Arts & Letters

Liveblogging Harry Potter, Part 2

Arts & Letters, Harry Potter / /

Well, I suppose this hardly qualifies as liveblogging anymore, as I’ve read over 300 pages since my last update, but such petty details notwithstanding, below are some more thoughts I’ve had while reading.

  • Liveblogging Harry Potter, Part 1: My first post covers initial thoughts and approximately the first 200 pages.
  • Magic Security: A tongue-in-cheek, yet strangely serious evaluation of a security measure suggested by the Ministry of Magic, using a muggle method of analysis.
  • Two more Harry Potter conventions have made an appearance at this point: Quiddich and teenage romance. I’ve never been too impressed with the game of Quiddich, but its appearances are brief and they do play a role in some of the subplots, so as not to be disconnected or boring (as I sometimes felt they were in previous books). Since Goblet of Fire, the Potter books have had more and more romantic encounters. There is, of course, the romantic tension between Ron and Hermione, which is alive and well in this sixth volume of the series, despite Ron’s boneheaded pursuit of Lavender Brown (and the resulting row with Hermione that results). It’s getting increasingly obvious that they’re going to get it on pretty soon (and it was obvious two books ago, so we’re getting darn close to definite here). Harry, too, has a new love interest, but he honorably realizes that she is “out of bounds,” and we have thankfully not had to endure much about that just yet. Harry, for his part, seems to have become quite mature and genuinely seems to have gained at least some self-confidence and composure, even under fire (a welcome change from his hyper-grumpy days in the last book). As the Michelle Pauli at the Guardian notes (warning: many more spoilers there than here) about the romantic storylines, Rowling is forced to compromise between raging hormones and a younger audience. It works reasonably well enough, but it perhaps leaves something to be desired. But at least she seems to be hitting a better tone with this book than with her previous effort (in terms of love interests and just about every other aspect of the story).
  • Am I the only one who finds the characterization of the Vampire Sanguini at Slughorn’s Christmas party absolutely hilarious? It’s but a few paragraphs (on page 316 in my edition), but I honestly would like to know more about that situation…
  • About 500 pages in, and it seems that Rowling isn’t really going to tell a self-contained story here. I mentioned before that numerous sub-plots and mysteries had presented themselves, and that is very true (none more compelling than the glimpses into Voldemort’s fascinating past), but there doesn’t seem to be much of a narrative here. Oddly, it’s working. This book feels like it’s simply laying the groundwork for the seventh and final book, which one assumes will contain the penultimate confrontation with Voldemort. But again, it works and I find the pages flying by. The only reason I haven’t finished is that I’ve intentionally been trying to draw out the reading of the book. Of course, much could happen with 100 pages to go. It’s not as if we’ve learned very much about this titular half blood prince (though we’ve been given certain disturbing hints). I expect to be finished tomorrow night.
  • Horcruxes! An interesting, if not especially novel, concept. It strikes me that, unlike some other series, Rowling actually did have some sort of plan for these books. The Horcruxes don’t seem tacked-on in the way that, for example, some things were in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. (Or, grandaddy of all tacked-on mistakes: midi-chlorians.)

More to come! I anticipate finishing the book off tomorrow night. Until then…

Magic Security

Arts & Letters, Best Entries, Harry Potter, Security & Intelligence / /

In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, there are a number of new security measures suggested by the Ministry of Magic (as Voldemort and his army of Death Eaters have been running amuk). Some of them are common sense but some of them are much more questionable. Since I’ve also been reading prominent muggle and security expert Bruce Schneier’s book, Beyond Fear, I thought it might be fun to analyze one of the Ministry of Magic’s security measures according to Schneier’s 5 step process.

Here is the security measure I’ve chosen to evaluate, as shown on page 42 of my edition:

Agree on security questions with close friends and family, so as to detect Death Eaters masquerading as others by use of the Polyjuice Potion.

For those not in the know, Polyjuice Potion allows the drinker to assume the appearance of someone else, presumably someone you know. Certainly a dangerous attack. The proposed solution is a “security question”, set up in advance, so that you can verify the identity of the person in question.

