Partial Perspective Vortex

Not too long ago I was playing around with the Google Sky Map app on my phone (a valid reason to get a smart phone in itself), looking at where the stars would be if I didn't live in light pollution land.  I noticed a little spot called "Hubble Ultra Deep Field."  I had heard about this.  It's a spot in space where scientists had aimed the big telescope and looked farther in space and time then anyone had ever looked before.  It got me thinking, and it got me looking around, and eventually I bumped into this video:



This is a couple of years old, so you've probably seen it already.  It's just that it is a little tiny bit mind blowing and at the moment it is as close as we're going to come to Douglas Adams's Total Perspective Vortex.  So, if you haven't seen it already, and you'd like a glimpse of just how tiny we are compared to the vastness of the cosmos, give it a click.

Nice Little Quote

Just a little clip from the book I'm reading:

Women fainted at the sight, so it was said, while strong men gasped; but then, women were forever fainting and strong men gasping in the records of that century.

From Pierre Berton's Niagra.

Glenn's Book of Quotes Number Twenty-Four

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. No put the foundations under them.” – Henry David Thoreau

Dream. Dream wild dreams. Then dare to do the work to follow those dreams to the wild places where they are true.

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.

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?

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?

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.

Mr. Monk and My Mental Vacation

I just took a little business trip. It involved four flights and lots of time sitting in airports, so I figured I'd need to bring an extra book. It needed to be small and I wanted something not too challenging. That would usually mean an old Star Trek novel, but this time I grabbed a Monk mystery.

Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse was kind of fun. It is the first in the series by Monk writer Lee Goldberg. The troubled detective and Natalie, his Dr. Watson, investigate the murder of a firefighter's dog. If you are familiar with the Monk TV series you can probably guess that Monk is, coincidentally, called in to investigate an unrelated murder that is, in fact, related. Then, through a series of remarkable observations, leaps in logic, and what seem to be lucky guesses, Monk solves the crime.

The Monk mysteries aren't the kind where you are intrigued by the puzzle. They are the kind where you enjoy seeing the engaging characters overcome a problem. And the characters are engaging, but only if you've seen the TV series and have a fondness for it. As a stand-alone novel this is pretty weak stuff. Not that Goldberg doesn't try. He works to flesh out the characters and does a nice job, but the fun of something like this is that you already know the characters.

A book like this doesn't really want a review. It is light, simple reading for people who enjoyed the series; pleasant, if you don't let yourself think too much about it. Good for planes, trains, and those days you want to give your brain a vacation.

Answer Fourteen – The Shipless Trek

An official Hoot to Jaquandor who correctly answered our last trivial question. Skilled craftsmen have carefully inscribed his name on our illustrious honor roll of Steely-Eyed Missile Men.

The only episode of Star Trek that did not show the interior of the Enterprise was, as Jaquandor told us, “All Our Yesterdays.” It began with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beaming into the library and meeting Mr. Atoz. It ended back in the library.  Scotty was only heard on the communicator and never seen.

This episode was also memorable for featuring Mariette Hartley as the scantily clad Zarabeth. Spock was quite taken with the temporally exiled beauty and they engaged in some highly illogical canoodling in the cave. According to the novel Yesterday's Son, this resulted in a Spock's son, Zar. The Trek Trinity met him by taking a little trip through their old friend, the Guardian of Forever.

One more fun fact about “All Our Yesterdays;” it was the third and final episode directed my Marvin Chomsky. Mr. Chomsky, who also directed “And the Children Shall Lead” and “Day of the Dove,” has a famous cousin -- a guy from MIT named Noam. Marvin has three Emmys. Noam, none.

Secret Knowledge About Books

Facts about books that they (you know, them) wouldn't tell you.



It's true, you know, about where blogs come from. But it isn't pretty to watch. No, not at all.

Via: PWxyz

GTA Amherst

Video games can't be art, huh?



XKCD just makes the world a better place.

What Should I Eat?

It's a serious question these days. I don't mean the simple “fries, rice, or mixed vegetable” sort of choice. I mean the more basic question of what should we eat to be healthy, happy people. That is, in essence, the whole point of eating.

