Arts & Letters

Book Meme

Arts & Letters / /

It appears that I’ve been “tagged” (not in the cool, web 2.0ey sense of the word, but rather the lame chain-letter equivalent used in blogging – not that I mind, though) for a book meme.

  1. One book that changed your life

    This might seem lame to some, but Lightning, by Dean Koontz was one of the first books that I ever read for pleasure. I was about 14 years old, and grounded (for reasons I won’t get into), and my brother had given me this book to read. I was skeptical, of course. The suggestion to read for pleasure was scandalous. I mean, come on, that’s something they force you to do in school, not something you spend precious spare time on! At some point, I got around to picking it up and as soon as I started reading it, I was hooked. I read the whole thing in about two days, then moved on to the rest of Koontz’s catalog, eventually branching out to other authors and genres (Asimov was also a notable influence in my early reading days). In any case, I hold this book responsible for all the reading I have done since, and I’ll always have a soft spot for Koontz (even if I don’t find his stuff as enjoyable these days – perhaps a topic for another post).

  2. One book that you’ve read more than once

    Well, I could mention Lightning again here (while still gripping and entertaining, it was, alas, not as good as I had rememberd it – the difference between a 14 year old and a 23 year old, I guess), but I assume the point of this is not to repeat myself… So I think the most impressive book I’ve reread is Neal Stephenson’s brilliant Cryptonomicon. I read this book a few years ago, then again after I had read the Baroque Cycle. Some might question the wisdom of re-reading a 900 page book after reading it’s 2700 page prequel, but it was actually great. There are tons of subtle references that I hadn’t noticed in the Baroque Cycle (sometimes extremely subtle, but it even to the point of fairly promintent side characters). Interestingly enough, the book was better the second time around,perhaps because of all the small tie-ins with the Baroque Cycle, but also because my focus had changed. When I first read the book, my favorite parts were in the WWII era of the story, but the second reading made me notice more about the present-day era.

  3. One book you’d want on a desert island

    This would depend greatly on the details of said island, but my first instinct was to go all pragmatic and pick a survival book (like Shamus notes, one with pictures and diagrams would be most useful). I assume the real intention here is to name a book that I think is so great that it would allow me to escape my dismal surroundings. I could probably go with any of the aformentioned books (perhaps Cryptonomicon would be ideal, as it’s longer) or perhaps the LotR trilogy (counting that as a single full book).

  4. One book that made you laugh

    Hmm, I’m getting the feeling that it will become more and more difficult to not mention books already mentioned. Both Koontz and Stephenson have keen senses of humor and almost always have things in their books that make me laugh out loud. I think I’ll go with Snow Crash here (though Cryptonomicon is the one that really comes to mind for me…)

  5. One book that made you cry

    Honestly, I can’t think of one. I’m not generally into the sad weepy stories that are likely to make one cry, so I tend to avoid those types of books…

  6. One book that you wish had been written

    I think this is the toughest question on the list because, you know, I haven’t really read many books in the grand scheme of things. There are plenty of books I’m waiting for, but the form of this question implies books that won’t be written (perhaps because the desired author is dead, etc…) not books that haven’t been written yet. I’ve looked around at others who participated in the meme and mostly what I see are humorous or clever answers. Eh, how about the The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, Explained So You May Understand It (yes, yes, I know, 42. Thanks a lot.).

  7. One book that you wish had never been written

    The obvious answer is, of course, Mein Kampf. There’s also some others like perhaps Protocols of the Elders of Zion (hmmm, catching a trend here?) or perhaps the entire political commentary rack at the local bookstore… but in reality, I find it hard to wish anything hadn’t been written. I’m just not the censoring type, I guess, and I value freedom of speech enough to put up with stuff I don’t like.

  8. One book you’re currently reading

    The Ghost Brigades, by John Scalzi. Heinein-inspired military sci-fi, and it’s pretty entertaining too (though not as good so far as the first in the series, Old Man’s War, which I’ll eventually get around to posting about one of these days).

