3 Novels

Heading into My First European Vacation, I finished 3 genre novels.

"Scratch Monkey", by Charles Stross. This was the 1st novel of most excellent sci-fi author Charles Stross. It was available for download I think 18 years ago (at his book signing in Lexington last year, Charlie said 17 years ago), and I got the key from him by email, but never read it. It is available now for free here. So I finally got around to reading it. Surprisingly, many of the concepts that he exploited later are present here. But, very uneven pacing, and somewhat confusing plotting, and a depressing ending. Still, if you're a fan, prolly worth a (free) read. 3 stars.

Next read "Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1-5)", by Hugh Howey. This got some press as being stories that were originally self-published as e-books, following which the author refused normal publishing channels after they became successful. It is a post-apocalypse dystopian world. The plotting and pacing are decent. No really new concepts of any type. 3 stars.

Finally, read, "Hide Me Among The Graves", Tim Powers. This is a straight-up sequel to his 1989 novel "The Stress of Her Regard", which featured Byron and Shelley fighting rock-based life-form vampires in Switzerland. The vampires are now in England tormenting later literary figures. I have always loved how Powers invents his own completely unique versions of magic, souls, vampires, the fisher king -- unique and quirky. For example in this one, there is the street sweeper who, if you offer him very odd payment terms, can sweep up your footsteps so that the vampires lose track of you.

Still tho, this seemed somehow to be pretty much by the numbers. At time the plot seems to be arbitrarily prolonged by dumbass actions of upper/middle class British twits. But, this won't stop me from reading Power's next, and next, and next books. 3 stars.

The Dumbass In Europe

Last August, our youngest daughter and her husband started 2 year contracts teaching 2nd and 3rd grade, respectively, at the American International School of Zagreb (Croatia). So we went to visit them. As their school is still in session, we figured we would just visit with them for a weekend, and spend a week before and after vacationing in Europe.

I had been to Europe 3 times before all on business: once for 3 days to Chamonix, France, at the base of Mont Blanc, for the users conference of one of our software distributors; once to London and Bristol, England -- my meetings in London were cancelled for 2 days, so I did get to do some sightseeing there; and once to Bristol. My wife had been to Europe -- Munich, Bavaria, and Venice -- for a week with some of her family ~25 years ago.

At the top of both my and my wife's bucket lists was: Paris. So on Saturday, May 18 at 3:30, we flew to Paris via Detroit, arriving at 8 am Sunday morning at Charles De Gaulle airport. We took a cab to our hotel (56 euros), the Hotel Eiffel Turenne. The room was tiny but the location was fabulous: on the Avenue de Tourville 1/2 block from the Ecole Militaire metro stop on the #8 metro line. That is also the southeast corner of the Champs du Mars -- two large blocks of former parade grounds, now park. At the center of the northwest boundary is the Eiffel Tower.

The nice lady at the hotel gave us a recommended walk: up the Champs du Mars to the Eiffel Tower; across the Seine to the Trocadero; then to the Arc de Triomphe; then down the Champs Elysses to Avenue de Winston Churchill; then between the Great and Small Palaces (museums) over the Alexander V bridge; then by Invalides (church) and back. It was a great walk, around 4.4 miles. The Arc de Triomphe is in the middle of a huge rotary that is called the Charles de Gaulle Etoile (star). 12 streets meet there, arranged very close to geometrically correct, with a 30 degree angle between. The Champs Elysses is amazing: 8 lanes of traffic with 20 yards of sidewalk on both sides. You wonder, where did all this space come from and you learn, in the 19th century they did indeed tear down large parts of the city to make way for these ultra-broad avenues. Also striking was the trees lining the Champs: 40-50 feet tall but squared on the sides and tops like hedges?!?!? There were also very pretty small public plantings. I remember one at Avenue de Franklin D. Roosevelt that had blue and purple wildflowers highlighted by white tulips.

We lunched at a place called Tribeca in the Rue Claire district, which was just a couple blocks north of our hotel. This was lots of street vendors selling all kinds of stuff. We had a list from a friend of our Brooklyn daughter who lives in Paris of restaurants to try, but we wound up mostly eating in cafes near the hotel or the place we were visiting. I had escargot twice -- excellent! -- lamb chops twice, shrimp twice, veal, mussels. Nothing very fancy at all, but all very edible.

At that point we'd had enough walking, so we hopped on a tour bus and rode around -- in the cold rain. It rained every day we were there, and temperatures were 45-55 degrees -- chilly! Being the dumbass I am, I went without a coat! So Tuesday I gave up and we bought me a jacket at an Adidas store on Champs Elysses.

Every place we were in Europe, black locust trees were in full bloom. That puts the climate about 3 weeks behind Lexington.

Monday we got up early and did the Louvre. 8 line to the 1 line on the metro -- we really found the Paris metro easy to use, and my wife had bought a Paris Pass thingy that included a 5 day metro pass. The Louvre is huge -- by far the biggest museum I've been in. After a couple of hours, we decided to go for The Biggies and call it a day. So we saw the Mona Lisa, Winged Victory, and Venus de Milo and called it quits. We then took a boat ride on the Seine. Interesting views of the city.

Tuesday we got up early and did the Musee d'Orsay. The Louvre is the old stuff, Musee d'Orsay is the new stuff. Great impressionist collection on the 5th floor, Gaugin and Van Gogh on the 2nd floor. Lunch at a cafe across the street from the museum, then rode the metro to Champs Elysses to buy my jacket. Then we took the metro to Montmartre, and climbed up the last of the hill to the Espace Dali, which was small but had some nice Dali sculptures, and went into the Basilica of Sacre Couer, which has some beautiful architecture.

Wednesday we got up early (I'm noticing a pattern here -- but getting there 1st thing in the morning the lines were minimal -- later in the day they got very long) and took the C train 20 minutes southwest to Versailles. Did the indoors in the morning (Lifestyles of the Rich, Famous, and Decapitated), and the outdoors in the afternoon. Mercifully the afternoon was sunny and mild. We ate at Helio's Pub in Versailles. I had mussels mariniere. Interesting, very low garlic, mostly diced shallots and parsley in addition to the white wine. The waiter had been raised right by his mom to like heavy metal. He got busted by the manager when he put on some Rival Sons -- modern metal -- for us to hear.

Thursday we slept late, yay! We took the metro to the Arc de Triomphe and went up to the top. Great views down the 12 avenues. Then we took a tour bus to Ile de la Cite and saw Notre Dame. The area around Notre Dame was definitely the most touristy we found in Paris. I bought myself this fine Paris Metro map t-shirt for gigging.

We finished up with walking on Ile de St. Louis -- east of Ile de La Cite. Again very touristy, lots of quirky shops. The guide books said they had great ice cream there, and we'd wanted to have a crepe. So we had a late afternoon snack at Les Fous de l'Ile of bertillon ice cream (chocolate) on a crepe. The bertillon ice cream was almost like icing -- very rich. Les Fous had a fabulous collection of pictures, sculptures, and other art forms representing chickens.

We discussed a couple of times going to the top of the Eiffel Tower at night, but we'd done so well in avoiding long lines that we decided against it. We did walk the 1-1/2 blocks to Ecole Militaire to snap a pic.

Paris was, at the time, the most beautiful city I'd ever been in. The food was good. The Metro was great and easy to use. My wife and I both got to speak some French. The people were uniformly friendly and helpful.

Friday we took the metro back to CDG (9.5 euros for 2 tickets) for an 8:30 flight to Zagreb. So great to get to the baggage claim area and see our daughter there waiting for us with a big grin on her face!

We took a cab to their apartment. It is huge! A great big living room and two huge bedrooms, a central entry foyer, a smallish kitchen, 1-1/2 baths. And right on the #14 tram line.

We then went to see Christie's school. We got to meet her class -- so cute, and they all love Miss Christie so much! We dropped into Ian's classroom too.

That evening we dined with Christie, Ian, and 3 of their coworkers at a restaurant overlooking Zagreb named Sestinski Lagvic. Getting there we had the 1st of only 2 snafus on our trip: the cab driver taking us there followed his GPS the wrong way over and around a mountain instead of the direct route. So a 30 kuna cab ride became 160 -- and that was with him turning the meter off 3/4 of the way. He refused to take less, so we paid it. 5 kunas per dollar. So not optimal, but not so bad in the greater scheme of things.

The restaurant was beautiful with a great view. Here's the party: Christie is next to her mom.

So the traditional Croatian dinner was: cheese; roasted vegetables; and big plates of meat. I think we had beef and rabbit, maybe? Very little seasoning, but there are dishes of ivar (sp?) -- a fairly bland red bell pepper and eggplant mix -- to use as a sauce.

Saturday we took the trolley to downtown Zagreb. At the central square (with the statue) there was some marketing-type thing going on with women racing in high heels -- ugh. The open air market was great, tons of fresh food. We wandered around, and the high point for me was encountering the Nikola Tesla statue.

That evening we ate at a somewhat more upscale restaurant called Trilogiya. The changed their menu daily depending on that the chefs found shopping at the market that day. I don't remember what I had but it was quite a bit tastier than the night before.

Sunday Christie and Ian rented a car and Ian drove us to Rovinj on the Adriatic Sea on the Istra peninsula. It was (of course) rainy as we left. At one point we came through a tunnel and said "Look at those pretty white flowers" -- but it was snow! But finally, we came through a tunnel near Rijeka on the coast to bright sunshine and a beautiful day.

