Fire and Fury

Posted on September 16, 2018 by smellincoffee

Fire and Fury
© 2018 Michael Wolff
336 pages

“You look at the operation of this White House, and you have to say…’Let’s hope to God we don’t have a crisis.” – Bob Woodward, CBS Sunday Morning interview

Even its fans must admit that the present administration is the most unstable in American history, with an incredible amount of staff turnover in the first year. The election results themselves were clouded in intrigue, involving multiple intelligence agencies, and just recently an op-ed contributor of the New York Times claimed to be part of a resistance group within the administration itself, actively interfering and manipulating Trump’s actions as president to minimize his disruptive and unpredictable behavior. When we are presented with supporting for either an unelected shadow-cabal or a temperamental and reckless executive , all Americans should be gravely worried.   Michael Wolff’s tabloid-esque Fire and Fury argues that the present administration’s instabilities were baked in, that Trump and his allies entered governance not seriously expecting to win, and were wholly unprepared for the responsibility once it was theirs.

Trump’s team was not a ‘team of rivals’, but a soft detente between bitter factions who found Trump’s position a useful tool.  Trump actively encouraged rivalry between his subordinates to prevent any one from assuming too much importance and overshadowing him, and the man himself — in Wolff’s portrayal,  one shared by virtually everyone except for his admirers — is…”anti-professional”, to put it mildly. Wolff claims that Trump is totally disinterested in the materials of administration — reading, reviewing,  listening — and mostly spends his days talking and then getting excited over various bugs lobbyists had put in his ear.  While there are people within the office with coherent agenda,   said agendas often conflict.  One faction might convince Trump to back more work visas for immigrants which his business friends need, while at the same time the populist faction reminds him that he ran on immigration being a problem.  Although Fire and Fury cannot be taken seriously as an expose of the administration (its style, lack of citations, etc),   two years of watching Trump’s public behavior makes the general premise believable.  However one may wish to think that the popular portrayal of the president as temperamental, aggressive, etc, is a multimedia conspiracy,  his own output betrays him.   As Hurricane Florence drew near the Carolina coast this past Friday morning, Trump was seemingly more interested in arguing over the death toll from last year’s devastation, defending himself over twitter.   Even if the estimate of three thousand deaths was inaccurate, the eve of another disaster isn’t the time to argue it.  At such an hour one would hope for a projection of strength and competence from the nation’s chief executive, not playground petulance.

While I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this, it may be helpful to those who find the Trump administration inexplicable, in explaining some of the causes of its internal chaos.  Bob Woodward’s Fear is presumably a more considered review of the same,  and I hope to evaluate it soon.

Posted in Politics and Civic Interest, Reviews | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Fly Girls

Posted on September 11, 2018 by smellincoffee

Fly Girls: How Five Daring Women Defied the Odds and Made Aviation History
© 2018 Keith O’Brien
352 pages

“Women must try to do things as men have tried. Where they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.” – Amelia Earhart, 1937

The subtitle is a bit of an oversell, but Fly Girls  honors five pioneers of aviation,  most of whom died while trying to push the envelope.  Amelia Earhart is the only one of their number who has any name recognition today,  disappearing as she did while trying to accomplish the first trans-pacific solo flight.  She’d previously been the first to fly solo from the United States to Hawaii, as well as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.  Judging by her accomplishments, Earhart is in a class by herself here, but I’m tempted to agree with one of the other featured fliers here, Louise Thaden, who responded to someone asking her how she won the 5th National Air Race by stating it was 25% skill, 25% the airplane, and 50% luck.      Early aviation was a lethal enthusiasm, practiced with evolving tools and planes composed with canvas wings.  When things went wrong — and flying planes for hours at a time meant something was bound to —  survival came down to circumstance. Sometimes a catastrophe could be survived, but sometimes there was nothing but to accept rapidly-hurtling fate. No one in this book is ever far from death; Earhart, for instance,  was nearly sucked out of her aircraft during the same race that Thaden won. 

Earhart’s triumphs could have belonged to other women, like Ruth Nichols:  she refused to give up trying to cross the Atlantic, even after she crashed two planes within a span of four months.  A broken back aside, she was determined to try it again — only to have Earhart beat her to it.  Another accomplishment of the women here — who were friends and competitors simultaneously — was organizing the International Organization of Women Pilots, more popularly known as “The Ninety-Nines” because 99 women attended the first full meeting thereof.  The Ninety-Nines organized in response to the discriminatory policies adopted by air race organizations to keep women out of the racing. The exact kinds of accidents that downed fantastically gifted fliers like Florence Klingensmith occurred to male fliers, but no one demeaned the talent of the male deceased or questioned their mental state at the time. Flying was inherently dangerous, but women, the Ninety-Nines protested, should have the right to accept that danger, and to try for the glory that would be theirs if they were successful.

