The Walrus Said

The fallacy of binary thinking

2008-08-19T13:22:00.005-04:00

Binary thinking has become my newest pet peeve. No, wait! Don't run away. It's not as eggheady as it sounds.

Binary thinking is the kind of thinking that says: "If you aren't A, then you are B. End of discussion." Or: "If you don't do A, then you must do B. End of discussion."

It raises its ugly head all over the place, but most especially in politics. It is the thinking of division, of facile labels. It is highly effective for pressuring or bullying someone who has not recognized it for what it is.

It is doubtful whether it qualifies as thinking at all, seeing as it falls short of even one dimension in its complexity, let alone the three (if you're normal) or four (if you have pretensions to scientific thinking) or ten (if you're a confirmed physicist) that the rest of the world lives in.

Let me illustrate. Binary thinking reduces everything to two points, thusly:

A. .B

In politics, especially of the American variety, this means you're either a bleeding-heart, pinko, atheistic commie or a flinty-eyed, redneck, heartless fascist.

This, of course, ignores the possibility of a complete first dimension, which looks like this:

A................................B

There are lots of intermediate points (an infinite number, if you want to get picky) between A and B. There are a lot of gradations of colour, even between the pinko and the redneck.

And all of this conveniently ignores the fact that there is more than one dimension. (No, I am not going to try to illustrate this with a keyboard. You are going to have to draw your own mental pictures.) There is a point C above the line and a point D below it. Now we are dealing with an embarrassing number of points. Because there are, yanno, God-fearing liberals and atheistic conservatives. And generous conservatives and skin-flint liberals.

It gets better. Between you and the line AB, (Yes, I know it's a square now. Don't get difficult.) there is a point E. And on the other side of AB there is a point F. Because there are, yanno, authoritarian liberals and libertarian liberals. And authoritarian conservatives and libertarian liberals. And the vast majority, who fall somewhere in the muddled middle of what is now a cube.

In all the vast space of the cube, it seems beyond childish to try to pile every single issue into a box on point A or another on point B. I would be greatly in favour of scrapping the terms "liberal" and "conservative" altogether. They generate more heat than light, and obscure thinking more often than encouraging it.

Please note that binary thinking is a handy tool of salesmen and advertisers the world over. If you don't buy car seat Brand A, your children will die horrible deaths. (Of course, they are a little more subtle about it, but that's the message they want you to get.) Because a couple of cars have been broken into in your neighbourhood, you had better buy my security system, so you won't be facing a raving lunatic with a knife in your dark living room. (Yes, this one was used on me recently. He put lots of sentences in between Point A and Point B so that I wouldn't catch on to the absurdity. It didn't work.)

Reality can almost never be reduced to an either/or situation. Be suspicious of such simplistic analysis whenever it comes along. And look for the intermediate points, because out on the extreme edge is rarely a good place to be.

ETA: After posting this, I found this quote in my Quote of the Day box:

Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.
- Kurt Vonnegut

Technorati tags: Binary thinking, Extremism

The Walrus is angry

2008-08-06T02:07:00.003-04:00

This is a rant. A personal, hot-under-the-collar, spitting-indignation rant. I normally try to keep the tone of this blog civil and rational and respectful. Not right now. If these things offend you, you might wish to go elsewhere.

There is a young lady on one of the forums I frequent who is twisting in excruciating pain. Why? Because her husband is not sure he wants to stay married to her. He says he loves her, treats her well in every other regard, but he's not too sure about the commitment thing. Worse yet, this young man is a Christian. Or he says he is.

Man, do I want to take this young fellow and smack him up both sides of the head. Real hard. Grow up, buddy. It's time to stop being a self-absorbed adolescent and start acting like a real man. Guess what? Your life is not all about you and the latest little wind of emotion blowing through you. It's not about your self-fulfillment or your self-realization. Marriage is not about your comfort and meeting your needs. Marriage is about love and commitment and meeting somebody else's needs. You stood up in public and swore, before God and man, to do that very thing.

Have you no self-respect? Would you be willing to stand again in front of the same people who were present at your wedding and say, "Yes, she's a fine woman, and I think highly of her, and I know I promised for better or for worse, but I don't think I feel like it anymore. And I am willing to subject her to searing agony because I don't feel too sure about it anymore. But that's OK, right? It's all about how I feel, right? My ambivalent feelings are more important than her happiness, than my word, than my commitment to God." I dare you. Do it.

