Intellect and Romance Triumph Over Brute Force and Cynicism

Extreme Awesomeness

It's the Least Wonderful Time of the Year

The holiday season.  Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, Solstice, HumanLight, Kwanzaa, Festivus, Eid al-Adha, Boxing Day, Feast of Stephen, Soyal, Yule, Life Day.  Phooey.  Flummery.  I suppose humbug would be traditional.  In my line of work it means that my time and energy are at their greatest premium.  So this is my annual announcement that you will hear less from me than usual.  I'll try to surface for air from time to time, but don't hold your breath.  Enjoy your holidays.  Bah!

The Day it Rained Whale

Forty years ago today . . . this happened.



This may be the best news story ever broadcast. November 12, 1970, the Oregon Highway Division reasoned that the best way to move a dead whale would be to use dynamite. It went about as well as you might expect.

As the Blogoshere Turns

I really don't like Jar Jar Binks and I've never seen the appeal of cartoons designed to look like Legos, so it's saying something that the Video O' the Week is a Lego cartoon featuring Jar Jar Binks.  It's another great post on Electronic Cerebrectomy.

Fast Paced NBA Action!

It's where amazing happens! No, wait a second . . . I meant to say something dull, like "60 years of honoring great American books." If you're like me you are all a-tingle for the National Book Awards. Or perhaps I'm tingling because I forgot to take my medication this morning. Either way, you want to watch The Totally Hip Book Reviewer break down this year's finalists. No, seriously, you do.

Sherlock Holmes Versus Jack the Ripper!

By no means is Dust and Shadow the first time a Sherlock Holmes pastiche has pitted the great detective against Victorian London's most notorious villain, Jack the Ripper, but it is certainly the best I've read. First time novelist Lyndsay Faye did a wonderful job of writing in the spirit of Arthur Conan Doyle while cranking up the pace for the jaded modern reader.

I am by no means a ripperologist (a rather grim historical specialty), nor would I qualify as a Sherlockian, but I have some familiarity with the crimes and I have read the canonical stories a few times. I'd say that Faye folded Holmes into the Whitechapel case seamlessly, using the proper Watsonian narrative style. And I loved every minute of it.

Which really is something of an accomplishment. We know that when Holmes is trying to prevent the next murder he is doomed to failure, because we know the history. The next crime will take place because it did take place. Yet we are carried along with the adventure, wondering what twist will be put on the facts, what insights Holmes will have into the identity of Jack.

Faye gives us the Watson and Holmes that we know and love. If I have any quibble it is that Holmes seems to show a good deal of sympathy toward the story's principal female character, which is a role usually assigned to Watson; but then she was an impressive woman. The characters, familiar (Lestrade is particularly well drawn) and unfamiliar, are engaging. The setting, often a very important part in these stories, is vivid. The crimes themselves are gruesomely fascinating. Enough of the details are revealed to horrify, but not enough to sicken.

One of the things that makes Jack the Ripper such a good subject for fiction is the fact that the murders will forever remain a mystery. It frees writers to come up with any solution they wish. The solution here works and the ending is satisfying. This is a Guaranteed Good Read for anyone who likes a mystery, especially a Sherlock Holmes mystery.

Invaluable Advice

Very short book review here of a thin volume published in 1965 and written by that eminent expert in proper behavior, Miss Hyacinthe Phypps. I was attracted to the book by the illustrations of that illustrious illustrator, Edward Gorey, but I must say I was was quite taken by the wise advice that Miss Phypps provides for the eponymous subject of the work, The Recently Deflowered Girl. A variety of delicate social situations that a recently deflowered girl might find herself in are described, and the offered wisdom never fails to be sound. What, for example, would you say if you had been deflowered by an elevator operator, a famous crooner, or a Chinese detective? Do you know the proper response if you find that you have been deflowered in a Moroccan palace, on a cross-country bus, or at a séance? Of course you don't. But you would had you read this book. And you would surely have found the drawings by the wonderful Mr. Gorey to be helpful and illuminating. In a time when such advice is sorely needed I am gratified that this volume has been republished.

Be Seeing You

A friend of mine has a disease called retinitis pigmentosa. That means that when he was a kid his vision started to deteriorate. By the time he was a teenager he was “legally blind.” That meant that he would never drive a car and never do the things he had dreamed of doing just a few years before. It also meant that he would continue to lose his sight. Every year it would be just a little bit worse, until his vision would be gone completely. Years would pass, decades would pass, but there would be no light at the end of this tunnel. Only tunnel.