As much as I enjoyed this look into aviation history,  it does not live up to its title. The subjects were all outstandingly courageous and talented, moreso for continuing to seek their passion despite little support from outside, save for businessmen interested in gaining advertising value by sponsoring the odd attempt to across the Atlantic or set a new endurance record. But if this is a book about early women aviation pioneers, why is someone like Bessie Coleman completely absent, not so much as mentioned?  Unable to take pilot training in the US because of her race, Coleman learned French and traveled to Paris to learn to fly, an incredible demonstration of doggedness that surely belongs here. I think Fly Girls is  therefore more accurately regarded as a book about the women who formed the Ninety-Nines, culminating in their successful re-entry into national air races and Thaden’s victory.   They were an impressive group of women who refused to quit, and I’m glad their story is being shared decades after the last of them has left us.

Earhart and the Autogyro prototype, which she used to demonstrate across the country before her Atlantic solo flight. I would have loved to learn more about this!

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Antiquity

Posted on September 10, 2018 by smellincoffee

Antiquity: The Civilization of the Ancient World
© 2003 Norman F. Cantor
256 pages

Perhaps western history is all Greek to you. In that case, Norman Cantor’s Antiquity may shed a little light on the subject. It is a brief work, scarcely over 200 pages,  and in it Cantor reviews the primary roots of Western civilization (Greece, Rome, and Judaism), as well as more material considerations like the role of cities.  Civilizations of the middle east also appear through the Jewish connection.  This book has a curious organization, and one of its chapters eschews narrative altogether: instead, Cantor presents the debates within early Christian thought as a lively conversation involving St. Augustine and a few others.   Although the book is intentionally pitched as a survey for the historically illiterate, Cantor doesn’t shy away from probing a little more deeply when he can —  exploring the meaning behind classic architecture, for instance, the common emphasis on rationality and restraint that linked Greek aesthetics and philosophy. (Of course, they can’t help but be linked, considering that aesthetics was considered one of the branches of philosophy, along with ethics and metaphysics.)   Cantor holds the Roman empire in especially high regard, declaring that it was the most harmonious and stable multiethnic society in history. 

Although I enjoyed this quick romp through the ancient and classical world well enough ,  it has its quirks — the unusual approach to reviewing Christian thought, for instance, and the fact that Cantor believes that imperialism and  plutocracy  were passed down not by human nature, but by the classic heritage.   I’m preee-eety sure they had war and imperialism in China, Africa, and…oh, everywhere else.  Those who have a serious interest in repairing historical blind spots can probably find better works.

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Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

Posted on September 9, 2018 by smellincoffee

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory
© 2014 Caitlin Doughty
272 pages

Memento mori — remember your death. Young Caitlin Doughty couldn’t help but remember it; as a child she was traumatized by the memory of another girl her age plummeting to her death inside a shopping mall.  The event led to episodes of compulsive behavior as Caitlin did whatever she could to keep the Boatman at bay, whether that be avoiding stepping on newly-fallen leaves or drooling into her shirt.  A slightly older Caitlin, one facing adulthood, realized she had to face Death, too: so she started working at a crematory.   There, faced on a daily basis with faces of decay,  she began to realize that her unhealthy obsession with avoiding Death —  avoiding  facing the reality of it — was endemic to modern society,  and began to chart a new course for herself, as someone who sought to help people deal with death in a more healthy manner.

Corpses aside, this is a funny book — but one with a serious heart.  Caitlin uses her experiences at her first funeral home — with a good bit of physical and morbid comedy as she learns the ropes —  to review how  death and funerary practices have changed in the United States,  and to explain what actually goes in during cremation or embalming.   For most of history, death was an everyday reality, inescapable. Disease and famine  were never far away, and when deaths happened they were handled within the home; family members saw to the final care of their loved ones’ remains.   Death is  now shoved away into the recesses of our minds, hidden until a serious sickness or a sudden accident forces it into the light. Doughty argues that this is psychologically and socially unhealthy: not only is contemporary society obsessed with youth, but it fights death to the point of making itself miserable. Although we continue to defer death,  Our triumphs in modern medicine have produced a bitter victory: as societies become more proportionally populated by aging citizens,   we’re left with a question:  where are the adults who will be taking care of these rising aged?  The numbers of geriatric physicians are falling, even as the need increases.   On a more practical level,  people’s refusal to consider death means that when it happens,   few families are prepared for it, financially or otherwise.. Few can distinguish between what is legally necessary and what the funeral home recommends, and are cajoled into accepting burdensome fiscal obligations.