I wouldn't treat my worst enemy the way you are treating your wife. You claim to love her, and yet you are torturing her as surely as if you were holding hot irons to her skin. I am beyond disgusted. What you desperately need is somebody to tell you to your face that you are being cruel and selfish and that there is absolutely no excuse for it. This is not a time for sympathy and soft words. Get over yourself and get back home and love your wife.

I just hope you have parents or a pastor or a best friend who will not hold back for fear of seeming uncharitable. Honour your word, honour your commitments, honour your wife. That's the only way you'll get my respect and deep down I'm sure you realize that's what you need to do to find some self-respect too.

Technorati tags: Divorce, Marriage, Commitment

For all you Pentecostals out there

2008-08-02T15:48:00.003-04:00

I couldn't resist.

Courtesy of I Can Haz Cheeseburger.

Technorati tags: lolcats

The Alchemy of Stone - a book review

2008-07-21T18:45:00.001-04:00

The Alchemy of Stone was my introduction to steampunk and a very enjoyable introduction it was too. Ekaterina Sedia writes beautifully and there is a kind of wistful sadness to this book that did not at all fit my preconceived notion of what steampunk was. But then again, it is probably unique to this particular novel.

The Alchemy of Stone is the story of Mattie, a liberated sentient automaton (with built-in hoop skirts!) who earns her living as an alchemist, a calling that is a weird blend of magician and scientist. She feels her non-humanness acutely, not like Pinocchio longing to be a "real" boy, but wanting to be accepted for what she is. It is a lyrical, haunting story of what it means to be marginal, especially in a time of social upheaval. For revolution is brewing...

As befits steampunk, the world in which Mattie lives is roughly reminiscent of Victorian society, but it does not correspond to any identifiable time or place that actually exists. Living gargoyles, sentient automatons, slave labour, and mistreated orphans all rub elbows in this strange place. One of Mattie's strengths, and therefore one of the book's strengths, is her willingness to consider things from all points of view, and her almost total lack of prejudice. This is not to say that she is entirely objective, for she has emotions, knows pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow. She does commit to a side, both in her personal life and in the revolution and must pay the price.

I recommend The Alchemy of Stone highly. Ekaterina Sedia is an author to watch, and I will be checking out her other books.

Thanks to Larry of the OF Blog, who hosted a giveaway of a signed ARC of the book, and of course, to Ekaterina herself, who graciously sent it.)

Technorati tags: The Alchemy of Stone, Ekaterina Sedia, Steampunk

A Prayer for Owen Meany - a review

2008-07-07T15:44:00.002-04:00

John Irving is a genius.

I picked up A Prayer for Owen Meany with some apprehension. (I am not always a fan of modern literature, for a variety of reasons, but I'll spare you that rant for now.) I had somehow managed to make it this far without ever reading Irving, and I suspected I was happier for it. Not.

Appropriately enough for a novel in which the voice of Owen Meany has such a central importance, it was the voice of the writer that drew me in. The novel opens thus:

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice--not because of his voice or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.

I don't know about you, but I find it intriguing that somebody becomes a believer because of the person who was the instrument of his mother's death. And what does he mean by "instrument" anyway? More questions pop up rather promptly: who was Johnny Wheelwright's father? Why was Owen Meany so angry with his parents? You have to get almost all the way through the 672 pages to get most of these questions answered. I'll confess, I did find the journey a little long sometimes, but not too much. Irving is capable of writing laugh-out-loud scenes and the way he writes a story is so engaging, I was prepared to forgive him a few slow spots.

Apart from the story-telling voice, what most impressed me about this book was the intricate interweaving of the various elements of the story. It never felt forced, but even in 672 pages, few elements of the story are single-use, disposable items. They duck in and out of the story, significance accreting to them with each successive appearance. The way Irving accomplishes this without it ever feeling contrived had me marvelling. And you can practically feel the author winking at you when a literary allusion tips off alert readers to the answer to one of the riddles before the narrator finds out.

The political rants, while supposedly being those of the narrator, do come across as something more, which I feel weakened the book a little also. But again, I shall forgive.

This book will not make a Christian out of anybody, but neither is it a veiled attack on Christianity. It shouldn't much change the piety quotient of anybody reading it, because that really isn't the point of the book.