  9. One book you’ve been meaning to read

    Well, this is quite a long list, but if I make the criteria dependent on actually owning the book but not having read it, I’ll have to go with Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I’ve heard good things and bad things, and it’s sat on my shelf for a few years now. It’s quite a hefty book, which doesn’t normally bother me, but considering that a lot of people seem to think the book is a clever exercise in literary style, I’m not sure I’m all that excited (at least, not for 1000 pages of it). Really, it just seems like there’s always something more interesting also on my shelf…

  10. Tag 5 people
    I’m not sure I know 5 other bloggers to tag that would bother to respond (and one of them tagged me, so that narrows it down further), so instead, I’ll just comdemn the practice of “tagging” (in the bloggers equivalent of chain letter sense) in a self righteous manner, thus proving my superiority to the rest of the blogging world. Or something.

    Seriously though, if you’re a blogger and you want to participate, go right ahead:) If you’re not a blogger, feel free to leave your answers in the comments…

That’s all for now. I know I mentioned last week that I’d post more, but I never got around to it. Apologies for the lameness lately, I’m sure I’ll get back on track soon…

Introductions

2 Comments / Arts & Letters / /

The main body of text in many books is often preceded by an introduction. For most of my life, I have pretty much ignored introductions, for a number of reasons:

  • The types of books that have introductions are generally somewhat old literature. As such, the tone of these introductions is somewhat stuffy, academic, and, quite frankly, boring.
  • I tend to read mostly fiction, and the introduction is often written as if the reader has already read the main text. This sometimes has the effect of ruining some of the story and making me wonder why it’s at the beginning of the book (on the other hand, it can also be useful to start reading a book while having a basic understanding of the story or, in more pretentious terms, it aids in the Hermeneutic Circle).
  • The grand majority of these types of books were read in school, which tells you how much motivation I had to read the introduction. They weren’t required reading and I generally got the necessary context and analysis in class from my professor.

The most important of these, I think, is the latter. In school, I learned the benefits of placing a historical work in its cultural and historical context, most notably with respect to the Bible (a book that reads much differently when you know it’s cultural and histoical context), but this was almost always done as an exercise in class and not by reading some dull introduction.

Since I graduated, I have read some introductions, but usually after I have read the novel. I sometimes found this rewarding, as with Thomas Pynchon’s introduction to 1984 and China Mi�ville’s introduction to H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, but I don’t know that I would have appreciated them much had I read them before the main text. This always confused me about introductions.

In any case, about a month ago, I picked up The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca, which recounts a 1527 expedition to America. As you might expect from what amounts to a translated 16th century history book, it was somewhat slow going. Of course, I had skipped the introduction entirely, for reasons I’ve already belabored. I immediately lost interest and moved on to something else (plus, I had to travel, and such material doesn’t make good airplane reading even if I did find it interesting). So a few days ago, I picked it up again and started reading the introduction (which I just finished now). It has that stuffy academic feel to it, but once I got into it, it started to shed some real light on the text.

There were a lot of things that initially mystified me about the main text, but which now made sense because of certain contextual clues in the Introduction. For instance, there are two versions of the book, one written explicitely for the Holy Roman Emporer Charles V in 1542, the other an edited version split into chapters with titles and a new preface targeting a broader readership in 1555 (the text had not changed much, but the preface did). This explains some of the “formality and decorum” of the account, and it’s noteworthy that Cabeza de Vaca used his book as a sort of resume; he was trying to garner support for another expedition to the Indies (which would place his story under a bit of suspicion, though it apparently has been corroborated by multiple accounts.)

All of which is to say that the Intoduction for this book, unlike most books I’ve read, was actually useful before reading the book. It’s still got that stuffy academic tone, and it is perhaps a bit too long (38 pages as compared to the ~140 pages of the main story), but it still did a decent job. I wonder if my observations make any sense, in that they are borne almost entirely out of ignorance, but in any case, all that remains for me is to actually read Cabeza de Vaca’s account (this time secure in the knowledge that I actually understand what’s going on from a cultural and historical context). I can already see that it will be less mystifying and more interesting this time around.