When Caitlin began working in a crematory,  it was a way to make money and face her fears. What it became, however, was a vocation, as she realized she wanted to help people manage death better.  Not only did she want to educate people about what happened to their bodies after death, but she wants to open eyes to the possibility of making death a meaningful part of life again.  It isn’t necessary to eject people from their loved one’s homes as soon as they perish, or pickle them and entomb them in vaults that seal them off from decay,   the author argues. The family can and should be part of the burial process; Caitlin’s own funeral home now offers families the option to wash and dress the deceased themselves, as well as push the button that begins the cremation, which serves as a powerful moment of closure. She also explores the concept of green burials, which return allow human remains to be reclaimed by nature quickly and purposely.

I cannot recall how I stumbled on Doughty’s YouTube channel (“Ask a Mortician“).   which made me aware of this book, but I’m glad I did. Although it’s often funny, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes is a work of tender reflection on the most haunting aspect of the human experience.  It’s definitely one worth reading.

Related:
Love and Death: My Journey Through the Valley of the Shadow, F. Forrester Church
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Mary Roach

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Funkytown

Posted on September 7, 2018 by smellincoffee

Well, dear readers, I appear to be in a reading funk. I’e read very little since early August, with only two serious reads within the last month and only a few novels besides that.   I don’t want for books to read– I have four I’m pecking at — but nothing I try is sticking.    Homo Deus has, so far, been more about animal rights than transhumanism; Our Only World by Wendell Berry is rather like everything else I’ve read by Berry;  and Fly Girls is interesting enough– just not, as yet, compelling.  I’ve also been reading Where Wizards Stay Up Late, a history of the internet. I’m hoping to find the exit sign from Funkytown soon, however, as I’ve just purchased a few promising titles from Bookbubs. I was also tempted by two Trek titles, but my inner miser kicked me and pointed to the existing Trek titles I’ve yet to read.

What do you do to break out of a funk? 

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Centauri Dawn

Posted on September 4, 2018 by smellincoffee

Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri: Centauri Dawn
© 2000 Michael Ely
292 pages

Earth was a sad memory for the crew and colonists of the good ship Unity, who fled its radioactive remains in hopes of building a new society near a not-too distant star, Alpha Centauri.  But an unexpected assassination brings the fears of the past alive once again, and when Unity arrives at her target, she no longer lives up to the name. Instead, the people of the dying colony-ship  cling to like-minded ideologues, and the sorry spectacle of human history begans to unfold again, this time on a planet covered in mysterious xenofungus and populated only by mind-destroying worms.

Such is the premise of Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, a turn-based strategy game that compels a player to pick a faction and see them through to victory. The sequel to  Civilization II, SMAC remains one of the best-critically received PC games of all time — holding, for instance, the PC Gamer record with a score of 98%.  It was a logical successor to Civ 2, which allowed players a ‘peaceful’ victory if they built a colonyship and sent it to Alpha Centauri.   While the traditional Civ games have players choose a civ to play as — the Persians, the Japanese,  the Aztecs, etc —   SMAC’s factions were sorted among ideological lines, championing religion, science, capitalism,  miltarism, etc.   Unusually for an open-ended “4X” game like this (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate), SMAC  had a plot which would develop as the player played, learning about the planet “Chiron” — specifically, learning that the planet is alive, with a collective consciousness,  and  that the constant attacks on human outpost by mindworms were a response to the constant terraforming.  The story of Alpha Centauri — the human in-fighting amid the alien world’s exploration — is presumably the setup for the trilogy of novels written about them. 

This first novel, Centauri Dawn, only covers the ship breaking up into factions, and the first decade of life on the planet as a few of the colony pods find one another and try to maintain some semblance of unity despite tensions over resources.  Not all of the factions feature here, as the first novel focuses on the conflict between the UN Peacekeepers — the alleged ‘government’ of all the settlements — and the Spartans, who are militarists.  The Gaians, who are…tech-hippies, feature, and  the capitalists and religious fundamentalists also make an appearance. Mysteriously absent is the Human Hive,   which  is a totalitarian society with obvious Chinese influences. (They’re supposedly based on the Chinese philosophy of Legalism.)   The Hive does appear in the second novel, however.

