Perhaps the biggest international news event of the past few days was Pope Benedict XVI’s announcement that he will abdicate the papacy at the end of this month, making him the first pope to resign since the Middle Ages. His reasons for resigning – an inability to cope with the demands of his position due to his advanced age and failing health – are reasonable enough, and apparently his predecessor John Paul II also considered resigning for similar reasons. Whether the Pope’s abdication is a good thing or a bad thing depends to a large degree on who is elected as his successor. While as far as I know Joseph Ratzinger (as he was once known) may be a nice person personally, his positions on issues like contraception and homosexuality are centuries out of date, to the great detriment of Catholic societies around the world. Of course such outmoded thinking is not at all rare among the Catholic Church leadership, so it is not unlikely that his successor will be similarly stuck in a time warp. Even a more progressive Pope may find it difficult to make real changes. Another interesting though ridiculously petty conflict that may arise in the election of a new Pope is the possibility that the Italians may try to retake the Papacy. Due to the long papacy of the Polish-born John Paul II, it is now often forgotten that he and the German-born Benedict XVI were the first non-Italian popes since the Middle Ages, and it seems that some Italians in the leadership would like to see this reversed. On the other hand, there are other church leaders who advocate the selection of the first ever non-European pope. Though I personally don’t really much care who is Pope, I am still curious, and the world in general would certainly be better off with a Pope who can move the Catholic Church away from the outdated stances it holds on many issues.
Another international news item from the past few weeks is the French intervention in Mali. While Western military intervention in developing countries is problematic for a number of reasons, I can’t say I’m sorry to see the radical groups chased out of Mali’s major cities, and it seems most of those cities’ residents think likewise. Aside from their implementation of a violent form of “justice” that occasional caused the populace to riot against them, their destruction of historical sites in places like Timbuktu was a crime against all humanity like similar acts by the Taliban when they ruled Afghanistan. However, once they are driven out, Western powers really need to rethink their approach in places like Africa by helping to improve governance rather than selling weapons and providing military training to corrupt regimes (even those with a democratic veneer), as pointed out in this opinion piece. This brings to mind something that US congressman Alan Grayson wrote about foreign policy following one of the presidential debates last fall. While I have mixed feelings about Grayson – I agree with him on most issues, he's intelligent and entertaining to read, and he loves rock music, but he also strikes me as somewhat egotistical and often goes overboard in his rhetoric – he makes some excellent points about the mentality governing foreign policy discussions in the US. If the US and the rest of the developed world really want to see substantial change in places like Mali, Libya, and Afghanistan, they really need to rethink their approach and start doing more to address the problems that lie at the root of the conflicts in the world.
One topic that has never come up in my blog is sports. This is because, though I was a sports fan as a kid, I long ago lost interest in sports. There is so much else that is more meaningful or more entertaining or both. However, I can’t resist commenting on the IOC’s idiotic decision to drop wrestling as an Olympic sport. Now I might be slightly biased because I was on the wrestling team in high school, but I can’t comprehend how you can have the Olympics without wrestling. Not only has it always been part of the modern games, but it was one of the main sports in the ancient Greek Olympics. Getting rid of wrestling is like getting rid of sprinting. Worse yet, this was done to make room for golf. Golf?!? You must be kidding me. Even aside from my dislike of the harm golf does to the environment, the idea that it is a better Olympic sport than wrestling is absurd. But as the article in the link above indicates, the real reason behind this decision is probably money and outright corruption in the IOC. I suppose for Taiwan the change might be a good thing, as the country has at least one very talented golfer who might win a medal. But that would be a bad reason to applaud a stupid decision. I haven’t really watched the Olympics in years, but things like this make me even more convinced that I’m not missing much.
Friday, February 15, 2013
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Dragon Babies, Astrology and Other Nonsense
The upcoming Chinese New Year will mark the end of the year of the dragon on the Chinese lunar calendar. As most people who have had much contact with Chinese culture – or who eat frequently at Chinese restaurants in the West – know, twelve years constitutes a cycle in the Chinese calendar, with an animal representing each of the twelve years (the animals are also associated with different months, days and even hours, but these complexities don’t concern me here). Because of the coincidence in number, this cycle and the animals that make it up are often called the “Chinese zodiac”, even though they have nothing to do with constellations or the apparent path of the Sun through the sky. People born in the year of a particular animal are believed to share certain characteristics, a belief that leads to all sorts of absurdities, particularly in a year like the one that is now ending.
Of the twelve animals in this so-called “Chinese zodiac”, the dragon is the only mythical one. More to the point, the dragon is associated with great power and fortune, and was historically the symbol of the Chinese emperors. Because of these positive associations, children born in the year of the dragon have been held by the superstitious to be lucky and destined for greatness. As a result, birth rates skyrocket in years of the dragon. The local media is complicit in perpetuating the idea that children born in these years are special, as in their celebrity gossip news they will report that such and such a celebrity is “pregnant with a dragon fetus”, whereas in other years news of celebrity pregnancies rarely if ever refer to the animal in whose year the baby will be born. This phenomenon seemingly repeated itself in the past year. While I haven’t seen any definitive statistics, I recall reports from during the year that mentioned a dramatic rise in births, and many anecdotal reports (plus the evidence of my own eyes) that there were a lot more pregnancies than usual.
Of course many women who gave birth in the past year got pregnant for reasons unrelated to it being the year of the dragon. At least two women I know who also happened to give birth in the last year themselves told me that they would rather not have given birth in the year of the dragon because of all the other people who were doing so. But one can safely assume that the majority or at least a large number of the “additional” pregnancies, that is the ones over and above the usual average, were due to a desire to have a “dragon baby”. Of course the real result is that children born in this year will face more crowded classrooms and greater competition than children born in other years. And the idea that all “dragon babies” could be destined for great things is laughable, considering that they make up a twelfth (or more) of all people. It’s like the scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian where the Three Wise Men have gone to the wrong stable and mistaken the baby Brian for the baby Jesus:
Mandy (Brian’s mother): So, you're astrologers, eh? Well, what is he?
Wise Man 2: Hmm?
Mandy: What star sign is he?
Wise Man 2: Capricorn.
Mandy: Capricorn, eh? What are they like?
Wise Man 2: He is the son of God, our Messiah.
Wise Man 1: King of the Jews.
Mandy: And that's Capricorn, is it?
Wise Man 2: No, no, that's just him.
Mandy: Oh, I was going to say, otherwise there'd be a lot of them.
This brings up the Western version of superstitions about times of birth and their supposed relationship to personalities, which takes the form of astrology. There are numerous reasons that show astrology has as little to do with reality as the Chinese birth animals (that is to say none at all). Most of them are very well summed up by Phil Plait on his Bad Astronomy blog. In addition to the points he makes in that article, in another entry, he mentions the fact that due to precession of the Earth’s axis, the astrological dates do not match the times the Sun is actually in the constellations of the zodiac, so that most of those who according to the standard astrological dates are Virgos were actually born when the Sun was in Libra.
I would also add that of course the “constellations” are merely the groupings which the Greeks imagined the stars to be in. Different cultures saw entirely different groupings. What’s more, the groupings themselves are just accidents of perspective. The stars in any given constellation are for the most part not at all close to each other; they only appear that way because from our perspective they lie along the same line of sight. For instance, Castor and Pollex, the two chief stars of Gemini (“the Twins”) are not particularly close to each other, as Castor lies 17 light years further away from us than Pollex. The three stars in the belt of Orion are even further apart, with the farthest about 600 light years further from us than the closest. If we travelled to other star systems few or none of Earth’s constellations would be visible. Finally, though to an ordinary observer the constellations don’t change even over many human lifetimes, the stars are all moving and in tens of thousands of years the constellations will all have changed. So claiming that these accidental, non-permanent groupings of stars as imagined by one culture in human history have some sort of influence over the lives of any of us is as silly as saying the same about ephemeral shapes formed by clouds as seen by a random observer.
Unfortunately Chinese birth animals and astrology are not the only ridiculous ideas given wide credence. Another example is the bizarre belief centered in Japan but also seen elsewhere in East Asia that a person’s blood type has something to do with their personality. This idea was ultimately derived from fallacious, racist pseudoscience adopted by the Nazis and then the militarist-era Japanese (who used it to “explain” the difference between the rebellious Taiwanese aborigines and the “submissive” Ainu people) and then revived in the 1970s by a Japanese writer with no scientific background. Despite the lack of any scientific basis, the belief that blood type influences personality is still widespread in Japan.
Several points made by Plait in his essay are relevant to all these irrational ideas about predicting a person’s fate or personality and worth reiterating here. One is that there is absolutely no evidence that any of these claims has any scientific validity. Any perception that there is a correspondence between predictions based on these ideas about people’s personalities or what happens to them and reality is purely a matter of selective perception (people notice the seemingly correct predictions – interpreting events in a manner that fits them – and ignore the incorrect ones). Also, the assertion that these concepts are merely harmless fun is also wrong. People waste large amounts of money and time on such nonsense, and such waste is not harmless. The other day I was eating at a restaurant and a woman at the next table was listening to a long spiel from a fortune teller, from the look of things hanging on his every word. It’s not harmless if people decide whom they should date or hang out with – or even when to give birth to a child – based on completely erroneous ideas. The sooner these inaccurate and outdated notions are abandoned the better off those who still hold to them, and the people around them, will be.
