Martin Wisse – Page 530

Books read in October

Published on November 6, 2008

Here are the books I’ve read last month. Less than I wanted to read to keep on track for my goal of 150 books read this year. Oh well, guess I have to read more in November and December…

Europe unfolding: 1648-1688 — John Stoye
Excellent narrative history about one of those interludes in European history that don’t really fit a period. As this is an English history, Europe means the continent, but it’s very good at covering the whole of Europe and not just western Europe.

Dreams of Steel — Glen Cook
The fifth Black Company novel (not counting The Silver Spike) and the first not narrated by Croaker. Gripping as always.

The Witches of Karres — James H. Schmitz
Schmitz is not an author I had heard much of, until ten years or so ago, when Baen started to reprint his work, but in an “updated” version. I got this book as an indirect result of the controversy this update caused in rec.arts.sf.written, as Jo Walton handed it out as a wedding present, echoing the old Hobbit tradition of giving away presents on your birthday. An entertaining read, which means I will search out more Schmitz.

Slan — A. E. Van Vogt
First time in decades I actually read some van Vogt. Slan is one of those stories that had an influence on science fiction all out of proportion to its qualities, just because the idea is so good. The first chapter especially is so good in establishing the emotional truth of poor old Jommy Cross’ situation, twelve years old, a superhuman mutant with intelligence and strength far above normal people but all alone in a world that fears and hates him and his kind.

1491 – New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus — Charles C. Mann
I got this on a recommendation by Teresa Nielsen Hayden. Mann is one of those people who’s able to take what the experts known on pre-Columbian America and make it available to the general public. The revelations here -that America was much more populated, had a much longer history and was much less wild than recieved wisdom would have it- are not new to those in the field, but have so far not quite penetrated public consciousness yet. 1491 might just be the book to do it.

Time Patrolman — Poul Anderson
Two long stories about the Time Patrol, as also seen in The Guardians of Time. A nice study of contrast, as the first story is one of cheerful high adventure, the kind of sotry which got Anderson his fame in the first place, while the second confirms his reputation of Gloomy Dane he got later in his life.

The Final Programme — Michael Moorcock
The first Jerry Cornelius novel, almost a word for word rewrite of the first Elric novella, the Dreaming City. Setting Elric’s story in a near contemporary England makes clear the banality of it all.

A Cure for Cancer — Michael Moorcock
The second novel in the Cornelius Quartet, more ambitious than the first, flawed but interesting.

The English Assassin — Michael Moorcock
A return to a more conventional structure but with a much less coherent (deliberately) storyline.

The Condition of Muzak — Michael Moorcock
In this one everything has degenerated, given in to entropy.

Wall Street — Doug Henwood
A somewhat dated (published in 1997) but still relevant examination of the financial industry from a leftwing, marxistoid point of view.

Eight years later…

Published on November 4, 2008

Eight years ago on this day our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity finally ended when the 2000 presidential elections halted in stalemate and Bush let his daddy’s lawyers steal the election for him.

You can sum up Bush in the disasters he left behind: the stolen election, the worst terrorist attacks on American soil ever, a bungled war in Afghanistan, another needless war in Iraq to show up his dad, an economy only keeping going by seducing people into unmanagable debts. — And then you fuckers re-elected him. Sure, the second election was as phony as the first, but still half or almost half of the people that actually bothered to vote after four years of endless disaster still thought Bush was a swell guy!

It only took another four years of unending war, the death of a major American city and the complete collapse of the American economy, swiftly followed by that of the rest of the world for you lot to realise that maybe, just maybe, voting for an asshole is not a good idea, not matter how much this will annoy that hippy drippy art teacher you had back in high school.

Please let Obama win tonight, not because he’s a socialist, or a leftist or even much of a liberal, but just because he is moderately competent and doesn’t constantly have to prove to the world he’s a better man than his daddy or how big his weiner is. We need somebody who will finally stop making things worse. The last eight years have been a complete washout, let’s not waste the next four.

Update: 5 AM local time: Thank you.

Also:

Also.

Plucky little Georgia not so innocent after all

Published on November 3, 2008

If there ever was a texbook example of Chomsky’s and Herman’s propaganda model in action, it was the way in which the conventional narrative about the War for South Ossetia was created this August. It was …interesting… to see how quickly western media, (with a little prompting from Washington and London) settled on a cod-Cold War story of plucky little Georgia standing up to the mad and dangerous Russian bear, while still reporting the war as it happened. On the one hand you had journalists correctly reporting how escalating tensions finally led to a Georgian invasion of South Ossetia followed by a Russian response, on the other hand you had the op-ed pages and other commentary roundly condemning this latest example of Russian aggression. As the news cycle moved on the facts of the war disappeared, eclipsed by new news events while the story remained, now firmly established as background assumptions to further reports about the war and its aftermath.

Which is why it’s good to see the BBC reporting that the Georgians were not so innocent after all, even if it comes months too late:

Marina Kochieva, a doctor in the regional capital Tskhinvali’s main hospital, told our reporters that she and three relatives were targeted by a Georgian tank as they were trying to escape by car from the town on the night of 9 August.