The Big U and Journalists

3 Comments / Neal Stephenson / /

I finished reading The Big U (Neal Stephenson’s first novel) tonight. Stephenson himself describes this as “a juvenile work,” and now that I have finished it, I can see where he’s coming from. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed it, but the story becomes a bit unhinged towards the end. At the beginning of the book, it’s obviously a satire, but as the story progresses things begin to slow down a bit and Stephenson starts to take the satire over-the-top in an attempt to compensate. Each chapter in the book corresponds to a month of the school year, starting in September and ending in May. By the time you get to November/December, things slow down a bit, and in March things begin to get a bit more absurd… this leads to a sudden (absurd) explosion of events in April, followed by the conclusion in May. Again, I enjoyed it, but I can see how some people would be turned off by the sudden turn of events. Sure, it’s ridiculous, but if you can get past that, there are still a few gems along the same lines as the ones I wrote about a few weeks ago…

Spoilers ahoy, if you care…

So at the beginning of April, an all out war breaks out in the Plex (for those who don’t know what the plex is, see my last entry). By “all out war,” I mean a literal war, with guns and bombs and plenty of deaths. Various groups of students, administration officials, and the bizzarre Crotobaltislavonians (yet another of Stephenson’s fictional nationalities) have fought it out and carved up their own spheres of influence. Things have calmed down a bit, and the narrarator is making a trek towards the library to recover a fellow professor’s research notes (this is an absurd motive, but everything is so surreal at this point that I was willing to let it ride). To reach the library, they must cross several “stable academic blocs” including the journalism bloc. The journalists have negotiated several treaties with various other blocs in exchange for safe passage and weapons for their guards. In exchange for an interview and allowing a camera crew to follow them, our narrarator’s group is able to make it through the journalism zone. The narrarator has some questions:

“You’ve got a hell of a lot of firepower. You guys are the most powerful force in the Plex. How are you using it?”

The student shrugged. “What do you mean? We protect our crews and equipment. All the barbarians are afraid of us.”

“Right, obviously,” I said. “But I noticed recently that a lot of people around here are starving, being raped, murdered — you know, a lot of bum out stuff. Do those guards try to help out? You can spare a few.”

“Well, I don’t know,” he said uncomfortably. That’s kind of network-level policy. It goes against the agreement. We can go anywhere as long as we don’t interfere. If we interfere, no agreement.”

“But if you’ve already negotiated one agreement, can’t you do more? Get some doctors into the building maybe?”

“No way, man. No fucking way. We journalists have ethics.”

Heh. Again, this book was published in 1984. Was that considered over-the-top satire at the time? Seems rather tame by today’s standards.

Stephenson has a reputation for bad endings that just sort of happen without warning, but that doesn’t really happen here. To be sure, it’s not a great ending (like the rest of the book, it’s slightly absurd as it hinges off of one of the groups’ fanatical religious devotion to a giant neon sign), but it was better than expected. Overall, I’d say the book is worth reading for die-hard Stephenson fans and maybe geeky folks who don’t mind that he goes off the deep end about 200 pages in…

Megaversity

3 Comments / Neal Stephenson / /

In an effort to exhaust the novelty of my current favorite author, Neal Stephenson, I’ve been reading his first novel, The Big U (I think I’ve covered everything else but his pseudonymous work). Stephenson himself describes this as “a juvenile work,” but I’m greatly enjoying myself. Filled with geeks pursuing… geeky pursuits, I’m reminded of the latter day portions of Cryptonomicon (though when you compare those two, I can see why The Big U would be called juvenile). It’s quite entertaining so far, though there does seem to be a lack of traditional plot points and I’m not expecting a particularly revelatory ending. The book is probably best described by it’s setting (American Megaversity) and characters (geeks). Some choice quotes are below:

Most of the facilities of the Big U are contained within a group of buildings refered to as the Plex:

The Plex’s environmental control system was designed so that anyone could spend four years wearing only a jockstrap and a pair of welding goggles and yet never feel chilly or find the place too dimly lit.