  • Step 1: What assets are you trying to protect? The Ministry of Magic claims that it’s solution is to the problem of impersonation by way of the Polyjuice Potion. However, this security measure essentially boils down to a form of identification, so what we’re really trying to protect is an identity. The identity is, in itself, a security measure – for example, once verified, it could allow entrance to an otherwise restricted area.
  • Step 2: What are the risks to those assets? The risk is that someone could be impersonating a friend or family member (by using the aforementioned Polyjuice Potion) in an effort to gain entrance to a restricted area or otherwise gain the trust of a certain group of people. Unfortunately, the risk does not end there as the Ministry implies in its communication – it is also quite possible that an attacker could put your friend or family member under the Imperious Curse (a spell that grants the caster control of a victim). Because both the Polyjuice Potion and the Imperious Curse can be used to foil an identity based system, any proposed solution should account for both. It isn’t known how frequent such attacks are, but it is implied that both attacks are increasing in frequency.
  • Step 3: How well does the security solution mitigate those risks? Not very well. First, it is quite possible for an attacker to figure out the security questions and answers ahead of time. They could do so through simple research, or through direct observation and reconnaissance. Since the security questions need to be set up in the first place, it’s quite possible that an attacker could impersonate someone and set up the security questions while in disguise. Indeed, even Professor Dumbledore alludes to the ease with which an attacker could subvert this system. Heck, we’re talking about attackers who are most likely witches or wizards themselves. There may be a spell of some sort that would allow them to get the answer from a victim (the Imperious Curse is one example, and I’m sure there are all sorts of truth serums or charms that could be used as well). The solution works somewhat better in the case of the Polyjuice Potion, but since we’ve concluded that the Imperious Curse also needs to be considered, and since this would provide almost no security in that case, the security question ends up being a poor solution to the identity problem.
  • Step 4: What other risks does the security solution cause? The most notable risk is that of a false positive. If the attacker successfully answers the security question, they achieve a certain level of trust. When you use identity as a security measure, you make impersonating that identity (or manipulating the person in question via the Imperious Curse) a much more valuable attack.
  • Step 5: What trade-offs does the security solution require? This solution is inexpensive and easy to implement, but also ineffective and inconvenient. It would also requires a certain amount of vigilance to implement indefinitely. After weeks of strict adherence to the security measure, I think you’d find people getting complacent. They’d skip using the security measure when they’re in a hurry, for example. When nothing bad happens, it would only reinforce the inconvenience of the practice. It’s also worth noting that this system could be used in conjunction with other security measures, but even then, it’s not all that useful.

It seems to me that this isn’t a very effective security measure, especially when you consider that the attacker is likely a witch or wizard. This is obviously also apparent to many of the characters in the book as well. As such, I’d recommend a magic countermeasure. If you need to verify someone’s identity, you should probably use a charm or spell of some sort to do so instead of the easily subverted “security question” system. It shouldn’t be difficult. In Harry Potter’s universe, it would probably amount to pointing a wand at someone and saying “Identico!” (or some other such word that is vaguely related to the words Identity or Identify) at which point you could find out who the person is and if they’re under the Imperious Curse.

Liveblogging Harry Potter, Part 1

2 Comments / Arts & Letters, Harry Potter / /

Odd as it may seem, that is exactly what a curiously unnamed BBC reporter has done for the just-released Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. As said book has arrived in the mail today, I figured I might as well just follow the Beeb’s lead and liveblog my reading of the book.

I’m no speedreader – the aformentioned reporter apparently read at a pace higher than 100 pages per hour – and I don’t particularly want to finish the book that quickly, so this will most likely be spread out over the next few days.

Before I started reading, I read this summary of the previous book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (thanks to Nate for the pointer). I didn’t especially enjoy that book. It seemed a distinct step down from the Goblet of Fire, and thus my hopes are not as high for the new volume (which, as I’ve noted before, could act in its favor). And so I give you, the first two chapters of the new Harry Potter book. Additional chapters will be added to this entry as I read them (new chapters will be on the bottom). I’ll attempt to keep things vague, but I must warn: Potential SPOILERS ahead. (as of now, I’m two chapters in, and no real spoilers).

