart of the story is the Ramsays, headed by the brooding philosopher Mr. Ramsay, who despite his intellectual accomplishments feels insecure and has great difficulty relating to others, and his wife Mrs. Ramsay, who holds the family together but accepts a subordinate position despite her own capabilities. The first section of the novel takes place in the course of a single day (again like Ulysses), culminating in a dinner party presided over by Mrs. Ramsay. In contrast, the middle section (appropriately titled "Time Passes"), only slightly touches on the human characters at all, but instead focuses on the deterioration of the house during a ten-year period when the family doesn't use it. The third part of the story takes place during another single day, when the remaining members of the family and their guests return to the house on the island.

Though it is not the kind of novel I would want to read just for fun, I can see why To the Lighthouse has a good reputation among critics. It is well-written, very original, and thought-provoking (though I would argue that books like Wolfe's and Zindell's are just as thought-provoking, though in different ways). Wolfe's insights into individual perspectives are fascinating. As a personal aside, I found it almost disturbing that I have a number of things in common with the intellectual student Charles Tansley, who is not a big favorite of many at the house, though I'm pretty sure I'm not as insensitive to the feelings of others as he is (particularly the little boy James Ramsay, whose obvious desire to go to the lighthouse is trampled on by both Charles and James's father, who keep saying the weather certainly won't allow it).

Among the other fiction works I've read in the last few months have been a number of sci-fi short stories, including some older ones by Frederick Pohl and newer ones from a recent anthology, and a Terry Prachett Discworld novel, Equal Rites. Regarding these, I'll just briefly state that Pohl's stories are good, though usually cynical and sometimes a bit out of date in certain ways (such as the role of women), a lot of the more recent sci-fi stories were also quite good, and Prachett's book, though not the equal of some of his best satire and straight humor (such as may be found in Small Gods, Wyrd Sisters or Hogfather), was still fun, and contained more than a little serious commentary in the guise of humor.

Just recently I also completed a book that I had been reading over a long period of time, a non-fiction work by Isaac Asimov entitled Asimov's New Guide to Science. This book I had been employing mainly as bedtime reading material, and as I have had less opportunity to read before bed than in the past, it took a lot longer to finish than it would have otherwise. The book is divided into two parts, "The Physical Sciences" and "The Biological Sciences", the first of which I actually finished perhaps a year ago or earlier, and the second of which I started some months later, having read other things before bed in the interim (such as Darwin's Origin of Species, which I have discussed in a previous post). But while I chose to read the book before bed in part because its relatively soporific qualities in comparison to a lot of fiction (including Asimov's own) or even some more dramatically paced nonfiction, it was by no means boring (nor nearly as sleep-inducing on average as Darwin's book). It was very educational, and written in about as clear and understandable a manner as possible considering the often very in-depth subject matter.

I cannot claim to have thoroughly understood every topic Asimov covered -- though I think I can fairly claim to have follow the vast majority, at least in a general sense -- and I have already forgotten much that I did understand clearly, all this despite the fact that I would have said (and in fact would still say) I knew more about science than the majority of people. But I do now comprehend more thoroughly certain things that I had previously only had a vague grasp of, and learned a lot of new things as well. For instance, despite all the references to enriched uranium and occasionally to centrifuges in news about Iran's nuclear program, I had previously no idea of the significance of either. In fact to create a sustained fusion reaction in a bomb, it is necessary to have sufficient quantities of a relatively rare isotope of uranium (to be precise -- with a quick reference to the book -- uranium 235, as opposed to the far more common uranium 238). The centrifuges are used to separate the lighter, more fissionable form of uranium from the more common form.

Likewise, I hadn't previously been aware that starch and cellulose (used by plants such as trees and grass for their bodies, as it were) are both made of glucose, and in terms of chemical makeup are basically the same thing, the only difference being their structure -- something which nevertheless makes a huge difference, as we can digest starch (and do in large quantities) but not cellulose. For that matter, even cattle and horses (which eat grass) and termites (which eat wood) are themselves also unable to digest cellulose, but have bacteria in their systems which do it for them, another thing I hadn't known. Likewise, I hadn't previously had any real idea how antibiotics work, or why they don't work on viruses. (Essentially, they closely resemble the structure of chemicals that the bacteria need to reproduce and function properly, and they attach themselves to the receptors for these proteins, in effect jamming the cells' machinery. Viruses, on the other hand, are so simple they have little or no machinery to jam, at least without damaging cells you want to leave untouched, such as those of our bodies.) Certainly I can say I got a much better understanding of organic chemistry than I had previously had from the book, though there is still a huge amount I don't know.