Sounds like a fun place, and it seems that Stephenson’s humor was fully in place when he started his writing career. I’ve also noticed that he seems to have a fascination with how smart people find one another in the throngs of normal people. For instance, two of the characters get lost in the Plex’s labyrinthine stairway system and end up exiting at the back of the building:

Later I was to think it remarkable that Casimir and I should emerge from those fire doors at nearly the same moment, and meet. On reflection, I have changed my mind. The Big U was an unnatural environment, a work of the human mind, not of God or plate tectonics. If two strangers met in the rarely used stairways, it was not unreasonable that they should turn out to be similar, and become friends. I thought of it as an immense vending machine, cautiously crafted so that any denomination too ancient or foreign or irregular would rattle about randomly for a while, find its way into the stairway system, and inevitably be deposited in the reject tray on the barren back side. Meanwhile, brightly colored graduates with attractively packaged degrees were dispensed out front every June, swept up by traffic on the Parkway and carried away for leisurly consumption…

Much the same situation brought Daniel Waterhouse and Isaac Newton together in Quicksilver. Other similar scenarios populate his various other books as well.

The book is obviously a satire, but I still can’t help but find a grain of truth in some of the absurdly bureaucratic obstacles that pop up for various students.

“I’m an English major. I know this stuff. Why are you putting me in Freshman English?”

The General Curriculum Advisor consulted little codes printed by the computer, and looked them up in a huge computer-printed book. “Ah,” he said, “was one of your parents a foreign national?”

“My stepmother is from Wales.”

“That explains it. You see.” The official had swung around toward her and assumed a frank, open body-language posture. “Statistical analysis shows that children of one or more foreign nationals are often gifted with Special Challenges.”

Sarah’s spine arched back and she set her jaw. “You’re saying I can’t speak English because my stepmother was Welsh?”

“Special Challenges are likely in your case. You were mistakenly exempted from Freshmen English because of your high test scores. This exemption option has now been retroactively waived for your convenience.”

“I don’t want it waived. It’s not convenient.”

“To ensure maintenance of high academic standards, the waiver is avolitional.”

Nothing that bad has ever happened to me, but there was that time the university lost my enrollment (in which I had very carefully picked what classes and professors I wanted) and, for my convienience, enrolled me in the remaining open courses that fulfilled my needs (at this point, though, everyone else had already registered, so the only classes that were open were the ones no one wanted to take). That was a fun semester.

It turns out that Freshmen English is being taught by a lunatic The student from the above excerpt gets a bad grade and decides to speak with the professor because other barely literate students got a better grade than her:

He took a long draw on his pipe. “What is a grade? That is the question.” He chuckled, but apparently she didn’t get it. “Some teachers grade on curves. You have to be a math major to understand the grade! But forget those fake excuses. A grade is actually a form of poetry. It is a subjective reaction to a learner’s work, distilled and reduced down to its purest essence-not a sonnet, not a haiku, but a single letter. That’s remarkable, isn’t it?”

Oh, but he’s not done yet. He actually goes on to describe how the barely readible grammar of a competing paper is better than Sarah’s:

“You aren’t necessarily a better writer. You called some of them functional illiterates. Well those illiterates, as you called them, happen to have very expressive prose voices. Remember that in each person’s own dialect he or she is perfectly literate. So in the sense of having escaped orthodoxy to be truly creative, they are highly advanced wordsmiths, while you are still struggling to break free of grammatical rules systems. They express themselves to me and I react with little one-letter poems of my own – the essence of grading! Poetry! And being a poet I’m particularly well suited for it. Your idea of tearing down these little proto-artists because they aren’t just like you smacks of a kind of absolutism which is very disturbing in a temple of academic freedom.”

They sat there silent for a while.

“You really said that, didn’t you?” she finally asked.

“I did.”