As a Canadian, I much appreciated that the Canadian components of the book were accurate and I wasn't much surprised to find out Irving actually has a residence in Toronto. I doubt if a non-resident American could have pulled it off quite so well, as he spends some time discussing the Canadian mindset, and nailing it. Or at least nailing what it was at the time in question. It's evolved a wee bit since.

In a way, I rather wish A Prayer for Owen Meany had not been such a good book. Then I could have crossed John Irving off of my reading list, which is insanely long. Alas, I shall be obliged to read more. Maybe even to buy some.

Technorati tags: John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

The Visitor - movie review

2008-06-04T15:05:00.001-04:00

Tom McCarthy's The Visitor is a gem, a tribute to the power of understatement. It is the story of Walter Vale, a professor who has withdrawn from life to the point of being almost catatonic. When he finds his seldom-used New York City apartment inhaibited by a young immigrant couple, victims of a con artist who rented it out to them, he takes pity on them and allows them to stay. The young man, Tarek, is everything Walter is not: vibrant, passionate, full of enthusiasm and energy. They connect through their love of music and Walter is, bit by bit, drawn back into life. And then disaster strikes.

This is a subtle and immensely moving story, told with restraint and dignity. Even the simplest of gestures resonates. Actors Richard Jenkins, Haaz Sleiman, Hiam Abbass, and Danai Gurira never strike a false note, conveying powerful emotions without sliding into melodrama. The social commentary of the last part of the story is obvious, but it doesn't run away with the movie, leaving it primarily a story about the characters.

If Hollywood could make a habit of producing movies of this quality, I would be in movie theatres more often. I will probably buy the DVD when it comes out, as this is a film I will be happy to see many times.

Technorati tags: The Visitor, Tom McCarthy, Richard Jenkins

In Praise of Weddings

2008-05-23T07:00:00.000-04:00

We have a wedding coming up. While the young couple about to marry is wildly, ecstatically happy about getting married, they keep on moaning that they should have eloped. All the minutiae of wedding planning is driving them crazy, even though they are having a relatively simple, low-key wedding.

I sympathize. But I am glad that they're going through with the hassle and bother anyway. I think it's a very important thing, for them and perhaps even more for the rest of us.

Marriage is undervalued nowadays. It truly is the central institution of a society (perhaps the only institution that is present in every human society in one form or another). And it is a good thing that we take the time to show our solidarity toward anyone committing to it.

There is nothing silly about the tradition of showers, for example. While some of the little games might be, a group of women (and sometimes men) coming together to help set up a new household reminds me of the old barnraisers - a concrete way for the community to lend a hand. There is a group of ladies in our church that think it so important that they show up, presents in hand, to every shower hosted at our church (and it's a big church). And if nobody else does, they'll host the shower themselves. It's a small ministry that most of the church is probably unaware of, but a beautiful one.

The act of physically showing up at the wedding to witness and support the vows is yet another affirmation of their importance. And yes, the gifts too are important, both practically and symbolically.

All the planning and headaches are good for the couple too. It helps cement in their minds that this a major commitment, not to be entered into lightly, and not to be left lightly. So when they moan, I sympathize, smile, and tell them that I'm glad they're doing it anyway. How important it all is might not sink in until they're marrying off their own, but that's OK. Then maybe they will realize that they were doing much more than providing an opportunity for a family get-together.

Technorati tags: Weddings

Sanity in the Supreme Court

2008-05-22T10:21:00.003-04:00

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that Waddah (Martin) Mustapha is not entitled to damages for psychological damages as a result of seeing a fly in his unopened bottle of drinking water.

I have long been amazed at what trivialities courts consider worthy of hefty damages, although amazed is perhaps too nice a word.

In a 9-0 ruling issued Thursday, the Supreme Court decided that his reaction was exaggerated and that a "person of normal fortitude, a more reasonable person, would have had a more reasonable reaction," the CBC's Rosemary Barton reported from Ottawa.

"[The court ruled] it would have been impossible for Culligan Canada, the supplier of the water bottle, to foresee this sort of extreme reaction that Waddah Mustapha had," Barton said.

The court decided the psychological damages suffered by Mustapha were "too remote" to justify more than $300,000 in compensation Mustapha was seeking, and ordered him to pay the company's court costs.