Not all parts of the books were equal informative to me personally -- the first chapters, for instance, cover astronomy, a subject I am far more familiar with, and so consequently had little that was new to me. And of course, given the fact that the book is an early 1980s update of a work first published in the 1960s, there is much that is out of date in many fields (astronomy not least among them). But in some cases, even the out of date passages were informative. For instance, at the end of the chapter "The Earth", Asimov explains how human production of large amounts of carbon dioxide may result in a warmer planet, and that studies were already showing that glaciers were receding. He goes on to say, however, that while temperatures had clearly gone up in the first half of the 20th century, there had been a slight downturn in temperatures since then, which he speculates might have been due to increasing smog and dust in the air blocking sunlight, so that the two forms of human pollution were canceling each other out. Of course since the book was written, the average global temperature has resumed its rise, so his last comments no longer apply. But this passage alone shows that despite what some global warming deniers like to assert, the concept of anthropogenic global warming is by no means a recent invention but was widely accepted in science decades ago, nor was there any kind of consensus among scientists in the 1970s that the Earth was entering a long-term cooling trend. In fact, everything since is simply a confirmation about what Asimov had to say about global warming three decades ago.

Another point about the book I might note is that, as befits a scientist who is also a science fiction writer, Asimov at times speculates about future trends. He also does not attempt to restrain himself from occasional comments about human society and behavior, and what he thinks people can do to improve things. He has particularly harsh comments for those who try to deny evolution and those who resist non-coercive population control measures. But all of these comments come out of the science he is discussing, so they don't bother me (of course it helps that I agree with nearly all of them anyway). He is also not entirely above a little self-promotion, as in the section on robots where he talks about his own three laws of robotics (and mentions, accurately, that he coined the term "robotics"). But considering the detail he goes to regarding other people's achievements, these references to his own don't seem like much. All in all, while there are certainly more up-to-date science books for the general reader out there, I can't imagine that there are many which can as easily give the reader as comprehensive an understanding of science in so many fields.

Recent News - Simkins, Sherrod, and Kosovo

A few weeks ago there was a news item about a school I once attend, the University of Texas at Austin. It seems that a historian published some research he had done about William Simkins, a former law professor at UT that a dormitory near the law school had been named after. Not only had Simkins been a leader of the Ku Klux Klan in the late 19th century, but the dorm named after him had been opened just as the nation's courts were ruling against segregation in schools. It appears that the university consciously chose to name the dorm after a known racist and KKK leader in an attempt to intimidate any blacks who might contemplate applying for UT. This research has led UT to consider renaming the dorm.

Naturally there was debate at UT and elsewhere about whether renaming the dorm was the right thing to do, and some journalists and commentators also discussed the more general issue of whether other buildings, streets, and other such things that were named after people whose views we might now question should likewise be renamed. Of course, as some pointed out, it would be difficult to rename every building in the South that is named after a Confederate leader or known member of the KKK, as there are huge numbers of them. But also, not every Confederate leader or even everyone who was at some time a member of the KKK was really reprehensible in their views and character. Robert E. Lee was certainly no worse a person, and probably better in many ways, than Union generals like William Sherman, Philip Sheridan (who was guilty of particularly bloodthirsty actions against the Native Americans after the Civil War), or even Ulysses Grant. For that matter, some prominent Southerners who were at least for a time members of the KKK were actually fairly progressive, including Bibb Graves and Hugo Black of Alabama and the recently deceased Robert Byrd of West Virginia. Also, every public figure in history did or said at least a few things that would be seen as bad today, if not in their own times. But equally obviously, someone who was guilty of egregiously terrible acts or who held particularly reprehensible opinions should not have buildings and streets named after them. Of course the most sensible approach in naming such things is to not name them after people at all (the proposed new name for Simkins dorm at UT, for instance, is Creekside).