I think he perfectly captured the futility of Sarah’s quest in this scene. It’s masterful, really. The book was published in 1984, so it seems that this sort of PC lit-crit babbled newspeak was just as common and annoying then as it is now. It’s kind of reassuring, in a dejected way. When I hear about crazy professors going on about this or that these days, it’s always tempting to assume that the sky is falling and that we’re all doomed. But it appears that this has been going on for quite some time now, and while I don’t like it and it may be harmful, it probably doesn’t mean the end of the world either. Anyway, I’m only halfway through the book, but I thought I’d share my impressions, because I was expecting a lot worse…

Novelty

6 Comments / Arts & Letters, Best Entries, Culture, Movies, Music, Video Games / /

David Wong’s article on the coming video game crash seems to have inspired Steven Den Beste, who agrees with Wong that there will be a gaming crash and also thinks that the same problems affect other forms of entertainment. The crux of the problem appears to be novelty. Part of the problem appears to be evolutionary as well. As humans, we are conditioned for certain things, and it seems that two of our insticts are conflicting.

The first instinct is the human tendency to rely on induction. Correlation does not imply causation, but most of the time, we act like it does. We develop a complex set of heuristics and guidelines that we have extrapolated from past experiences. We do so because circumstances require us to make all sorts of decisions without posessing the knowledge or understanding necessary to provide a correct answer. Induction allows us to to operate in situations which we do not uderstand. Psychologist B. F. Skinner famously explored and exploited this trait in his experiments. Den Beste notes this in his post:

What you do is to reward the animal (usually by giving it a small amount of food) for progressively behaving in ways which is closer to what you want. The reason Skinner studied it was because he (correctly) thought he was empirically studying the way that higher thought in animals worked. Basically, they’re wired to believe that “correlation often implies causation”. Which is true, by the way. So when an animal does something and gets a reward it likes (e.g. food) it will try it again, and maybe try it a little bit differently just to see if that might increase the chance or quantity of the reward.

So we’re hard wired to create these heuristics. This has many implications, from Cargo Cults to Superstition and Security Beliefs.

The second instinct is the human drive to seek novelty, also noted by Den Beste:

The problem is that humans are wired to seek novelty. I think it’s a result of our dietary needs. Lions can eat zebra meat exclusively their entire lives without trouble; zebras can eat grass exclusively their entire lives. They don’t need novelty, but we do. Primates require a quite varied diet in order to stay healthy, and if we eat the same thing meal after meal we’ll get sick. Individuals who became restless and bored with such a diet, and who sought out other things to eat, were more likely to survive. And when you found something new, you were probably deficient in something that it provided nutritionally, so it made sense to like it for a while — until boredom set in, and you again sought out something new.

The drive for diversity affects more than just our diet. Genetic diversity has been shown to impart broader immunity to disease. Children from diverse parentage tend to develop a blend of each parent’s defenses (this has other implications, particularly for the tendency for human beings to work together in groups). The biological benefits of diversity are not limited to humans either. Hybrid strains of many crops have been developed over the years because by selectively mixing the best crops to replant the next year, farmers were promoting the best qualities in the species. The simple act of crossing different strains resulted in higher yields and stronger plants.

The problem here is that evolution has made the biological need for diversity and novelty dependent on our inductive reasoning instincts. As such, what we find is that those we rely upon for new entertainment, like Hollywood or the video game industry, are constantly trying to find a simple formula for a big hit.

It’s hard to come up with something completely new. It’s scary to even make the attempt. If you get it wrong you can flush amazingly large amounts of money down the drain. It’s a long-shot gamble. Every once in a while something new comes along, when someone takes that risk, and the audience gets interested…

Indeed, the majority of big films made today appear to be remakes, sequels or adaptations. One interesting thing I’ve noticed is that something new and exciting often fails at the box office. Such films usually gain a following on video or television though. Sometimes this is difficult to believe. For instance, The Shawshank Redemption is a very popular film. In fact, it occupies the #2 spot (just behind The Godfather) on IMDB’s top rated films. And yet, the film only made $28 million dollars (ranked 52 in 1994) in theaters. To be sure, that’s not a modest chunk of change, but given the universal love for this film, you’d expect that number to be much higher. I think part of the reason this movie failed at the box office was that marketers are just as susceptible to these novelty problems as everyone else. I mean, how do you market a period prison drama that has an awkward title an no big stars? It doesn’t sound like a movie that would be popular, even though everyone seems to love it.

