"May have been the losing side...still not convinced it was the wrong one."
--Malcolm Reynolds, five hundred years from now
Wednesday, September 20, 2017
Tuesday, September 19, 2017
Today's Text
A reading, suitably interpreted for the day:
Aye th' Lord be my Cap’n, I’ve all that I need.
He puts a wind abaft th' beam; he sets a course f’r smooth waters; he sets me heart at ease. Sure an’ once ‘tis all done we do give him honor for it.
Aye th' Lord be my Cap’n, I’ve all that I need.
He puts a wind abaft th' beam; he sets a course f’r smooth waters; he sets me heart at ease. Sure an’ once ‘tis all done we do give him honor for it.
Even though I’ll sail in
th’ roughest seas, I be fearin’ no lee shore, f’r his hand on th’ wheel
is sure, an’ ne’er do we miss stays.
Never in life does he stop our grog f’r nothing, an' sees he we’ve all et well afore there’s a row; we’ve prize money an’ booty t’ spare.
Surely ‘tis blessing an’ favor all me days, an’ I shall sail in his crew ‘til th’ waves close over me head an' beyond.
Reader:
Th' word o' the Cap'n f'r th' people o' th' Cap'n;
All:
Arrr!
Never in life does he stop our grog f’r nothing, an' sees he we’ve all et well afore there’s a row; we’ve prize money an’ booty t’ spare.
Surely ‘tis blessing an’ favor all me days, an’ I shall sail in his crew ‘til th’ waves close over me head an' beyond.
Reader:
Th' word o' the Cap'n f'r th' people o' th' Cap'n;
All:
Arrr!
Monday, September 18, 2017
Empty Screens
This guy is smack on the money about how hard it is to watch an older movie on Netflix's streaming service.
Zach Schonfeld writing at Newsweek points out the very limited selection the streaming service has when it comes to movies made before 1970. I switched when the gym where I used to live got wi-fi and it was easier to stream something onto my tablet on the treadmill. But I'm thinking about switching back or maybe trading out for one of the other services Schonfeld mentions. And for that matter, everything he says about classic older movies goes and maybe even double for international movies. It's not hard to exhaust the catalogue in your fave genre if you even just want to catch two or three a week.
Netflix has some of the same misconceptions that a lot of modern culture seems to when it comes to these classics. Most of today's great directors started out on a diet of those iconic movies and it inspired their own creative visions. As bad as the screen scene is today, I shudder to think of what it might be like if future filmmakers get moved to study the craft based on a menu of Will Farrell, Judd Apatow and David Gordon Green.
Zach Schonfeld writing at Newsweek points out the very limited selection the streaming service has when it comes to movies made before 1970. I switched when the gym where I used to live got wi-fi and it was easier to stream something onto my tablet on the treadmill. But I'm thinking about switching back or maybe trading out for one of the other services Schonfeld mentions. And for that matter, everything he says about classic older movies goes and maybe even double for international movies. It's not hard to exhaust the catalogue in your fave genre if you even just want to catch two or three a week.
Netflix has some of the same misconceptions that a lot of modern culture seems to when it comes to these classics. Most of today's great directors started out on a diet of those iconic movies and it inspired their own creative visions. As bad as the screen scene is today, I shudder to think of what it might be like if future filmmakers get moved to study the craft based on a menu of Will Farrell, Judd Apatow and David Gordon Green.
Sunday, September 17, 2017
A Strong Constitution
On this day in 1787, 39 men signed a document outlining the new method by which the United States would govern itself. The initial Articles of Confederation had proved unworkable, and delegates had been meeting to hash out a new proposal. Sept. 17 was their final meeting, at which they signed the document in order for it to be sent out to states to be ratified.
So today we celebrate Constitution Day, with a little bit of melancholy at the realization that most of the political figures who take an oath to uphold and defend said Constitution see it mostly as a tool to be used rather than rules and limits to be followed. But this was probably bound to happen; the Constitution may be great but it's not magic or anything. And it would probably take a supernatural force to bring their attention to what that document says they should and should not do.
So today we celebrate Constitution Day, with a little bit of melancholy at the realization that most of the political figures who take an oath to uphold and defend said Constitution see it mostly as a tool to be used rather than rules and limits to be followed. But this was probably bound to happen; the Constitution may be great but it's not magic or anything. And it would probably take a supernatural force to bring their attention to what that document says they should and should not do.
Saturday, September 16, 2017
Test Pattern
The worn-out Friar got his tartan on at the Oklahoma Scotfest in Tulsa and listened to some great music, so he will return tomorrow.
Friday, September 15, 2017
...And I Feel Fine
The end of the world -- and its aftermath -- is a fertile field for growing stories. Whether it ends via natural disaster or human-caused calamity, the tales of those who survive feature challenges, heroism, ingenuity as well as the darker impulses spurred by the will to survive at the expense of others. Here are three visions of How It All Ends and What Comes After.