There is, of course, a lot more to be said about this issue of names and renaming, and it is a topic of particular interest in countries like Taiwan, where large numbers of streets, districts, and even towns were renamed for political reasons by the KMT government in the mid 20th century, and in some cases by previous governments such as the Qing. But for now I'll leave the topic of Simkins, except to note that in the course of reading about it, I looked up information about UT dorms and learned that several new ones have been built since I was at school there, and many dorms that were once single sex are now co-ed. In fact, Simkins, a dorm which I remembered the name of but virtually nothing else about (I'm sure I was never inside it, and I don't think I even noticed it much when I passed by it), is now the only male-only dorm left.

Related in a way to the Simkins issue, in that it involved the reputation of an individual and a gap between perception and reality, was the Shirley Sherrod story. This one has pretty much been rehashed to death in the American media, so I'll only say that this started out as an unfortunate example of something I've touched on earlier, namely that if you try to make an overall judgment about a person (or even about a particular comment they made) based on incomplete or even biased evidence, your conclusion will be suspect, to say the least. Regrettably, the high speed, low content nature of today's media makes it easier for this sort of thing to happen. Of course it doesn't help if you have right-wing bloggers, media figures and politicians who deliberately twist and take things out of context in order to support their warped thinking. That's not to say that liberals aren't sometimes guilty of taking things out of context, or blowing slips of the tongue by politicians on the right completely out of proportion. But it seems to me (and I'll grant that this may be at least partly due to my own biases) that extremists on the right are worse in this regard (the nonexistent "death panels" and the manufactured controversy over climate scientists' private emails are just two examples that come to mind). Still, I'll give credit to the conservatives who apologized or said positive things about Shirley Sherrod and her speech -- they at least proved they could be objective about some things.

Another recent news item was the International Court of Justice ruling that Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia was not in violation of international law. This ruling is generally seen as positive for independence movements around the world and negative for governments trying to suppress them. I agree with the ruling in principle; after all, if Kosovo's declaration of independence was illegal simply because Serbia didn't approve, then the United States' declaration of independence from the United Kingdom in 1776 was similarly "illegal". But I would say that what really counts is reality. If there is a functioning independent state, than it is a country regardless of any declarations, recognition, or court rulings. So Taiwan is a country, though not widely recognized as such, and North (Turkish) Cyprus should probably be considered one too. Places like South Ossetia and Abkhazia are more questionable, as they are highly dependent on Russia (most of their citizens have Russian passport) and so they don't function like truly independent states (North Cyprus also depends fairly heavily on Turkey, but not quite to such an extent). Even Kosovo is not quite a functioning independent state, as it is still to some degree dependent on the UN and the EU.

Of course the whole issue of what sort of grouping can or should constitute a nation is complex, and worthy of a lengthier discussion. Briefly put, while I in principle support the right of regions to declare independence from larger nations, the issue is more complicated when the independence movement is ethnically based, as so many of them are, as then the issue of whether even smaller groups within the independence-seeking region should then be allowed to become independent (as is indeed an issue in Kosovo, with a Serb-majority part of Kosovo now essentially separated from the rest). Ideally, the rights of the minorities in a country should be well enough protected that they don't feel compelled to seek independence. Also, of course, below a certain minimum size it's difficult to have a truly viable state. In some ways, I'd be in favor of abolishing nation-states altogether, but then we'd have the issue of what to replace them with. Optionally, if all nations were of roughly the same size in terms of population and resources, there would be fewer instances of strong nations (e.g., China, the US, Russia, etc.) bullying the weak. But again that would take a drastic redrawing of the world's boundaries. Again, this is a topic for another day. For now, I'll simply restate my support in principle for the right to self-determination, as long as the rights of minority groups receive sufficient protection.