If you are interested in a storied playthrough of the game, I found a good one on the Let’s Play Archive. The player chose the Gaians, who are supposedly the easiest faction.  Also,  just for flavor, I’ve inserted the Spaceship victory cinematic from Civ 3 below, as well as the intro video for SMAC. Also,  in the last few years another SF 4X game called Beyond Earth was intended as a spiritual successor to SMAC. It wasn’t anywhere near as critically acclaimed, but it does have some interesting elements.  Here’s a review if you’re interested!

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Old Man’s War

Posted on September 2, 2018 by smellincoffee

Old Man’s War
© 2005 John Scalzi
320 pages

Boot camps on Earth may promise to make a new man out of you, but the intake camps of the Colonial Defense Forces do it for real. At the tender age of seventy-five, John Perry enlisted in the Colonial Defense Forces and disappeared from Earth, never to be seen again.  No knew what happened to CDF enlistees, but on Earth the rumors were pervasive: they can make you young again. Why else would they only recruit 75-year olds?   Perry thought it was a gamble worth taking, and even when he woke up in a new body — a green one — it was still better than being hunched over and arthritic. But then the mysteries around the CDF fell away to reveal ugly truths: the universe brims over with intelligent and aggressive species, and all of them are fighting tooth and nail to expand faster than the next guy. Ordinary soldiers stood no chance against the universe of horrors, but auguments — with increased strength, stamina,  and abilities — could at least hold their own, especially when coupled with the experience of mature humans transferred into them. Even so,  75% of augments would not survive their term of enlistment.

 Old Man’s War is first in a trilogy,  and is somewhat reminiscent of Starship Troopers given the supersoldiers fighting against a galaxy of monsters. The alien creatures vary widely, from slime molds  to biological shredders. The Hork-Bajir would not be out of place here.  Part of the reason so many CDF troops die is that they’re in constant use: if humans aren’t defending colonies, they’re attacking alien colonies or clearing out native species to make room for human colonists.  Can’t we all get along?  …no. The last person to ask that question in the novel got turned into a puddle of goo in an alien church, so…no. It’s kill or be killed. The only diplomacy in the novel occurs after a ritual of individual combat designed to see how many questions the winners earn the right to ask.

This is the first Scalzi novel I’ve not read which is intended to be more serious than funny, and while there are light moments, Old Man’s War is chiefly a SF combat thriller.  There are creepier elements to explore, too, like the “Ghost Brigades”.   I could see reading more of this series, but I was mostly interested in the idea of transferring consciousness from an aged body into a lab-grown young one. Unfortunately, a lot of the tech the CDF uses is above the heads of our newly-arrived narrator, so we don’t really get an inkling as to how it works. Because humans often steal technology from aliens, even the upper echelons of the CDF don’t know exactly how things work, and they’re not the only ones.  I might continue with this series if the kindle books go on sale, but I mostly read this for the basic ideas of consciousness-transferal. More monster-slaying doesn’t strike me as too exciting.

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Yesterday’s News: The Shangri-La

Posted on September 1, 2018 by smellincoffee
When the United States government formally announced that the Doolittle raid — a flight of B-17s over Tokyo in early 1942 — had been carried out, President Roosevelt informed a reporter that the bombers had been launched from a secret base in “Shangri-La”, an island from a novel popular at the time.   I was thus intrigued to see this ad while searching for obituaries in 1943, encouraging Americans to buy stamps to support the building of the  “mystery ship” Shangri-La. I assumed this was a codename,  but it proves to have been the actual name: a USS Shangri-La was laid down in January 1943, completed in early ’44, and put into service in the autumn of that year.   An Essex-class carrier, the ship participated in late-war bombing raids against the Japanese home islands, so this is a rare case of an advertisement getting fairly close to the mark.  According to Wikipedia, the ship served through Vietnam, specializing in anti-submarine warfare,  and was retired in 1974.   Although I’m familiar with war bond campaigns, this is the first I’ve encountered where bonds or stamps were linked to a specific project, in this case a bonafide ship. 

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The Believing Brain

Posted on August 31, 2018 by smellincoffee

The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies – How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them As Truths
© 2011 Michael Shermer
400 pages

The human brain is an incredible organ, capable of storing vast amounts of information and using that information creativity, to change the world and to fascinate itself.  It is also a belief-making engine. In The Believing Brain, psychologist and skeptic Michael Shermer examines the nature of belief and the biology which sustains it. He then applies lessons learned there to evaluate human beliefs in politics, religion,  and the paranormal.

