Recent reads
A couple of interesting blog posts from something calling itself the "SF Commonwealth Office in Taiwan". Official or not, they offer explanation for some of Smith's elliptic and eccentric (to western ears) writing style.
http://danjalin.blogspot.com/2007/11/rediscovery-of-cathay-chinese-elements.html
http://danjalin.blogspot.com/2007/11/rediscovery-of-cathay-chinese-elements_16.html
Monday, May 17, 2010
Recent reads
The World Inside, by Robert Silverberg. "Here begins a happy day in 2381." Silverberg's wryly imagined utopia/dystopia presents a staggeringly huge human population living in titanic, thousand-story "urbmons", or urban monoliths, that tower over a mostly depopulated countryside while their teeming inhabitants while away their "happy days" with carefully managed jobs, abundant entertainment, and above all, sex with whomever they desire on any given night. Sexual "availability" is a social obligation whenever propositioned by either sex. Procreation is regarded as literally sacred, and status is measured by how many "littles" mommo and daddo contribute to society, to be married off and join the happy everlasting open-marriage orgy as soon as they hit puberty at 12 or 13. Sex, drugs, food, safety, all are provided in a life carefully designed to be free of "frustration".
It's possible that that might be enough to satisfy much of the human race. Several times, Silverberg describes the windows of Urbmon 116 "deopaquing" in the morning light, and I don't remember a single character ever looking through them. But are "happy days", free of physical frustration of any kind, enough to keep the best and brightest individuals really, truly content? And if one is discontented with such a life, does it mean that he is an atavistic misfit, a throwback to undesirable anti-social habits of the past, or that there's something lacking about "a happy day in 2381"?
The book, published in 1971, is obviously an exercise in projecting the tendencies of population growth, urbanization, and the Sexual Revolution to their logical extreme, but there's more to it than that. Beyond the risque caricature of a mile-high commune full of swingers enacting the biggest imaginable production of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, there's a serious query about whether a managed, controlled, "inside" existence, with every biological urge satisfied without struggle or frustration, is a fit existence at all. A worthy counterpart to Brave New World, which it (of course) resembles in some ways.
The World Inside, by Robert Silverberg. "Here begins a happy day in 2381." Silverberg's wryly imagined utopia/dystopia presents a staggeringly huge human population living in titanic, thousand-story "urbmons", or urban monoliths, that tower over a mostly depopulated countryside while their teeming inhabitants while away their "happy days" with carefully managed jobs, abundant entertainment, and above all, sex with whomever they desire on any given night. Sexual "availability" is a social obligation whenever propositioned by either sex. Procreation is regarded as literally sacred, and status is measured by how many "littles" mommo and daddo contribute to society, to be married off and join the happy everlasting open-marriage orgy as soon as they hit puberty at 12 or 13. Sex, drugs, food, safety, all are provided in a life carefully designed to be free of "frustration".
It's possible that that might be enough to satisfy much of the human race. Several times, Silverberg describes the windows of Urbmon 116 "deopaquing" in the morning light, and I don't remember a single character ever looking through them. But are "happy days", free of physical frustration of any kind, enough to keep the best and brightest individuals really, truly content? And if one is discontented with such a life, does it mean that he is an atavistic misfit, a throwback to undesirable anti-social habits of the past, or that there's something lacking about "a happy day in 2381"?
The book, published in 1971, is obviously an exercise in projecting the tendencies of population growth, urbanization, and the Sexual Revolution to their logical extreme, but there's more to it than that. Beyond the risque caricature of a mile-high commune full of swingers enacting the biggest imaginable production of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, there's a serious query about whether a managed, controlled, "inside" existence, with every biological urge satisfied without struggle or frustration, is a fit existence at all. A worthy counterpart to Brave New World, which it (of course) resembles in some ways.
Monday, May 10, 2010
James Branch Cabell has a posse
So says Poictesme, the student literary magazine of Virginia Commonwealth University. This would make a great T-shirt logo. I'd wear it.
So says Poictesme, the student literary magazine of Virginia Commonwealth University. This would make a great T-shirt logo. I'd wear it.
Monday, April 19, 2010
The fall of Mordor?
No, it's just that pesky Icelandic volcano, courtesy of photographer Marco Fulle by way of NASA.
NASA's own satellite photographs here.