On a final note, here's a very interesting article by the most prominent scientist of the 20th century, talking about capitalism, socialism, and democracy:
http://monthlyreview.org/598einstein.phpo

Nepal

Not too long ago, I posted a cursory and incomplete account of some of my travels. Though I still haven't written even an overview of the big five-month trip that came immediately after the place where that account left off, as I noted in my afterword, I did write down some impressions of a couple of the individual countries we visited on that trip. The first country we went to after Thailand (which was almost like our base of operations, as we returned to it twice more in the following months) was Nepal, which is the only country that I finished my write-up on. I had only typed half of it into the computer previously, but now I have finished the job, so it can be posted. As I recall, I actually started writing it while we were still in Nepal, though I finished it later (exactly when I don't remember). In typing up the last half, I noticed that a number of little incidents, especially from later in the trip, were left out, so I may have finished it a bit hastily. Also, I'm not sure that I would still agree with all of my impressions as I wrote them then (of course they were much fresher then, but now I also know more about not only Nepal but many other places, knowledge which might have led to different impressions if I had had it at the time). Nevertheless, I am posting the essay essentially unchanged, except for few changes to punctuation, even fewer to wording, and a handful of additional comments in brackets.

Upon arriving at Kathmandu's airport, it was immediately obvious that Nepal differs somewhat from a place like Thailand or even China. Instead of impressive rows of official-looking immigration counters, there were two counters manned by half a dozen officials running back and forth. The counters had signs hanging above them which informed us that one was for foreigners who already had a visa, the other for those without one. At the latter counter, however, we were told to go to the former to get our visas. Upon learning that we wanted 30-day visas the officials at the second counter sent us back to the first (they only had the stamp for 15 days). Now that we were at the correct counter, we had to pay for our visas in US dollars (local currency was not accepted) and we were given change from a drawer in which bills were rather casually stacked.

After leaving immigration and passing through a rather chaotic baggage claim and customs area, we went to buy tickets at the taxi counter. The guy behind the counter sold us the ticket while expounding on the virtues of one hotel to which we could have a "free taxi". We exited the airport to see dozens of touts for various hotels all waiting outside flashing cards. We pushed to the crowd to the taxi (which had no markings whatsoever identifying it as such - apparently the only way to tell in many cases is by the color of the license plate ). Many "volunteers" appeared offering to help us load our bags into the car (we ignored them, not wanting to pay for unnecessary services).

The car drove away from the airport, which was not surrounded by warehouses and such, but rather by fields. The taxi wound thru narrow streets to the tourist area of Thamel, a journey accomplished fairly quickly, making it clear that Kathmandu is much smaller than, say, Bangkok. In fact, most of Kathmandu can be seen on foot, though one must take care not to lose one's sense of direction in the narrow winding streets.

After arriving in Thamel and turning down the hotel the taxi took us to (the driver apparently having been bribed by a tout who had squeezed into the taxi with us), we walked around looking for a cheap place (the hotel we were taken to cost US$6, which is pricey for Nepal). On the way, we were constantly approached by guys offering, in conspiratorial tones, tiger balm, Gurkha knives, chess sets, and hashish (at least for this product the whispering made sense ). Having found a place to stay (US$2 for a room with common bath) we spent the next few days exploring the city.

Wandering thru the streets of Kathmandu, in particular the older sections of the city, one encounters a place which seems to have little in common with capitals of countries farther east. While in a city like Beijing or Seoul one can see monuments and palaces of the distant past, in old Kathmandu not only are there temples dating back centuries, but even most of the buildings that the people live and work in seem to be ancient. Many of them are cracked and lean into the narrow streets, seemingly on the verge of collapse. It is not difficult to imagine that the Kathmandu of medieval days differed but little in appearance from that of today.

Of course, there are still reminders that this is the 20th century rather than the 15th. When moving thru the crowds of people on a narrow market street, one frequently has to move aside for bicycles and motorcycles, and even the occasional car. Though traditional dress is still commonplace (particularly among women), Western style clothes are also in evidence. Certain ubiquitous Western products, e.g. Coca-cola, are available as readily as in most other places, and there was even a Wimpy's fast food place under construction during our visit.