We walked around the peninsula that makes up most of Rovinj, climbing tiny winding streets up to the church at the top. Here's the view from the north side.

Here's a tiny, winding street.

Here's the Rovinj assault team.

Then we had lunch at a great restaurant named La Puntulina. We ordered a cold seafood appetizer plate and it came out with 8 kinds of seafood, all very tasty. Ian had a mussels mix that I snitched some of -- there was one type of mussel that was closed until you pulled out a little key-like section of shell, after which you could open it -- we didn't figure it out until the waitress showed us. I had a warm octopus goulash dish, very good. Then Ian and I chilled in a cafe while Christie and her mom shopped.

After the drive back to Zagreb, we had dinner at Christie and Ian's neighborhood restaurant, Pivnica Mlarnica. I had a mixed grill, good sausages and more meat! From Zagreb on, meat was pretty much what was for dinner.

Zagreb was quite a change from Paris. Downtown Zagreb had some old architecture, the rest had that soviet bloc look to it. The people seemed dour, particularly the older ones. You were not to raise the issue of their civil war when they fought the Serbs to exit Yogoslavia in 1993. And I felt like I was able to understand basically 0 of their slavic language. No common roots you could discern. Da and Ne for Yes and No. Hvala for Thank You.

Christie and Ian had started one class in Croatian but had a horrible teacher. They are trying again, but I'm guessing they'll have learned enough Croatian to be useful just about when it's time to come home.

Monday morning, Christie and Ian took us to the train station, and we caught a 7:30 train to Vienna. What a pleasant difference it is to travel by train. You find your car, you stow your bags, the train leaves. At some point a conductor wanders through and stamps your ticket, and border patrol (for Croatia and Slovenia) come through and stamp your passport. No standing in line for bags or security, emptying pockets, getting frisked, etc. Zagreb to Vienna was 6.5 hours. I booked it 1st class to see the difference. I think we actually liked 2nd class better (on the leg from Vienna to Prague). We had a compartment to ourselves with a door that closed. 1st class had bigger seats, but it was in an open car -- with only 1 other passenger. Both trains had a food car, with the standard coffee machine, and food in plastic bags.

But, bad news, after the 6.5 hour train ride, I had 4-5 hours of landsickness. The rocking of the train pretty much like the rocking of a boat, I guess. After drinks, dinner, and sleep, it was gone, but, still, this implies I probably cannot sleep on a train without risking weeks of landsickness afterwards :-(

Just over the Austrian border there were snow-capped mountains to the west.

In Vienna we took a cab to Lindner Hotel am Belvedere -- 20 euros I think. The hotel seemed very new and was very nice. It was 3 short blocks from the entrance to The Belvedere, an old palace turned into a museum. Lots of Klimpt, who was Austrian, good stuff. Very nice fountains, which were turned on -- the fountains at Versailles had all been turned off. That evening we ate at a somewhat upscale place named Huth. Great appetizer, stewed beef heart -- sliced very thin in a mushroom sauce with small morels. I had some big morels from the Mountain Mushroom Festival a few years ago -- 4-5 inches long -- and I didn't particularly feel they were worth the price or the trouble. These were about 1 inch long, and gave a mouthful of tangy mushroom goodness, delicious! My entree was calf's liver, which was OK.

That night we had tickets to the Mozart Orchestra at Musikverein Golden Hall. It was the only thing playing while we were in town. 30 pieces, with a baritone and a soprano for the operatic pieces. Mostly single pieces and songs -- the most they did of one thing was 2 movements of a clarinet concerto. Then "Blue Danube Waltz" and an audience participation hand clapping thing at the end. Pretty popish, but I enjoyed it, and the hall was beautiful.

Tuesday we slept a little late and then walked through the Botanical Gardens of the University of Vienna, which were also around 2 blocks from our hotel. We lunched at a local corner cafe -- I ordered the lunch special, which turned out to be a ribeye with some veggies. We then took a bus tour of the city. I didn't pick a very good one. We saw a bit of their old city, then headed to a panoramic vista location, and then switched to a boat and cruised on the Danube. Also got to go through a lock that lowered us 4 meters to the level of the Danube Canal. The tour left us off in the central city. We'd been having a running joke that I kept identifying domes as astronomical observatories. Here is an actual observatory dome on the canal in Vienna.

We walked back to the hotel via the city park, which was pretty, and saw some outdoor, basketball court-sized soccer fields with some intense games going on. We ate at a restaurant on the way, I had wiener schnitzel -- dry as always -- but it came with german potato salad that was excellent. Later the bartender at the hotel was giving me tips on how to make good german potato salad like that.

1-1/2 days was not near enough to do Vienna justice. It is also a very beautiful city. I got to speak a little German. And we were back on euros again.

In Paris and Zagreb, there was no tipping. There was no place for a tip on credit card slips. Vienna was back to tips. But at the small restaurant where we had lunch, the waitress said "that's too much!" The next restaurant told us 10% is the max you're supposed to do there. At the next stop, Prague, it was tipping again, at 15%.

Another oddity in Vienna was this: at our lunch in the neighborhood restaurant, when the waitress came to tally our check (die rechnung), she opened our bread basket and asked how many pieces of bread we had eaten. We were then charged for those. Similarly, in Prague I think, the bill came with 2 euros for "couvert" -- basically a cover charge, to cover bread, water, or you just sitting in the restaurant!

Wednesday morning we took a cab back to the train station and caught a 8:30 train to Prague. It was a 5 hour trip. In the Prague train station, I got Czech korunas from the ATM -- 20 per dollar. Plus we found the taxi stand easily -- in Vienna we came out the wrong entrance of the station or something and wandered a few blocks in a circle before we found the cabs.

We took a cab to the Red Lion Hotel -- 285 korunas. This near the top of the hill across the river from the Old Town, and around 2 blocks from the Prague Castle and St. Vitus Cathedral that dominates the Prague skyline. So that afternoon we walked around St. Vitus. It is truly impressive. It looks bigger than Notre Dame on the inside. It was only completed in the 19th century.

We were supposed to meet my old friend/WRA Pavel Platchky for drinks, but he stood us up. So we ate at the Red Lion. I had smoked pork (== ham, duh), with red and white cabbage and very good potato gnocchi.

Thursday we wandered down the hill and crossed the Charles Bridge -- statues on both sides very 30 feet -- into the Old Town. It is amazing. Domes, spires, statues, paintings, frescos everywhere. Absolutely beautiful, it beats Paris. After a while you kind of go, OK, enough already, and then you see more awe-inspiring architecture.

After getting worn down by mid-afternoon, we took a cab back to the Charles Bridge and wound up in the Kampa Park restaurant looking over the Vltava River -- which was up 1/2 meter at the time, and flooded a couple of days later. Hunh, website says the restaurant is currently closed due to the flooding. I had a wild garlic soup with black trumpet mushrooms and parmesan that was delicious. But, with the bad weather, their patio was closed, and they were booked solid for dinner, so they kicked us out.

We went back up the hill, where the people at the Red Lion refused to recommend another restaurant to us ?!?!? ("eat here again"). We did hook up with Pavel for dinner at a restaurant a few doors up the hill, it was nice to see an old friend.

So Paris held the mantle as Most Beautiful City for only a week. Prague has much more striking architecture. The area of Prague we were in and Old Town were completely tourist traps: restaurants, cafes, shops, thai massage, nightclubs, theaters. Coming back up the hill one night we hear just a drummer playing, mostly bass and tom toms, and it's coming from a club with 6-7 very provocatively dressed young women standing out front smoking, and a fire eater performing inside to the music.

Prague is Pinochio's home town? There were lots of marionette shops, and the Marionette Theatre was performing "Don Giovanni".

And lots of tourists. Big Japanese tour groups. Menus were in Czech, English, German, Russian, and sometimes Italian. But the city is so beautiful that you don't care, it seems right for it to have worshippers from all over the world.

Czech was another slavic language. Ano for Yes, Ne for No. After 2 days I was still struggling to remember that Thank You was Dekuji.

Friday morning, May 31, I got up at 4:30 to take a cab to the airport for a 7:10 flight home via Paris and Detroit. Here begins trip snafu #2. Prague was completely fogged in. We left 2 hours late and missed our connection in Paris. They put us on a flight 2.5 hours later, not so bad. We left Detroit 1 hour late waiting on crew. We got to Lexington and circled for 1/2 hour while they tried to move an airplane with a flat tire that was blocking the runway?!?!? Never heard of that before! Of course, they finally give up, fly us to Cincinnati, and bus us back to Lexington. So we get home at 1am instead of 5pm, and our bags don't get here until late afternoon the next day. But we did make it home.

So overall, weather was lousy, cold and rainy, but it was nice when we did the gardens at Versailles, and when we were at Rovinj on the Adriatic. I think 4 countries in 2 weeks is probably 2 too many. Of course most of the people there speak English, but we both seemed to want to make some effort to learn a little bit of their language, and 2 days is not near enough, particularly for slavic languages. So I think we're likely to target romance language countries, particularly French-speaking, in the future.

Money management: best was my Capitol One credit card, which did straight-up currency conversions with no fees. Good was my ATM which came through the Shazam system and appeared to be doing pretty much straight up currency conversions as well. Bad was AAA, which charged us 8% for euros to take over there, and the currency place in Detroit, which charged 15% and $7.95 to convert our euros back into dollars -- ugh. Also good was our hotel in Prague, who changed euros into koruna at the going rate with no fees.