  • Chapter 1: The Other Minister – Unlike previous books (if I remember correctly), this one opens on a scene not featuring Harry. It contains a recap of some of the events in previous books, and it does so in a more novel way than usual (Rowling normally just kinda blurts out a recap, but this time she sneaks it into a scene, with characters informing a Muggle about certain events). It’s a clever bit of storytelling, and it illuminates some of the previously vague Wizard-Muggle interactions. I shall be interested to see if the Muggle in question will actually play a larger part in the story, or if he’s merely a plot contrivance (an excuse to recap earlier works), in which case this probably wouldn’t be as clever as I though. I guess that’s how the hermeneutic circle turns.
  • Chapter 2: Spinner’s End – Things pick up a bit and Rowling unleashes the first twist of what is sure to be many. It’s an interesting notion, but several years of watching the television show 24 have addled my brain to the point where I’m naturally suspicious of such revelations so early in the story. Of course, this really doesn’t mean anything, but it does indicate a sort of diminishing returns in the series. One of the big problems with a story that you know will have a lot of surprises (though I guess I don’t know that about this book) is that you’re constantly formulating guesses as to what’s going to happen, so that when it does, it’s something less of a surprise. Of course, Rowling has deftly navigated this sort of obstacle in previous books (notably The Prisoner of Azkaban, my favorite of the books) and either kept something a surprise or executed a twist with such flare that you don’t care you guessed it earlier.
  • Chapter 3: Will and Won’t – Harry Potter makes his first appearance, followed by a more typical recap of events from the previous books and events between the last book and this one. Dumbledore also makes his first appearance here, saving Harry from his horrid step-family (the Dursleys) and the end of this chapter marks the real beginning of the story. As the BBC reporter notes, the chapter ends with an appropriate quote: “And now Harry, let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.”
  • Chapter 4: Horace Slughorn – All the Potter books follow a certain structure, but one of the big variables from book to book is the appearance of a new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. Dumbledore and Harry recruit this year’s teacher, who seems to have a flare for recognizing and exploiting talent. Given the way Rowling portrays him, and given certain other facts about him, you can’t help but be a little suspicious of the man. Things are getting more interesting, but we’re still cought up in the preliminaries. So far we’ve had numerous recaps of the story so far, Harry’s escape from the Dursley family, and a new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. Still to come are Harry’s reunion with Ron and Hermione (ostensibly to occur in Chapter 5), the trip to Hogwarts, and the start of classes, at which point the real story begins.
  • Chapters 5 & 6: More Potter staples: The aformentioned reunion with Ron and Hermione (and other members of the Weasley family), a trip to Diagon Alley, and the inevitable run-in with Draco Malfoy. At this point I think I’m going to be abandoning the whole chapters thing, and just comment on something when I feel the need. I don’t want this to end up being a summary of the book, after all. Additional entries will be by page number (indicating where I am in the book – the comments won’t necessarily be about whatever appears on that page).
  • Page 138: One thing that keeps getting stressed in the book is additional security, since Voldemort is loose and wreaking havoc again. I think it might be fun to analyze some of the security measures laid out by the Ministry of Magic (as the book I’d been reading before I got Potter was Bruce Schneier’s Beyond Fear). Perhaps I’ll tackle that tomorrow. All in all, after 138 pages, I’m quite enjoying the book. It’s been a while since I’ve read over 100 pages in a single day (though I suspect that also has something to do with the size of the type and the page layout). So far, I’m enjoying it a lot more than I did the previous book, but the story really hasn’t started in earnest yet (though things are set in motion).
  • Page 200: About 200 pages and 11 chapters in, the kids are back at Hogwarts and the story is now starting in earnest. We’ve had a few mentions of the Half-Blood Prince, Harry get’s detention, and we learn some stuff about Voldemort’s past. Lot’s of mini-mysteries and subplots are popping up in a generally fun feeling atmosphere. None of that grumpiness that permeated the last book. It looks like The Guardian also liveblogged the book.

Update: Added thoughts on chapters 3 & 4. Added some more chapters after that, and switched to a different format.

Again Update:Added some more stuff. Will probably write the security entry soon, and will then start a “Part 2” of this post.

Update 7.19.05: Part 2 is up, as is the discussion on magic security I hinted at above..

Veg Out

1 Comment / Culture, Movies, Neal Stephenson / /

Neal Stephenson’s take on Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith in the New York times is interesting on a few levels. He makes some common observations, such as the prevalence of geeky details in supplementary material of the Star Wars universe (such as the Clone Wars cartoons or books), but the real gem is his explanation for why the geeky stuff is mostly absent from the film:

Modern English has given us two terms we need to explain this phenomenon: “geeking out” and “vegging out.” To geek out on something means to immerse yourself in its details to an extent that is distinctly abnormal – and to have a good time doing it. To veg out, by contrast, means to enter a passive state and allow sounds and images to wash over you without troubling yourself too much about what it all means.

Stephenson says the original Star Wars is a mixture of veg and geek scenes, while the new movies are almost all veg out material. The passive vegging out he describes is exactly how I think of the prequels (except that Episode III seems to have a couple of non-veg out scenes, which is one of the reasons I think it fares better than the other prequels). He also makes a nice comparison to the business world, but then takes a sudden sort of indirect dive towards outsourcing and pessimism at the end of the article, making a vague reference to going “the way of the old Republic.”