It is possible to some degree to escape the more negative aspects of modern life which Kathmandu exhibits (namely traffic and touts) by going to the town of Bhaktapur a short distance away. It has the same medieval atmosphere as Kathmandu's old city, but fewer motor vehicles and not quite so many people selling tiger balm. In each of the three cities of the Kathmandu valley (the third being Patan, just across the river from Kathmandu), the heart of the town is in its Durbar Square. Durbar means palace, so not surprisingly there is a palace in each of the three Durbar Squares, harking back to the days when the three towns were separate principalities. The squares in front of the palaces are dotted with temples, shrines, and statues and it is easy to spend hours wandering around in them (if one can avoid the touts and sadhus. I'll say more about these two types momentarily).

The temples, however, are not concentrated solely in the cities' Durbar Squares. In virtually any part of the three towns' older sections one will come across temples and shrines. At one intersection in Kathmandu, the front of a relatively modern building, there is a small, inconspicuous Buddha statue which is said to be well over a thousand years old. Bakthapur has a small square in the town's oldest section (predating its Durbar Square) with several ancient temples and nearby there is a wooden window fantastically carved in the shape of a peacock. Scattered around Patan are four Buddhist stupas said to originally have been erected by the Indian emperor Ashoka over two thousand years ago, and throughout all three cities one comes across red-painted rocks sticking out between the paving stones which offerings have been placed on.

We saw a number of interesting street scenes while in the Kathmandu valley. Once while eating dinner in a second-floor restaurant in Bhaktapur, next to the valley's highest temple, we watched as large numbers of children in the square below taunted and were chased by a man wearing a mask and costume (actually there were two men but they took turns). Occasionally they would stop running around and ask for money from adults passing thru the square. Also in Bhaktapur, and in Patan as well, we saw snake charmers with crowds gathered around them.

One of the biggest differences between Nepal and the west (or Japan, Taiwan, etc.) is wealth --- we have it, they don't. Fortunately not all Nepalese treat tourists like walking money trees, but some do (and though irritating, it isn't hard to see why, when the average annual income is below US$200). As mentioned before, Nepal has large numbers of people selling all sorts of stuff, to the point where it is difficult to stand or sit in one place for a minute without being approached. In Kathmandu's Durbar Square, while we sat on the steps of a temple, we were approached by a boy of about eleven or twelve who first tried to sell us a souvenir, then wanted to change money, and finally, offered to be our guide. His English was quite good, and when I told him I was from Taiwan he simply replied "I don't think so." Nearby on Freak Street we encountered a guy who offered us some "dynamite" ("It'll blow you sky high, man").

Aside from those trying to sell something, there are, naturally, plenty of beggars. A special type are the sadhus --- normally these are men who give up their worldly possessions and go on a spiritual search, living on whatever alms they are given, but some are less genuine than others. In tourist areas some sadhus will come straight up to tourists, sprinkle flowers on their hair, smear red paste on their foreheads and ask for payment for the (unsolicited) blessing they've given. A far more common type of beggar is children --- a large proportion of them will, upon seeing a foreigner, stop whatever they're doing and ran over asking for "one rupee, school pen, chocolate" or offering to pose for "one photo" (for payment, of course).

Despite all this, we enjoyed our time in Kathmandu immensely, and after leaving Nepal, looked back longingly on its tourist-oriented Western restaurants (some of Asia's best Italian food can be found in Nepal [this may be a slight exaggeration, but I can't remember well enough to be sure]). Since, however, we didn't want to spend all our time in the Kathmandu valley, after five days we took a tourist mini-bus (the passengers were mostly but not all foreigners) south over incredible -- and at times incredibly scary -- mountain roads down to the Terai, the flat area which makes up Nepal's southern half. This part of the country is semi-tropical, and much of it is covered in forest (though, as elsewhere, not so much forest as in centuries past). Since malaria was mostly eradicated in the fifties, it has become the most heavily populated part of the country.

Our objective, however, was a place known not for its human population (it has almost none) but its non-human one -- Royal Chitwan National Park. The bus dropped us off in a town called Tadi Bazaar. Upon getting off the bus we were immediately surrounded by a horde of touts (at least twenty) offering lodging and/or jeep rides. We went along with one of them, the jeep bouncing its way over dirt roads and a ford (we were told that during monsoon season they had to use boats) to the village of Sauhara on the edge of the park. The village still has plenty of people living fairly primitively, and it had only gotten electricity a few weeks before we arrived, but there is also a lot of accommodation for park visitors.