Drinking in Europe: in Paris they had martinis on the menus -- I guess they put Vermouth in them, they didn't taste right and were very small. No bourbon in Paris at all?!?!? The place in Versailles had Wild Turkey and Four Roses. Mostly drank red wine there. In Zagreb, red wine or beer. The Croatian and Bosnian red wines we had were very good. In Vienna, white wine and beer -- I started having a beer with lunch there. And the 1st beer on some menus was often a weiss beer, yum! Unbelievably, our hotel bar had Maker's Mark, Bullit, Blanton's, a couple other bourbons, and Sazernac rye. In Prague, mostly drank beer as well.

The 2 weeks went by quickly, and we were both glad to get home. It will be interesting to see what our next travel destination is. Maybe St. Martin in February? We'll see, I guess.

Sharia Law Comes To Kentucky

Letter to the editor submitted to the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Sharia Law Comes To Kentucky

I had thought that conservatives were worried that somehow Muslim Sharia Law was going to gain a foothold in the US. I personally was not too worried about this; I could not conceive of it actually happening.

However, recently, conservative members of both houses of the Kentucky General Assembly have overridden Governor Beshear's veto of the Religious Freedom Act, which allows someone with a “sincerely held religious belief” to defy state law. Compliance with Sharia Law is a "sincerely held religious belief" for conservative Muslims. So it seems to me that such Muslims are now allowed to claim that Sharia Law overrides Kentucky law.

Surely I'm missing something here. Can one of the legislators who helped pass this horrible law please point out the flaw in my logic? Or has Sharia Law indeed come to Kentucky?

We'll see if they print it.

Update, 2013-05-09. Just got the verification call from the Herald-Leader, they are going to run it.

AI Generated Fiction

I read "Constellation Games", by Leonard Richardson. Probably the wierdest first contact novel of all time. The aliens show up, a couple dozen races of them hanging together in an anarchistic confederation. Instead of landing on the White House lawn, they just start exchanging emails with individuals and dropping presents on peoples' lawns. The progagonist is a game developer, game reviewer and gamer. He and is pals are so over the top, you say, "no way". But then, I think about some of the gamers I know, and I see the pictures in the paper of the local steampunk cosplayers, and I'm forced to conclude, "way".

So our hero sets out to play and review 15 million year old alien games. Hilarity ensues, but the world does get saved in the end. The love interest -- the hero's (girl)friend of years -- is oddly touching, with a really different existential outlook. Overall, a very fun read. 4 stars.

I then read 2 books I spotted in the library: volumes 6 ("Metal Swarm") and 7 ("The Ashes of Worlds") of the Book of the Seven Sons series by Brian J. Anderson. Man, I blogged reading volumes 4 and 5 over 6 years ago, February 24, 2007. This is about as heavy duty a space opera as you can imagine: 5 alien races, 2 races of robots, several human groups. There are at least 30 narrative threads, maybe more than 40. Chapters are generally 2-4 pages, so it keeps moving and you keep turning the pages. Note, the books are about 450 pages each for 3150 pages total, so my 100 pages per narrative thread heuristic is probably not too far off.

But, trolling alert, the writing is just so bad. In 2007 I described it as "sophomoric". So many wrong or unnecessary adjectives and adverbs. So many extraneous sentences. And his bad guys, particularly, are all like "bwahaha, I love dismembering humans and seeing their blood splatter because I love dismembering humans and seeing their blood splatter". So, mercifully, I am done with him. He has another set of Dune followups written with Frank Herbert's son, I believe that I will never read them, yay! Which brings us to the title of this post. If I were to be told that Brian J. Anderson was actually an AI fiction generation program, I would not have a problem believing that. The writing is that formulaic and stilted.

Finally, I read 2 books by Saladin Ahmed: "Engraved on the Eye", a short story collection, and "Throne of the Crescent Moon", nominated for the Hugo Award this year. These were easy reads, and somehow, I guess that I have some fondness (I would not have thought so) for "The Arabian Nights"; the Islamic/Arabic overtones seem very familiar, although the constant religious overtones did get very slightly annoying at times. But a good story, with the old ghul-hunter, his dervish swordsman assistant, and a young woman who is a were-lion.

I've always been fond of the early (unsuccessful) attempts at science: magic, tarot (for characterizing experience), astrology (for characterizing personalities). I liked here when he off-handedly mentioned the 8 elements: sand and lightning, water and wind, wood and metal, orange fire and blue fire. So 3 forms of earth and 3 forms of fire, definitely different.

Anyway, both are easy and fun reads, 3 stars.

Music I/O

No new music for December, January, and the 1st 3 weeks of February. I think that the new Mumford and Sons came out but I decided they wanted too much for it. Odd. But then things got back to normal.

• Jamie Lidell, eponymous. I think the 4th album I have from this British DJ turned R&B singer. Great stuff, great dance music. 3 stars.
  
• Gold Panda, "Lucky Shiner", 2010. I think I got from my oldest daughter Erica tweeting. Instrumental electronica/dance music, I like it much better than most instrumental albums. Definitely catchy tunes. 3 stars.
  
• Passion Pit, "Gossamer". I think Amazon recommended. Nice tunes, and I really like the different vocal textures of the male and female vocalists. 4 stars.
  
• Young The Giant, eponymous, 2010. I think Amazon again. Nice tunes, maybe a little too commercial at times. 3 stars.
  
• Atoms For Peace, "Amok". Thom Yorke of Radiohead's super band. Very listenable, Mr. Yorke's style is totally evident. 3 stars.
  
• Idiot Glee, "Life Without Jazz". 5 track EP by Lexingtonian James Friley released by the local Hop Hop Records. These are very good songs, but the vocals really don't work for me. I think there are intonation problems that they try to hide with a lot of reverb, and I don't think it comes off. Too bad, because the songs are good. 3 stars.
  
• Matt Duncan, "Soft Times". Another Lexington artist, he follows his fabulous 7 track first release with 12 great songs. Seriously pop arrangements, sunny, horns, it is a great sophomore effort. 4 stars.
  
• Jimi Hendrix, "People, Hell & Angels". Whoda thunk it, a new Hendrix album? Unfortunately, nothing much very memorable at all. 3 stars.
  
• David Bowie, "The Next Day". Wow, 17 tracks, and really not a weak one. Bowie has still got it. But, most of it very energetic, edgy, and anxiety producing. So 3 stars, except for "Where Are We Now?", which I really like and have worked up and gets 4 stars.
  
• Bob Dylan, "Blood On The Tracks", 1975. This was a $2.99 special. The songs I knew off of this were "Shelter From The Storm" and "Tangled Up In Blue". The other 8 tracks are pretty mediocre. They grew on me some after more listens. Plus this is one of Dylan's crappy vocals periods (did he have good vocals periods?). 3 stars.
  
• Dido, "Girl Who Got Away". Very easy listening, nothing really really catchy. 3 stars.
  

That brings us through March. Two new albums so far in April are still sinking in.

On the music out side, I feel like I get more comfortable performing all the time. In descending order of pleasedness, I am by and large pleased lately with my rhythm guitar playing, singing, lead guitar playing, and bass guitar playing. Last Sunday played at the jam at Paulie's Toasted Barrel, which goes from 4-8, and did a set of 6 songs. Then Tuesday night played 2 sets of 4 songs at the Electric Jam at the Henry Clay Public House. Then last night at the Wednesday Blues Jam at Cheapside I played 6 songs on bass behind the excellent Brent Carter -- and got to sing harmony on "Why Get Up", "That'll Be The Day", and "Thunderbird" -- and then got another 5 songs at the end on guitar and lead vocals. A little more of a crowd there, I think some Keeneland people, and it was a beautiful warm night.

Tuesday night was the last night for the Tuesday night jam. Jairaj Swann, bass player extraordinaire, had several reasons for not continuing to host the jam. So last night I talked to the owner and he was amenable to me hosting it. I talked to a good young bass player and drummer who were interested in continuing as well. So we'll see. Probably 1st time I'd try would be May 7, if nobody jumps on it before then. If I do it, I think I'm going for The Tuesday Night Rock & Roll Party.

Three Novels

I read three novels in the last week or so.

First, "Ship Breaker", by Paolo Bacigalupi. This is set in the same future dystopia as "The Drowned Cities" discussed here. It also has in a supporting role the half-man Tool who was one of the lead characters of "The Drowned Cities". From where Tool is, this seems to be before the other novel. I mentioned that this is being distributed as a Young Adult novel. The protagonist is indeed a teenager; he helps rescue the beautiful plutocrat "princess" and maybe wins her heart. Potentially another YA component: he has serious issues with his father. In fact, that relationship is so dark that I would not recommend this book for young teens.

Bacigalupi has made himself the master of this future dystopia, where the rising seas have vastly disrupted civilization and Monsanto rules the world. It is a chilling vision that he portrays. The narrative arc of the story is simple (single threaded), the pacing is good, it is an easy and enjoyable 336 pages.

Man, one thing I don't like about ebooks is how hard it is to figure out how many pages are in the book. I usually have to go to Amazon or B&N. I wish they would fix that.