Most readers will have heard the expression that there is a thin line between genius and insanity. The Believing Brain bears this out, because the same abilities of the brain that allow for creativity, insight, and wisdom can lead to conspiracies and schizophrenia.  Human intelligence is based on the ability of our brains to discern patterns:  to associate a noise or a smell in the wild with a looming predator, to interpret behavior as safe or hostile. Because the biological incentives for robust pattern-detection are great — literally life and death  — humans are extraordinarily good at it, to the point that we see things that aren’t there, like human faces in Mars or in whorls in wood.  The same pattern-making ability that allowed early farmers to plan their labors by the seasons also led them to believing the position of the sun in the sky at the time of their birth meant good or ill.

Another key concept of the early book is the pervasive tendency for humans to believe there’s a force behind the patterns — an agent.  Early on Shermer addressees dualism, which in this context refers to a divide between the mind and the body.   Shermer’s most recent publication, Heavens on Earth, rebukes (among other things) the transhumanist fantasy of downloading brains into computers and achieving life eternal.   The brain and our minds are inseparable, Shermer states; every aspect of our personalities has a physical cause within the cranium, and it’s a little disconcerting to realize at first.  Just as we think of a ghost in the machine — a discrete Mind controlling the body — we tend to look for a purpose behind the connections we see, inventing conspiracies . We all experience this — a stray thought that the universe is plotting against us when the traffic lights are all red during a trip made in haste.  Our brains continually invent stories to explain what happens; even if a person’s nervous system is manipulated by outside lab equipment,  prompting them to suddenly stand up,  the subject will instantly invent a reason why he stood up — “I wanted to get a Coke”.

Shermer has previously examined beliefs like alien abductions, conspiracies, etc. in detail, using books like Why People Believe Weird Things. Here he dissects them again in brief, but chiefly as as an extension of the aforementioned discussion on patterns and agency.  Shermer believes that alien abductions and conspiracies have erupted in part to fill the vacuum created by secularization.  Societies were once bound together by religions which gave the cosmos and the beings within it meaning; now, many people are led to recreate that sense of meaning  by attaching themselves to causes which are part of a grand narrative of the world.

Crucial to understanding belief — any belief — is that emotions precede reason.   Whatever our pretensions, human beings are not rational creatures who approach a subject, collect facts, and then determine whether this or that policy is effective, or this suspicion is valid.   Instead, we lean in toward ideas; we attach ourselves to things that sound good, and then support them with facts.  A disciplined mind can then correct itself  — but we’re inherently believers.  The more emotionally active our brain is at the time of encountering an idea, the less likely we are to make a rational decision.

There’s an enormous amount to process in a book like this, and it recommends itself to those with an interest in lucid thinking.

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Agent to the Stars

Posted on August 28, 2018 by smellincoffee

Agent to the Stars
© 1997, 2005 John Scalzi
286 pages

They’re heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere.  Extraterrestrials exist, and they’ve been watching our television.  The good news is they don’t hold it against us — though they don’t want to meet any of our politicians.  They’ve seen the debates.   Who are they? They are the Yherjak, an amiable race of aliens who have the misfortune of looking like giant mounds of snot. They smell like fish. And…they’re aware that this will cause a little image problem in a first contact situation.   Obviously, they need a good agent to finesse things — to maybe use Hollywood to introduce the planet the idea of repulsive-but-friendly aliens.   Such is the setup for Agent to the Stars, a wonderfully funny  light-SF tale that features sarcastic aliens,  talking dogs,  and a little Hollywood drama, including abducted paparazzi.

After reveling in the Star Trek spiff that was Redshirts,  and especially in the codas which so transformed a comic novel into something seriously touching, I looked forward to this on its premise alone. Scalzi doesn’t disappoint. This is not ‘serious’ science fiction, or anything close to it;  our aliens are smelly blobs of goo that have learned everything they know on Earth by watching TV, and their language is laced with culture references and sitcom quips.  Their interactions with humans —  main character Tom Stein, rising talent agent, is not the first — have helped them put things into perspective, and to realize that  people don’t spontaneously have conversations in which they recommend laxatives to one another while watching TV —  but  their fanboy passion for television makes them goofy fun to hang around.

This is not purely a comedic novel; as with Redshirts there are serious moments, developing late in the novel when one character is involved in a serious accident that, tragic as it is, presents an opportunity if the morality of it can be worked through.  Tangentially connected to the main story is Stein’s well-meaning attempt to help one of his starlets branch out by landing her a serious role as a Holocaust survivor who later becomes a civil rights activist in the US’s turbulent sixties.  The movie is a biopic about a real-world survivor-activist, and her efforts to help people see the essential humanity of one another, looking past differences in appearance and culture, obviously gives the aliens’ desire to contact humanity and be received in brotherhood a little more oomph.

That aside, the novel is consistently funny throughout, and I’m going to keep poking around for more by Scalzi.

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