I’m not sure I agree with those last few paragraphs. I see the point, but it’s presented as a given. Many have noted Stephenson could use a good editor for his recent novels, and it looks to me like Stephenson was either intentionally trying to keep it short (it’s only two pages – not what you’d expect from someone who routinely writes 900 page books, including three that are essentially a single 2700 page novel) or his article was edited down to fit somewhere. In either case, I’m sure he could have expounded upon those last paragraphs to the tune of a few thousand words, but that’s what I like about the guy. Not that the article is bad, but I prefer Stephenson’s longwinded style. Ironically, Stephenson has left the details out of his article; it reads more like a power-point presentation that summarizes the bullet points of his argument than the sort of in-depth analysis I’m used to from Stephenson. As such, I’m sure there are a lot of people who would take issue with some of his premises. Perhaps it’s an intentional irony, or (more likely) I’m reading too much into it.

A tale of two software projects

2 Comments / Computers & Internet, Military, Neal Stephenson, Security & Intelligence / /

A few weeks ago, David Foster wrote an excellent post about two software projects. One was a failure, and one was a success.

The first project was the FBI’s new Virtual Case File system; a tool that would allow agents to better organize, analyze and communicate data on criminal and terrorism cases. After 3 years and over 100 million dollars, it was announced that the system may be totally unusable. How could this happen?

When it became clear that the project was in trouble, Aerospace Corporation was contracted to perform an independent evaluation. It recommended that the software be abandoned, saying that “lack of effective engineering discipline has led to inadequate specification, design and development of VCF.” SAIC has said it believes the problem was caused largely by the FBI: specifically, too many specification changes during the development process…an SAIC executive asserted that there were an average of 1.3 changes per day during the development. SAIC also believes that the current system is useable and can serve as a base for future development.

I’d be interested to see what the actual distribution of changes were (as opposed to the “average changes per day”, which seems awfully vague and somewhat obtuse to me), but I don’t find it that hard to believe that this sort of thing happened (especially because the software development firm was a separate entity). I’ve had some experience with gathering requirements, and it certainly can be a challenge, especially when you don’t know the processes currently in place. This does not excuse anything, however, and the question remains: how could this happen?

The second project, the success, may be able to shed some light on that. DARPA was tapped by the US Army to help protect troops from enemy snipers. The requested application would spot incoming bullets and identify their point of origin, and it would have to be easy to use, mobile, and durable.

The system would identify bullets from their sound..the shock wave created as they travelled through the air. By using multiple microphones and precisely timing the arrival of the “crack” of the bullet, its position could, in theory, be calculated. In practice, though, there were many problems, particularly the high levels of background noise–other weapons, tank engines, people shouting. All these had to be filtered out. By Thanksgiving weekend, the BBN team was at Quantico Marine Base, collecting data from actual firing…in terrible weather, “snowy, freezing, and rainy” recalls DARPA Program Manager Karen Wood. Steve Milligan, BBN’s Chief Technologist, came up with the solution to the filtering problem: use genetic algorithms. These are a kind of “simulated evolution” in which equations can mutate, be tested for effectivess, and sometimes even “mate,” over thousands of simulated generations (more on genetic algorithms here.)

By early March, 2004, the system was operational and had a name–“Boomerang.” 40 of them were installed on vehicles in Iraq. Based on feedback from the troops, improvements were requested. The system has now been reduced in size, shielded from radio interference, and had its display improved. It now tells soldiers the direction, range, and elevation of a sniper.

Now what was the biggest difference between the remarkable success of the Boomerang system and the spectacular failure of the Virtual Case File system? Obviously, the two projects present very different challenges, so a direct comparison doesn’t necessarily tell the whole story. However, it seems to me that discipline (in the case of the Army) or the lack of discipline (in the case of the FBI) might have been a major contributor to the outcomes of these two projects.

It’s obviously no secret that discipline plays a major role in the Army, but there is more to it than just that. Independence and initiative also play an important role in a military culture. In Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, the way the character Bobby Shaftoe (a Marine Raider, which is “…like a Marine, only more so.”) interacts with his superiors provides some insight (page 113 in my version):

Having now experienced all the phases of military existence except for the terminal ones (violent death, court-martial, retirement), he has come to understand the culture for what it is: a system of etiquette within which it becomes possible for groups of men to live together for years, travel to the ends of the earth, and do all kinds of incredibly weird shit without killing each other or completely losing their minds in the process. The extreme formality with which he addresses these officers carries an important subtext: your problem, sir, is doing it. My gung-ho posture says that once you give the order I’m not going to bother you with any of the details – and your half of the bargain is you had better stay on your side of the line, sir, and not bother me with any of the chickenshit politics that you have to deal with for a living.

Good military officers are used to giving an order, then staying out of their subordinate’s way as they carry out that order. I didn’t see any explicit measurement, but I would assume that there weren’t too many specification changes during the development of the Boomerang system. Of course, the developers themselves made all sorts of changes to specifics and they also incorporated feedback from the Army in the field in their development process, but that is standard stuff.