Second, "Bitter Seeds" by Ian Tregillis. I think this was a $2.99 special I saw in the TOR blog. Basically, engineered, electrically powered Nazi superheroes fight British warlocks invoking elder gods in the Spanish Civil War and WW II. The story is told with narratives from both sides. It is well written and is a definite page turner. There is a sequel out and a third one due to be released this month. I will definitely read those. 352 pages. Amazon sez it is Tregillis' debut novel -- definitely a good start.

Third, "A Time Of Changes" by Robert Silverberg. I'm not sure how I picked this one up. Probably on sale and I thot, I haven't read Silverberg in a while, and I've been enjoying his stuff for 40 years, let's give this a try.

Then found it is a 2009 reissue (with a new preface by the author) of a 1971 release. I don't remember reading it then which is surprising because I was reading all of Silverberg in the 70s.

The story is of a planet whose culture/religion is based on complete abnegation of the self. Using first person pronouns is "talking dirty". The protagonist rebels against this, catalyzed by his meeting an Earthman who introduces him to a drug that allows people to share minds. You can't love others until you love yourself. The catchphrase of his new movement is "I love you" which you would never say under the old system.

Kind of fun to go back to the hippie ideals of the 60s -- taking drugs and opening up to others lead to a world of peace and love, yay! Of course, it didn't really work out that way, but, it was still fun to revisit those days of heady hope. 304 pages.

Understanding Power

I finished reading "Understanding Power: The Indispensible Chomsky" (2002), Edited by Peter R. Mitchell and John Schoeffel, 416 pages. This is a collection of some of Noam Chomsky's seminars and discussions from the time period 1992 through 1999. I started reading a few weeks ago and was going through it rather quickly before spending a (very pleasant) weekend with my wife and my middle daughter in Ithaca, NY, and then the following weekend spending most of my time watching the NCAA basketball tournament.

Chomsky's speaking style is extremely straight-forward and understandable. At one point he dismisses a lot of modern intellectualism for using fancy words to obfuscate easy concepts as a form of self-aggrandization. He has done a lot of reading including lots of formerly classified government documents.

The first thing that is most striking about the book is how, 15-20 years before the Occupy movement, he has dead on anticipated their arguments. And in the end, it doesn't come down to republican vs democrat or liberal vs conservative, it comes down to class war: rich and powerful and of course doing every possible to keep it that way vs poor and powerless -- or as he says, "superflous population", who are not involved in producing profit. The 1%, or the 0.5% who own 50% of everything via the stateless multi-national corporations, are clearly who is in charge.

It was striking too when he talks about the (never ending) "War on Drugs": incarceration of inner city blacks for drug use or dealing on the street, while in the 1980's $260M in drug money was being laundered by US banks annually, with never a thought of prosecutions or jail time. And here we are 20-30 years later, and now HSBC alone is laundering close to $1B a year in drug money, and still there are no criminal prosecutions, no jail time -- "Too big to prosecute". Similarly, in the 1980's, studies showed that 90% of the chemicals being exported by US companies into Latin America were going into drug production. Were there any investigations or prosecutions of US chemical companies and/or their executives and their bonuses? Of course not! "War on Drugs" my ass!

It's kind of hard for me to try to summarize this book, there is so much there. I've known about Chomsky, the Father of Modern Linquistics and a Linguistics professor at M.I.T., since I was there 40 years ago. I'd always kind of dismissed him as being kind of on the lunatic fringe of the left. But, now that I finally read his words, he is just thinking simple thoughts, drawing simple conclusions, and speaking the truth of these.

Eight years ago (surely not!), I read Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States". I blogged about it at the time, I thought it was leftist-slanted to the point of being unbelievable at times. I had pretty much none of that reaction reading the Chomsky. So I wonder if Chomsky's thinking is actually better, or if I have just evolved that far to the left in the last 8 years? Since I quit working so much and finally retired, I definitely have more time to think about and get involved in politics, and, I think ever since the Tea Party started I've been moving left rapidly. Funny, the Zinn and the recommendation on Chomsky, and "Occupy World Street" before that, all came from my oldest daughter Erica. We seem to be sliding to the left together. She has been very active with Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Sandy and I am very proud of her.

The Chomsky book starts with a discussion of how the US and to a lesser degree the European press are locked into the narrative of "the US is the good guy always starting the peace process" vs "the US is the world's foremost terrorist state; it has not been attacked since 1812 but still manages to invade someplace (basically defenseless) every year or so; and the entire world is scared shitless of it". I had to agree how, every time we start a war with some poor chump, there's always "evidence" -- which no one can verify then or later -- that we've been attacked or are going to be attacked, and we all get called on to support our troops, and, damn it, it's hard not to get sucked in. But, how many times can they keep doing this? I wonder if Obama will be able to complete his 2nd term without invading somewhere.

There's some LOL stuff on the semantics of the mainstream press. A "moderate" government is defined as one that "follows U.S. orders". A "radical" government is of course one that "doesn't follow U.S. orders". See also "terrorist state".

Meanwhile, he gives many examples of cases where maybe 1 courageous reporter finds out that, say, Saddam is willing to get out of Kuwait peacefully, but then basically no newspapers will carry the story. Once the drums start beating, no one want to be a "traitor". He also talks very believably about how reporters and writers who don't want to follow the narrative that their editors want wind up having to find a different career. Because newspapers are businesses, and their main customers are not their readers, their main customers are their advertisers, who are mostly businesses. And the main point here is that, the Republican and Democratic parties are not really different parties, they are just factions of the same party that has ruled the US for the last 150 years or so: the Capitalist Business Party. It's the same message of Occupy, that US domestic and foreign policy are both completely determined by what is best for corporate business interests.

There is a thread that runs through all the sessions: are the corporate interests so entrenched that it is hopeless? Or can people organize and get things changed? In general, he says, keep plugging, keep the faith, keep organizing, have hope. And he also points out where there has been progress. For example, the fight against the popular Sandinistas in Nicaragua had to be done via clandestine operations rather than outright invasion because the public would not support invasion. It comes back to, the people in power will listen to the rest of us if we get loud enough to scare them -- otherwise, they could care less. Discouraging tho that in the 10-20 years or so since he talked about this, the situation seems to be continuing to get worse rather than better. But, still, what choice do we have but to keep fighting the old lizards? Every person in the world has the right to live.

One of his contentions that was new to me was that the US defense budget has for 60 years been about channelling tax dollars into the development of new tech, that can then be exploited by business. I guess that makes sense, the Internet came from DARPA, and that's probably true of the majority of non-medical tech as well. So this is yet another subsidy for business and the rich, as is the NIH budget on the medical side.

I didn't come away with a clear feeling for, why do our .01% rulers want to kill the social safety net so much? It costs much less than the entitlements of the corporations and the rich. I think what he said on this was by suppressing the general populace they are suppressing rivals for power. Hungry children don't grow the brains they should, so they stay an underclass, available as labor if necessary, otherwise they can be held in the prisons (for nice profit margins).

Also interesting, Britain used to have General Welfare and Corn laws up until the 1840's, which basically guaranteed food to everyone. Those got repealed to force people to go to work in the new factories of the Industrial Revolution. This was also when general public education started, to give workers the limited literacy they needed to work in a factory.

I also did not realize that, just as oil has been the crux resource of the 20th century, the crux resource of the 19th century was cotton. The Industrial Revolution started with textiles for clothing.

He also debunks The Great Man Theory, which I've talked about before, in answer to a question about, what about the need for Great Leaders, like Gandhi or Martin Luther King? His take is, these types show up late in the process to take the credit, when most of the real work was actually done by 1000s of nameless, faceless feet on the ground. The standard narrative of The Empire pushes The Great Man Theory to disempower the average person, who is actually who makes the change happen. I couldn't agree more.

Similarly, he has great mistrust of the intellectual class. On the political left and in US labor unions, there is a leader class that wants to hobnob with the capitalists and hand down decisions to the rank-and-file. Wrong, wrong, wrong. There have been very few actually socialist and democratic movements in history. The Spanish Anarchists in the 1930's were one. And at the start of the Russian Revolution, there were workers' councils and coops before Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks took over and instituted state-controlled capitalism aka Communism.

There are many, many more details and facts in this book. It is an easy, easy read. I read it in 16 hours (thank you for that data point, KoboReader). I strongly recommend it. Now to check out what Noam's been up to lately. Wow, here's his Wikepedia page. 84 years old, still going strong. FTW!

Hmmm, reading the Wikipedia article, the start 3rd paragraph in the section on politics may well be the base principle of all Chomsky's anarchist politics:

Chomsky asserts that authority, unless justified, is inherently illegitimate, and that the burden of proof is on those in authority. If this burden can't be met, the authority in question should be dismantled. Authority for its own sake is inherently unjustified.

Back in the book, he also says at one point that he was a horrible organizer, so he wound up being a writer. I can identify with that. I made phone calls for Obama in 2008 and hated it. I've never been much on meetings or crowds, so I can't see myself getting involved there. Plus, this seems like Yet Another Thing that it would be more appropriate for me to leave to the younger people. Well, maybe I'll find my niche to contribute eventually (I certainly don't consider myself a writer). For now at least I can still do $$$.

Hah, I should point out how, in passing, Chomsky mentions modern sports as the "circus" part of "bread and circuses" that our plutocrat masters provide to keep us distracted from how much they are fucking us. How many NASCAR owners (Romney's "friends"), NFL and NBA team owners are members of the plutocrat class? All, maybe? Now, if we could just get them to give everyone "bread" to go with the "circus". Still, I love University of Louisville Cardinal basketball! Go Cards!