In this precedent-setting ruling, the Supreme Court has effectively and unanimously declared that psychological damage has to be foreseeable before someone can be held accountable for inflicting it.

A few more rulings like this and perhaps our legal system will actually speed up as the backlog of trivial cases is cleared out and genuinely important cases have a little breathing room.

Technorati tags: Supreme Court, Psychological damage

I Can Has Cheezburger

2008-05-21T12:03:00.003-04:00

This blog has become a daily stop for me. And it's too good not to pass on. I Can Has Cheezburger is a cooperative blog that allows readers to submit captioned pictures in the LOLCats tradition. Other animals or amusing pictures are accepted; the current front page has a lioness, a polar bear and a raccoon, in addition to the numerous pussycats. Several pictures are posted daily.

It's like the comics page in the newspaper, but often better.

Technorati tags: LOLCats

Prince Caspian - a movie review

2008-05-17T00:15:00.005-04:00

In a word: meh. Warning: spoilers follow.

This is a fairly mindless action flick, I'm afraid. A mediocre one, liberally sprinkled with charming moments. The real point of the book, which is the conflict between belief and disbelief, between faith and unbelief, is almost completely buried and allowed to surface only briefly here and there to keep the lovers of the original happy. Trumpkin's personal journey from cheerful skeptic to sturdy believer is so glossed over it loses all its resonance and power to move. (I also missed the cheerfulness of the book's Trumpkin. The movie version is too melancholy to smile, although thankfully still with enough spirit to deliver a zinger or two.) Having removed the psychological motor of the story, the screenwriters tried to replace it with cheap tricks: an improperly developed power struggle between Peter and Caspian (oh please, if you're going to introduce new elements, at least do it right), a spark of romantic interest between Caspian and Susan (which they both relinquish far too easily) and Peter's anguish at having to sacrifice soldiers in the unsuccessful attack on Miraz's castle (yes, you're right, that wasn't in the book). This last one illustrates everything that was wrong with the movie. In an attempt to reintroduce depth, cheap tricks are used half-heartedly. Peter's anguish comes from nowhere and leads to nowhere. It's a throw-away moment and develops nothing. Both Caspian and Peter play with the idea of calling in the White Witch and are rescued from themselves by others. Again, it came from nowhere and led nowhere, is explained nowhere and explains nothing itself. Cheap, cheap, cheap. When Caspian proposes a duel with Miraz, it falls to Peter with no explanation whatsoever of why that should be. Again, cheap and poorly thought out.

The charming moments were almost entirely lifted from the original text of the book although Reepicheep and Trumpkin both get a couple of good original lines. The fate of the cat in Miraz's castle provided one of the good laughs. (I'm not going to spoil everything here.)

Visually, the movie is a treat and the special effects work very well.

One had to wonder at the decision to cast the Telmarines as Spaniards, both in their style of dress and armour, and in their accents. All the more amusing, since so many of them were played by Italians. It was an unexpected, but defensible decision.

Still, I can't help but mourn C.S. Lewis's spirited attack on modernity, perhaps best exemplified by the trashing of the schools as centres of indoctrination. Needless to say, this didn't make it into the movie. The central theme of the book was completely excised from the movie. What was left was moderately entertaining on a superficial level, but breaks down rather quickly on examination.

I'll probably watch the movie one more time when it comes out on DVD, just to catch the lines I missed (especially the one that everybody else laughed at). I doubt I will have any desire to see it again after that.

ETA: You can find a somewhat less snarky review here, which manages to find some good things to say (which I happen to agree with) even while pointing out even more problems.

Technorati tags: Prince Caspian, Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis

City of God: A Novel - a review

2008-05-15T09:00:00.000-04:00

City of God is a fragmented, dissonant, self-absorbed, and self-referential piece of post-modernist twaddle. Written by someone with real talent. It was only the fact that I had publicly committed to reading the book as part of the 1% Well-Read Challenge that kept me from abandoning it fairly early on in the game, despite the talent and the beautiful language.

The book is essentially a modern cry of despair, the logical conclusion of a worldview essentially wrapped up in self. Everett, the author whose words we are supposedly reading, has this to say about himself. (Or was it his fictitious alter-ego? I forget. It's very hard to keep track of who is speaking sometimes.)

So he is lean, fit, he takes very good care of himself in that way of someone profoundly faithless. He runs, works out almost religiously, for the self-maintenance that is his due.