So I'm pretty excited by this news out of Germany that scientists have developed an implant that could give my friend back some of his vision, possibly enough to read. We do, perhaps, live in an age of miracle and wonder.

For the Children

You've probably heard that phrase before. We have to do this, “for the children.” We must ban that, “for the children.” Those who would censor, restrict, or regulate always say it is “for the children.” When my state attorney general, Martha Coakley, helped draft a law to regulate naughtiness on the internet, it was “for the children.” Never mind that it was an unconstitutional infringement of the
First Amendment (a federal judge recently said so when she struck it down). When Tipper Gore got warning labels on CDs, it was “for the children.” When Joe Leiberman tried to regulate computer games, it was “for the children.” Smashing rock 'n roll records, banning pinball, burning Harry Potter books, it's all “for the children.” As Robert Heinlein wrote in “The Man Who Sold the Moon,” “The whole principle is wrong. It's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't have steak.”

One of the earliest moral panic episodes of the past century was the “great comic-book scare.” In his excellent book on the subject, The Ten-Cent Plague, David Hajdu gives us a history of comics in the 1950s, the men and women who made them, and the panicked, duped, self-serving, or just downright venal people who destroyed the industry.

Mr. Hajdu writes a good history of comics, delving into the lives and personalities of their creators as well as their social milieu. At first I thought this might be off of the main point of the book, the censorship of comics. Often in pop-culture histories the writer will take extended sidetracks into parts of the story that are fun to read and write about. While I enjoyed these section of the book I had, in my mind, judged them to be a minor flaw in the narrative structure. But I was wrong. By laying down a solid (and very interesting, especially for a comic book fan like me) foundation describing the writers, artists, publishers, and their work, it put many of the arguments of the anti-comics forces into a context that demonstrated the wrongness of their position.

Some may be surprised to read about what a big issue this was at the time. Public comic book burnings were held all over the country. Local censorship boards sprung up across the map. Congressional hearings on the subject were broadcast on live television. Major newspapers like the Hartford Courant wrote editorials calling for an end to the comics menace. Fredric Wertham's infamous comic-bashing book The Seduction of the Innocent was a bestseller. Publishers and newsstand owners were threatened with prosecution, years before the CBLDF was even imagined. It is a remarkable story.

I'd call this a must-read for any real comics fan and a good read for anyone interested in American history, pop-culture, art, or witch trials.

Trivial Hoot Fifteen

Hoo, it's been a long time since I've been in a question posing mood. We just watched the second episode of Sherlock here and noted that it echoed the canonical Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Dancing Men” in that Holmes cracked a code. In the original story it was a substitution code with stick figures replacing letters. The question then: what was the first letter that Holmes figured out? This should be elementary for even the most casual Sherlockians.

As always, the first person to give me the correct answer gets an ephemeral hoot and gets his or her name added to our list of Steely-Eyed Missile Men.

St. Lewis of Black

I've read some of the works of evangelical atheists, so I thought I knew what to expect when I was handed Me of Little Faith, a book on religion by avowed atheist Lewis Black. I was wrong.

Not entirely wrong. I expected funny, I got funny. I expected it to be witty, to use humor to cast a harsh light on some of the more ridiculous aspects of organized religion, and I got that. I expected a classic Lewis Black angry rant or two, and I expected the book to be profane and irreverent. Naturally.

I also expected it to take cheap shots at faith. I expected smug arrogance, like I've heard from Bill Mahr. I expected weak straw man (straw God?) arguments like I've read in Christopher Hitchens. I expected to see the inane “how can you believe in a big buddy in the sky” sort of junk that passes for reason I've seen way too often.

I didn't expect thoughtfulness. I didn't expect self-doubt, which is usually lacking in evangelical atheists and their equally fanatical counterparts, religious zealots. I didn't expect respect for people of faith. But that's what I got.

So forgive me Lewis Black. I should have had more faith in you.

Me of Little Faith is a funny, occasionally laugh out loud funny, collection of very short essays, mostly on the subject of religion. Some are clever, some are terrific, some are just a passing thought on paper. It includes a play that Black wrote a few years ago that he admits the critics didn't like, and I'm afraid I'm with the critics. And near the end it includes Black's idea for a new religion. One based on the idea that God, whatever He may be, wants you to laugh.