Which brings up another point. Not only is it difficult to create novelty, it can also be difficult to find novelty. This is the crux of the problem: we require novelty, but we’re programmed to seek out new things via correllation. There is no place to go for perfect recommendations and novelty for the sake of novelty isn’t necessarily enjoyable. I can seek out some bizarre musical style and listen to it, but the simple fact that it is novel does not guarantee that it will be enjoyable. I can’t rely upon how a film is marketed because that is often misleading or, at least, not really representative of the movie (or whatever). Once we do find something we like, our instinct is often to exhaust that author or director or artist’s catalog. Usually, by the end of that process, the artist’s work begins to seem a little stale, for obvious reasons.

Seeking out something that is both novel and enjoyable is more difficult than it sounds. It can even be a little scary. Many times, things we think will be new actually turn out to be retreads. Other times, something may actually be novel, but unenjoyable. This leads to another phenomenon that Den Beste mentions: the “Unwatched pile.” Den Beste is talking about Anime, and at this point, he’s begun to accumulate a bunch of anime DVDs which he’s bought but never watched. I’ve had similar things happen with books and movies. In fact, I have several books on my shelf, just waiting to be read, but for some of them, I’m not sure I’m willing to put in the time and effort to read them. Why? Because, for whatever reason, I’ve begun to experience some set of diminishing returns when it comes to certain types of books. These are similar to other books I’ve read, and thus I probably won’t enjoy these as much (even if they are good books).

The problem is that we know something novel is out there, it’s just a matter of finding it. At this point, I’ve gotten sick of most of the mass consumption entertainment, and have moved on to more niche forms of entertainment. This is really a signal versus noise, traversal of the long tail problem. An analysis problem. What’s more, with globalization and the internet, the world is getting smaller… access to new forms of entertainment are popping up (for example, here in the US, anime was around 20 years ago, but it was nowhere near as common as it is today). This is essentially a subset of a larger information aggregation and analysis problem that we’re facing. We’re adrift in a sea of information, and must find better ways to navigate.

50 Best Film Adaptations Meme

3 Comments / Arts & Letters, Movies / /

I’m generally not one to partake in memes on the blog (especially not two in a row), but I figure that since I’ve been writing about movies pretty much non-stop for the past month, it might make a good palate cleanser before I get obsessed with another topic.

Anyway, a few days ago, the Guardian listed the 50 best movie adaptations of books. Aside from the rather odd snubbing of the Lord of the Rings movies, a few people have started marking the list with what they’ve seen and read. Michael Hanscom and Jason Kottke have done so, and so will I (each line is tagged with a B if I’ve read the book, and an M if I’ve seen the move):

1. [BM] 1984

2. [B] Alice in Wonderland

3. [M] American Psycho

4. Breakfast at Tiffany’s

5. Brighton Rock

6. Catch 22

7. [BM] Charlie & the Chocolate Factory

8. [M] A Clockwork Orange

9. Close Range (inc Brokeback Mountain)

10. The Day of the Triffids

11. [M] Devil in a Blue Dress

12. [M] Different Seasons (inc The Shawshank Redemption)

13. [M] Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (aka Bladerunner)

14. [M] Doctor Zhivago

15. Empire of the Sun

16. The English Patient

17. [BM] Fight Club

18. The French Lieutenant’s Woman

19. [M] Get Shorty

20. [M] The Godfather

21. [M] Goldfinger

22. [M] Goodfellas

23. [M] Heart of Darkness (aka Apocalypse Now)