Sandman Slim, 2-4

Well, as blogged last time, I thought that "Sandman Slim" by Richard Kadrey, was a decent supernatural noir comic book novel. The library had the other 3 in the series, so I went for it. I read them in 2 days, 4 days, and 2 days -- the OverDrive reader that the library uses shows you the number of days left on your (7) day subscription in its listing of books, so it's easy to notice. I got kind of tired of them. I think the main thing they have going for them is lots of smart-ass, cheap detective dialogue -- or should I say "patter". There are also a lot of pop culture references, which makes me afraid that these won't age well. Also, after a while, I found the christian mythology getting on my nerves. Of course, any christian would I'm sure find these books horribly blasphemous, but still, how about Brahmah creating the universe instead of Elohim? He does introduce lots of other species of magical creatures, which I think is fun, whether in stories like this, or in the trashy SyFy channel series that I enjoy (guiltily) like "Warehouse 13", or "Lost Girls".

The 2nd book, "Kill The Dead" introduces an interesting new character: a Czech female porn star zombie hunter -- nice!. The 3rd book "Aloha From Hell" takes place mostly in Hell, as does the 1st half of the 4th book, "Devil Said Bang". The pacing of these books is of course whiz-bang, and each one does come to enough of a conclusion that you are not left resenting being hung over a cliff too much.

So there will clearly be more of these, I guess I'll keep reading them. I have concluded tho that I did like the Harry Connolly Twenty Palaces series better -- too bad it's been discontinued.

Meanwhile, I have three more novels by new authors, most suggested by tweets or retweets of people I follow on twitter. So, should I read some economics or politics, or am I still on vacation? We'll see, I guess.

Yet Another Supernatural Noir Novel

I read, via eBook from the Lexington Free Public Library, "Sandman Slim", by Richard Kadrey, I think based on a recommendation by William Gibson. Very nicely done, christian and ceremonial magic mythology-based, very fast paced, huge body count. There are three more books in the series, I guess I'll go for them as well. Hard to go wrong with cheap (supernatural) detectives. I've also enjoyed Harry Connolly's Twenty Palaces series of books, which was discontinued after 5, and the first of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher -- I think there's about a dozen of those. Apparently I'm still on vacation, yay!

YA

I did a reread of "Blindsight", by Peter Watts (2006). Hmmm, I thought I'd blogged on this, but I can't find it. I must have read during the period when I had quit blogging. I thought this novel was the best I read that year -- whatever year that was, see what happens when you quit blogging? It is a very unusual first contact novel. The alien race we encounter is incredibly intelligent but completely unconscious. The contention, that such a race would see consciousness as parasite that does nothing but waste energy, which is not an unreasonable argument. Most mentation is accomplished by subconscious processes, the conscious mind then just chimes in and takes credit.

Another nice twist was that the leader of the small, rushed human expedition was a vampire. Vampires had been extinct for 6000 years but "jurassic park"ed back into existence. They have very different mental organization and are ruthless predators -- just who we need to meet aliens.

The reread was good. The main new thing I noticed this time through was that garden variety homo sapiens was being pretty much consigned to the dustbin of history, being replaced by cyborgs, AIs, and, of course, vampires.

I also noticed in an afterword a reference to the novel "Permanence", by Karl Schroeder (2003), and decided to give it a try. A good read, with some interesting use of new science. One of these concepts was that habitable planets could exist around brown dwarf "stars", and that these could be closer together than normal stars. Another was some ideas about consciousness similar to "Blindsight": that technological, conscious races become so because they are poorly adapted to their ecological niche. As eons pass and the race becomes better adapted, it will become increasingly unconscious and instinctive in its behavior. Also some good astro-archeology with artifacts of defunct alien interstellar civilizations.

I wonder if this was published as a Young Adult (YA) novel? The protagonist is a woman in her late teens, and there is a definite subplot of her hooking up with the right guy, i.e., we got us a chick flick here as well as a good hard sci-fi space opera. I know "Hunger Games" was YA. I've got the new Paulo Bacigalupi "Ship Breaker" on my iPad, it was listed as YA, the synopsis says the hero is a teenage boy. So does having a teenager as the protagonist make a novel YA? Seems like there are others ("Jumper" by Steven Gould comes to mind) that have teenage protagonists but weren't called YA. So I guess I'm confused by the YA designation.

Regardless, I've always loved stories with kids or teenagers as the protagonist. They make me think of how much I would have enjoyed reading them when I first started shoveling this stuff in, at age 12 or so.

Free stuff! I was going to buy some of Peter Watts' older stuff, but couldn't get the eBook for the 1st book of a trilogy he had published: "Starfish", "Maelstrom", and "Behemoth". Then found out, these are all available for free at his website. Also all his short stories. Pretty cool!

Karl Schroeder also has his novel "Ventus" available for free at his website. It's interesting how more options for obtaining books keep popping up. Nice!

Flashback

So when I picked up the new Culture novel at the Lexington Free Public Library, I also picked up the latest Dan Simmons, "Flashback". Simmons is a great author, having won awards for science fiction, mystery, and horror, and having also published mainstream novels. What a great trip to the library!

I start reading "Flashback". It's set in a near future (25 years) dystopia. The American Empire has fallen due to the horrible decisions of 2008 and 2012 re not cutting social services and fixing the deficit, and encouraging the Arab world, and not nuc'ing Iran, and not realizing that anthropogenic global warming doesn't exist but was just bad modeling, and getting rid of all but 26 of our nuclear weapons, and abandoning Israel, and, pretty much every (neocon) republican talking point of the last 10 years -- except for abortion and creationism, mercifully.

It really made it hard to read the book. Simmons seemed to be going out of his way to prostelytize on this stuff, and talking about how he doesn't like socialism, Boulder CO, or the Denver Art Museum. It didn't seem to be just story development, it seemed like he was seriously getting stuff off his chest. That aside, it was a classic cheap detective story, with great action, a lot of fun if it weren't for the chorus of right-wing dog whistles throughout.

Well, I would guess that Simmons is successful enough that he's made it into the 1% -- net worth over $2M. And somehow, it seems like a lot of people when they get there decide that it's time to become Libertarians -- "I got mine, fuck you".

My wife and I had a few years where we paid 6 figure federal taxes. I was happy and proud to help my government and those not as lucky as I had been. There was still plenty left over. Maybe it comes back to being afraid that the government is going to take all the results of your hard work and give it away to the undeserving. Somehow I just never felt that way.

More and more it becomes apparent that the policy of the US is to maintain our standard of living at the expense of democratic principles, the rest of the world, and the planet itself, and that seems to be what Simmons is in favor of. This is just flat out wrong. If we don't get sustainable, we are going to get a collapse, and not just an economic one.

A New Culture Novel!

Just finished the latest Iain M. Banks Culture novel, "The Hydrogen Sonata". I so love his totally post-human, galaxy-spanning Culture civilization. The main movers of the Culture are actually the (artificial) Minds mostly embodied in ships ranging in size from moderate to "that's not a moon, that's a battle station". They all have smart ass names, smart ass vehicle classes (Thugs, Hooligans, ...), and are constantly engaged in smart ass dialog. But, their key feature is that they are trying to optimize every situation; they are firmly committed to the principle that in a post-scarcity economy, complete and utter altruism is the only outlook on life that makes any sense.

Most of the conflict in a Culture novel usually comes from their dealings with a less advanced civilization, and basically using carrots, sticks, and whatever else is available to get everyone involved to Do The Right Thing. In this case, there is a non-Culture cousin civilization getting ready to Sublime -- move to the 7th and 8th dimensions, where space is mostly full rather than mostly empty as it is here -- and some less advanced civilizations squabbling over all the great gear they are leaving behind, with a 10,000 year old man thrown in just for fun.

Damn, I love these novels!

Three Library Books

Visited our most excellent Beaumont Branch of the Lexington Free Public library. Came home with 3 novels.

First, "The Alchemist", by Paolo Bacigalupi. I would suspect this is a chapbook -- not clapbook, as I first wrote. Paolo has broken out as a science fiction author with near future tales of global ecosystem catastrophe. This short story is a fantasy -- in the preface he says he wanted to try something different. It is a very pleasant read, with a nice fairy tale feel.

Secondly, "Redshirts", by John Scalzi. I would characterize this is a meta-story that borrows from the Star Trek mythos. Sometimes I like meta-stories more than others. The first I remember was "Beasts", by John Crowley (1976), where you gradually realize that the characters are mostly fairy tale and fable archetypes placed in a science fictional background -- it was magical and charming. Even better from Crowley was the award winning "Little, Big" (1981), where the characters themselves by the end have realized that they are characters in a fairy tale. More recently, I loved the stories within stories of "The Fractal Prince", by Hannu Rajaniemi, about which I blogged here.

But on the other hand, I remember blasting Heinlien's "The Number of the Beast" in this blog post to the effect that "reusing literary figures is a kind of a cheap ploy, and I usually interpret it as a lack of imagination". And I remember my first reaction was annoyance when a writer as good as Dan Simmons ended the award winning "Hyperion" with the characters linking arms and singing "We're Off To See The Wizard".