She said the tank fired on her car and two other vehicles, leading them to crash into a ditch. The firing continued as she and her companions lay on the ground, she added.

Georgy Tadtayev, a 21-year-old dental student, was one of the Ossetian civilians killed during the fighting.

His mother, Taya Sitnik, 45, told the BBC he bled to death in her arms on the morning of 9 August after a fragment from a Georgian tank shell hit him in the throat as they were both sheltering from artillery fire in the basement of her block of flats.

It confirms what I thought from the start: Saakashvili tried to ethnically cleanse the Ossetians and it backfired, not so much on him as on the Georgian inhabitants of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, who in turn were cleansed from those regions. Saakashvili gambled that Russia was too weak to intervene or that his western backers would help him and he lost.

Two bits of interestness

Published on November 3, 2008

(Alternative title: Martin shows his ignorance again.)

James Nicoll resurrects a piece of interesting US medical history for the benefit of a silly Livejournal poll, asking his readers their opinion of the Flexner report:

The Report (also called Carnegie Foundation Bulletin Number Four) called on American medical schools to enact higher admission and graduation standards, and to adhere strictly to the protocols of mainstream science in their teaching and research. Many American medical schools fell short of the standard advocated in the Report, and subsequent to its publication, nearly half of such schools merged or were closed outright. The Report also concluded that there were too many medical schools in the USA, and that too many doctors were being trained. A repercussion of the Flexner Report resulting from the closure or consolidation of university training, was reversion of American universities to male-only admittance programs to accommodate a smaller admission pool. Universities had begun opening and expanding female admissions as part of women’s and co-educational facilities only in the mid-to-latter part of the 19th century with the founding of co-educational Oberlin College in 1833 and private colleges such as Vassar College and Pembroke College.

0wen Hatherley commenting on a half forgotten 1930ties cartoonist, Osbert Lancaster, a fellow with the same sort of progression as Betjeman in moving from Modernist to nostalgic defender of dear old England:

The 1930s work, from Pillar to Post and elsewhere, is still excellent – a precise, droll anatomisation of English building styles, with the admirable aim of making the English actually think about their environment for once. The absurdities of each idiom are neatly pricked, from the ‘Stockbroker Tudor’ pile with its streamline moderne car, glamour girl and adjacent pylon (which, amongst other things reveals just how old postmodernism is); to the ‘Functional Modern’ interior where the Bauhaus aesthete (apparently based on Herbert Read) sits bow-legged on an Aalto stool, oblivious to the fact that his sun-window gives onto pissing rain rather than light-air-openness.

The later cartoons – for the likes of the Daily Express or Anthony Powell’s epics of bourgeois manners, or for the theatre – still have a certain seedy charm, but are far less interesting. The architectural observations stay sharp, but elsewhere it all gets rather flabby. The lurid sexuality which pervades the prurient sketches of ‘permissiveness’ – a skirt never quite covers an arse, breasts always seem to be forcing themselves out of dresses – offers a few moments of interest, although they pale in comparison with the teeming, obsessive visions of Ronald Searle, whose angular lines the 1950s- works superficially resemble – and who is vastly more deserving of the exhibition’s throwing around of the term ‘genius’.

(I hadn’t heard of Lancaster before, but it’ll probably turn out that S. had a pile of his books but threw them out before moving house.)

Ragemongering

Published on October 29, 2008

Justice secretary Jack Straw says prisons exist to punish criminals and attacks the “criminal justice lobby [sic] for putting the needs of offenders before those of victims”. Immigration minister Phil Woolas says a tough new points-based system to limit non-EU immigration is needed to make sure the UK won’t reach a population of seventy million. Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell, a while back said the unemployed should be made to work for their benefits .

Three examples of ragemongering, pandering to the worst instincts of the tabloids. Unlike America where fear and hatred of the stranger seems the paramount emotion driving the rightwing press, in the UK it seems to be anger and rage at everybody getting one over on ordinary, decent hardworking folk. Scroungers getting money for nothing from my hard earned wages, criminals mollycoddled by those leftie lawyers, bloody foreigners coming over here and getting everything handed on a silver platter, those are all tabloid stock villains. Amongst a certain part of the electorate there’s a deep rooted conviction that other people are getting away with murder and a strong desire to see them punished for it. It’s a well conditioned reflex that New Labour has been nurturing ever since they first got in power, by a torrent of ill considered and needless legislation designed to trigger these sentiments. Because if there’s one thing New Labour has internalised is that they need the tabloids behind them to remain in power.

For Gordon Brown it must be slightly worrying that such a big hitter like Jack Straw is engaging in this tactic now, just when Gordon himself is widely praised for his handling of the credit crisis, after such a long period of tabloid dissatisfaction with the Designated Successor. It may just be a sign that Gordon’s political position is not as secure as it seems to be, that Straw is positioning himself for a possible leadership battle in the near future. Ragemongering after all can also be used to raise your own profile, rather than that of the party…