Sci-fi authors Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle made a big splash with their 1974 alien first-contact novel The Mote in God's Eye. The collaboration was enjoyable enough that they turned their hands to a disaster novel in between their respective solo work. The result, 1977's Lucifer's Hammer, is not really a science fiction novel even though that's where you're likely to find it shelved. Instead we watch several people in the months preceding a comet smashing into the Earth, what happens to them and others on that day, and their struggle to survive and rebuild their society in the months afterwards.
Both authors have the science backgrounds to flesh out the technical aspects of smashing the Earth with a giant comet, and they set most of their novel in and around Southern California, an area they lived in and knew. It may seem as though the first section of the novel, setting up the characters and their own specific situations, drags a little, but Niven and Pournelle are taking pains to show what kind of life the comet, nicknamed "The Hammer," will destroy. The section outlining how each of our main characters either does or doesn't escape the effects of the comet strike is harrowing and realistic.
The post-strike section, centering on the battle between a roving anti-technological cannibal army and an enclave working to survive and rebuild, feels a little less focused, but that may stem from the strength of the section on the day of the impact. Niven and Pournelle comment on what they believe are the keys to humanity's survival by showing which kinds of responses to disaster succeed and which fail. Those choices are not entirely organic, and could use some more supporting evidence to make them seem less arbitrary. The characterizations are largely solid, although only two of the female leads are very well drawn. Hammer could probably benefit from some tightening and maybe cast slimming but it's still a great end-of-the-world yarn that is less outdated than its 40-year-old pedigree might suggest.
Walter M. Miller spent most of his active writing career working in short stories. The only novel he published during his lifetime was the 1960 post-apocalyptic triptych A Canticle for Leibowitz, about life at different periods following a nuclear World War III.
Canticle's action begins several hundred years after the war, in a monastery in the Desert Southwest. Civilization has only begun to recover, as in the aftermath of the war technology and advanced knowledge were blamed, rooted out and destroyed wherever they could be found. The monastery is the home of the "Albertian Order of Leibowitz," monks who carry on the work of Isaac Liebowitz, a Jewish engineer who spent the tumultuous postwar years collecting, hiding and preserving books and knowledge. The first section concerns the canonization of the Blessed Leibowitz as St. Leibowitz. In the second, set 600 years after the first, secular leaders want to try to control the knowledge contained at the abbey and political struggles with the church lead to schism. The third section, set 600 years later, sees humanity with advanced technology and colonies in other solar systems. The Order now works to preserve all knowledge, particularly important as two major powers seem set on again fighting each other with nuclear weapons.
The action isn't the focal point of Canticle, as Miller uses his characters and narrative to explore topics like the role of religious faith as a transmitter of knowledge and whether secular and ecclesiastical power structures can really co-exist. Starting with the wry irony of the title -- an order of Roman Catholic monks named for a Jewish electrical engineer -- Miller aims to tell the truth as he sees it but to do so following Emily Dickenson's admonition to tell it slant. The post-apocalyptic world of Canticle serves mostly as a way for Miller to skew things enough to bring that slant to bear and make readers think in order to uncover the ideas at the core of his work.
The post-apocalyptic setting of Robert Adams multi-volume Horseclans series is also important mainly as a backdrop, but in a much different way. The plains and eastern U.S. after a devastating nuclear war functions like Robert E. Howard's Hyborean Age -- as a backdrop for some down-and-dirty sword-slinging, hacking and slashing action.
In the series' first novel, 1975's The Coming of the Horseclans, we meet Milo Morai, a man who has lived for centuries, saw the nuclear holocaust of 1980 and helped its survivors develop a nomadic culture modeled on different plains Indian tribes. Milo is one of the Undying, a group of immortals who can be killed only by suffocation, decapitation or drowning. He had sought others of his kind but not found them, so when the novel begins he is returning to the Horseclan people he founded. They have flourished, communicating telepathically with their mounts and with genetically engineered saber-toothed cats developed before the war. The bulk of the novel recounts how the Horseclans invade the decadent kingdom of the Ehlens (Hellenes), Kenooryos Ehlas. These Greek-speaking people had invaded the U.S. after the war and established themselves on the Eastern seaboard.
Throughout the novel -- and the whole series -- Adams stops now and again to lecture about politics, religion and the corrupting effects of civilization. These exposition asides frequently stall the narrative and have the additional effect of making the author appear like a jerk if you happen to hold one of those opinions on the downside of his literary nose.
Features such as that lessen the fun of what should be a big ol' sword-and-sorcery romp across the remnants of the old world, and Adams is simply not enough of a stylist like Howard and other earlier writers to overlook the digressions. The tale-spinner's inability to know when to shut up and spin leaves Coming and the rest of the Horseclans series at a solid C+ instead of the B or B+ its elements give it the potential to be.
Both authors have the science backgrounds to flesh out the technical aspects of smashing the Earth with a giant comet, and they set most of their novel in and around Southern California, an area they lived in and knew. It may seem as though the first section of the novel, setting up the characters and their own specific situations, drags a little, but Niven and Pournelle are taking pains to show what kind of life the comet, nicknamed "The Hammer," will destroy. The section outlining how each of our main characters either does or doesn't escape the effects of the comet strike is harrowing and realistic.