The main object of his attention is Tom Pemberton, a maverick Episcopal priest who is supposedly seeking to find out who God really is, but who is equally self-absorbed. Witness his take on prayer:

You should try it. As an act of self-dramatization, it can't be beat. You get a hum, a reverberant hum of the possibility of your own consequential voice.

He calls his skull his cathedral, appropriate imagery for several reasons.

The plot, if you can call it that, is highly fragmented, told from various viewpoints, all presumably written by the fictitious author, and is really a series of different stories and metaphysical ramblings, interspersed with an adult version of teen angst poetry, riffing off of some of the classic songs of the early 20th century. A few little ornithological observations are thrown in for a reason which would probably become clear if I reread the book and spent a few hours meditating on its symbolism. (And please, Mr. Doctorow, it's not Canadian geese, it's Canada geese.)

The voice is well-done. Doctorow has a deft way with the language and occasionally throws out a flash of insight that delights. But there are a large number of viewpoint characters, most speaking in the first person, and almost all of them sound alike. This is sloppy characterization and makes it even harder to fit together the shards of story that make up City of God.

All in all, I found this a highly irritating book. From the pretentious arrogance of much of the metaphysical ramblings (I get very annoyed when affirmations of opinion are presented as logical necessities, when they are anything but), to the disjointed "story-telling", to the essentially unsympathetic characters, too much of this book was designed to grate on my nerves, so that its virtues just weren't enough to win me over.

Doctorow has won plenty of awards for his work, so obviously plenty of people disagree with me. I do note, however, that City of God appears to be one of his least popular books as rated by Amazon reviewers.

Technorati tags: E.L. Doctorow, City of God

The General has a point

2008-05-13T21:38:00.004-04:00

General Roméo Dallaire (that's Senator Dallaire to you civvies) is upbraiding the Conservative government over the case of Omar Khadr. (In all fairness, the Liberals didn't do any better when they were in power, which may be why Stéphane Dion is threatening to discipline the senator, in yet another stunning example of Dion's lack of political and good sense.)

Dallaire's central point - and whatever you think of the General or Khadr or any of the political parties, it's a very good one - is that Khadr was only 15 at the time he was taken into custody and sent to Guantanamo. Someone that young is normally considered a victim of indoctrination and/or intimidation and is rehabilitated, not charged. He asks what makes this case different. And he's right. You cannot have two sets of standards, applied according to the political winds of the times. Either we stand for human rights and justice equally applied, or we don't.

Dallaire said Canadian soldiers have helped rehabilitate more than 7,000 child soldiers in Afghanistan. None of them have been prosecuted, he said.

"What is the political reason? What makes [Khadr] different from the others?" said Dallaire.

Technorati tags: Romeo Dallaire, Omar Khadr

Quote of the day - evangelicals in academia

2008-05-07T16:32:00.005-04:00

"Evangelicals are the most discussed but least understood group in American society. Observers often assume that they are in lockstep with the Republican Party, but the sociologist Christian Smith has shown that 70 percent of evangelicals do not identify with the religious right. Other observers conclude that evangelicals principally serve their own interests, but Allen D. Hertzke's persuasive Freeing God's Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004) shows that evangelicals work as vigorously to protect the religious freedom of Buddhists and Jews around the world as they do that of their fellow Christians. A number of journalists and pundits have written about evangelicals since 2000, but the most interesting and helpful works have been academic studies based on empirical research. (Pick up one of those instead of a best-selling polemic to learn more about the subject. Hint: Avoid any work that includes "theocracy" in the title.)"

From "Evangelicalism Rebounds in Academe" (subscription necessary) by sociologist Michael Lindsay in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The article discusses the increasing presence of evangelicals in the academic community and challenges many cherished misconceptions.

Technorati tags: Evangelicalism, Academia, Michael Lindsay

The 1% Well-Read Challenge

2008-05-03T17:23:00.004-04:00

Book lovers of the world, unite!

Peter Boxall's book, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, is the basis of a challenge that is being thrown out by Michelle of 1morechapter.com. To accept this challenge, you commit to read 1% of the list over the next 10 months, which is one book a month. She even refers us to a nifty spreadsheet that allows you to tick off all the books you've read and get an automatic calculation of how many you need to read a month to get them all in before you die. I would have to read three a month. Not going to happen. Reading three books a month is not the issue; I just have too many books outside of that list I want to read.