I suspect that the FBI is not completely to blame, but as the report says, there was a “lack of effective engineering discipline.” The FBI and SAIC share that failure. I suspect, from the number of changes requested by the FBI and the number of government managers involved, that micromanagement played a significant role. As Foster notes, we should be leveraging our technological abilities in the war on terror, and he suggests a loosely based oversight committe (headed by “a Director of Industrial Mobilization”) to make sure things like this don’t happen very often. Sounds like a reasonable idea to me…

The Stability of Three

Best Entries, Culture, Neal Stephenson, Politics / /

One of the things I’ve always respected about Neal Stephenson is his attitude (or rather, the lack thereof) regarding politics:

Politics – These I avoid for the simple reason that artists often make fools of themselves, and begin to produce bad art, when they decide to get political. A novelist needs to be able to see the world through the eyes of just about anyone, including people who have this or that set of views on religion, politics, etc. By espousing one strong political view a novelist loses the power to do this. Anyone who has convinced himself, based on reading my work, that I hold this or that political view, is probably wrong. What is much more likely is that, for a while, I managed to get inside the head of a fictional character who held that view.

Having read and enjoyed several of his books, I think this attitude has served him well. In a recent interview in Reason magazine, Stephenson makes several interesting observations. The whole thing is great, and many people are interested in his comments regarding an American technology and science, but I found one other tidbit very interesting. Strictly speaking, it doesn’t break with his attitude about politics, but it is somewhat political:

Speaking as an observer who has many friends with libertarian instincts, I would point out that terrorism is a much more formidable opponent of political liberty than government. Government acts almost as a recruiting station for libertarians. Anyone who pays taxes or has to fill out government paperwork develops libertarian impulses almost as a knee-jerk reaction. But terrorism acts as a recruiting station for statists. So it looks to me as though we are headed for a triangular system in which libertarians and statists and terrorists interact with each other in a way that I’m afraid might turn out to be quite stable.

I took particular note of what he describes as a “triangular system” because it’s something I’ve seen before…

One of the primary goals of the American Constitutional Convention was to devise a system that would be resistant to tyranny. The founders were clearly aware of the damage that an unrestrained government could do, so they tried to design the new system in such a way that it wouldn’t become tyrannical. Democratic institions like mandatory periodic voting and direct accountability to the people played a large part in this, but the founders also did some interesting structural work as well.

Taking their cue from the English Parliament’s relationship with the King of England, the founders decided to create a legislative branch separate from the executive. This, in turn, placed the two governing bodies in competition. However, this isn’t a very robust system. If one of the governing bodies becomes more powerful than the other, they can leverage their advantage to accrue more power, thus increasing the imbalance.

A two-way balance of power is unstable, but a three-way balance turns out to be very stable. If any one body becomes more powerful than the other two, the two usually can and will temporarily unite, and their combined power will still exceed the third. So the founders added a third governing body, an independent judiciary.

The result was a bizarre sort of stable oscillation of power between the three major branches of the federal government. Major shifts in power (such as wars) disturbed the system, but it always fell back to a preferred state of flux. This stable oscillation turns out to be one of the key elements of Chaos theory, and is referred to as a strange attractor. These “triangular systems” are particularly good at this, and there are many other examples…

Some argue that the Cold War stabilized considerably when China split from the Soviet Union. Once it became a three-way conflict, there was much less of a chance of unbalance (and as unbalance would have lead to nuclear war, this was obviously a good thing).

Steven Den Beste once noted this stabilizing power of three in the interim Iraqi constitution, where the Iraqis instituted a Presidency Council of 3 Presidents representing each of the 3 major factions in Iraq:

…those writing the Iraqi constitution also had to create a system acceptable to the three primary factions inside of Iraq. If they did not, the system would shake itself to pieces and there was a risk of Iraqi civil war.

The divisions within Iraq are very real. But this constitution takes advantage of the fact that there are three competing factions none of which really trusts the other. This constitution leverages that weakness, and makes it into a strength.

It should be interesting to see if that structure will be maintained in the new Iraqi constitution.

As for Stephenson’s speculation that a triangular system consisting of libertarians, statists, and terrorists may develop, I’m not sure. They certainly seem to feed off one another in a way that would facilitate such a system, but I’m not positive it would work out that way, nor do I think it is particularly a desirable state to be in, all the more because it could be a very stable system due to its triangular structure. In any case, I thought it was an interesting observation and well worth considering…

The Final Baghdad Journal

Arts & Letters, Politics / /

The final entry in an exceptional series of articles written by a New York artist, Steve Mumford, on his experiences in Iraq has been posted. As always, it is compelling reading and depicts an Iraq not normally seen from the usual sources.