No, it's just that pesky Icelandic volcano, courtesy of photographer Marco Fulle by way of NASA.
NASA's own satellite photographs here.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
A queen's visitationUP 844, one of the two showpieces of the railroad's steam program, makes a brief service stop at Kingsville, Texas, en route to Harlingen on the Valley Eagle public relations tour.
Full picture sequence at my newly-minted Flickr page.
Addendum, 4/18/2010: Another railfan captured images and video of the 844's arrival. See if you can spot Your Humble Correspondent.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
GTT
On the one hand, my new home town seems to have more "gentlemen's clubs" per square mile than any place else I've ever lived. On the other hand, such establishments are considerably outnumbered by churches of various flavors. When I had occasion to wear a raincoat during a morning rain shower a couple of days ago, I found that some helpful soul had thoughtfully slipped a religious tract into one of the pockets. Presumably this was to make sure that I knew I was welcome in the Bible Belt.
The day of Uriah's arrival in Corpus Christi was magnificent in its beauty. It was March and early spring. The stage coach from Brownsville rolled to a stop in front of the St. James Hotel and a tired, worn young man dismounted stiffly, bade the driver a quick goodbye and commenced looking around in a place where he didn't know a soul....Your Humble Correspondent is now a denizen of the Texas "Guff" Coast. No doubt culture shock and climate shock will follow in short order.
-- from Uriah Lott, by J.L. Allhands, a biography of a 19th-century South Texas railroad builder.
On the one hand, my new home town seems to have more "gentlemen's clubs" per square mile than any place else I've ever lived. On the other hand, such establishments are considerably outnumbered by churches of various flavors. When I had occasion to wear a raincoat during a morning rain shower a couple of days ago, I found that some helpful soul had thoughtfully slipped a religious tract into one of the pockets. Presumably this was to make sure that I knew I was welcome in the Bible Belt.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Of Net Neutrality
For those who don't understand why "net neutrality" is a critical issue, this editorial [NYT] explains the issue, and why a recent episode involving Verizon is a warning bell in the night for anyone who wants our electronically-mediated society to remain free and democratic.
Unless, of course, you trust your local cable/internet/telecommunications monopoly to make all your political decisions for you.
For those who don't understand why "net neutrality" is a critical issue, this editorial [NYT] explains the issue, and why a recent episode involving Verizon is a warning bell in the night for anyone who wants our electronically-mediated society to remain free and democratic.
Unless, of course, you trust your local cable/internet/telecommunications monopoly to make all your political decisions for you.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Your tax dollars at work
Want to know where your tax dollars are going? Check out this 2005 "trophy video", from Aegis, a mercenary gang on the US payroll in Iraq. Fair warning: You'll see mercenaries, on your payroll and officially immune from all military and legal oversight, cruising along the highway casually machine-gunning cars and their occupants completely at random to the cheerful accompaniment of American rock music.
"Why do they hate us?" Oh, yes, I forgot. "Because they hate our freedoms," right?
It's almost as shocking that, despite following Iraq-related news fairly closely, I neverheard of this video until now. It appears that the Christian Science Monitor carried the story, but so far as I can tell it was the only US major media outlet to have considered video evidence of US mercenaries casually murdering Iraqi civilians at random to be newsworthy. A little digging in online databases reveals that UPI and the New York Times carried short squibs about it, but they were apparently inconspicuous enough that I didn't see them. (UPI NewsTrack (Nov 27, 2005); "Shots on Web Draw Inquiry." The New York Times (Dec 10, 2005): A10(L).)
But, hey, you're far more interested in some dimwitted, drug-addled Hollywood pop-tart's latest hair malfunction than in documentary proof that your nation is committing acts of random terrorism against civilians, aren't you? Ooh! Ooh! OJ Simpson!!! And.. and.. there's a cute woman missing somewhere! Look, we have her college yearbook photo! And a cute puppy-dog video! Look! Look!
You're a good American. You watch TV obediently. Are you doing your part in the everlasting, ever-expanding "War On Terra" by going shopping? And watching what you say?