But there were so many books on this list that I really wanted to read anyway, I figured I'd officially throw my hat in the ring.

The 10 books (subject to change) I have selected for this challenge are:

City of God - E.L. Doctorow
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
Beloved - Toni Morrison
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann
The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins
The Betrothed - Alessandro Manzoni

Technorati tags: Reading Challenge, 1001 Books

Quote of the day - Hillarobamarama

2008-05-01T15:22:00.004-04:00

But right now, as Hillarobamarama continues to throw fuel on the fires of rage and prejudice and division — all in the name of “hope” and “change” — I think neighborhoods need places where we can casually chat about stories, and pictures, and experiences, instead of react in shock at What Outrageous Thing Reverend Wright Said Today, or How Hillary’s Laughing Off the Fact That She Was Caught in Another Big Fat Lie.

Jeffrey Overstreet at Looking Closer

Technorati tags: Jeffrey Overstreet

How do I get myself into these things?

2008-04-10T11:08:00.003-04:00

Cut it out, Rafique. I'll play along this time, but that's it. No more memes!

It's even worse that I've come late to the game for this one, and just about everybody has already done it. So I'm going to break a rule or two on this one.

I. Link to the person who tagged you.
II. Post the Rules Here.
III. Share Seven Random or Weird Facts About Yourself.

1. In the three generations spanning our parents to our children, there are five different languages spoken in our family.
2. I have been on TV in three different shows that had absolutely nothing in common. This does not include woman-in-the-street interviews that may or may not have aired.
3. I speak two languages fluently, one semi-fluently, and a smattering of a couple of others.
4. I turned down an African, a Palestinian, an Inuit (Should I count the Austrian? Why not?) before finally saying yes to an Italian. I have no idea why WASPs seemed to ignore me.
5. I published an online newsletter that forecast the movements of commodity markets, using a method I devised myself. I pulled the plug on it because it required me to be two people and I didn't have that many hours in a day.
6. I was born on a Canadian Air Force base in France, back in the days when they still existed.
7. A friend of mine was once kidnapped while walking my baby in a stroller. In front of a cop's house. The only witness was my two-year-old. Fortunately, there was a happy ending.

And the ones I'm breaking:
IV. Tag 7 random people, linking to them.
V. Leave a comment letting them know you've tagged them.
Anybody reading this who hasn't already done it and who is amused by these things, consider yourself tagged.

And all taggers, consider yourself warned. The probability of me simply ignoring the next meme is very, very high.

Technorati tags: Memes

Zimbabwe opposition offices raided

2008-04-03T17:07:00.001-04:00

So reads the headline on the Yahoo news report. It then continues:

President Robert Mugabe's government raided the offices of the main opposition movement and rounded up foreign journalists Thursday in an ominous indication that he may use intimidation and violence to keep his grip on power.

Hands up, everyone who is surprised. It may be an ominous indication, but I personally am surprised that Mugabe has shown this much restraint. It's totally out of character. Power will slip out of his hands when they are cold and dead, and not a minute earlier. His use of intimidation and violence is well-documented and goes way back.

It's rather uncomfortable for journalists to document that though. Mugabe was a former media darling. It is difficult to admit mistakes, especially ones that never should have been made. To this day journalists seem incapable of summoning the moral outrage they applied (rightly, in that case) to apartheid and turning it against Mugabe. This despite the fact that he has turned his formerly prosperous country into a hellhole that most of his people would cheerfully leave for South Africa - present or past - or for old-time Rhodesia.

It is the African tragedy writ large all over again: a "liberator" who is really only interested in his own power. And a politically correct world that should be howling in outrage but doesn't. And journalists who express polite amazement at the inevitable.

I think I shall go be ill.

Technorati tags: Mugabe, Journalism, Zimbabwe

Free Books!

2008-04-02T18:00:00.004-04:00

I have recently, belatedly, discovered that people all over the Internet give away free, brand-new books. Most of the time, all you have to do is indicate your willingness to accept them and wait for the luck of the draw.

Book bloggers are in the midst of a give-away frenzy, so if you're interested, start with Eva's blog, In a Striped Armchair. She'll point you to a few other bloggers doing the same thing.