Of the twelve animals in this so-called “Chinese zodiac”, the dragon is the only mythical one. More to the point, the dragon is associated with great power and fortune, and was historically the symbol of the Chinese emperors. Because of these positive associations, children born in the year of the dragon have been held by the superstitious to be lucky and destined for greatness. As a result, birth rates skyrocket in years of the dragon. The local media is complicit in perpetuating the idea that children born in these years are special, as in their celebrity gossip news they will report that such and such a celebrity is “pregnant with a dragon fetus”, whereas in other years news of celebrity pregnancies rarely if ever refer to the animal in whose year the baby will be born. This phenomenon seemingly repeated itself in the past year. While I haven’t seen any definitive statistics, I recall reports from during the year that mentioned a dramatic rise in births, and many anecdotal reports (plus the evidence of my own eyes) that there were a lot more pregnancies than usual.
Of course many women who gave birth in the past year got pregnant for reasons unrelated to it being the year of the dragon. At least two women I know who also happened to give birth in the last year themselves told me that they would rather not have given birth in the year of the dragon because of all the other people who were doing so. But one can safely assume that the majority or at least a large number of the “additional” pregnancies, that is the ones over and above the usual average, were due to a desire to have a “dragon baby”. Of course the real result is that children born in this year will face more crowded classrooms and greater competition than children born in other years. And the idea that all “dragon babies” could be destined for great things is laughable, considering that they make up a twelfth (or more) of all people. It’s like the scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian where the Three Wise Men have gone to the wrong stable and mistaken the baby Brian for the baby Jesus:
Mandy (Brian’s mother): So, you're astrologers, eh? Well, what is he?
Wise Man 2: Hmm?
Mandy: What star sign is he?
Wise Man 2: Capricorn.
Mandy: Capricorn, eh? What are they like?
Wise Man 2: He is the son of God, our Messiah.
Wise Man 1: King of the Jews.
Mandy: And that's Capricorn, is it?
Wise Man 2: No, no, that's just him.
Mandy: Oh, I was going to say, otherwise there'd be a lot of them.
This brings up the Western version of superstitions about times of birth and their supposed relationship to personalities, which takes the form of astrology. There are numerous reasons that show astrology has as little to do with reality as the Chinese birth animals (that is to say none at all). Most of them are very well summed up by Phil Plait on his Bad Astronomy blog. In addition to the points he makes in that article, in another entry, he mentions the fact that due to precession of the Earth’s axis, the astrological dates do not match the times the Sun is actually in the constellations of the zodiac, so that most of those who according to the standard astrological dates are Virgos were actually born when the Sun was in Libra.
I would also add that of course the “constellations” are merely the groupings which the Greeks imagined the stars to be in. Different cultures saw entirely different groupings. What’s more, the groupings themselves are just accidents of perspective. The stars in any given constellation are for the most part not at all close to each other; they only appear that way because from our perspective they lie along the same line of sight. For instance, Castor and Pollex, the two chief stars of Gemini (“the Twins”) are not particularly close to each other, as Castor lies 17 light years further away from us than Pollex. The three stars in the belt of Orion are even further apart, with the farthest about 600 light years further from us than the closest. If we travelled to other star systems few or none of Earth’s constellations would be visible. Finally, though to an ordinary observer the constellations don’t change even over many human lifetimes, the stars are all moving and in tens of thousands of years the constellations will all have changed. So claiming that these accidental, non-permanent groupings of stars as imagined by one culture in human history have some sort of influence over the lives of any of us is as silly as saying the same about ephemeral shapes formed by clouds as seen by a random observer.
Unfortunately Chinese birth animals and astrology are not the only ridiculous ideas given wide credence. Another example is the bizarre belief centered in Japan but also seen elsewhere in East Asia that a person’s blood type has something to do with their personality. This idea was ultimately derived from fallacious, racist pseudoscience adopted by the Nazis and then the militarist-era Japanese (who used it to “explain” the difference between the rebellious Taiwanese aborigines and the “submissive” Ainu people) and then revived in the 1970s by a Japanese writer with no scientific background. Despite the lack of any scientific basis, the belief that blood type influences personality is still widespread in Japan.
Several points made by Plait in his essay are relevant to all these irrational ideas about predicting a person’s fate or personality and worth reiterating here. One is that there is absolutely no evidence that any of these claims has any scientific validity. Any perception that there is a correspondence between predictions based on these ideas about people’s personalities or what happens to them and reality is purely a matter of selective perception (people notice the seemingly correct predictions – interpreting events in a manner that fits them – and ignore the incorrect ones). Also, the assertion that these concepts are merely harmless fun is also wrong. People waste large amounts of money and time on such nonsense, and such waste is not harmless. The other day I was eating at a restaurant and a woman at the next table was listening to a long spiel from a fortune teller, from the look of things hanging on his every word. It’s not harmless if people decide whom they should date or hang out with – or even when to give birth to a child – based on completely erroneous ideas. The sooner these inaccurate and outdated notions are abandoned the better off those who still hold to them, and the people around them, will be.
Friday, January 4, 2013
Is the "Fiscal Cliff" Deal a Good One?
In the past few days the US Congress passed legislation to avert the so-called “fiscal cliff”. This came after weeks of tense negotiations between President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats on the one hand and the Republican congressional leadership on the other. The final bill passed by a comfortable margin, with most of the opposition coming from Republicans in the House, almost two-thirds of whom voted against it, including some in leadership positions. On the surface, the deal looks like a victory for bipartisanship (despite Speaker Boehner's petulance toward Majority Leader Reid), but particularly for Obama and the Democrats. After all, taxes were raised on the wealthiest Americans (or more correctly speaking, they went back to the level they were at before they were cut under Bush the Younger), and Social Security and Medicare remained untouched. But a closer look makes me wonder if this deal wasn’t worse than none at all.
First of all, the Bush tax cuts were made permanent for the vast majority of Americans. Of course throughout this process, the Democrats characterized the Republicans as holding the middle class hostage in order to preserve low taxes for the wealthy. This was accurate, but the problem with the Democratic position was the idea that while the rich should pay more, the middle class shouldn’t have to. To be perfectly clear, I should emphasize that I do think the wealthy should have to pay a proportionately higher tax burden than they do now. Not only should the Bush tax cuts have been allowed to expire, but loopholes should have been closed, dividends taxed as income and the capital gains tax raised substantially (then there’s the estate tax, but I’ll get back to that). However, the Bush tax cuts should also have been allowed to expire for everyone else, if not now then at some point not too far in the future. Despite what right-wingers often claim, Americans in general do not pay all that much in taxes, and all but the relatively poor (who unfortunately constitute a larger and larger proportion of the population) can afford to pay a little more. As an aside, let’s keep in mind that while the poorest Americans don’t pay income tax, they do pay all sorts of other taxes, including in most places state sales taxes and of course Social Security payroll taxes (in fact they pay a larger share of their income in payroll taxes than those with high salaries, another point we’ll come back to). But instead of a temporary extension of the Bush tax cuts for those making under $250,000 a year (Obama’s original minimum threshold), the cuts have been made permanent for everyone making under $400,000. Admittedly, the Democrats had always advocated making the tax cuts permanent for those earning less than $250,000, but that was a mistake, even if it was politically expedient. What’s more, not only has the capital gains tax rate been set at a too low level of 20%, but dividends are now taxed as capital gains, rather than income as in the 1990s, meaning the wealthiest Americans (who earn most of their money from investments) will still be paying proportionately less in taxes than many of the moderately wealthy.
In addition, while the estate tax was raised slightly, it is still only 40%, with a $5 million exemption, and that indexed to inflation. This one is particularly absurd. Many on the right claim to oppose higher taxes on the principle that people should be able to keep their “hard-earned” money. But while it is possible to argue that a billionaire industrialist or a multimillionaire small businessperson “earned” their money (with plenty of help from their employees and the public infrastructure), their children certainly didn’t earn it. None of these Ayn Rand-type justifications about the superiority of “prime movers” and how they should be allowed to keep the money they make apply in the case of inherited wealth. For that matter, several of the "Founding Fathers" that many on the right claim to be the heirs of (not to mention Adam Smith, the father of capitalism) were critical of the idea of inheriting wealth. While I don’t object to allowing people to leave some of their assets to their children, the heirs can certainly afford to pay considerably more in taxes (50% at the least, with an exemption of no more than $2 million, or better yet several different rates depending on the size of the estate).
What’s more, the sequester that would cut drastically cut spending was merely put off for two months. Of course there is some spending that definitely could and should be cut, particularly defense spending. But despite all the rhetoric about the US government’s unmanageable debt, the problem is not nearly as serious as it’s made out to be. The more immediate issue is transforming America’s economy for the future by promoting new industries such as alternative energy. In any case, there is no justification for drastic cuts to solvent programs like Social Security. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The best step that can be taken to improve the financing of Social Security for the long-term is eliminating the payroll tax cap, which ensures that people who earn salaries above the current cap of around $110,000 actually pay a smaller percentage of their income in payroll tax than minimum-wage workers do. Granted, getting rid of the cap will not eliminate all of the future shortfall, but it will eliminate most of it (if it had been done several years ago, it could have eliminated it entirely), and combined with a slight increase in the rate, it would solve the problem. But of course Republicans are not interested in any solution that makes the rich pay more (what many of them really want is to destroy Social Security entirely), and even many of the Democrats seem far more willing to cut benefits than adjust payroll taxes.
