Right on cue, huh?
Today, we got a kitty. Or rather, a cat; she's 5 years old. Her name is Mooch, she's as heavy as a cat with that name might suggest, and her hobby in the first hour or so of life in our house seems to be crawling under things.
But this is not a cat blog.
While in Madison to get Mooch, I've added one book to the collection: History Lessons: How Textbooks From Around The World Portray U.S. History, by Dana Lindaman and Kyle Ward.
By 'around the world', the table of contents mentions textbooks from Brazil, Canada, the Caribbean, Costa Rica, Cuba, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, North Korea, Norway, the Philippines, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Spain, Syria, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe.
I bought it as it seemed a nice companion to Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen, which examines U.S. textbooks on their knowledge and portrayal of American history. That's the domestic portrayal; here lies the overseas portrayal.
I'm not expecting sunshine and lollipops.
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Monday, August 29, 2011
Why Political Current-Events Books Suck
Dick Cheney has a new autobiography out, called In My Time. In it, he says that the "undisclosed location" you kept hearing about during his time in office was in fact his house. Past that, Dick Cheney is Dick Cheney for a couple hundred pages.
Congratulations. You have successfully read In My Time.
In fact, you have successfully read every political current-events book or autobiography ever.
I make a point of not buying any of these books. I've been burned by them enough times to where I've soured on the entire genre. There's no point in curling up with any of them, be they slanted left, right or center. The way you "read" one of these books for maximum return is, you let someone read it who's paid to read it, let that person pick out whatever new revelations happen to be in the book (and usually they will pick out one or two), let the book pass through the one news cycle it will occupy, and then promptly forget the book ever existed.
Because you will promptly forget the book ever existed.
Some years down the road, these books turn up in a used bookstore like all the others. One of the reasons I like used bookstores is that they are a book's test of time. It's a test of a book's shelf life. If you see a brand new book on the shelf and it looks attractive, fine and dandy. But it may not look that way ten years down the road, and unless you're the type of person to quickly resell a book, it's going to keep sitting there on your shelf, possibly getting less attractive by the day. If you go to a used bookstore, though, and see a 10-year-old book that looks attractive, odds are you'll be fine.
Political current-events books and autobiographies have the shortest shelf lives of anything likely to appear in that bookstore. Including the periodicals. The thing about a political book referencing current events is that the book ceases to be relevant as soon as the next election hits or too many of the major figures in the book (or certain key figures) leave office. It may even cease to be relevant upon some single piece of news- a bill addressing something the book spends a lot of time on is passed, for example. By the time it hits a used bookstore's shelf, it seems dated to the point of comedy, sitting alongside titles about Tip O'Neill and Dan Quayle, and books which warn of the consequences of voting incorrectly in an election from the 1980's where both winner and loser have since left public service.
Did you read Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them? I did. There's a whole chapter in there going on about how the death of former Senator Paul Wellstone was turned into a political event that led to the election of Norm Coleman to Wellstone's seat. Since the book was written, Franken ran against Coleman and took Coleman/Wellstone's seat. Does this chapter now have any further relevance to anything? Is there anything more we can squeeze out of it? I highly doubt it. (And that's not even getting into all the chapters concerning Bush 43.)
That kind of thing happens all across the genre.
In the most extreme cases, this can happen even before the book is ever made available for sale. Jerome Corsi, for example, put out a book on May 17 entitled Where's The Birth Certificate? asking, of course, where Barack Obama's birth certificate was. (Astute readers may recall me not wanting to give the birthers the time of day after a piece I wrote in April. Sorry. They're needed today.) On April 27, however, about three weeks before it was put on store shelves, Obama held a press conference that basically went 'Here, here's the damn birth certificate; the state of Hawaii made an exception to their normal rules and released it just so you'll stop calling them about it and keeping them from their actual work, now will you shut up about it already?' The media spent the rest of the day tearing birthers a new one for wasting everyone's time with lunacy. (They promptly found fresh and exciting lunacy to give airtime to, but hey, we can't have everything.)
Where's The Birth Certificate debuted at #6 on the New York Times bestseller list anyway, though the Times had placed a symbol next to the book's listing noting that some retailers had gotten bulk orders. That's a bad thing. That means the book publisher may be, and likely is, inflating sales figures by buying a bunch of copies of their own book. As if to underscore the point, the next week it dropped to 14th, and then out of the top 35 entirely. It never returned to the list.
By comparison, the book immediately above Where's The Birth Certificate? when it debuted on the hardcover nonfiction list, Bossypants by Tina Fey, was on the list for its seventh week at the time. It's now in its 20th week, yet to fall out of the top 10. Lest you think I'm cherry-picking, the current top 10 have been on the best-seller list for, respectively, 6, 40, 15, 2, 2, 13, 20, 12, 15 and 6 weeks. There's a lot of stability at the top of the list.