"Redshirts" I reacted to somewhere between these two extremes. The fact that Star Trek is pop culture (and a favorite of fanboys) rather then more general archetypes made it a little cheezy for me. Like I was wondering, could someone who had never seen Star Trek, or who wasn't vaguely a Trekkie, have enjoyed this at all? I guess they probably wouldn't have picked up a book titled "Redshirts" -- no, they wouldn't have gotten the reference, would they, they might still have picked it up randomly?

"Redshirts" also seemed to end rather abruptly, and then was followed by 3 short addenda, told from the viewpoint of three somewhat ancillary characters. I liked the third of these, but this still seemed gimmicky -- almost like alternative endings, or fan fiction. I guess I mostly like getting sucked into a main narrative and staying there.

Finally, "The Cold Commands", by Richard K. Morgan. Sequel to "The Steel Remains". Morgan broke out in 2002 with "Altered Carbon", which I thought was great. After a couple sequels to that, he did "Thirteen", which was very good as well. Then he switched to a sword-and-sorcery fantasy, but very gritty, and with a gay protagonist, and explicit homosexual sex scenes. I'm always up for some good sex with my action and adventure, but the male homosexual stuff definitely sets off my "yuck" reaction.

Reading the full library edition, with dust covers and all, I always enjoy reading the synopsis, "about the author", etc. -- kind of like appetizers for the main course, the book itself. This was one case where that was a mistake, because the synopsis says "the characters are going to be doing this", but apparently "this" got pushed to the 3rd book. So the pacing seems off throughout. Aside from that, a good read. The homosexual stuff seemed toned down a bit (phew) -- and a lesbian sex scene I of course found totally unyucky. I'm hoping Morgan will get back to sci-fi after this fantasy trilogy concludes.

On a different topic, I made the decision to retire (rather than work at a new 50-60 hour per week startup) Labor Day weekend of 2012. So it's been 4-1/2 months now. I sleep late; exercise every morning; go to lunch a few days a week; and read, fool around online, blog in the afternoons. I cook 2-3 times a week. I haven't been playing as much music as I expected due to the arthritis in my hands acting up. The long and the short of it is, I'm acting like I'm on a prolonged vacation, and will probably continue to do so until it no longer seems appropriate. My mind seems to be smoothing out with regard to worries, ambition, etc, like ripples in a pond dying down. Getting in touch with my inner buddha -- or my inner complete slacker, one or the other. I did have an idea for an iPhone app last week that I'm exploring -- very slowly. But from this point on, I think I will only work again if it's something I (or conceivably a good friend) come up with.

Occupy World Street

I just finished reading "Occupy World Street: A Global Roadmap For Radical Political And Economic Reform", by Ross Jackson. Jackson is a former IT guy who cofounded a software company that supports the financial industries. PhD in Operations Research from Case Western, a Canadian now living in Denmark.

The first 50-60% of the book is kind of depressing:

• Has the US really bombed and/or invaded that many other countries since World War II?
  
• Has the middle class of the entire developed world pretty much gone nowhere since 1980 and Reagan and Thatcher invented trickle-down economics? While CEO salaries and corporate profits have outpaced GDP growth?
  
• Are the WTO and the IMF designed primarily as instruments of economic colonialism, loaning developing countries money that is pocketed by corrupt elites or returned to the developed countries as consulting contracts, and keeping the developing countries in a permanent debtor status?
  
• Is "free trade" designed to keep developing companies from protecting fledgling new local industries via tariffs, so that they remain nothing but sources of raw materials and slave/cheap labor for the developed countries manufacturers -- developed countries who used tariffs and other tools of "sovereign trade" to protect their new industries in the 19th and 20th centuries?
  
• Do the executives of large corporations really not mind trashing the earth if it means they get their $10M bonuses and their billionaire lifestyles?
  

Sadly, you realize that the answer to all these charges is probably a resounding "yes".

Of course, this is against a backdrop of the ecosystem collapse that we are heading into, with global warming, extinction of 1/3 of the species on the earth, continued rising population, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, monoculture farming, and endocrine disruptors in the water supply. He also includes GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) in this list, which I would not classify as the same level of problem as the others.

Interestingly, he also contends that we have passed or are right at "peak oil" -- which means that we have used over half the fossil fuels on the planet, such that supplies will from here on out decline and continuously increase in price -- leading to an economic collapse to match the ecological one. And he points out, this is a one-time supply. If we run out before we have alternative energy sources in place, we are totally screwed, there will be no energy to drive civilization.

He talks about books on the collapse of civilizations, including "Collapse" by Jared Diamond, blogged here. He reaches the same conclusion that Diamond did: that civilizations usually collapse because of ecological catastrophes. This time, tho, the difference is we're talking about possibly the whole world.

In discussing how we got here, he contrasts the current system vs a new system that would try to address these problems rather than ignore them in favor of continued wealth extraction by the world's wealthiest.

Current system:

1. Cartesian/Newtonian worldview.
   
2. Growth economy.
   
3. Good of the merchant class most important.
   
4. Globalization maintains status quo with US on top.
   
5. Corporatocracy (the Empire).
   
6. The Neoliberal Project.
   
7. Continuous war -- from the War on Communism to the War on Terror.
   

New system:

1. Quantum, holistic worldview.
   
2. Sustainable economy.
   
3. Good of everyone most important.
   
4. Localization creates micro, eco-friendly, local markets worldwide.
   
5. Democracy.
   
6. The Gaian League.
   
7. Peace, and a peace dividend.
   

There's a lot of good information on financial systems that I did not know about (I'm thinking about finding an economics course online), with discussions of currency regimes, derivatives, default credit swaps, and lots more. One point what was emphasized is that GDP growth has been proportional to energy use -- which implies serious problems for a growth economy if energy availability starts to decline. There's a very good discussion of financial bubbles, and how they are now pretty much baked into our unregulated economy.

The discussion of The Neoliberal Project (or "wealthism" or "financial colonialism") is fascinating. From WW2 until 1980, there was pretty much growth and prosperity for many, and no financial crises. Then, Reagan and Thatcher and Neoliberalism:

1. unrestricted movement of capital across borders in a currency regime of floating rates without capital controls;
   
2. removal of all restrictions on the free flow of goods and labor;
   
3. minimum government regulation of markets;
   
4. removing of all subsidies to domestic industries;
   
5. privatization of state enterprises.
   

This is pretty much what you are required to sign up for to join the World Trade Organization (WTO), with its sister organizations the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Number 1 above is what allows the big money on Wall Street to engage in currency speculation such that they can loot and bankrupt a small country, such as they did with Iceland and Thailand. All in all, they all screw the current Have-nots to the benefit of the current Haves. But there are signs that the Have-nots are starting to wake up.

All of this leads to the horrible inequality we are seeing in the world today, both between and within countries. And studies show, inequality is bad, producing poorer health and less happiness for starters. This applies to everyone, not just the Have-nots. Many studies lately have show that even Republicans want a more equalitarian society than what the US has developed into. Increasingly the .01% billionaires seem to be horribly unhappy, driven, sociopathic power and money addicts.

So then on to what a better system could look like. Note, he characterizes quantum theory as showing that "everything is interconnected", which I would not. And, he chooses to use James Lovelock's Gaia Theory, which I would not particularly put in the scientific mainstream. But, to me, his slight misappropriation of science is far outweighed by the overwhelming economic and social evidence for the need for something new.

He divides the population of the world into 3 groups:

1. the Cultural Creatives -- us, the cool kids and hipsters. In 1999, 26% of the population, now 35%.
   
2. the Moderns -- the corporate hacks and yuppies, $$$. 49% in 1999.
   
3. the Traditionals -- the christian dumbasses. 25% in 1999.
   

He also talks about the 100,000s of NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations) now in the world, and the impact they are having.

Overall, the new system comes with only two core values:

1. Sustainable development, or eco-economics;
   
2. Human rights.
   

There are many amazing examples of new more holistic agriculture and manufacturing, including Ecovillages (the first of which in the US is in Ithaca, NY).

Finally, there is the new government structure of the new system:

• the Gaian Trade Organization.
  
• the Gaian Clearing Union. This maintains an artificial "currency" for international exchange, and frees the US dollar from its role as the world's currency, allowing us to decrease our deficit without decreasing the liquidity of the world's cash supply.
  
• the Gaian Development Bank.
  
• the Gaian Congress.
  
• the Gaian Commission -- the executive branch.
  
• the Gaian Court of Justice.
  
• the Gaian Resource Board -- administers both nonrenewable and renewable resources. This has got to be the hardest piece.
  
• the Gaian Council -- the council of "wise elders" with veto power. People like Nelson Mandela and Jimmy Carter.
  

One thing interesting about all these new bodies is that they have very little power. The emphasis is on local groups making locally correct decisions. They seek to truly level the playing field rather than keep it slanted to the US and its allies as it is now. Part of why China is booming is that it refused to play by the US rules. So this gives the rest of the developing world, smaller countries who don't have the size or clout of China, a chance to maybe do the same.

Finally, he talks about, how do we get there? Surprisingly, some of the paths seem possible. The Old Lizards really aren't going to like this approach at all tho. So that the Powers That Be will instead of course want to continue to become more obscenely rich at the expense of everyone and everything else.

One thing he didn't talk about, except for a passing reference to Newt Gingrich touting space exploration as a solution to limits to growth, is just that: space exploration, asteroid mining, etc as source of more materials. But, despite my most optimistic, futuristic outlook, I would say that we will not be able to get an interplanetary economy going anywhere near in time to help with the ecosystem collapse we are facing. Plus, the problem is not just sources, it also sinks. We still have to control growth, or we will wind up living (or dying) on a planet that is all one large garbage dump.