Finally, this deal didn’t even raise the debt ceiling. This wouldn’t have been an issue in the past, as previous Congresses didn’t consider it necessary to debate whether the US government would commit to fulfilling its obligations. But the current crop of Republicans have already shown their willingness to use the debt ceiling as a club to get what they want (the gutting of social programs, continued tax breaks for harmful industries like oil and coal, lower taxes for the rich), and with the Bush tax cuts permanently extended, the Democrats will have less bargaining power next time around. No wonder a fair number of the slightly less short-sighted Republicans were pleased with the deal. With the debt ceiling and the sequester, the can has just been kicked down the road, and it's not clear that the Democrats will be in a stronger position when the next deadline looms.
There are many other provisions in the deal, some absurd (a $9 billion tax break that benefits big banks and multinationals, tax breaks for NASCAR race tracks) and some good (subsidies for taking public transit). Even if I had the time and inclination, it would take hours of study and analysis to find all the pluses and minuses. It's clear that the deal could have been worse. Social Security and Medicare were left alone (but wait till the sequester and debt ceiling rear their ugly heads again). The Republicans’ absolute intransigence on raising taxes for the wealthy finally gave way (though not among all of them – and it was so stupid to begin with that it is hard to celebrate some Republicans finally showing a bare minimum of sense, if only grudgingly). But I am not convinced that this deal is any better than no deal at all would have been.
First of all, the Bush tax cuts were made permanent for the vast majority of Americans. Of course throughout this process, the Democrats characterized the Republicans as holding the middle class hostage in order to preserve low taxes for the wealthy. This was accurate, but the problem with the Democratic position was the idea that while the rich should pay more, the middle class shouldn’t have to. To be perfectly clear, I should emphasize that I do think the wealthy should have to pay a proportionately higher tax burden than they do now. Not only should the Bush tax cuts have been allowed to expire, but loopholes should have been closed, dividends taxed as income and the capital gains tax raised substantially (then there’s the estate tax, but I’ll get back to that). However, the Bush tax cuts should also have been allowed to expire for everyone else, if not now then at some point not too far in the future. Despite what right-wingers often claim, Americans in general do not pay all that much in taxes, and all but the relatively poor (who unfortunately constitute a larger and larger proportion of the population) can afford to pay a little more. As an aside, let’s keep in mind that while the poorest Americans don’t pay income tax, they do pay all sorts of other taxes, including in most places state sales taxes and of course Social Security payroll taxes (in fact they pay a larger share of their income in payroll taxes than those with high salaries, another point we’ll come back to). But instead of a temporary extension of the Bush tax cuts for those making under $250,000 a year (Obama’s original minimum threshold), the cuts have been made permanent for everyone making under $400,000. Admittedly, the Democrats had always advocated making the tax cuts permanent for those earning less than $250,000, but that was a mistake, even if it was politically expedient. What’s more, not only has the capital gains tax rate been set at a too low level of 20%, but dividends are now taxed as capital gains, rather than income as in the 1990s, meaning the wealthiest Americans (who earn most of their money from investments) will still be paying proportionately less in taxes than many of the moderately wealthy.
In addition, while the estate tax was raised slightly, it is still only 40%, with a $5 million exemption, and that indexed to inflation. This one is particularly absurd. Many on the right claim to oppose higher taxes on the principle that people should be able to keep their “hard-earned” money. But while it is possible to argue that a billionaire industrialist or a multimillionaire small businessperson “earned” their money (with plenty of help from their employees and the public infrastructure), their children certainly didn’t earn it. None of these Ayn Rand-type justifications about the superiority of “prime movers” and how they should be allowed to keep the money they make apply in the case of inherited wealth. For that matter, several of the "Founding Fathers" that many on the right claim to be the heirs of (not to mention Adam Smith, the father of capitalism) were critical of the idea of inheriting wealth. While I don’t object to allowing people to leave some of their assets to their children, the heirs can certainly afford to pay considerably more in taxes (50% at the least, with an exemption of no more than $2 million, or better yet several different rates depending on the size of the estate).
What’s more, the sequester that would cut drastically cut spending was merely put off for two months. Of course there is some spending that definitely could and should be cut, particularly defense spending. But despite all the rhetoric about the US government’s unmanageable debt, the problem is not nearly as serious as it’s made out to be. The more immediate issue is transforming America’s economy for the future by promoting new industries such as alternative energy. In any case, there is no justification for drastic cuts to solvent programs like Social Security. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The best step that can be taken to improve the financing of Social Security for the long-term is eliminating the payroll tax cap, which ensures that people who earn salaries above the current cap of around $110,000 actually pay a smaller percentage of their income in payroll tax than minimum-wage workers do. Granted, getting rid of the cap will not eliminate all of the future shortfall, but it will eliminate most of it (if it had been done several years ago, it could have eliminated it entirely), and combined with a slight increase in the rate, it would solve the problem. But of course Republicans are not interested in any solution that makes the rich pay more (what many of them really want is to destroy Social Security entirely), and even many of the Democrats seem far more willing to cut benefits than adjust payroll taxes.
Finally, this deal didn’t even raise the debt ceiling. This wouldn’t have been an issue in the past, as previous Congresses didn’t consider it necessary to debate whether the US government would commit to fulfilling its obligations. But the current crop of Republicans have already shown their willingness to use the debt ceiling as a club to get what they want (the gutting of social programs, continued tax breaks for harmful industries like oil and coal, lower taxes for the rich), and with the Bush tax cuts permanently extended, the Democrats will have less bargaining power next time around. No wonder a fair number of the slightly less short-sighted Republicans were pleased with the deal. With the debt ceiling and the sequester, the can has just been kicked down the road, and it's not clear that the Democrats will be in a stronger position when the next deadline looms.
There are many other provisions in the deal, some absurd (a $9 billion tax break that benefits big banks and multinationals, tax breaks for NASCAR race tracks) and some good (subsidies for taking public transit). Even if I had the time and inclination, it would take hours of study and analysis to find all the pluses and minuses. It's clear that the deal could have been worse. Social Security and Medicare were left alone (but wait till the sequester and debt ceiling rear their ugly heads again). The Republicans’ absolute intransigence on raising taxes for the wealthy finally gave way (though not among all of them – and it was so stupid to begin with that it is hard to celebrate some Republicans finally showing a bare minimum of sense, if only grudgingly). But I am not convinced that this deal is any better than no deal at all would have been.
Friday, December 21, 2012
A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of America Being Massacred in their Schools
The following is a guest essay by the author of our (relatively) popular "A Manifesto for the "Tea" Party (and other Right-thinking people)". Sorry, no prizes for guessing his true identity.
In the wake of the horrific mass murder at an elementary school in Connecticut the other day, I would like to take a leaf from the book of Jonathan Swift and offer a modest proposal for preventing such a tragedy from taking place again. Whenever something like this happens, you hear a lot of people going on about how there are too many guns in America and that’s why these things happen. No, I say! Sure, a person may be 40 times more likely to get shot in America than in Canada, England or Germany, but the real problem is not that there are too many guns, it’s that there aren’t enough! As the wonderful people at the NRA are always telling everyone, guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Some argue that guns make it easier for people to kill people. Well, sure. That’s what’s so wonderful about them. I mean, just squeeze that trigger and bang! …sorry, I got a little carried away there. What I meant to say was, guns make it easier for people to kill the people who want to kill people. I mean, as all gun-lovers know, if you make it hard to buy guns, only the bad guys will have guns. Some might say that if guns were hard to buy, even the bad guys, whoever they might be (and they could be anybody!), would find it more difficult to get guns, but I’m sure they’d find a way to get them, and if we assume that then obviously we’ve got to protect ourselves.
Given the assumption that anyone dangerous will have a gun anyway, and the incontestable fact that gun ownership is sacred therefore the idea of making it hard to own a gun shouldn’t even be discussed, the answer is obviously not less guns, but more guns. Like defenders of gun rights have pointed out repeatedly in the past couple of years after every one of these shooting incidents (and it’s not like they happen all the time – I mean, what’s a few mass shootings a year anyway?), if someone at the scene had had a gun and been able to get off a shot, then the massacre could have been stopped. So what about in this particular case? Obviously, just having one or two armed security guards wouldn’t be enough, because the shooter might have gotten the drop on them or just slipped in through an unguarded door. Some of my fellow gun lovers have suggested that the solution is to arm the teachers. This would be a step in the right direction (and how cool it would be for all our elementary teachers to have guns on them!), but there would be still be a risk that a gunman coming into a classroom might catch the teacher by surprise and shoot the teacher and a lot of kids before another teacher could come to the rescue. Basically, if only one other person has a gun, a massacre might still take place. Ah! But what if the students had had guns too?