We found a place to stay and during lunch the manager came to tell us about all the services they offered. We were taken to see the park's trained elephants and even fed one. The next day, accompanied by a guide, we took a canoe downriver into the park and walked back thru the forest, not without first being informed by our guide of the ways to deal with the various types of animals we might encounter. We saw a number of monkeys and even two crocodiles dozing in the sun on the bank of a stream. In addition we saw traces of other animals, such as the tracks of sloth bears and rhinos. On one tree we saw the claw marks of a tiger and elsewhere fresh tiger droppings [at least that's what the guide said they were].

On the following afternoon, we took a ride on one of the park's elephants, together with some friends from Taiwan who we met just by chance while going to the elephant landing [it was a British guy I'd lived with in a hostel in Taipei and his girlfriend; I'd had no idea they were in Nepal]. While on our hour and a half ride thru the park we saw seven rhinos (though we might have seen some twice) including a mother and calf [I recall that she was not too happy to see us, but compared to an elephant, even an adult rhino looked small, so she wasn't a real threat]. We ate that evening in a restaurant in the village we'd first visited the evening before and talked with the children who worked there (a girl of nine and a boy of seven, both with excellent English for their age). The next day we took a jeep to Tadi and a bus back up into the mountains.

This time our destination was a town several hundred kilometers west of Kathmandu called Pokhara. The attraction here is neither culture and history, as in Kathmandu, nor wildlife, as in Chitwan National Park, but mountains -- specifically the Himalaya, the world's greatest mountain range. Thought the Himalaya is visible at a distance from the Kathmandu Valley, it is often obscured by haze, pollution, or intervening smaller mountains. In Pokhara one is right up against them, a stunning array of towering white peaks. The portion of the Himalaya nearest Pokhara is known as the Annapurnas, a collection of mountains all over 7000 meters high. The nearest mountain of all is the slightly smaller (just under 7000 meters) Fishtail, which dominates the skyline. We spent several days enjoying the view [though I was briefly ill and acquired a tick bite on my shin, which later became slightly infected and left a scar which took a long time to fade], took a short hike up to a higher viewing point, and saw our friends off on a trek before heading back to Kathmandu on a video bus, meaning we were treated to an Indian [Bollywood] movie (action? comedy? romance? music? convoluted yet predictable plot? you name it, they've got it) and a Bruce Lee kung fu classic.

On arrival in Kathmandu we shook off the few (but very persistent) touts and got on a city mini-bus. It was no problem getting on as it started its route from the bus station, but it was no simple matter getting off -- it got so crowded we could barely see the door, even though we were sitting next to it (indeed, if another foreigner -- who looked like he might have first come to Nepal in its hippie heyday in the seventies -- hadn't told us when we arrived in Thamel, we might have missed our stop). We got a room in Mom's House (perhaps the best -- or worst -- named hotel in Asia) and spent a few more days enjoying Kathmandu's excellent restaurants (actually Pokhara's are also quite good) -- some of which also have great names, like Alice's Restaurant.

On our last full day in Kathmandu we took an auto-rickshaw (a three-wheeled mini-taxi) to a Hindu temple near the airport. There were huge crowd of people, many lining up to go in, others, like us, climbing a nearby hill to look down at the temple. We also visited a Tibetan Buddhist stupa, which like the similar stupa on the other side of town was surrounded by the relatively new houses of the relatively well-to-do Tibetans -- when one sees teenagers wearing jeans and other expensive Western-style clothes in Nepal, they're usually Tibetans. [I'm not sure how I knew this, assuming it is accurate, though simple appearance might have been the main basis.]

Back in the city, we noticed groups of children ambushing cars by pulling a string across narrow streets and demanding money from the driver or going to a shop entrance and shouting at the owner for the same purpose. That night there were many bonfires built around which people stood talking or singing. We learned that all this activity (and the crowds at the temple) was due to Shivarati, a holiday in honor of the god Shiva. The next day we caught a taxi to the airport and after waiting an hour or so in the waiting room (there was only one, as there was only one gate), boarded an airplane to our next destination.

So ends my account of our trip to Nepal. When I'll get around to finishing accounts to the other destinations on that trip or subsequent ones only time will tell.