Meanwhile, while the corporate media spew out a steady stream of distraction and disinformation, billions of your tax dollars are funding the development of murderous paramilitary mercenary gangs that answer to no one but their paycheck and blithely slaughter civilians whenever they feel like it. They're already been employed as substitutes for Iraq-assigned National Guardsmen in the aftermath of Katrina, and further deployments to the United States are planned. Meanwhile the Bush administration keeps the military and the National Guard, which are at least nominally sworn to respect the Constitution and the rule of law, tied up in a distant overseas quagmire. (As noted in the New York Times, Bush is demanding a larger 2008 budget for his ongoing adventure in Iraq than in any previous year. So much for any talk about troop withdrawals, as favored by the majority of the population in our purported democracy.)
Naomi Wolf has a theory about this. But of course it would an irresponsible conspiracy theorizing to propose that there could be any connection between these events. Nah, that sort of thing never happens. La la la.
UPDATE: a summary of the federal tax dollars shoveled out to Blackwater USA during the Bush Administration can be found here.
Want to know where your tax dollars are going? Check out this 2005 "trophy video", from Aegis, a mercenary gang on the US payroll in Iraq. Fair warning: You'll see mercenaries, on your payroll and officially immune from all military and legal oversight, cruising along the highway casually machine-gunning cars and their occupants completely at random to the cheerful accompaniment of American rock music.
"Why do they hate us?" Oh, yes, I forgot. "Because they hate our freedoms," right?
It's almost as shocking that, despite following Iraq-related news fairly closely, I neverheard of this video until now. It appears that the Christian Science Monitor carried the story, but so far as I can tell it was the only US major media outlet to have considered video evidence of US mercenaries casually murdering Iraqi civilians at random to be newsworthy. A little digging in online databases reveals that UPI and the New York Times carried short squibs about it, but they were apparently inconspicuous enough that I didn't see them. (UPI NewsTrack (Nov 27, 2005); "Shots on Web Draw Inquiry." The New York Times (Dec 10, 2005): A10(L).)
But, hey, you're far more interested in some dimwitted, drug-addled Hollywood pop-tart's latest hair malfunction than in documentary proof that your nation is committing acts of random terrorism against civilians, aren't you? Ooh! Ooh! OJ Simpson!!! And.. and.. there's a cute woman missing somewhere! Look, we have her college yearbook photo! And a cute puppy-dog video! Look! Look!
You're a good American. You watch TV obediently. Are you doing your part in the everlasting, ever-expanding "War On Terra" by going shopping? And watching what you say?
Meanwhile, while the corporate media spew out a steady stream of distraction and disinformation, billions of your tax dollars are funding the development of murderous paramilitary mercenary gangs that answer to no one but their paycheck and blithely slaughter civilians whenever they feel like it. They're already been employed as substitutes for Iraq-assigned National Guardsmen in the aftermath of Katrina, and further deployments to the United States are planned. Meanwhile the Bush administration keeps the military and the National Guard, which are at least nominally sworn to respect the Constitution and the rule of law, tied up in a distant overseas quagmire. (As noted in the New York Times, Bush is demanding a larger 2008 budget for his ongoing adventure in Iraq than in any previous year. So much for any talk about troop withdrawals, as favored by the majority of the population in our purported democracy.)
Naomi Wolf has a theory about this. But of course it would an irresponsible conspiracy theorizing to propose that there could be any connection between these events. Nah, that sort of thing never happens. La la la.
UPDATE: a summary of the federal tax dollars shoveled out to Blackwater USA during the Bush Administration can be found here.
Monday, September 24, 2007
God Hates the World (He Hates You!)
A musical message from Fred Phelps' congregation, via YouTube.
This would be simply stupid and comical if it weren't recognizably just an amplified form of the literal worship of hatred and sadism that has hijacked segments of most major religions. As Harold Bloom memorably put it in The American Religion, reading the words of certain fundamentalist religions makes you realize that their authors and adherents should never be left unattended with small children or helpless animals.
For a corrective, one might consider actually reading the Bible, rather than just waving it about like a mute leather-bound idol (to steal another memorable image from Bloom).
A musical message from Fred Phelps' congregation, via YouTube.
This would be simply stupid and comical if it weren't recognizably just an amplified form of the literal worship of hatred and sadism that has hijacked segments of most major religions. As Harold Bloom memorably put it in The American Religion, reading the words of certain fundamentalist religions makes you realize that their authors and adherents should never be left unattended with small children or helpless animals.
For a corrective, one might consider actually reading the Bible, rather than just waving it about like a mute leather-bound idol (to steal another memorable image from Bloom).
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