The only way to be sure that no shooter is ever in a situation where he’s the only one with a gun is to make sure everyone has a gun. Right now there are only around 88 guns for every 100 people, and since some of us have more than one, there are obviously still a lot of people who don’t have any. More guns will make everyone safer, so we should make sure every single person has a gun. And how can we do that? Simple! Issue a gun at birth to every newborn child! Sure, they won’t be able to use it at first. But as soon as they can be taught to hold it properly, they should take it everywhere they go. So if some nut charges into a kindergarten hoping to get into the news by killing a bunch of kids, they’ll all be able to open fire on him and take him out! There might be a few stray bullets that hit other kids, but at least the overall death toll will probably be lower than if the gunman has the only gun. If we arm the kids, no one will dare pull a stunt like this one again!
Though arming children is the core of my proposal, another thing we have to do is get rid of any and all bans on different types of guns. First of all, when the omniscient, infallible Founders were writing the Second Amendment, they weren’t just talking muskets. They clearly had things like Glock pistols and Bushmaster assault rifles in mind, and we know for sure (because we know they must have thought the same as us about these things; after all, how could anyone we admire like the Founders possibly have thought differently from us?) that they wouldn’t have wanted the government to restrict them in any way. Secondly, we can’t take the chance that some nut, robber or home intruder might have better firepower than us. I mean, a lot of the perpetrators in the more notorious recent incidents have had Glocks and such. Of course these sorts of weapons are absolutely necessary. After all, who knows when you’ll have your home invaded by an army of intruders or you’ll have to fight off the powerful armed forces of the United Nations trying to impose world socialism on us? That’s what their real purpose is, you know. The UN is a sinister…ahem, sorry, got off track there. Anyway, obviously people need to be able to buy guns that can fire off a dozen quick shots without a need to reload. We certainly can’t let a situation arise where some lunatic has a semi-automatic rifle with a high capacity magazine and the people around him only have cheap pistols. Everyone has to be encouraged to get the best guns money can buy, so they’ll never be outgunned by the bad guys. Perhaps the kindergarteners should be restricted to smaller guns…but no, let them learn how to handle the big ones early. They can practice by hunting. Do you know what a semi-automatic assault rifle can do to a duck or a squirrel? You haven’t lived until you’ve blown some small animal to…er, sorry, another little tangent there. But anyway, semi-automatic weapons with high capacity magazines for everyone.
Some anti-gun people will say that guns are more dangerous to their owners and their friends and families than they are to any possible bad guys. They’ll point to statistics that say a gun kept at home is far more likely to shoot someone in the household by accident or in an act of suicide than it is to be used against an intruder. They’ll point to stories like the recent one about a guy who was putting his gun in his truck when it went off and killed his 7-year-old son. Sure, this sort of thing may happen on occasion, just as soldiers get killed by friendly fire. But anyway, like some guy I saw on the comment board for a news article along those lines so nicely put it, if a gun goes off and kills someone’s kid, they can just have another kid. Survival of the fittest and all that. If careless people shoot themselves or their families, that’s too bad for them. And it's not like having a lot of weapons around will make it more likely that someone's mentally disturbed family member is going to get hold of them and run amok. Whatever would make anyone think that? But anyway, if all the sane people have guns, including kids as I have suggested, the occasional loose cannon will get shot down before he kills too many people. In the final analysis, a few more losers committing suicide, some accidental deaths here and there and even the occasional mass shooting are a small price to pay to be able to own such a wonderful, exciting thing as a gun. Remember, guns don’t kill people, people kill people, so get yourself and your children guns and be ready to shoot down the other guy before he does it to you.
An interesting proposal indeed. Well, as at least one Republican congressman (Louie Gohmert of, you guessed it, Texas!) has already suggested that elementary school teachers should be armed, no doubt he or someone like him will consider pushing this idea. For another tongue in cheek look at the gun issue, check out this (and also the original).
In the wake of the horrific mass murder at an elementary school in Connecticut the other day, I would like to take a leaf from the book of Jonathan Swift and offer a modest proposal for preventing such a tragedy from taking place again. Whenever something like this happens, you hear a lot of people going on about how there are too many guns in America and that’s why these things happen. No, I say! Sure, a person may be 40 times more likely to get shot in America than in Canada, England or Germany, but the real problem is not that there are too many guns, it’s that there aren’t enough! As the wonderful people at the NRA are always telling everyone, guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Some argue that guns make it easier for people to kill people. Well, sure. That’s what’s so wonderful about them. I mean, just squeeze that trigger and bang! …sorry, I got a little carried away there. What I meant to say was, guns make it easier for people to kill the people who want to kill people. I mean, as all gun-lovers know, if you make it hard to buy guns, only the bad guys will have guns. Some might say that if guns were hard to buy, even the bad guys, whoever they might be (and they could be anybody!), would find it more difficult to get guns, but I’m sure they’d find a way to get them, and if we assume that then obviously we’ve got to protect ourselves.
Given the assumption that anyone dangerous will have a gun anyway, and the incontestable fact that gun ownership is sacred therefore the idea of making it hard to own a gun shouldn’t even be discussed, the answer is obviously not less guns, but more guns. Like defenders of gun rights have pointed out repeatedly in the past couple of years after every one of these shooting incidents (and it’s not like they happen all the time – I mean, what’s a few mass shootings a year anyway?), if someone at the scene had had a gun and been able to get off a shot, then the massacre could have been stopped. So what about in this particular case? Obviously, just having one or two armed security guards wouldn’t be enough, because the shooter might have gotten the drop on them or just slipped in through an unguarded door. Some of my fellow gun lovers have suggested that the solution is to arm the teachers. This would be a step in the right direction (and how cool it would be for all our elementary teachers to have guns on them!), but there would be still be a risk that a gunman coming into a classroom might catch the teacher by surprise and shoot the teacher and a lot of kids before another teacher could come to the rescue. Basically, if only one other person has a gun, a massacre might still take place. Ah! But what if the students had had guns too?
The only way to be sure that no shooter is ever in a situation where he’s the only one with a gun is to make sure everyone has a gun. Right now there are only around 88 guns for every 100 people, and since some of us have more than one, there are obviously still a lot of people who don’t have any. More guns will make everyone safer, so we should make sure every single person has a gun. And how can we do that? Simple! Issue a gun at birth to every newborn child! Sure, they won’t be able to use it at first. But as soon as they can be taught to hold it properly, they should take it everywhere they go. So if some nut charges into a kindergarten hoping to get into the news by killing a bunch of kids, they’ll all be able to open fire on him and take him out! There might be a few stray bullets that hit other kids, but at least the overall death toll will probably be lower than if the gunman has the only gun. If we arm the kids, no one will dare pull a stunt like this one again!
Though arming children is the core of my proposal, another thing we have to do is get rid of any and all bans on different types of guns. First of all, when the omniscient, infallible Founders were writing the Second Amendment, they weren’t just talking muskets. They clearly had things like Glock pistols and Bushmaster assault rifles in mind, and we know for sure (because we know they must have thought the same as us about these things; after all, how could anyone we admire like the Founders possibly have thought differently from us?) that they wouldn’t have wanted the government to restrict them in any way. Secondly, we can’t take the chance that some nut, robber or home intruder might have better firepower than us. I mean, a lot of the perpetrators in the more notorious recent incidents have had Glocks and such. Of course these sorts of weapons are absolutely necessary. After all, who knows when you’ll have your home invaded by an army of intruders or you’ll have to fight off the powerful armed forces of the United Nations trying to impose world socialism on us? That’s what their real purpose is, you know. The UN is a sinister…ahem, sorry, got off track there. Anyway, obviously people need to be able to buy guns that can fire off a dozen quick shots without a need to reload. We certainly can’t let a situation arise where some lunatic has a semi-automatic rifle with a high capacity magazine and the people around him only have cheap pistols. Everyone has to be encouraged to get the best guns money can buy, so they’ll never be outgunned by the bad guys. Perhaps the kindergarteners should be restricted to smaller guns…but no, let them learn how to handle the big ones early. They can practice by hunting. Do you know what a semi-automatic assault rifle can do to a duck or a squirrel? You haven’t lived until you’ve blown some small animal to…er, sorry, another little tangent there. But anyway, semi-automatic weapons with high capacity magazines for everyone.
Some anti-gun people will say that guns are more dangerous to their owners and their friends and families than they are to any possible bad guys. They’ll point to statistics that say a gun kept at home is far more likely to shoot someone in the household by accident or in an act of suicide than it is to be used against an intruder. They’ll point to stories like the recent one about a guy who was putting his gun in his truck when it went off and killed his 7-year-old son. Sure, this sort of thing may happen on occasion, just as soldiers get killed by friendly fire. But anyway, like some guy I saw on the comment board for a news article along those lines so nicely put it, if a gun goes off and kills someone’s kid, they can just have another kid. Survival of the fittest and all that. If careless people shoot themselves or their families, that’s too bad for them. And it's not like having a lot of weapons around will make it more likely that someone's mentally disturbed family member is going to get hold of them and run amok. Whatever would make anyone think that? But anyway, if all the sane people have guns, including kids as I have suggested, the occasional loose cannon will get shot down before he kills too many people. In the final analysis, a few more losers committing suicide, some accidental deaths here and there and even the occasional mass shooting are a small price to pay to be able to own such a wonderful, exciting thing as a gun. Remember, guns don’t kill people, people kill people, so get yourself and your children guns and be ready to shoot down the other guy before he does it to you.