This seems like a really long summary. I guess there is a lot there. There were dozens of FFTKAT (Fun Facts To Know And Tell) that I have omitted for the sake of brevity.

I recommend this book highly. It is a fairly quick read, 336p. I read it in 2-3 days -- ha ha, cool, Kobo reader tells me I read it in 13.6 hours! Lots of new (economic) concepts for me, but well explained and very comprehensible. Joe Bob sez, Check it out!

(Too Much) Music In

Man, so much good music! But it seems like I just cannot find enough time to listen to it all to where it sinks in. Between new albums from known favorites, and the 2 fabulous new Brooklyn bands I seem to find every month, and going back and mining gems I missed like Tom Waits, and ripping my vinyl to MP3 (which I basically haven't started yet), there just ain't enough time!

My current sources of new music are:

1. An email every Tuesday from Amazon: MP3 Newsletter. Usually 20 or so recommendations. I'll usually listen to any indie / alternative that look interesting. (Note, I'd still like to have someplace to buy music from other than Amazon (or Apple)).
   
2. Lexington Herald-Leader Friday Weekender section, In The Bins column lists newly releaased albums and albums to be released the next Tuesday. Plus their music critic of 30 years Walter Tunis usually reviews a few albums a week.
   
3. The Rolling Stone RSS feed. It has around 10-20 items a day, usually one or two videos of new songs.
   
4. Word of mouth (particularly Chris Cooper).
   

I got somewhat signed up for Spotify but haven't been using it. I unsubscribed from its email notifications "so-and-so is listening to blah" almost immediately. Way TMI.

OK, enough whining, let's get down to it! (Gotta get down to it!) This is acquisitions from the start of October to the start of December.

• Dave Matthews Band, "Away From The World". I think about half the people I play music with don't like DMB. My daughters all liked them in high school (particularly my middle daughter), and I always liked it pretty well myself. I checked, my smart playlist of 5-star songs "Serious Medicine" has 7 DMB tracks in it (out of 115), so I guess I like them a lot. This album is a good effort. This is the first time that I noticed that some of the instrumental sections of multiple instruments playing the same theme reminds me of some of Frank Zappa's orchestral stuff. 3 stars.
  
• Van Morrison, "Born To Sing: No Plan B". This one more jazzy that the last one. Very nice tunes. Some of the same world-weary lyrics as his last album: "Playing in the background, some kind of phony pseudo jazz". I classified this album as Pop, Van's 3rd genre, along with Rock and Blues. 3 stars.
  
• A.C. Newman, "Shut Down The Streets". Very nice tunes, extremely listenable. 3 stars.
  
• Grizzly Bear, "Shields". Man, another great Brooklyn band! From the catchy and distinctive opening riff of "Sleeping Ute", the 1st track, to the last track tour-de-force "Sun In Your Eyes", which became the 115th 5 star track (out of > 16,000) in my iTunes library. 4 stars for the rest of the album.
  
• Benjamin Gibbard, "Former Lives". At some point I am going to go through the 3300 "Alternative & Punk" tracks in my library and break them down into more atomic genre. Benjamin Gibbard, along with his bands Death Cab For Cutie and The Postal Service, will definitely go under Emo. Very nice songs. Aimee Mann featured on "Bigger Than Love". 3 stars.
  
• Of Montreal, "Daughter of Cloud". Their last couple of albums hadn't been up to the crazy energy of "Skeletal Lamping". Well, they're back, with Kevin Barnes at his snarky, gay, obscene best, with great ELO backgrounds and vocals and, of course, bongos! 4 stars.
  
• Andrew Bird, "Hands of Glory". Much folkier than his earlier stuff, and as such, somewhat lacking in the quirky charm of the earlier stuff. 3 stars.
  
• Donald Fagen, "Sunken Condos". OK tunes. Donald apparently is still a player. The best Steely Dan followup album is still "11 Tracks of Whack", by Walter Becker. 3 stars.
  
• Beach House, "Bloom". This is the 2nd I have by this husband/wife duo from Baltimore. Very nice tunes. They remind me of the other excellent husband/wife duo Tennis. Wikipedia says their genre is Dream Pop. Another genre for the big split. 3 stars (almost 4 tho).
  
• Dirty Projectors, "Swing Lo Magellan". Another great Brooklyn Band. Really distinctive voicings of both melodic and rhythmic instruments and vocals. In "Maybe That Was It" it sounds like the guitarist is playing the tuners on the guitar, very odd. 4 stars.
  

While doing this post, upgraded to iTunes 11. It created duplicate entries for ~400 tracks, not sure what that was about. Hopefully OK now.

Synchronicity

Weird. Posted as a response to Walter Tunis's article on the death of Dave Brubeck.

Very strange, this past Saturday 12/1/12 went to see the internationally renowned guitarist, the inimitable Ben Lacy at Azur. The first song he did was "Take Five". Talking to him later I told him he had to do "Blue Rondo a la Turk" as well. And he posted 3 days later that based on the positive reception of "Take Five", he was working up "Blue Rondo a la Turk" -- but that it was really hard (yeah right).

After he did "Take Five", I googled when it came out. I would have thought early 60's. My (3 years) older brother, who graduated HS in 1966, was a jazz fan in HS, so I heard Brubeck, Miles, Nina Simone, etc, when I was 10-15 YO. I was surprised to see it was 1959.

Within the last year, I watched Ken Burns "Jazz", loaned to me by a friend. The West Coast Jazz movement (Brubeck) was the only thing that kept the jazz of the period from being completely dominated by the (junkie) East Coast scene.

Anyway, one word: synchronicity.

Economy of Plenty, Part 4

So I'm totally churning here. I'm finding more and more stuff, bringing it here, throwing it up against the wall, seeing what sticks.

As Tim O'Reilly has been talking about Economy of Abundance rather than Economy of Plenty, I was considering editing my posts and changing everything. Nope, not happening. For one thing, I have also come across references to this concept as Post-scarcity Economy. This seems to be very science-fictiony -- right up my alley. But, with 2 optional names, I'll stick with Economy of Plenty.

O'Reilly is actually talking about something that exists now, in that, for digital goods -- an eBook or a MP3 track of music -- there is no natural scarcity. It has to be created artificially. Like when my public library has only 2 "copies" of a given eBook -- LOL, they have infinite copies. Hence the huge market for pirated music, movies, books worldwide. And, as 3d printers continue to come down in price, soon the same thing will be true for lots of physical objects as well.

Here's O'Reilly talking about "The Clothesline Paradox" and new economics.

I mostly talked about what I call "The Clothesline Paradox" - the way that our economic measures favor value captured from the economy rather than value created - and why we need to change that. Tim Berners-Lee and the people who created the open source software that powers the internet didn't capture very much of the enormous value they created for themselves. It was captured elsewhere in the economy. Meanwhile, the titans of Wall Street are very good at capturing value for themselves while actually destroying value for the economy as a whole.

Here's a slideshow of this same material.

Here's a post that does a nice analysis of post abundance. I posted this response:

Nice post. I've been researching this and done several posts lately. Not near as well organized, more on the order of thrashing around. My blog is portraitofthedumbass.blogspot.com.

Your tiered system intuitively seems like the wrong model to me, not sure why, I need to think on that.

One thing I have seen is that my children (36-29 YO) seems to be much less materialistic than our generation. They also seem to be somewhat immunized to advertising.

My 33 YO graphic designer daughter in Brooklyn has done a lot of pro-bono work over the years. She finally cut back on that a few years ago and made some money, now she's done a lot of work for Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Sandy. In her community, and in software development communities, especially open source ones, there does seem to be a "reputation economy" growing up, which is often mentioned as a sign of a post-scarcity economy.

So, with so much as cheap as it is, and a billionaire unable to get a better smartphone then anyone else, maybe we're almost there already? Just need universal health care and some serious tax reform.

Google autocomplete also suggests Economy of Plentitude. That seems to have been coined by these guys. Their mission statement:

Inspiring, engaging, and challenging Americans to re-examine their cultural values on consumption and consumerism and initiating a new national conversation around what “the good life” and the “American dream” mean.

They've got a book, and a video. I like the video. Apparently mostly the brainchild of Juliet Schor, a Sociology prof at Boston College.

Here's another short post on Economy of Abundance.

One of my favorite sci-fi authors, Charles Stross (@cstross), had an interesting post on his blog re, what makes a billionaire want to make even more money? Three theories:

1. "It becomes a habit". And amongst businessmen I know, just because you get (filthy) rich you don't change how you do business -- you do it right.
   
2. "It becomes a game", trying to rack up the top score. Larry Ellison comes to mind.
   
3. "you're trying to build up a war chest that will buy you a very expensive toy one that isn't currently available at any price, so that if you want one you'll have to sink billions of dollars and years of your own time into building it." Think Elon Musk saying he wants to retire on Mars.
   

All three reasons make sense.

How Much Is Enough

Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.

Epicurus

I finished reading "How Much Is Enough? Money and the Good Life", by Robert and Edward Skidelsky (British, an economist and a philosopher), 2012, a couple of weeks ago. Their article "In Praise Of Leisure", which I cannot recommend highly enough, contains about 70% of the preface. I discussed and quoted that in my 3rd Economy of Plenty post.