In that, I think I think I am luckier than the famously disgruntled comedian. I actually believe in that God already. Isn't that funny?

Give a Hoot . . . or Die

I love the shirt they're selling today at Woot.

Woodsy means business. And he's looking at you, punk.

Eat Food

Regular readers might recall my going on about Food Rules, Michael Pollan's pithy follow-up to In Defense of Food. Now I've gone ahead and read that book, subtitled “An Eater's Manifesto.” So should you, if you are concerned at all about food.

And you ought to be, you know. Concerned. We're living in an age when going to the market means filling our carts with the products of food science. The first two words of Pollan's famous dictum, “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants,” is no joke. Most of what we feed ourselves with today is not food but “edible foodlike substances.”

Mankind has been eating animals and plants for millennia. Only in the last few years have we begun eating products that are made in plants. What is this vast experiment in the way we eat doing to us? We are beset with obesity, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. Scientists tells us that a child born today has a one in three chance of getting a diagnosis of diabetes sometime in his life.

Who is to blame for all this? Business, of course, is one villain. So is food science in the employ of that business. Government, in it's efforts to do something for us, as usual, does something to us. Surprisingly, one of Pollan's biggest villains is nutritional science.

At first I had trouble with this. Yes, I could see that scientific errors, hubris, and bad communication had caused many problems, but Pollan's condemnation of what is he prefers to call “nutritionism” seemed off. Surely it is good to know about vitamins, fiber, and such.

But as I read I began to understand what Pollan was driving at. Science is a reductionist discipline. It has a tendency to look at the bits and pieces of something, see what they do and how they work together. The problem is that food is a complex subject. We don't yet really understand all the dynamics of the interaction between the complex things we put on our plates and the complex beings that do the eating. But nutrition science learns something about a part of our food and goes from there. The classic example is the “lipid hypothesis.” You know it as the concept that fat in our food is bad for us. Fat is to be avoided. Science said so. So now there are low-fat versions of everything. They're more chemical than food, but the label says it is good for us because it is low-fat. Problem is, it turns out that there really isn't much evidence, all these years later, that fat in food is all that bad. Sure, overindulging in anything isn't the best idea, but fat is an essential part of our system. It makes your brain work, for one thing. But fat was the enemy, so it had to come out of the foods that we had been eating. Pigs were bred so that they'd be less fatty (and less tasty). And butter was right out. My parents always had margarine on the table. No unhealthy butter for us. There was overwhelming scientific consensus (how we love that phrase) that this new miracle of food science, margarine, was good, and butter, which was higher in fat, was bad. Margarine had some fat, but not as much, because it was made with a wonderful new invention called trans fat. I think you know how that worked out for us.

In fact, since nutritionism took over from traditional cuisine American waistlines have increased as have our medical bills.

Perhaps you are still diligently searching the grocery aisles for chemically jiggered low-fat versions of your favorite foods. You haven't heard that scientific consensus has shifted away from it? Why do you suppose that public health officials have been slow to correct themselves? What are they afraid of? Pollan suggests that they are afraid that “we'll come to the unavoidable conclusion that the emperors of nutrition have no clothes and never listen to them again.”

More than an attack on food science, In Defense of Food is a call for mindfulness about how and what we eat. It is a reminder that the brightly colored packages in the middle of the grocery store may contain attractive and tasty products, but they are not really food and they are probably not very good for us. It is a call for a return to a more traditional diet with foods that have been traditionally grown, not manufactured in a factory or doused in chemicals, injected with hormones, or otherwise “improved” to make them more profitable. It is a Glenn Guaranteed Good Read and as long as you plan to eat in America, an important one.

As the Blogoshere Turns

It's been a good week in Lake Blogosphere.  I've bumped into a few things that I rather liked.

I found our Video O' the Week via Folderol.  It's on a baseball blog called Foul Territory and shows the Texas Rangers, my current favorite team (go Rangers, beat those Yankees!) celebrating their division championship.  While normally such locker room celebrations feature champagne showers, the Rangers had a special ginger ale-only celebration for outfielder Josh Hamilton, who is a recovering alcoholic.  That, my friends, is what we mean by the word "team."

Our Cat O' the Week is also a video.  Incurable Insomniac presents Cat vs. Printer -- The Translation (warning--NSFW language).