An interesting proposal indeed. Well, as at least one Republican congressman (Louie Gohmert of, you guessed it, Texas!) has already suggested that elementary school teachers should be armed, no doubt he or someone like him will consider pushing this idea. For another tongue in cheek look at the gun issue, check out this (and also the original).
Friday, December 14, 2012
Forty Years in Earth’s Gravity Well
On December 14, 1972, Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan climbed into their lunar module and lifted off from the surface of the Moon, rejoining Apollo 17 command module pilot Ron Evans in lunar orbit before embarking on their journey back to Earth. Since that day forty years ago, though many people have gone into space, no human being has left low Earth orbit. This is very unfortunate, and something that I hope will change soon, as I have remarked before. Though the Moon is in orbit around Earth, it is essentially outside Earth’s gravity well, in that a rocket capable of getting to the Moon would also be capable of going to places beyond the Moon. But while we have launched robot probes to various places in the Solar System, we have not launched humans out of Earth’s gravity well since the end of the Apollo program.
As I noted in my post on the death of Neil Armstrong, only a dozen human beings have walked on the Moon, and another dozen who went to the Moon without landing on it. These men (all of them were European-American males, true, but the lack of diversity was not their fault) are the only people to have left low Earth orbit or to have seen the Earth from a distance, as a small object in space (even from the space station it fills half the view). While most people are only familiar with Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the Moon, and maybe his Apollo 11 colleague and second man on the Moon Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, all of the astronauts who went to the Moon deserve recognition for their achievements and for their unique experience. Other than Apollo 11’s Armstrong and Aldrin and Apollo 17’s Cernan and Schmitt, the other people to walk on the moon were Pete Conrad and Alan Bean of Apollo 12, Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell of Apollo 14, David Scott and James Irwin of Apollo 15 and John Young and Charles Duke of Apollo 16. Those who went to the Moon without landing on it include the crew of the missions Apollo 8 (the first humans to go to and orbit the Moon), Apollo 10 (which also orbited the Moon and included later moon-walkers Young and Cernan), the aborted Apollo 13 (which passed around the Moon after the explosion that nearly cost the astronauts their lives) and the command module pilots for the missions that involved landings. In addition to Apollo 17’s Evans, they were Jim Lovell (Apollos 8 and 13), Frank Borman (Apollo 8), Bill Anders (Apollo 8), Tom Stafford (Apollo 10), Michael Collins (Apollo 11), Dick Gordon (Apollo 12), Jack Swigert (Apollo 13), Fred Haise (Apollo 13), Stu Roosa (Apollo 14), Al Worden (Apollo 15), and Ken Mattingly (Apollo 16).
Of course all of these men are quite elderly; those that are still alive, that is. Moon-walkers Armstrong, Conrad, Shepard and Irwin have died, as have Swigert, Roosa and Evans. Of the 17 men still living who have been to the Moon, the youngest are Schmitt and Duke, who are 77. Many of the others are now in their early 80s. Even if many of them end up living unusually long lives, it seems improbable that more than a few, if any, of them will still be alive two decades from now. So unless things change fairly soon, it’s possible that a day will come when there is no one living who has been to the Moon or even out of Earth’s gravity well. Such a sign of stagnation in humankind’s exploration of space would truly be regrettable.
There is still debate about what NASA’s medium-term and long-range goals should be, particularly where it should attempt to go first. One possibility that has been floated recently is building a space station at the Earth-Moon L2 point, the gravitationally-stable Lagrangian point beyond the far side of the Moon, a location from which spacefarers can operate robotic probes on the surface of the Moon and engage in radio astronomy, among other things. This is an intriguing idea, as is the idea of sending humans to an asteroid, back to the Moon, or perhaps best of all to Mars. The problem is that NASA has not received the funding to vigorously pursue any of these goals, and while private space ventures are making great progress, most of the really long-range journeys will probably require government involvement, at least for the next few decades. The exaggerated hysteria over the so-called “fiscal cliff” makes immediate prospects for increased funding for NASA remote. Still, while it is sometimes hard to be optimistic, I hope that by the time the 50th anniversary of Apollo 17’s lift off from the Moon comes around, humans will be preparing to go back there or on to another distant destination like an asteroid or Mars.
As I noted in my post on the death of Neil Armstrong, only a dozen human beings have walked on the Moon, and another dozen who went to the Moon without landing on it. These men (all of them were European-American males, true, but the lack of diversity was not their fault) are the only people to have left low Earth orbit or to have seen the Earth from a distance, as a small object in space (even from the space station it fills half the view). While most people are only familiar with Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the Moon, and maybe his Apollo 11 colleague and second man on the Moon Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, all of the astronauts who went to the Moon deserve recognition for their achievements and for their unique experience. Other than Apollo 11’s Armstrong and Aldrin and Apollo 17’s Cernan and Schmitt, the other people to walk on the moon were Pete Conrad and Alan Bean of Apollo 12, Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell of Apollo 14, David Scott and James Irwin of Apollo 15 and John Young and Charles Duke of Apollo 16. Those who went to the Moon without landing on it include the crew of the missions Apollo 8 (the first humans to go to and orbit the Moon), Apollo 10 (which also orbited the Moon and included later moon-walkers Young and Cernan), the aborted Apollo 13 (which passed around the Moon after the explosion that nearly cost the astronauts their lives) and the command module pilots for the missions that involved landings. In addition to Apollo 17’s Evans, they were Jim Lovell (Apollos 8 and 13), Frank Borman (Apollo 8), Bill Anders (Apollo 8), Tom Stafford (Apollo 10), Michael Collins (Apollo 11), Dick Gordon (Apollo 12), Jack Swigert (Apollo 13), Fred Haise (Apollo 13), Stu Roosa (Apollo 14), Al Worden (Apollo 15), and Ken Mattingly (Apollo 16).
Of course all of these men are quite elderly; those that are still alive, that is. Moon-walkers Armstrong, Conrad, Shepard and Irwin have died, as have Swigert, Roosa and Evans. Of the 17 men still living who have been to the Moon, the youngest are Schmitt and Duke, who are 77. Many of the others are now in their early 80s. Even if many of them end up living unusually long lives, it seems improbable that more than a few, if any, of them will still be alive two decades from now. So unless things change fairly soon, it’s possible that a day will come when there is no one living who has been to the Moon or even out of Earth’s gravity well. Such a sign of stagnation in humankind’s exploration of space would truly be regrettable.
There is still debate about what NASA’s medium-term and long-range goals should be, particularly where it should attempt to go first. One possibility that has been floated recently is building a space station at the Earth-Moon L2 point, the gravitationally-stable Lagrangian point beyond the far side of the Moon, a location from which spacefarers can operate robotic probes on the surface of the Moon and engage in radio astronomy, among other things. This is an intriguing idea, as is the idea of sending humans to an asteroid, back to the Moon, or perhaps best of all to Mars. The problem is that NASA has not received the funding to vigorously pursue any of these goals, and while private space ventures are making great progress, most of the really long-range journeys will probably require government involvement, at least for the next few decades. The exaggerated hysteria over the so-called “fiscal cliff” makes immediate prospects for increased funding for NASA remote. Still, while it is sometimes hard to be optimistic, I hope that by the time the 50th anniversary of Apollo 17’s lift off from the Moon comes around, humans will be preparing to go back there or on to another distant destination like an asteroid or Mars.
Friday, November 30, 2012
What I've Been Reading – July 2012 to October 2012
Salammbô by Gustave Flaubert
Salammbô was Gustave Flaubert’s follow-up to the famous but controversial Madame Bovary. Superficially it is very different, as instead of being set in provincial France and telling of the adulterous affairs of a country doctor’s wife it is set in ancient Carthage and tells of the brutal conflict between the city and its mercenary army. However, both share Flaubert’s carefully thought out prose and a bleak outlook on life.
The mercenary revolt, also called the “Truceless War” by the historian Polybius, writing in the 2nd century BCE, took place immediately after Carthage’s defeat at the hands of Rome in the First Punic War (241 BCE). The city of Carthage, due to financial difficulties as a result of its defeat, attempted to persuade its mercenary army to accept a payment of only a part of what they were owed in overdue pay, and in part due to poor handling of the situation, instead provoked them to revolt. Soon the mercenaries were joined by many of Carthage’s Libyan (non-Phoenician native peoples) subjects in a war that was characterized by great brutality on both sides.
Flaubert apparently did a lot of research in preparation for this novel, and made a special effort to be historically accurate. Nevertheless it is obvious to anyone who knows the actual history well that he has taken quite a few liberties. Some of these are to be expected; Polybius’s account is brief and so a lot had to be added to expand it into a novel. Still, Flaubert exaggerates a number of things considerably. The hostility between the mercenaries and the people of the city grew rather more gradually than is the case in the novel; the riotous feast in Hamilcar’s gardens and the slaughter of the company of Balearic Islanders by the Carthaginians seem to have been entirely Flaubert’s invention. He also greatly exaggerates the incompetence of Hamilcar’s rival Hanno, even beyond Polybius’s version (which some modern historians already consider somewhat biased). The romantic attraction between Hamilcar’s daughter Salammbô and the rebel Libyan Matho is of course an invention, as is the theft of the veil of the goddess Tanit by Matho and Spendius, an episode which reminded me of Fritz Leiber’s stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser – though Matho and Spendius were even more amoral than Leiber’s heroes. Salammbô herself is largely an invention, as Polybius merely mentions that Hamilcar promised an unnamed daughter to the Numidian chief Naravas (spelled Narr’ Havas by Flaubert) in return for his help. The grisly episode where the Carthaginians sacrifice children to the god Moloch (now known not to exist – early historians misinterpreted the Punic word mlk to be referring to a god, when it actually meant a type of sacrifice) is also basically fiction; while most historians conclude that the Carthaginians, like some other ancient peoples including on rare occasions the Romans, did practice human sacrifice, it seems to have involved much smaller children (often stillborn infants).