Apparently Mumford’s work has been gathering more and more attention; those who have been following his work will be interested in this NY Times article (registration required) which provides a little background into Mumford’s motivations and inspiration.

Now 44, Mr. Mumford had been comfortably embedded in the London and New York gallery worlds. He was known for paintings that seemed to pit two disparate Americas – wilderness and society – against each other by depicting, for example, a car seen against a sublime landscape or a wild animal about to pounce at a house. … Mr. Mumford says his inspiration for the project stemmed directly from his admiration for the painter Winslow Homer, who was sent to the front during the Civil War to sketch for Harper’s Weekly.

… Like Winslow Homer before him, Mr. Mumford spent most of his time at military bases, chronicling the routine, monotony and constant togetherness of soldiers’ daily lives. Often they are seen dozing on cots, doing paperwork, watching television or playing cards. But he also shows them standing guard, attending neighborhood council meetings, searching homes and hunched inside tanks, tensely watching the road.

The article mentions that this latest installment is unfortunately also the final one (though one wonder whether his newfound friendships with Iraqi artists will lead to further “journal” entries in the future). As always, it is an excellent read. Artnet has collected all of the Baghdad Journals here, if you’re interested.

Arranging Interests in Parallel

Best Entries, Culture, Neal Stephenson, Weblogs / /

I have noticed a tendency on my part to, on occasion, quote a piece of fiction, and then comment on some wisdom or truth contained therein. This sort of thing is typically frowned upon in rigorous debate as fiction is, by definition, contrived and thus referencing it in a serious argument is rightly seen as undesirable. Fortunately for me, this blog, though often taking a serious tone, is ultimately an exercise in thinking for myself. The point is to have fun. This is why I will sometimes quote fiction to make a point, and it’s also why I enjoy questionable exercises like speculating about historical figures. As I mentioned in a post on Benjamin Franklin, such exercises usually end up saying more about me and my assumptions than anything else. But it’s my blog, so that is more or less appropriate.

Astute readers must at this point be expecting to recieve a citation from a piece of fiction, followed by an application of the relevant concepts to some ends. And they would be correct.

Early on in Neal Stephenson’s novel The System of the World, Daniel Waterhouse reflects on what is required of someone in his position:

He was at an age where it was never possible ot pursue one errand at a time. He must do many at once. He guessed that people who had lived right and arranged things properly must have it all rigged so that all of their quests ran in parallel, and reinforced and supported one another just so. They gained reputations as conjurors. Others found their errands running at cross purposes and were never able to do anything; they ended up seeming mad, or else percieived the futility of what they were doing and gave up, or turned to drink.

Naturally, I believe there is some truth to this. In fact, the life of Benjamin Franklin, a historical figure from approximately the same time period as Dr. Waterhouse, provides us with a more tangible reference point.

Franklin was known to mix private interests with public ones, and to leverage both to further his business interests. The consummate example of Franklin’s proclivities was the Junto, a club of young workingmen formed by Franklin in the fall of 1727. The Junto was a small club composed of enterprising tradesman and artisans who discussed issues of the day and also endeavored to form a vehicle for the furtherance of their own careers. The enterprise was typical of Franklin, who was always eager to form associations for mutual benefit, and who aligned his interests so they ran in parallel, reinforcing and supporting one another.

A more specific example of Franklin’s knack for aligning interests is when he produced the first recorded abortion debate in America. At the time, Franklin was running a print shop in Philadelphia. His main competitor, Andrew Bradford, published the town’s only newspaper. The paper was meager, but very profitable in both moneys and prestige (which led him to be more respected by merchants and politicians, and thus more likely to get printing jobs), and Franklin decided to launch a competing newspaper. Unfortunately, another rival printer, Samuel Keimer, caught wind of Franklin’s plan and immediately launched a hastily assembled newspaper of his own. Franklin, realizing that it would be difficult to launch a third paper right away, vowed to crush Keimer:

In a comptetitive bank shot, Franklin decided to write a series of anonymous letters and essays, along the lines of the Silence Dogood pieces of his youth, for Bradford’s [American Weekly Mercury] to draw attention away from Keimer’s new paper. The goal was to enliven, at least until Keimer was beaten, Bradford’s dull paper, which in its ten years had never puplished any such features.

The first two pieces were attacks on poor Keimer, who was serializing entries from an encyclopedia. His intial installment included, innocently enough, an entry on abortion. Franklin pounced. Using the pen names “Martha Careful” and “Celia Shortface,” he wrote letters to Bradford’s paper feigning shock and indignation at Keimer’s offense. As Miss Careful threatened, “If he proceeds farther to expose the secrets of our sex in that audacious manner [women would] run the hazard of taking him by the beard in the next place we meet him.” Thus Franklin manufactured the first recorded abortion debate in America, not because he had any strong feelings on the issue, but because he knew it would sell newspapers. [This is an exerpt from the recent biography Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson]

Franklin’s many actions of the time certainly weren’t running at cross purposes, and he did manage to align his interests in parallel. He truly was a master, and we’ll be hearing more about him on this blog soon.