The post-strike section, centering on the battle between a roving anti-technological cannibal army and an enclave working to survive and rebuild, feels a little less focused, but that may stem from the strength of the section on the day of the impact. Niven and Pournelle comment on what they believe are the keys to humanity's survival by showing which kinds of responses to disaster succeed and which fail. Those choices are not entirely organic, and could use some more supporting evidence to make them seem less arbitrary. The characterizations are largely solid, although only two of the female leads are very well drawn. Hammer could probably benefit from some tightening and maybe cast slimming but it's still a great end-of-the-world yarn that is less outdated than its 40-year-old pedigree might suggest.
-----
Canticle's action begins several hundred years after the war, in a monastery in the Desert Southwest. Civilization has only begun to recover, as in the aftermath of the war technology and advanced knowledge were blamed, rooted out and destroyed wherever they could be found. The monastery is the home of the "Albertian Order of Leibowitz," monks who carry on the work of Isaac Liebowitz, a Jewish engineer who spent the tumultuous postwar years collecting, hiding and preserving books and knowledge. The first section concerns the canonization of the Blessed Leibowitz as St. Leibowitz. In the second, set 600 years after the first, secular leaders want to try to control the knowledge contained at the abbey and political struggles with the church lead to schism. The third section, set 600 years later, sees humanity with advanced technology and colonies in other solar systems. The Order now works to preserve all knowledge, particularly important as two major powers seem set on again fighting each other with nuclear weapons.
The action isn't the focal point of Canticle, as Miller uses his characters and narrative to explore topics like the role of religious faith as a transmitter of knowledge and whether secular and ecclesiastical power structures can really co-exist. Starting with the wry irony of the title -- an order of Roman Catholic monks named for a Jewish electrical engineer -- Miller aims to tell the truth as he sees it but to do so following Emily Dickenson's admonition to tell it slant. The post-apocalyptic world of Canticle serves mostly as a way for Miller to skew things enough to bring that slant to bear and make readers think in order to uncover the ideas at the core of his work.
-----
In the series' first novel, 1975's The Coming of the Horseclans, we meet Milo Morai, a man who has lived for centuries, saw the nuclear holocaust of 1980 and helped its survivors develop a nomadic culture modeled on different plains Indian tribes. Milo is one of the Undying, a group of immortals who can be killed only by suffocation, decapitation or drowning. He had sought others of his kind but not found them, so when the novel begins he is returning to the Horseclan people he founded. They have flourished, communicating telepathically with their mounts and with genetically engineered saber-toothed cats developed before the war. The bulk of the novel recounts how the Horseclans invade the decadent kingdom of the Ehlens (Hellenes), Kenooryos Ehlas. These Greek-speaking people had invaded the U.S. after the war and established themselves on the Eastern seaboard.
Throughout the novel -- and the whole series -- Adams stops now and again to lecture about politics, religion and the corrupting effects of civilization. These exposition asides frequently stall the narrative and have the additional effect of making the author appear like a jerk if you happen to hold one of those opinions on the downside of his literary nose.
Features such as that lessen the fun of what should be a big ol' sword-and-sorcery romp across the remnants of the old world, and Adams is simply not enough of a stylist like Howard and other earlier writers to overlook the digressions. The tale-spinner's inability to know when to shut up and spin leaves Coming and the rest of the Horseclans series at a solid C+ instead of the B or B+ its elements give it the potential to be.
Arrivederci, Cassini
NASA sent its Cassini spaceship into the Saturn atmosphere early this morning, insuring its radioactive fuel and any possible Earth microbes it carried could never accidentally contaminate a world where life might develop. Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus offer that possibility given their interior oceans, and the Cassini team decided to be certain no unplanned rendezvous between them developed.
The story at the Los Angeles Times recounts some of the highlights of the probe's 13-year exploration of Saturn and its moons, including the Huygens lander that sent back pictures of Titan's surface in 2005 (Huygens was designed to prevent contamination possibilities, making it safe to land).
It also points out how close the mission came to being scrubbed by budget cuts, and how those same kinds of cuts limited the instruments that the ship carried. Maybe the upcoming New Frontiers project and tier of missions should take a hint from NASCAR and decide to sell a little advertising -- space nut Jeff Bezos would probably cough up at least seven figures to have the Amazon logo on the side of a satellite headed to Titan.
The story at the Los Angeles Times recounts some of the highlights of the probe's 13-year exploration of Saturn and its moons, including the Huygens lander that sent back pictures of Titan's surface in 2005 (Huygens was designed to prevent contamination possibilities, making it safe to land).
It also points out how close the mission came to being scrubbed by budget cuts, and how those same kinds of cuts limited the instruments that the ship carried. Maybe the upcoming New Frontiers project and tier of missions should take a hint from NASCAR and decide to sell a little advertising -- space nut Jeff Bezos would probably cough up at least seven figures to have the Amazon logo on the side of a satellite headed to Titan.
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