Despite these and other unhistorical elements, such as making Spendius a slave of Hamilcar freed by Matho and the exaggerated account of all the groups of people flocking to take part in the assault on Carthage, Flaubert does capture the viciousness of the Mercenary War and does so with evocative language. The novel is a somewhat disturbing read at times, not only in its depiction of the (unfortunately mostly historical) cruelty and violence that took place in the war but also in its racist attitudes – the Carthaginians are a decadent Oriental people, and on the few occasions black Africans make an appearance, they are portrayed as savages little above the level of (non-human) animals. The ending is not a happy one either; this is something this novel shares with Flaubert’s better-known Madame Bovary. But for those who can overlook its flaws and endure its depressing elements, Salammbô is an interesting historical novel, and one that is regarded as a classic in France.
Maskerade by Terry Pratchett
Maskerade, another entertaining novel by Terry Pratchett, is a parody of Phantom of the Opera featuring the witches Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, plus Agnes Nitt, an overweight young woman (and prospective witch) with an incredible singing voice. Unlike in many other Discworld novels, the fate of the world is not at stake, though there is still murder and mayhem a-plenty. It shares many basic features with Pratchett’s other novels, such as good, sardonic humor, dramatic action with quite a few plot twists, and occasional ironic reflections on more serious subjects. Basically it is light entertainment, but very well done and not without some deeper, more thought-provoking elements.
The Age of Wonder: How the romantic generation discovered the beauty and terror of Science by Richard Holmes
The Age of Wonder is a non-fiction book by Richard Holmes about science in Britain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Each chapter has a different topic, but the whole thing is tied together by the careers of four individuals who serve as Holmes’s chief protagonists: the botanist Joseph Banks, the German-born astronomer William Herschel and his sister Caroline Herschel, and the chemist Humphry Davy. Though it is a work of non-fiction, the book reads as easily as a novel and is quite fascinating. It also has a fair amount of excitement and adventure, especially in the chapters on the first balloonists and on Mungo Park’s travels in Africa.
One particularly intriguing theme running through the book is the relationship between science and poetry in this era. Though nowadays they are seen as having almost nothing in common, Romantic poets had many connections with science and the scientists (or Natural Philosophers, as they were called then) of their day. Keats referred to Herschel’s discovery of Uranus in a poem, Wordsworth wrote about Newton, Byron and Shelley frequently wrote about scientific discoveries, Mary Shelley wrote the science fiction novel Frankenstein, and Coleridge was passionate about science and a good friend of Davy. Davy himself wrote poetry and even published some of it in his youth, and Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles Darwin, wrote a scientifically-based epic poem called The Botanic Garden.
Mostly set in England, but opening in Tahiti and including episodes in Germany, France, West Africa, and elsewhere, The Age of Wonder is a wide-ranging work that touches in varying degrees of depth on the careers of numerous scientists, poets, and writers of the era. Anyone who has an interest in the Romantic Age, the history of science, or good historical non-fiction in general should check it out.
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
High Fidelity is a novel by British author Nick Hornby. The narrator, Rob Fleming, is an independent record store owner and former club disc jockey in his mid-thirties. The plot of the novel centers around his relationship problems, not only with his current girlfriend but also with various past girlfriends and an American singer-songwriter who he meets, as well as his interactions with the two guys who work at his record shop. Music, of course, is mentioned a lot, especially as Rob’s life (and even more so the lives of his employees Dick and Barry) revolves almost entirely around music. Since the record store doesn't get a lot of customers, most of Rob, Dick and Barry's time is spent making up top 5 lists, debating the merits or flaws of various bands and singers, and talking about obscure music trivia.
Rob is in many ways quite rather self-centered, and he is tormented by various insecurities as he goes through something of a mid-life crisis due to his relationship troubles.
I have to admit that to some degree I share some of his flaws and can relate to many of his problems, though not all of them (the sort of anxiety he deals with when he goes to Marie's place, for example, is something I've never felt). I would like to think I would have handled some of his more awkward conversations better than he does, but I certainly have had plenty of occasions where I wish I handled things differently, and I suspect this is true of the vast majority of people. His reflections on past relationships, and his discovery that his perception of many of them was distorted, also represent a fairly universal problem.
Though the parts about relationships and life choices give the book depth, the thing that most clearly sets it apart is the music. I won't go into that in depth here, though perhaps on my music blog I'll someday write an essay about musical snobbery, something Rob, Dick and Barry are definitely guilty of. Having said that, their knowledge of music – and by extension Nick Hornby's – is quite impressive. I should mention that many years ago I saw the critically acclaimed film adaptation of this novel, and my recollection is that it was pretty good, even though I don't remember it very well now and tend to confuse it with Say Anything, perhaps because both feature a lot of music and both star John Cusack. One thing I do remember about the film version of High Fidelity is Jack Black's excellent portrayal of Barry, who is the ultimate musical snob (and something of a jerk as well). In addition to the film version, there is apparently a Broadway musical based on the book. In any case, the novel is a good piece of modern fiction with particular appeal to music fans.
Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization by Richard Miles
Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization is a good, recent overview of the history of the ancient city of Carthage by Richard Miles. I know quite a bit about this subject myself, having become fascinated with Carthage and its most famous citizen, the brilliant military leader Hannibal, when I was still in elementary school, but nevertheless there was a fair amount here that was new to me. Much of the newer information is based on a combination of more recent archeological discoveries and new interpretations of both older discoveries and the ancient sources. Miles does a good job of explaining the current views about early Carthage and particularly the relationship between the Carthaginians and other Phoenician settlers in the Western Mediterranean on the one hand and other peoples, particularly the Greeks, on the other.
The part of the book on the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage had less that was new to me, but even here the idea that there may have been a deliberate effort by Hannibal and his staff, particularly the Greek historian Silenus, to foment the idea that Hannibal was associated with Heracles-Melqart, a syncretistic amalgamation of the Phoenician god Melqart and the Greek hero-god Heracles (known to the Romans as Hercules), who had come to unite the older peoples of the Western Mediterranean against the upstart Romans was something I hadn’t read about before, though I knew that the Barcids (Hannibal and his predecessors, his father Hamilcar and brother-in-law Hasdrubal) had used Heracles-Melqart on their coins. While it is now difficult to be certain how extensive Hannibal’s use of such propaganda was, especially since the pro-Carthaginian histories of Silenus, Sosylus and others no longer exist except in isolated fragments, Miles makes a plausible case for the idea.
As for the rest of his account of the Punic Wars, I was somewhat disappointed that Miles seems to simply accept the traditional views regarding Roman leaders like Flaminius and Varro, despite the obvious bias of the main ancient sources. Also, he states that the river Hasdrubal had promised the Romans he would not cross bearing arms was “the river Hiberus [now generally thought to be the river Júcar]”. However, in the past most historians have believed the river in question to be the Ebro, including the modern histories I have (Lazenby discusses the theory that it might be a river further south but discounts it). This is significant because the Júcar is south of Saguntum, the Spanish city whose capture by Hannibal sparked the Second Punic War, whereas the Ebro is to the north. Miles, however, doesn’t even mention this traditional view, let alone discuss arguments favoring the interpretation he uses, even in the footnotes, in contrast to the way he deals with most other controversial points. But these are the only significant flaws I noticed, and in any case there are many other accounts of the Punic Wars around. For anyone looking for a comprehensive, readable survey of the history of Punic Carthage, Carthage Must Be Destroyed is probably the best choice available.
A Doll's House and Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen
A Doll's House and Ghosts, two famous plays by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen dating back to the late 19th century, attack social conventions of the time, particularly with respect to the role of women. While Torvald Helmer's condescension toward his wife Nora seems almost unbelievable today (though at the time, unfortunately, it may not have seemed so) and Nora's sudden enlightenment about the nature of her status a tad unrealistic, especially given her naivety early in the play, these seemingly exaggerated elements ensure that the point is made all the more clearly. Ghosts shows the tragic results of a woman's efforts to keep up appearances while living in a completely dysfunctional family. While they may not seem so revolutionary today, both of these plays were extremely controversial in the very conservative period in which they first appeared. They were both attacked in very strong language by conventionally-minded critics, and banned in many places. But they also attracted a following among more liberal people, and helped to change people's attitude toward marriage and the status of women.
The Book of the Short Sun by Gene Wolfe
The Book of the Short Sun is a "science fantasy" trilogy by Gene Wolfe consisting of On Blue's Waters, In Green's Jungles and Return to the Whorl. It is a sequel of sorts to The Book of the Long Sun, which unfortunately I have not read (though I intend to look for a copy. There are frequent references to characters and events in The Book of the Long Sun, but it is not essential to have read it to understand The Book of the Short Sun, though the latter is not always so easy to follow for other reasons, as I'll explain. The second and third books tie in to a more limited degree with Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun, with the three sets making up Wolfe's "Solar Cycle". The Book of the Short Sun is set on three worlds, the planets Blue and Green and the interstellar colony ship The Whorl of the Long Sun, which was also the setting of the The Book of the Long Sun.