There are also blogs that specialize in reviewing specific kinds of books. They often have complimentary copies from the publishers to give away so are usually running book draws a couple of times a week. Fantasy Book Critic is a good example.

And last but not least, check out your favourite author's blog or website. They sometimes have freebies too, especially if they're debut authors trying to get attention.

Then there's that nasty Edward Willett at Hassenpfeffer who managed to not draw my name SIX WEEKS RUNNING! And Marseguro looks like a good read too. I suppose this means I shall have to spend money to do so.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have free books to read...

Technorati tags: Free books, Book give-aways

And you thought The Fugitive was fiction

2008-03-28T21:24:00.003-04:00

I will confess to not liking pharmaceuticals. I have never trusted them. I have never trusted the FDA, because I thought it was in bed with the pharmaceuticals.

Now I have really good reasons to. If you are a parent, make sure you read this and ask your pediatrician some hard questions. If you're not a parent, read it anyway.

By the way, it's easy reading, in spite of the fact that it's a hard topic. Served up in nice, bite-size pieces with lots of pictures which are often bleakly funny. More often scary.

Technorati tags: Pharmaceuticals

What I learned in Italy, Part 2

2008-03-28T10:38:00.002-04:00

Venice is better on cold, windy days when the water doesn't stink and you can still see the buildings through the tourists.

Always pack extra batteries. Your batteries will run out sooner than you expected, it will be harder to find them than you expected, and when you do find them, you will pay more than you expected. I know, dear, it was my fault. You're a hero for not saying "I told you so." (Picture taken with said expensive batteries.)

Poor taste is not restricted to religious icons. Mind you, they were offering cheaper prices than on nice days. Good day to bargain. (No, we didn't.)

Whenever you are in possession of a clean bathroom, use it, whether you think you need to or not. Public washrooms in Italy - unlike the private ones - are often disgustingly dirty. And for North Americans, bewildering. The entire county seems to be playing an elaborate game of "Guess what novel way of flushing we've come up with for this toilet." (No, I don't have a picture. I forgot. So this is an excuse to throw in an unrelated, but beloved, picture.)

"When in Rome, do as the Romans do" extends to Episcopalian churches. San Paolo dentro le Mure (St. Paul's Within-the-Walls, as opposed to St. Paul's Outside the Walls) was the baby of a Pennsylvanian Episcopalian in the late 1800's. He tried hard to fit in.

Continuation from Part 1.

Technorati tags: Italy, Venice

Deluded internationalists

2008-03-25T15:12:00.003-04:00

This quote from Pankaj Mishra's review of Erez Manela's The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anti-Colonial Nationalism strikes me with all the force of a sudden spotlight. I have long bemoaned the profound ignorance of global realities among people who should know better (the people who actually hold some geopolitical power), most especially the incredibly naive idea that most of the world wants to become a clone of America. The debacle in Iraq, which is only now beginning to be turned around, is largely attributable to this cultural arrogance. But Mishra says it better:

The victories of the Cold War – and the giddy speculation that history had reached the ideological terminus of liberal democracy – revived illusions of omnipotence among an Anglo-American political and media elite that has always known very little about the modern world it claims to have made. Consequently, almost every event since the end of the Cold War – the rise of radical Islam, of India and China, the assertiveness of oil-rich Russia, Iran and Venezuela – has come as a shock, a rude reminder that the natives of Delhi, Cairo and Beijing have geopolitical ambitions of their own, not to mention a sense of history marked by resentment and suspicion of the metropolitan West. The liberal internationalists persist, trying to revive the Wilsonian moment in places where Anglo-American liberalism has been seen as an especially aggressive form of hypocrisy. Increasingly, however, they expose themselves as the new provincials, dangerously blundering about in a volatile world.

Hat tip to David Akin's On the Hill.

Technorati tags: Pankaj Mishra, Geopolitics, Internationalism

What I learned in Italy, Part 1

2008-03-24T13:27:00.001-04:00

I suppose I knew most of these already, but they got hammered home in new ways.

People grow oblivious to the beauty around them. We were soaking up the beauty of my husband's birthplace: rolling green hills topped with historic little towns, fields full of gnarled, silvery olive trees, almond and mimosa trees in full glorious bloom of white and yellow, peach trees inflating their pink buds almost to popping point. The relatives were astonished when we said they were lucky to live surrounded by so much beauty. They hadn't noticed.