This isn’t the first time I’ve written about this subject before either. In a previous post, On the Overloading of Information, I noted one of the main reasons why blogging continues to be an enjoyable activity for me, despite changing interests and desires:

I am often overwhelmed by a desire to consume various things – books, movies, music, etc… The subject of such things is also varied and, as such, often don’t mix very well. That said, the only thing I have really found that works is to align those subjects that do mix in such a way that they overlap. This is perhaps the only reason blogging has stayed on my plate for so long: since the medium is so free-form and since I have absolute control over what I write here and when I write it, it is easy to align my interests in such a way that they overlap with my blog (i.e. I write about what interests me at the time).

One way you can tell that my interests have shifted over the years is that the format and content of my writing here has also changed. I am once again reminded of Neal Stephenson’s original minimalist homepage in which he speaks of his ongoing struggle against what Linda Stone termed as “continuous partial attention,” as that curious feature of modern life only makes the necessity of aligning interests in parallel that much more important.

Aligning blogging with my other core interests, such as reading fiction, is one of the reasons I frequently quote fiction, even in reference to a serious topic. Yes, such a practice is frowned upon, but blogging is a hobby, the idea of which is to have fun. Indeed, Glenn Reynolds, progenitor of one of the most popular blogging sites around, also claims to blog for fun, and interestingly enough, he has quoted fiction in support of his own serious interests as well (more than once). One other interesting observation is that all references to fiction in this post, including even Reynolds’ references, are from Neal Stephenson’s novels. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out what significance, if any, that holds.

/.Stephenson

2 Comments / Arts & Letters, Neal Stephenson / /

The new Slashdot interview with Neal Stephenson is an unexpected treat. Not only are the questions great, but Stephenson’s responses are witty and somewhat more profound (and much longer, as he had time to compose answers to some of the more difficult questions). As Nate points out, one of the more enlightening answers deals with the much rumored feud between Stephenson and William Gibson:

I was doing a reading/signing at White Dwarf Books in Vancouver. Gibson stopped by to say hello and extended his hand as if to shake. But I remembered something Bruce Sterling had told me. For, at the time, Sterling and I had formed a pact to fight Gibson. Gibson had been regrown in a vat from scraps of DNA after Sterling had crashed an LNG tanker into Gibson’s Stealth pleasure barge in the Straits of Juan de Fuca. During the regeneration process, telescoping Carbonite stilettos had been incorporated into Gibson’s arms. Remembering this in the nick of time, I grabbed the signing table and flipped it up between us. Of course the Carbonite stilettos pierced it as if it were cork board, but this spoiled his aim long enough for me to whip my wakizashi out from between my shoulder blades and swing at his head. He deflected the blow with a force blast that sprained my wrist. The falling table knocked over a space heater and set fire to the store. Everyone else fled. Gibson and I dueled among blazing stacks of books for a while. Slowly I gained the upper hand, for, on defense, his Praying Mantis style was no match for my Flying Cloud technique. But I lost him behind a cloud of smoke. Then I had to get out of the place. The streets were crowded with his black-suited minions and I had to turn into a swarm of locusts and fly back to Seattle.

Heh. Stephenson apparently fought Gibson two times after that, and the interview is worth reading just because of that answer… but the whole thing is worth reading, especially his answer regarding why genre and popular writers don’t get the literary respect they deserve (or don’t, depending on your point of view). [Thanks again to Nate for pointing this out to me, who, in my work induced haze, had missed it entirely]

Update: Just for fun, I checked out Stephenson’s homepage and found this picture of the entire Baroque Cycle manuscript:

Damn.

Again Update: Holy Crap! Stephenson t-shirts? And they look cool too! Why was I not informed? Damn you monkey research squad!

Dark Tower & Adaptation

1 Comment / The Dark Tower / /

This is yet another entry in a series of somewhat repetitive posts about Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, particularly how it is going to end. Previous installments are here: [part 1 | part 2 | part 3] Spoilers Ahead:

I’ve often felt that King doesn’t know how to end his novels – it seems like he is just making it up as he goes along. It’s a shame because he does come up with some pretty intriguing concepts, and he knows how to get you to turn the page, but as compelling as some of his ideas are, he often ends up backing himself into a corner. He sometimes manages to weasel his way out of it, but other times the ending is just unsatisfying.