While Wolfe has not had the commercial success of the biggest scifi authors, he is a critical favorite who has won a number of awards. Most of the books in his "Solar Cycle" have placed in polls for the best science fiction books of all time. Some critics have even claimed Wolfe is the greatest living American writer. While this is a somewhat subjective judgment, he is certainly a good writer, though his books are not the easiest to read. In certain ways, The Book of the Short Sun is somewhat easier to read than The Book of the New Sun, as there is less of the unusual vocabulary found in the latter book (though there are a few examples, such as "whorl" for world, "augur" for priest, and "manteion" for church or temple). However, as the narrator Horn himself observes at one point, he has "written whatever crossed [his] mind" and so his narrative skips back and forth in time, telling both the story of his earlier journey and what is happening at the time he is writing, and neither strand of the story is told in a completely linear fashion. He often refers in passing to events and characters that are not properly introduced until much later (in the respect it reminded me a little of Rushdie's Midnight's Children), as well as to events and characters in The Book of the Long Sun. None of this makes the book impossible to follow, but it does tend to encourage flipping back and forth to keep track of what is happening. Some parts of the story are told in detail, while others are merely summarized, and some are never explained properly at all. This sort of non-linear storytelling style also reminded me a little of Infinite Jest, though The Book of the Short Sun is not quite so complex and it does have an ending, even if it is one that doesn't resolve everything clearly, unlike David Foster Wallace's book, which doesn't have a proper ending at all. In any case, while it may occasionally make for frustrating reading, this narrative structure is fascinating and also adds an extra element of realism, as the book does read much like a disorganized account scribbled down in spare moments by a person who is in the middle of fast moving events – and is himself changing as the narrative progresses.
The narrator is the key character in the book, though as the story evolves, it becomes clear that his identity is somewhat ambiguous. It is apparent early on that something has happened to him in the course of his travels to change his physical appearance, but it is gradually revealed that it may have changed more than that. Horn originally departed his home to search for Silk, the protagonist of The Book of the Long Sun, which was ostensibly written by Horn and his wife Nettle. Horn views Silk as a saint-like character and a great leader who he tries to emulate, though he is generally self-deprecating about his efforts. Nevertheless, Horn seems to take on many of Silk's qualities. He is frequently taken for Silk himself and is looked to as a leader and a source of wisdom by many of those he meets. Indeed, in certain ways he is a Christ-like figure, as was Severian from The Book of the New Sun (who appears near the end of this book as well, though he is not named). The manner in which the man calling himself Horn can be seen as a symbolic representation of Jesus is reminiscent of the way both Gandalf and Frodo in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings are also in certain respects (particularly in terms of nobility and self-sacrifice) Christ-like. Another similarity between Wolfe and Tolkien is theology. While the people of Horn's worlds have a pantheon of gods, Horn concludes that only the one known as the Outsider is a true god. The Outsider is similar to Tolkien's Eru or Illuvitar, who is likewise a somewhat mysterious god that stands above and beyond the Valar, who act as the gods of Middle Earth. Of course both the Outsider and Eru clearly represent the Christian God. These similarities between Wolfe and Tolkien (who corresponded briefly back when Wolfe was just starting his career) may be explained in part by their religion, as I have read that Wolfe is Catholic, like Tolkien was. While I don't necessarily agree with their theology, both of them did a good job incorporating it into their stories in a way that benefited them rather than detracting from them.
There are many aspects of this book that could be discussed in greater detail. For instance, the inhumi as they are first described seem reminiscent of the Thread in Anne McCaffery's Pern books, as they are said to be able to launch themselves from their home planet of Green through space to Blue. This obviously doesn't seem very realistic from a scientific point of view, but later in the story there are suggestions that this explanation may not be the true one, merely a myth believed by the humans on Blue (and perhaps perpetuated by the inhumi themselves). Indeed things in Wolfe's books are very often not quite what they seem. Even questions that I might have had in the course of reading, such as why Horn believes his son Sinew hates him, the nature of the Neighbors/Vanished People and exactly how their civilization collapsed, or how the spirit travel that Horn and others engage in actually works, may at best be answered in an ambiguous manner, like the question of Horn's identity is, but this may well be intentional on Wolfe's part, as in real life things are often no clearer. So while this book may not be the best choice for simple light reading, it challenges the reader like good literature should, and yet remains engrossing throughout. Overall, while saying Wolfe is the greatest living writer in the English language is probably an overstatement, The Book of the Short Sun, like The Book of the New Sun, shows that he is one of the most interesting writers out there, and certainly is one worth reading.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Secession and Other Silliness
In my recent election recap, I neglected to mention one of the widely reported absurd reactions to the results. It seems that almost as soon as President Obama won reelection, people in a number of different states started petitions on the White House petition website calling for the US to permit their states to secede from the country. The petition which got the most signatures (at least 75,000, three time the number required to elicit an official response from the White House) was from Texas, the state I grew up in. Presumably the signers were motivated chiefly by dismay at the election results, though pro-secession sentiment is not new in Texas, which was briefly an independent nation and also a member of the Confederacy at the time of the US Civil War. But secession is a bad idea for a number of reasons.
Now I am not by any means opposed in principal to regions in a country declaring independence. I am a firm believer in the right to self-determination, and I support the right of occupied territories around the world (such as Tibet, West Papua, Western Sahara, East Turkestan, Chechnya and Kurdistan) to claim independence from their occupiers if that is the will of the majority of their people (though this becomes more tricky when the occupier settles large numbers of outsiders – who presumably will not support independence – in the territory, as has been done by empires since at least the Assyrians and is still being done by countries like China). But not all struggles for independence are equally worthy. While there is a lot to be said for the idea of breaking up the largest and most dangerously powerful countries in the world, including the United States, China and Russia, to name the most obvious ones, this particular effort, even if it were truly serious, would not be one I’d support, for a number of reasons.
First of all, it should be pointed out that it is unlikely that the signers of these petitions represent a significant segment of the population of the states in question. While 75,000 people may sound like a lot, Texas has a population of over 25 million, so only a very tiny proportion of Texans have signed, and the same is true of the petitions by residents of other states. But even if the petitions really represented the sentiments of a substantial group, there remains the question of their reasons for wanting to secede, and the consequences should they get what they wish.
From their timing, it is clear that the main motivation for most of the signers of these petitions is unhappiness at the reelection of Barack Obama. While I can understand this to some degree (had Mitt Romney been elected, I’d have been even less inclined than I am now to consider returning to the US on a permanent basis), dissatisfaction with an election result is a rather weak reason for seceding. It is rather ironic that the Obama haters who no doubt make up a substantial proportion of the petitioners are, by calling for their states to secede, making Obama look like Abraham Lincoln – after all, it was Lincoln’s election as US President that prompted the southern states to secede in 1860-1. Using Obama’s victory as an excuse to secede is particularly ridiculous given that, despite the shrill claims of some, he is a fairly moderate leader who has shown little inclination to push for dramatic changes, and it is improbable that he will be able to do anything revolutionary in his second term even if he wanted to.
Speaking of poor reasons to secede, the Confederate states that seceded in the wake of Lincoln’s election victory are a very good example, and one that relates closely to why secession by states like Texas would also be a bad thing today. While Confederate sympathizers now try to claim the South was fighting for states’ rights, anyone who knows the actual history is aware that the only states’ right which really concerned the southern states was the right to retain slavery. Slavery had been the big issue dividing the nation for decades, and it was the election of a pro-abolition President and the perception that the balance of power was permanently tilting toward the “free” states that led the South to secede. All the talk about fighting for “states’ rights” and “the Southern way of life” is just another way of saying they were fighting for slavery, and no independence fight is justified if its main purpose is to allow the seceding region to oppress or enslave others. Now let’s look at some of the things that those who would like Texas to secede dislike about the way things are going in the US under Obama (I know they claim budget issues as their key motivation, but I don’t buy that for a minute). Legalization of same sex marriage, making contraceptives easily available to women, allowing young undocumented immigrants to attend college without fear of deportation, making it easier for people to vote, taking a scientific approach to the issue of climate change, allowing Muslims to worship freely, teaching evolution in schools rather than theories with no scientific basis…these are the kinds of things that bother many of these people, and these are almost certainly among the first things that would be targeted in an independent Texas (or Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, etc.).
The above issues are why I would not like to see states like Texas secede from the US; even as it is, membership in the Union only partly restrains the negative impulses of many in the more conservative states (President Rick Perry, anyone?). If they were independent, I hate to think what would happen. While they might not try to bring back segregation or other blatantly discriminatory practices, I am sure the rights of ethnic minorities, women, homosexuals and Muslims would take a huge step backwards, and schools would be teaching all sorts of absurd nonsense. If I could feel sure that an independent Texas would uphold the principles of equality and fairness and would educate its children on the basis of rationality and science, then I could very willingly support a movement to separate from the US. As it is, I’m happy that these petitioners represent only a tiny fringe movement.