In the Picture O' the Week our Canadian correspondent Calvin gazes south from his Cave of Cool to remind us that the presidency of Barack Obama contains an element of positive change for America that is as beautiful as it is exciting.  And if you think I'm being hyperbolic, you obviously haven't been paying attention for the last couple of centuries.

Finally, the Post O' the Week is by Bill Peschel.  It's a true tale of a literary hoax involving Jean Shepherd (of A Christmas Story fame), Theodore Sturgeon, Frank Kelly Freas, Ian and Betty Ballantine, saucy bawds, and seventeenth century sex scandals.  How can you not love that?

Geek-in-Chief

As you and most of the free world have probably heard by now, President Obama will appear on an upcoming episode of MythBusters. At first I wondered why. What is his hidden purpose? Then I heard the details. The arch-liberal has ordered Adam and Jamie to retest the Archimedes death ray. Clearly this is all part of a plan to replace our nuclear weapons with a solar powered alternative. Well that didn't work when Jimmy Carter tried it, and it won't work now!

I wonder if we can get people to start spreading that around the interwebs as a serious conspiracy theory? That'd be cool.

As soon as I heard that the president would be on MythBusters I knew we'd start seeing the Obama-haters making the usual idiotic comment about “more important things to do.” What some so-called patriots don't understand about the American system of government is that the president has two constitutional roles. He is the head of government and the head of state. In most of the world's nations these roles are separated. In the UK the head of government is the prime minister, the head of state is the monarch. In Germany the head of government is the chancellor, the head of state is the president. In Finland the head of government is prime minister, the head of state is the president. In America both jobs go to one person. As head of government he does important stuff like propose legislation, veto bills, run the executive branch, and command the armed forces. As head of state he is the embodiment of our national spirit. Like a walking, talking flag, he is the symbol of what we think of as American virtues. He hands out awards to writers and artists. He poses for pictures with Boy Scouts and astronauts. He calls the winner of the Superbowl and meets the World Series champions in the Rose Garden. And this president encourages math and science.

According to what I've read, the announcement occurred during the first ever meeting of a president with science fair winners. If that is so I am astounded. It seems the most reasonable thing in the world that the president would boost American science education in this way. If Mr. Obama is the first to do this then he deserves high praise for this wise and proper exercise of his office. And what better way to get lots of young people excited about science than to appear on the most popular of science popularizing TV shows, MythBusters?

Will a pro-science president encourage learning and lead to a generation of more educated Americans? It's plausible. And if things work out, we might even end up with a solar powered death ray.

Political What If . . .?

Marvel Comics used to publish an occasional comic book in which they posed “what if” question and told a story that was strictly outside of the “canon.” What if Spider-Man joined the Fantastic Four? What if Dr. Doom became a hero? What if Invisible Girl married the Sub-Mariner? (Ew, ick on that last one)

I like to play political what if. For example, the people of California are going to vote in a referendum next month in which they may decide to decriminalize and regulate marijuana use and growth. Far out, huh? Okay, just for fun, what if John McCain had won and he was our president now?

I'll just bet that he would have his Attorney General tell the Californians that it didn't matter what they wanted, the feds would continue to prosecute recreational and medical users. The 10th Amendment can be ignored by Presidents, the Commerce Clause allows Washington to override all state laws, and the will of the people be damned. The President would insist that the demon weed be destroyed wherever it is found to prevent the scourge of reefer madness.

Whew. Scary story. Fortunately, it is only a “what if.” Good thing we voted for change.

John

As just about everyone has pointed out by now, John should have been 70 today.

As the Blogoshere Turns

Another light week of monitoring the great blogophere brings us the Picture(s) O' the Week.  Love these takes on Starry Night from Popped Culture.  Go forth and be enlightened.

Glenn's Book of Quotes Number 24

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." -- H.P. Lovecraft

Fear of the unknown is primal. The unknown, after all, is where the monsters of our imagination live. Fear teaches us caution, which keeps us alive to cower another day, but, conversely, it is also fear that drives us forward, into the unknown. We are driven to explore, to find out what lives behind the mountains, what is inside the old house, the isolated town, the forbidden tome. We defeat the unknown, again and again, and keep fear at bay.

Of course, if you're writing weird fiction, you're going to want to fill that unknown with hideous, horrible, unspeakable creatures of eldritch power, unimaginable age, and a physical presence that calls reality itself into question. And maybe some tentacles.

I Have Great Taste In Music

You'll be singing it all day. Or not.