It should be pretty simple, but we are confronted with a thousand choices at the local mega-mart. And while most of us eat the great American diet of mostly meat, a little veg, and lots of highly processed stuff with loads of simple carbohydrates, we all should know by now that it is not proving to be the healthiest way to live.

A few years ago I read Michael Pollan's excellent The Omnivore's Dilemma. It changed the way I think about food in America. I recently read and enjoyed his brief little manual, Food Rules.

Mr. Pollan says that when he was thinking about this subject he came up with a bit of advice that pretty much summed it all up. “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” This little manual is organized around the three parts of that sentence. Each section provides “rules,” pithy little thoughts to get us thinking about food and to help us remember some sound advice. Rule 1, “Eat food,” is, as the author says, “easier said than done.” Most of what passes for food in our supermarkets are products of food science. Highly processed chemical concoctions, that stuff in the jar, bag, or box is not really food but an “edible foodlike substance.” As Rule 19 puts it, “if it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don't” The second section, “Mostly Plants,” suggests what sorts of good food we should be eating. It mostly comes down to eating like an omnivore, choosing a wide range of good, wholesome food. The third part, “Not Too Much,” might just be the toughest. We Americans do love to super-size. We like to fill our plates (Rule 52: “Buy smaller plates and glasses”). We like to eat, as a recent fast-food chain ad suggested, until we feel full. And we eat when we are bored or upset. But when you consider what overeating is doing to us, you might agree that “food is a costly antidepressant.”

Not every rule in the book will work for everybody. That's okay. If it gets you thinking about food and making better decisions, that's all that matters. I found myself putting a bottle of goo back on the supermarket shelf because of this book. Who knows? This little volume might just make me healthier, happier, and may even keep me from eating myself to death. Not too bad for such a quick read.

Glenn's Book of Quotes Number Twenty-One

“It's a man's business to be what he is, and to be it in style.” – Lazarus Long

I guess I should point out that Lazarus Long is a fictional character. He is a long-lived creation of Robert A. Heinlein and was known for his aphorisms, among other things.

There's something about this quote that I find encouraging. Be you, with your own distinctive dash, with every step you take. That, in a nutshell, is your life's work. Go forth.

If That's Wonder Woman, Where's Her Star-Spangled A--?

Yeah, that's the new Wonder Woman. I don't have a whole lot to say about this because, like most red-blooded American geeks, I haven't read her comic in years.

DC is rebooting the character in an attempt to give her some more fans. While I'm getting a little tired of all these reboots, it is also pretty clear that something needed to be done. She hasn't really been all that interesting since the days when she was rescuing Steve Trevor, palling around with Etta Candy, and getting tied up with her own lasso way too often. So Jim Lee has given her a new costume and J. Michael Straczynski has re-written her whole life, origin to now. It might not be such a bad idea. I mean, peace ambassador for Themyscira is not the sort of mission to engage a readership. War against crime, upholding truth, justice, and the American way, that can get your blood pumping. Peace ambassador? Anyway, the whole point of a continuing character is to be an ongoing vehicle for stories, so if we get good stories out of this then it was a good idea.

As for the costume, I'm just not sure. The original look, iconic as it was, was a bit goofy. It's pretty hard to be taken seriously as an ambassador or as a crimefighter dressed in a strapless bathing suit and go-go boots. And DC gave Robin pants years ago, so why not Wonder Woman? But the new look doesn't have all that much pizazz. Perhaps she'll lose the jacket in time. If bare arms are good enough for Michelle Obama, they should be okay for the Amazon princess.

At least she's still got the tiara and bracelets. It's just not Wonder Woman without the tiara and bracelets.

It Really is a Dark and Stormy Night, Isn't It?

As Holmes, who had a nose for danger, quietly fingered the bloody knife and eyed the various body parts strewn along the dark, deserted highway, he placed his ear to the ground and, with his heart in his throat, silently mouthed to his companion, “Arm yourself, Watson, there is an evil hand afoot ahead."

And that's only a runner up!

This year's Bulwer-Lytton Award winners have been announced.