Another silly issue that dominated the post-election news in the US even more than these petitions to secede was the story that CIA Director and former general David Petraeus was resigning due to an extramarital affair, and another top general was being investigated for potentially “inappropriate” email exchanges. As a few commentators pointed out, good leaders are not so readily available that the US can afford to lose them for so inconsequential a reason as having an affair. While I am not in position to judge Petraeus’s effectiveness as either a general or the head of the CIA, I certainly don’t think he should have had to resign just for having an affair. America needs to stop being so obsessed with people’s sex lives and start getting its priorities straight.
Now I am not by any means opposed in principal to regions in a country declaring independence. I am a firm believer in the right to self-determination, and I support the right of occupied territories around the world (such as Tibet, West Papua, Western Sahara, East Turkestan, Chechnya and Kurdistan) to claim independence from their occupiers if that is the will of the majority of their people (though this becomes more tricky when the occupier settles large numbers of outsiders – who presumably will not support independence – in the territory, as has been done by empires since at least the Assyrians and is still being done by countries like China). But not all struggles for independence are equally worthy. While there is a lot to be said for the idea of breaking up the largest and most dangerously powerful countries in the world, including the United States, China and Russia, to name the most obvious ones, this particular effort, even if it were truly serious, would not be one I’d support, for a number of reasons.
First of all, it should be pointed out that it is unlikely that the signers of these petitions represent a significant segment of the population of the states in question. While 75,000 people may sound like a lot, Texas has a population of over 25 million, so only a very tiny proportion of Texans have signed, and the same is true of the petitions by residents of other states. But even if the petitions really represented the sentiments of a substantial group, there remains the question of their reasons for wanting to secede, and the consequences should they get what they wish.
From their timing, it is clear that the main motivation for most of the signers of these petitions is unhappiness at the reelection of Barack Obama. While I can understand this to some degree (had Mitt Romney been elected, I’d have been even less inclined than I am now to consider returning to the US on a permanent basis), dissatisfaction with an election result is a rather weak reason for seceding. It is rather ironic that the Obama haters who no doubt make up a substantial proportion of the petitioners are, by calling for their states to secede, making Obama look like Abraham Lincoln – after all, it was Lincoln’s election as US President that prompted the southern states to secede in 1860-1. Using Obama’s victory as an excuse to secede is particularly ridiculous given that, despite the shrill claims of some, he is a fairly moderate leader who has shown little inclination to push for dramatic changes, and it is improbable that he will be able to do anything revolutionary in his second term even if he wanted to.
Speaking of poor reasons to secede, the Confederate states that seceded in the wake of Lincoln’s election victory are a very good example, and one that relates closely to why secession by states like Texas would also be a bad thing today. While Confederate sympathizers now try to claim the South was fighting for states’ rights, anyone who knows the actual history is aware that the only states’ right which really concerned the southern states was the right to retain slavery. Slavery had been the big issue dividing the nation for decades, and it was the election of a pro-abolition President and the perception that the balance of power was permanently tilting toward the “free” states that led the South to secede. All the talk about fighting for “states’ rights” and “the Southern way of life” is just another way of saying they were fighting for slavery, and no independence fight is justified if its main purpose is to allow the seceding region to oppress or enslave others. Now let’s look at some of the things that those who would like Texas to secede dislike about the way things are going in the US under Obama (I know they claim budget issues as their key motivation, but I don’t buy that for a minute). Legalization of same sex marriage, making contraceptives easily available to women, allowing young undocumented immigrants to attend college without fear of deportation, making it easier for people to vote, taking a scientific approach to the issue of climate change, allowing Muslims to worship freely, teaching evolution in schools rather than theories with no scientific basis…these are the kinds of things that bother many of these people, and these are almost certainly among the first things that would be targeted in an independent Texas (or Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, etc.).
The above issues are why I would not like to see states like Texas secede from the US; even as it is, membership in the Union only partly restrains the negative impulses of many in the more conservative states (President Rick Perry, anyone?). If they were independent, I hate to think what would happen. While they might not try to bring back segregation or other blatantly discriminatory practices, I am sure the rights of ethnic minorities, women, homosexuals and Muslims would take a huge step backwards, and schools would be teaching all sorts of absurd nonsense. If I could feel sure that an independent Texas would uphold the principles of equality and fairness and would educate its children on the basis of rationality and science, then I could very willingly support a movement to separate from the US. As it is, I’m happy that these petitioners represent only a tiny fringe movement.
Another silly issue that dominated the post-election news in the US even more than these petitions to secede was the story that CIA Director and former general David Petraeus was resigning due to an extramarital affair, and another top general was being investigated for potentially “inappropriate” email exchanges. As a few commentators pointed out, good leaders are not so readily available that the US can afford to lose them for so inconsequential a reason as having an affair. While I am not in position to judge Petraeus’s effectiveness as either a general or the head of the CIA, I certainly don’t think he should have had to resign just for having an affair. America needs to stop being so obsessed with people’s sex lives and start getting its priorities straight.
Monday, November 19, 2012
2012 US Election Recap
Though it's sort of old news by now, I can't let the US elections pass without commenting on them briefly. In an earlier post, I talked about my own choices on the ballot I had received. Unfortunately, since I was voting in very conservative, overwhelmingly Republican Texas, not a single candidate I voted for won. On the national level, however, the results were considerably more gratifying. Though I voted for Jill Stein myself, I definitely wanted Barack Obama to win reelection over Mitt Romney, and as I noted in my other post, assuming my vote swap partner followed through, I helped ensure he got an extra vote in Florida, where it was much more useful than my vote in Texas would have been (for that matter, I even contributed a few dollars to his campaign). So I was very pleased to see him win quite convincingly over Romney. I was also very happy to see some good Democratic candidates for Senate like Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin, and Heidi Heitkamp win, and some truly awful Republican candidates defeated. Though the House results were not as good, some of the worst extremists on the Republican side were defeated. Also, there were many positive state referendum results, including three states approving same sex marriage, two states legalizing recreational use of marijuana, and one voting to allow the children of undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition.
Though overall the results of the election were about as good as I could reasonably have hoped for, being the cynic that I am I can't help but note the downsides as well. As mentioned earlier, the Republicans held onto the House and while some of the very worst extremists were defeated, there are still a lot of awful right-wing congresspeople left. A perfectly reasonable measure to require labeling of GMO foods was defeated in California thanks to heavy spending by Monsanto and similar dangerously powerful groups. While the Green Party's Jill Stein came in fourth overall and received close to three times the number of votes that the Green Party candidate got in 2008 and four times the votes of their 2004 candidate (she also got the most votes that any female presidential candidate has ever received in the general election), she still got far fewer votes than she deserved to get (less than half of 1%), and the party's Texas candidates didn't get all that many votes either, though the ones in races without Democrats did get enough to guarantee ballot access for the party next time around (5% was required and I believe two of them got 8%). The extremist Ted Cruz easily won election as a US Senator from Texas. And I still find it disturbing that people like Romney, Ryan, Akin, McMahon, etc. could even come close to winning big races. Finally, the fact that House Republican leaders like John Boehner and Pete Sessions both made the ridiculous assertion that the elections showed that the American people opposed tax increases, when not only did Obama and most of the Senate Democrats (the vast majority of whom have called for the wealthy to pay higher taxes) win but the Democrats even won more of the popular vote in House elections than the Republicans (who kept their majority mainly due to gerrymandering of Congressional districts) does not bode well for reasonable compromises on budget issues.
Despite these caveats, I have to consider myself generally happy with the results of this election. If this election actually forces the Republicans to reverse course and move back toward the center a little, rather than going further and further to the right as they have been doing, then it will prove even better. But for now, it has to be considered just one victory in a long war.
Though overall the results of the election were about as good as I could reasonably have hoped for, being the cynic that I am I can't help but note the downsides as well. As mentioned earlier, the Republicans held onto the House and while some of the very worst extremists were defeated, there are still a lot of awful right-wing congresspeople left. A perfectly reasonable measure to require labeling of GMO foods was defeated in California thanks to heavy spending by Monsanto and similar dangerously powerful groups. While the Green Party's Jill Stein came in fourth overall and received close to three times the number of votes that the Green Party candidate got in 2008 and four times the votes of their 2004 candidate (she also got the most votes that any female presidential candidate has ever received in the general election), she still got far fewer votes than she deserved to get (less than half of 1%), and the party's Texas candidates didn't get all that many votes either, though the ones in races without Democrats did get enough to guarantee ballot access for the party next time around (5% was required and I believe two of them got 8%). The extremist Ted Cruz easily won election as a US Senator from Texas. And I still find it disturbing that people like Romney, Ryan, Akin, McMahon, etc. could even come close to winning big races. Finally, the fact that House Republican leaders like John Boehner and Pete Sessions both made the ridiculous assertion that the elections showed that the American people opposed tax increases, when not only did Obama and most of the Senate Democrats (the vast majority of whom have called for the wealthy to pay higher taxes) win but the Democrats even won more of the popular vote in House elections than the Republicans (who kept their majority mainly due to gerrymandering of Congressional districts) does not bode well for reasonable compromises on budget issues.
Despite these caveats, I have to consider myself generally happy with the results of this election. If this election actually forces the Republicans to reverse course and move back toward the center a little, rather than going further and further to the right as they have been doing, then it will prove even better. But for now, it has to be considered just one victory in a long war.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