The book is a quick read, 218 pages, and written in very common-sensical prose. I almost thought about rereading it before writing this post, but decided to proceed on the single reading. I will summarize the book's 7 chapters a chapter at a time.

Chapter 1, "Keynes's Mistake". This reviews Keynes article from the 1930s, which posited that once productivity had increased by a factor of 8 or so, how we would be living in a utopia for all. What happened instead? Almost all of the increased income from the increased productivity ended up in the pockets of the 1%. With many fine charts, facts, and figures. Keynes's error: to assume that material wants are naturally finite.

Chapter 2, "The Faustian Bargain". Reviews ideas of utopias. Hmm, I didn't know that the devil as "old Nick" was a reference to Nicholai Machiavelli. The history of how money-making as a goal got out of control. Never heard of Mandeville, who apparently was somewhat of a predecessor to Hegel and Marx. Marx thought capitalism had to end eventually because it was unjust -- but he never quite figured out how. "Greed is good" is a very new concept, throughout prior history, greed was bad and considered immoral. The Faustian pact: "the devils of avarice and usury were given free rein, on the understanding that, having lifted humanity out of poverty, they would quit the scene for good". Oops.

Chapter 3, "The Uses of Wealth". The good life, according to Aristotle, Pericles, Epicurus. "Use values" vs "exchange values". Acquiring money is a means to what ends, according to Western, Indian, and Chinese tradition? One thing I found out in this chapter is that I am not a liberal. "Liberal thinkers have insisted on public neutrality between rival concepts of the good." -- I am not a relativist, I believe there are absolutes. I judge a culture number one by how it treats its women, children and minorities. Apparently liberalism changed from emphasizing tolerance to emphasizing neutrality in the 1960's.

Chapter 4, "The Mirage of Happiness". The definition of happiness through history, and the economics of happiness. More fun charts. Is happiness aggregrative, i.e., a function of your entire life? Is it uni-dimensional or multi-dimensional? The conclusion is, happiness ≠ The Good Life.

Chapter 5, "Limits to Growth: Natural or Moral?". They argue that global warming does not necessarily mean that we need to reduce growth, a pretty non-PC position. They compare deep environmentalists, "who value nature as an end in itself", and shallow environmentalists, "who value nature as an instrument of human purpose". Gaia is discussed. And they introduce a concept I really like: "harmony with nature", which is one of the components of The Good Life. Their best example of harmony with nature: gardening.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. -- Cicero

The pear tree near the house in our back yard is definitely coming down, I will have a vegetable garden next spring!

Chapter 6, "Elements of the Good Life". So we finally get our shopping list, and it is a good one. First tho, the attributes of what makes something a Basic Good are discussed. These are concluded to be:

• it must be universal:  world-wide and world-view independent.
• it must be final:  it is not a means to an end. It must be the end.
• it must be sui generis (of its own kind/genus):  atomic and not part of some other good.
• it must be indespensible:  "anyone who lacks it may be deemed to have suffered a serious loss or harm."

So here are their 7 Basic Goods, the elements of The Good Life:

1. Health. "The full functioning of the body, the perfection of our animal nature." Sounds like universal health care would help with making this available to all.
2. Security. "An individual's justified expectation that is his life will continue more or less in its accustomed course, undisturbed by war, crime, revolution or major social and economic upheavals." Of course, when I did computer security, I would always say, there is no such thing -- we should all become Buddhists. But I understand the principal here and agree with it as a Good.
3. Respect. What Mitt Romney did not have for the 47%. Some relative level of equality, in all forms, is probably a prerequisite for respect. "Where the rich behave with lawless arrogance, the poor with impotent resentment and politicians with obeisance to money, inequality has exceeded the mark."
4. Personality. "The ability to frame and execute a plan of life reflective of one's taste, temperament and conception of the good." It would hard to conceive of any kind of Good Life that did not have rampant individuality, the more the better. It also implies the concept of private property.
5. Harmony with Nature. As discussed above. I want my garden.
6. Friendship. They include family in this Good. Plus they distinguish it from community, which does not imply a reciprocal relationship between the participants.
7. Leisure. "That which we do for its own sake, not as a means to something else". What floats your boat. What you love. What would do if money were no object? (This Allen Watts video has been floating around the web lately).

   Throughout history this has included participation in things like sports, art, crafts, music, and citizenship. Note we are talking participation rather than spectatorship.

So how do we achieve these? "The state's first duty is to create the material conditions of a good life for all." We realize that growth for is own sake is not part of The Good Life.

Chapter 7, "Exits from the Rat Race". "Darwinian capitalism", with its buddy "social Darwinism", must be reigned in. We must "reverse the onslaught of insatiability". Social Catholicism is examined. Hmmm, with the fall of the USSR in the 1980's, capitalism was declared the winner in the race of world ideologies -- which undoubtedly accelerated the growth of the out-of-control, rape/pillage/loot capitalism that we now have.

They also identify the fact that it is cheaper for employers to have fewer employees working more hours than more employees working fewer hours because that minimizes their overhead for benefits. This could be fixed by legislation to limit the work week. "The Dutch work fewer hours than the British yet enjoy a higher average income".

They propose (gasp, socialism alert), a basic income for all citizens. Lots of good arguments why this won't lead to generations of slackers worse than what we see amongst trust fund children.

In even more heresy against the 'Murrican Way, they discuss ways to "reduce the pressure to consume":

• sumptuary laws, which, dating back to ancient Greece, forbade various forms of conspicuous consumption. LOL, is that foreign to modern thinking or what? Well, excessive conspicuous consumption was part of what led to the French Revolution. Man, if Romney had won the election, I was really afraid we were totally going that way. At least we have a little breathing room now to try to fix some of this.
• consumption (or expenditure) taxes. We are used to sales tax, but these would be progressive, based on annual consumption or (highly priced) single items. So you pay a higher tax rate for consumption over $100K a year and/or for your Rolex. Hell, we all grew up playing Monopoly, which has a Luxury Tax square. Of course that dates back to the 1930's, when tax rates were actually much more equitable than they are now.
• reduce advertising!!! Gawd, would we all love that!!! They point out that whereas some ads provide useful information about necessities, far more have as their purpose creating a desire for something that is not a necessity.
  My add-on thought was, how about a tax on every advertising transaction? Just like microtaxes on stock market transactions would probably quickly reign in the zero-value-add programatic trading on Wall Street, you wonder what a tax on all marketing transactions would do to all the Internet businesses for whom ads are their main source of revenue. It might make some of them have to come to grips with what their real value-add is.

I've missed a lot here, but hopefully you get a feel for it. I really do highly recommend this book, it is a quick, easy and very informative read. I finished it 3 days after I started, reading at most a few hours a day. I'm getting more interested in economics, it had a lot of good background information on economic history, as well as philosophical history.

Two Books

So last week finished "The Fractal Prince", by Hannu Rajaniemi. This is the 2nd book of a trilogy, following "The Quantum Thief", which I have already proclaimed to be the definitive sci-fi novel of the 2010's. There are so many neologisms in this book, it was really helpful for me to go to the handy glossary of terms for the first novel in wikipedia for a quick review.

That said, what a cool read. An "Arabian Nights" tribute, stories within stories within stories. At one point a story that includes one of its figures retelling the same story causes a person infected by the story to go into an infinite recursive loop, presenting to the outside world as catatonic. A great read. Looking foward to a year or so after the 3rd book comes out, reading the three of them end to end.

Just yesterday, I finished "2312", by Kim Stanley Robinson. The ultra-wealthy have mostly moved to Mars. Earth is mostly a still a mess 2 centuries after the oceans rise 11 meters. The rest of the inhabited solar system: Mercury, asteroids, Jovian and Saturnian moons; are mostly a coop based on the Mondragon Accord. They wind up being a post-scarcity, semi-anarchic utopia reminiscent of Iain M. Banks "Culture". A lot of implicit and explicit commentary on current politics, particularly climate change denialism. An excellent read.

Note, this was the 1st book I read using the Kobo reader. I linked to these books on the Kobo website. This is what Carmichael's, Louisville's oldest independent bookstore, is using to sell ebooks. The reader is a little buggy but not too bad. Better than the IndieRead reader.

Children Do Not Get To Choose

Posted this to Facebook the 23th. Figure it's long enough to go here. This blog I clearly see as my external memory. Not sure what I see FB as. Man, I am definitely cutting way back on FB and Twitter after the election.

Begin post:

Poor people "entitlements" vs rich people "entitlements" == blue collar crime vs white collar crime.

Blue collar crime == bank robbery, net $5-10k, 5-10 years jail time.

White collar crime == embezzlement, net $1-5M, 6-12 months in a country club jail.

$$$billions in preferential tax treatment to corporations and "investor class", but heaven forbid we should try to feed the 20% of children in the richest country in the history of the world who are hungry. That would be SOCIALISM!!!

Children do not get to choose to be born, nor do they get to choose their parents. If our basic goal is, "maximize the outcome of every child", how can that possibly be wrong for our country?

The game is rigged. We need above all else campaign reform and repeal of AU so our democracy is not for sale!

Next, try, try to rein in the military-industrial complex, so that the US can quit being, by a large factor, the biggest arms dealer in the world.

Finally, my greatest disappointment in my BFF Barack Obama, get rid of indefinite detention, ground the drones, restore the rule of law and constitutional rights, and in doing so, restore the US to being a shining beacon for the rest of the world.