24. [BM] The Hound of the Baskervilles

25. [M] Jaws

26. [M] The Jungle Book

27. A Kestrel for a Knave (aka Kes)

28. [M] LA Confidential

29. [M] Les Liaisons Dangereuses

30. [M] Lolita

31. Lord of the Flies

32. [M] The Maltese Falcon

33. Oliver Twist

34. [M] One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

35. Orlando

36. The Outsiders

37. Pride and Prejudice

38. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

39. The Railway Children

40. [M] Rebecca

41. The Remains of the Day

42. [M] Schindler’s Ark (aka Schindler’s List)

43. [M] Sin City

44. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold

45. [M] The Talented Mr Ripley

46. Tess of the D’Urbervilles

47. Through a Glass Darkly

48. [BM] To Kill a Mockingbird

49. [M] Trainspotting

50. [M] The Vanishing

51. Watership Down

Not so bad, but nowhere near as impressive as Sameer Vasta, who has both read and seen 34 items on the list (with only 5 that he hasn’t read or seen). Like everyone else who has done this, I have no idea why the top 50 adaptations actually contains 51 items…

Philadelphia Film Festival: Adult Swim 4 Your Lives

Arts & Letters, Culture, Movies, Philadelphia Film Festival 2006 / /

Well. That was interesting. Hosted by Dana Snyder (voice of Master Shake from Aqua Teen Hunger Force) and featuring a veritable plethora of other Adult Swim creators, Adult Swim 4 Your Lives was a show that defies any legitimate explanation. As such, I will simply list out some highlights, as well as some words that I would use to describe the night:

  • The Paul Green School of Rock kicked things off. Yes, Paul Green was the inspiration for Jack Black’s character in the film The School of Rock.
  • Skeletor singing show tunes (notably the song Tomorrow from Annie)
  • In fact, lots of singing was happening tonight.
  • Burlesque.
  • Beethoven vs. Bach (featuring Camel Toe)
  • Evil Monkey Boy (and hula hoops).
  • Suggestive dancing.
  • Twirling tassels.
  • Preview of second season of Tom Goes to the Mayor and a new series, Minoriteam. I got a t-shirt!
  • Aqua Teen Hunger Force Feature Film (!?) preview.
  • Did I mention Burlesque?
  • Dana Snyder was either putting on his Master Shake voice all night, or that’s really the way his voice sounds. Also, that man is crazy.

Basically the night was filled with Dana Snyder saying (usually singing) wacky stuff, followed by some sort of weird performance (usually featuring elements of the burlesque). It was quite a night, though from what I understand, last year’s event went on much longer and was even crazier. Nevertheless, if you’re a fan of Adult Swim and if such an event is ever going on near you, I’d recommend it. Unless the thought of watching Skeletor belt out a few show tunes turns your stomach. Then I’d suggest avoiding it.

Update 4.15.06: I’ve created a category for all posts from the Philadelphia Film Festival.

Unintended Customers

Neal Stephenson, Science & Technology / /

The Art of Rainmaking by Guy Kawasaki: An interesting article about salesmanship and what is referred to as “rainmaking.” Kawasaki lists out several ways to practice the art of rainmaking, but this first one caught my eye because it immediately reminded me of Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, and regular readers (all 5 of you) know I can’t resist a Stephenson reference.

“Let a hundred flowers blossom.” I stole this from Chairman Mao although I’m not sure how he implemented it. In the context of capitalism (Chairman Mao must be turning over in his grave), the dictum means that you sow seeds in many markets, see what takes root, and harvest what blooms. Many companies freak out when unintended customers buy their product. Many companies also freak out when intended customers buy their product but use it in unintended ways. Don’t be proud. Take the money.

This immediately reminded me of the data haven (a secure computer system that is protected by it’s lack of governmental oversight as well as technical means like encryption) in the “modern-day” segments of Cryptonomicon. Randy Waterhouse works for the company that’s attempting to sett up a data haven, and he finds that the most of his customers want to use the data haven to store money. Pretty straightforward, right? Well, most of the people who want to store their money their are criminals of the worst sort. I guess in that particular case, there is reason to freak out at these unexpected customers, but I thought the reference was interesting because while there may be lots of legitimate uses for a data haven, the criminal element would almost certainly be attracted to a way to store their drug money (or whatever) with impugnity (that and probably spam, pornography, and gambling). Like all advances in technology, the data haven could be used for good or for ill…