If you want to torment people in a small town, walk into the local cafe, look around, greet people in Italian, and leave without telling them who you are. (Come back later and make up.)

Teaching graffiti as a form of artistic expression in university is a really, really bad idea. The only good thing to be said of Italy's graffitti artists is that they seem to restrict their efforts to stucco and concrete surfaces. Historic buildings are mostly unscathed. But some parts of town, particularly around railroad tracks, are nothing but a blur of graffiti.

Speaking of concrete surfaces, I never knew there was such a thing as concrete picket fences.

Starbucks should roll over and die. Seriously. Where did they get the crazy idea they know how to make espresso or cappuccino?

Technorati tags: Italy

Toking up with Lawrence Welk

2008-02-14T18:24:00.004-05:00

This clip should come with a beverage alert. Make sure you swallow your coffee before you view it, because you're going to be either spluttering in indignation or howling with laughter.

I led a fortunate childhood. My parents didn't watch Lawrence Welk and I was subjected to him only when I happened to be at my grandmother's house at the wrong time. I much preferred Hymn Sing, trust me. There the content mattered. On the Lawrence Welk Show, content was meaningless and this clip proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

But it does leave me wondering: who set him up? There is no way all the young performers on that show were ignorant of the song's real meaning. This was perhaps a bit of a sly wink to all the teenagers who were more or less forced to watch the show.

Hat tip to Tully of Stubborn Facts

Technorati tags: Lawrence Welk

Last Dragon by J.M. McDermott

2008-02-06T16:35:00.000-05:00

If you like stereotyped, cliché-ridden, sword and sorcery fantasy, avoid this book. If you like straightforward simple plots that tick carefully through events in chronological order, avoid this book. If you like to see everything tidily sewn up at the end of a novel, with all loose ends tucked carefully into the warp and woof of the story, avoid this book.

If you like complex, evocative and haunting stories, read it. If you like innovative artistry, read it. If you like to have plenty of things left to wonder about at the end of the book, read it. In my opinion, there are still a few rough edges here - most notably Korinyes's secret - but Last Dragon is still very much worth reading.

What impressed me about this book is that it pulled me in, despite a format that normally does not appeal to me: the puzzle-piece approach. Bits and pieces of the dying Empress's memories are fed to us without context and it is up to us to fit them together, although it becomes apparent after a little while that we are mostly following two fairly chronological timelines, starting at two different points in the past. I don't normally have a lot of patience for this kind of thing, but McDermott made it work.

You don't have to be a lover of fantasy to appreciate Last Dragon. You do have to like your reading intelligent, complex and gritty. As of yesterday, it is available in bookstores and can be easily ordered online.

P.S. - I'm scrapping the whole star system. I really prefer discussing books to rating them.

Technorati tags: Last Dragon, J.M. McDermott

Page 123

2008-02-04T16:39:00.000-05:00

Rafique of The Liberal War Journal (and The Stubborn Facts) has tagged me for yet another book meme. He's too likable for me to say no, and at least this one is easy.

Here are the rules:
1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

There is a full bookcase to the right of the computer (yikes!) but to my great relief there are several books strewn across the surface of the low table to the left and the closest one comes in several inches closer than the bookshelf. It is one of my all-time favourites, My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok.

She sounded frightened. I wondered why she was frightened. She hadn't drawn the Rebbe's face in a Chumash.

This is a magnificent novel about a young ultra-orthodox Jewish boy who is consumed by his gift. From the time he can hold a stubby crayon in his fat little fist, he cannot stop himself from drawing, painting, documenting his life. And it ultimately leads him to paint a crucifixion, although it is not Jesus, but his mother who hangs on the cross formed by the intersection of the living room window panes. Potok explores with his customary compassion and sensitivity the relationships between father and son, mother and son, art and religion, belief and doubt. I don't know if the book is still in print, but if you can get your hands on a copy, do so. And cherish it.

Now that I am "it", I need to tag five others. Mwahaha.

Janna at Something She Wrote, of course (revenge is sweet)
Jared at Total Depravity (despite the name, a blog of great charm)
Greg at Sippican Cottage, essayist extraordinaire
Edward Willett at the misspelled (no I won't give it up, Ed!) Hassenpfeffer
and
Annie at The Superfast Reader

Technorati tags: Memes, Chaim Potok, My Name is Asher Lev