The Dark Tower series was different than his other work, though. It had a broader scope than his other books. It is an ambitious effort, telling the epic story of Roland, the last gunslinger, and his quest for the Dark Tower, and King has often described it as his opus. All along, though, I was bothered by the nagging suspicion that he didn’t know how to end the series. It seemed like he was making it up as he went along, and that he was backing himself into a corner. He already did as much within the series, in the third volume called The Waste Lands, which he describes in the Author’s Note thusly:

I am well aware that some readers of The Waste Lands will be displeased that it has ended as it has, with so much unresolved. I am not terribly pleased to be leaving Roland and his companions in the not-so-tender care of Blaine the Mono myself, and although you are not obligated to believe me, I must nevertheless insist that I was as surprised by the conclusion to this third volume as some of my readers may be. Yet books which write themselves (as this one did, for the most part) must also be allowed to end themselves, and I can only assure you, Reader, that Roland and his band have come to one of the crucial border crossings in their story, and we must leave them here for a while at the customs station, answering questions and filling out forms.

He had ended The Waste Lands with a cliffhanger, but didn’t continue the story for a few years! But the new volume came, and resolve the cliffhanger it did. But in a sense, I could always tell that the story was leading somewhere, and there was always a nagging thought in the back of my mind about how he was going to end it (or even if he was going to end it). So when the new novels started coming out last year, I began noticing bits and pieces of the books which lead me to believe that I wasn’t going to be happy with the ending. At times, it is difficult to shake the notion that King is overtly attempting to warn the reader that the ending isn’t going to be satisfying. It is almost as if King realizes that he’s written himself into a hole, and doesn’t really know the way out, and is trying to subtly inform his audience that they may not like where it’s going.

I’m about 550 pages (out of 830, not including the Appendix) into the final volume of the series, aptly titled The Dark Tower. Steady as it goes, but I did want to mention something about one of King’s questionable additions to the Dark Tower mythos: the inclusion of Stephen King himself. You see, Stephen King has written himself into the story. Personally, I found this to be a questionable move, but I must admit that I found those chapters that have Stephen King (the character) to be rather well done. I’m still not sure it was the wisest move, but it could certainly have been much worse and I’ve actually enjoyed some of the nuances that have come about because of that addition. The way in which he references himself, and the part his “character” plays in the story, reminded me of something…

The movie Adaptation is based on an odd recursive concept: The screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, was hired to write an adaptation of Susan Orlean’s novel The Orchid Thief, but he found the task to be quite difficult and could not seem to make any progress. So instead of actually writing the adaptation, he writes a script about how he is having trouble writing the adaptation. The result is a strangely compelling and moving film.

And it struck me that King, himself anxious that he would not be able to complete his beloved Dark Tower series, has instead written a story about how he is having trouble ending the series. Oh, it’s not all about him. In fact, his “character” is actually quite a peripheral one, but every mention of his character seems to fit. And to be fair, as King has said, this stuff writes itself. For example, on page 144 of The Dark Tower, Roland’s ka-tet discusses the writer:

“If he wrote those things into the story,” Eddie said, “it was long after we saw him in 1977.”

“Aye,” Roland agreed.

“And I don’t think he thought them up,” Eddie said. “Not really. He’s just… I dunno, just a…”

“A bumhug?” Susannah asked, smiling.

“No!” Jake said, sounding a little shocked. “Not that. He’s a sender. A telecaster.” …

It must be a little cathartic for King, to be able to use his difficulties in writing the series in such a way, just as Charlie Kaufman was able to channel his frustration into something meaningful. Another quote, from pages 446-447, portrays the author thinking about writing the series:

Going back to the tale of the Tower means swimming in deep water. Maybe drowning there. Yet he suddenly realizes standing here at this crossroads, that if he goes back early he will begin. He won’t be able to help himself. … He’ll junk the current story, turn his back on the safety of land, and swim out into that dark water once again. He’s done it four times before, but this time he’ll have to swim all the way to the other side.

To be honest, I’m not being very fair to King at all. I’m certainly reading a lot into them, but these last few books aren’t bad, and I’ve really enjoyed reading them. I have a feeling that once the series is over, I’ll look back on it with a grin on my face. I might even read the whole thing again. But I can’t get over the feeling that there was something else, something better, that laid in store for Roland and his quest. It feels like King has lost something with these newer books. They lack the sweeping grandeur of the first four books. It no longer seems to be such an epic quest, but then, I’m not sure such greatness could be sustained. I wonder how I would feel if King never finished the series, just leaving it at book four? In closing, another quote, from page 447:

“Resolution demands sacrifice,” King says, and although no one hears but the birds and he has no idea what this means, he is not disturbed.