Mastery II

Arts & Letters, Culture, Science & Technology / /

I’m currently reading Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky. It’s an interesting novel, and there are elements of the story that resemble Vinge’s singularity. (Potential spoilers ahead) The story concerns two competing civilizations that travel to an alien planet. Naturally, there are confrontations and betrayals, and we learn that one of the civilizations utilizes a process to “Focus” an individual on a single area of study, essentially turning them into a brilliant machine. Naturally, there is a lot of debate about the Focused, and in doing so, one of the characters describes it like this:

… you know about really creative people, the artists who end up in your history books? As often as not, they’re some poor dweeb who doesn’t have a life. He or she is just totally fixated on learning everything about some single topic. A sane person couldn’t justify losing friends and family to concentrate so hard. Of course, the payoff is that the dweeb may find things or make things that are totally unexpected. See, in that way, a little of Focus has always been part of the human race. We Emergents have simply institutionalized this sacrifice so the whole community can benefit in a concentrated, organized way.

Debate revolves around this concept because people living in this Focused state could essentially be seen as slaves. However, the quote above reminded me of a post I wrote a while ago called Mastery:

There is an old saying “Jack of all trades, Master of none.” This is indeed true, though with the demands of modern life, we are all expected to live in a constant state of partial attention and must resort to drastic measures like Self-Censorship or information filtering to deal with it all. This leads to an interesting corollary for the Master of a trade: They don’t know how to do anything else!

In that post, I quoted Isaac Asimov, who laments that he’s clueless when it comes to cars, and relates a funny story about what happened when he once got a flat tire. I wondered if that sort of mastery was really a worthwhile goal, but the artificually induced Focus in Vinge’s novel opens the floor up to several questions. Would you volunteer to be focused in a specific area of study, knowing that you would basically do that and only that? No family, no friends, but only because you are so focused on your studies (as portrayed in the novel, doing work in your field is what makes you happy). What if you could opt to be focused for a limited period of time?

There are a ton of moral and ethical questions about the practice, and as portrayed in the book, it’s not a perfect process and may not be reversible (at least, not without damage). The rewards would be great – Focusing sounds like a truly astounding feat. But would it really be worth it? As portrayed in the book, it definitely would not, as those wielding the power aren’t very pleasant. Because the Focused are so busy concentrating on their area of study, they become completely dependent on the non-Focused to guide them (it’s possible for a Focused person to become too-obsessed with a problem, to the point where physical harm or even death can occur) and do everything else for them (i.e. feed them, clean them, etc…) Again, in the book, those who are guiding the Focused are ruthless exploiters. However, if you had a non-Focused guide who you trusted, would you consider it?

I still don’t know that I would. While the results would surely be high quality, the potential for abuse is astounding, even when it’s someone you trust that is pulling the strings. Nothing says they’ll stay trustworthy, and it’s quite possible that they could be replaced in some way by someone less trustworthy. If the process was softened to the point where the Focused retains at least some control over their focus (including the ability to go in and out), then this would probably be a more viable option. Fortunately, I don’t see this sort of thing happening in the way proposed by the book, but other scenarios present interesting dilemmas as well…

Link Dump

3 Comments / Arts & Letters / /

Yet another lazy post filled with links. Enjoy:

  • Love and Severus Snape: Eric S. Raymond’s take on the latest Harry Potter novel nicely summarizes some of the reasons people think Snape will be redeemed in the next novel. He’s got a few interesting twists to the standards as well.
  • Tameem’s Edge Diary: Fascinating diary recounting how a small software company decided to write a next-generation game long before anyone else. Lots of details about how games are made, published and distributed. It’s especially daunting when it’s a small company struggling to make ends meet…
  • Richard Feynman Lectures on Physics – An index with lots of info on Physics and Feynman, including a series of audio lecture files by Feynman. It’s funny, Feynman doesn’t sound brilliant, but he clearly is.

And that’s all for now…