And the bulk-buying symbol showed up again just one week ago... for After America: Get Ready For Armageddon by Mark Steyn, another political current-events book, which is currently in 4th place, one of the pair of 2's.
Just by looking at the title- After America: Get Ready For Armaggedon- can you guess the general gist and tone of the book? Of course you can. It's the same gist as the ones called In Defense Of America or The Coming Armageddon or whatever we're-all-gonna-die-and-it's-all-Obama's-fault book is this week.
This is the other thing: forget the old phrase 'you can't tell a book by its cover'. In this genre, the hell you can't. Is an Ann Coulter book called Demonic really going to be any different from an Ann Coulter book called Treason or an Ann Coulter book called Godless or an Ann Coulter book called Slander or an Ann Coulter book called Guilty: Liberal "Victims" And Their Assault On America or an Ann Coulter book called How To Talk To A Liberal (If You Must) or an Ann Coulter book called If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans? They're all Ann Coulter being Ann Coulter for a couple hundred pages.
It's like the old criticism of Madden games being annual roster updates. All you have to do is look at the author, look at the title, and you've basically got everything there is to get out of it. None of these books are going to be all that much different from the author's usual fare. Someone will buy them for sure, but once those people pull out the little scraps of interesting information, there's not much point to them beyond their one little news cycle.
Needless to say, none of these books are going to be joining the Rapid-Fire Book Club anytime soon. I may buy a lot of books, but every book I buy, I buy with intent to read. I gravitate towards titles that tell me something new, that present new stories, fresh ideas, challenging thoughts.
And there's nothing fresh or challenging in this section.
Congratulations. You have successfully read In My Time.
In fact, you have successfully read every political current-events book or autobiography ever.
I make a point of not buying any of these books. I've been burned by them enough times to where I've soured on the entire genre. There's no point in curling up with any of them, be they slanted left, right or center. The way you "read" one of these books for maximum return is, you let someone read it who's paid to read it, let that person pick out whatever new revelations happen to be in the book (and usually they will pick out one or two), let the book pass through the one news cycle it will occupy, and then promptly forget the book ever existed.
Because you will promptly forget the book ever existed.
Some years down the road, these books turn up in a used bookstore like all the others. One of the reasons I like used bookstores is that they are a book's test of time. It's a test of a book's shelf life. If you see a brand new book on the shelf and it looks attractive, fine and dandy. But it may not look that way ten years down the road, and unless you're the type of person to quickly resell a book, it's going to keep sitting there on your shelf, possibly getting less attractive by the day. If you go to a used bookstore, though, and see a 10-year-old book that looks attractive, odds are you'll be fine.
Political current-events books and autobiographies have the shortest shelf lives of anything likely to appear in that bookstore. Including the periodicals. The thing about a political book referencing current events is that the book ceases to be relevant as soon as the next election hits or too many of the major figures in the book (or certain key figures) leave office. It may even cease to be relevant upon some single piece of news- a bill addressing something the book spends a lot of time on is passed, for example. By the time it hits a used bookstore's shelf, it seems dated to the point of comedy, sitting alongside titles about Tip O'Neill and Dan Quayle, and books which warn of the consequences of voting incorrectly in an election from the 1980's where both winner and loser have since left public service.
Did you read Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them? I did. There's a whole chapter in there going on about how the death of former Senator Paul Wellstone was turned into a political event that led to the election of Norm Coleman to Wellstone's seat. Since the book was written, Franken ran against Coleman and took Coleman/Wellstone's seat. Does this chapter now have any further relevance to anything? Is there anything more we can squeeze out of it? I highly doubt it. (And that's not even getting into all the chapters concerning Bush 43.)
That kind of thing happens all across the genre.
In the most extreme cases, this can happen even before the book is ever made available for sale. Jerome Corsi, for example, put out a book on May 17 entitled Where's The Birth Certificate? asking, of course, where Barack Obama's birth certificate was. (Astute readers may recall me not wanting to give the birthers the time of day after a piece I wrote in April. Sorry. They're needed today.) On April 27, however, about three weeks before it was put on store shelves, Obama held a press conference that basically went 'Here, here's the damn birth certificate; the state of Hawaii made an exception to their normal rules and released it just so you'll stop calling them about it and keeping them from their actual work, now will you shut up about it already?' The media spent the rest of the day tearing birthers a new one for wasting everyone's time with lunacy. (They promptly found fresh and exciting lunacy to give airtime to, but hey, we can't have everything.)
Where's The Birth Certificate debuted at #6 on the New York Times bestseller list anyway, though the Times had placed a symbol next to the book's listing noting that some retailers had gotten bulk orders. That's a bad thing. That means the book publisher may be, and likely is, inflating sales figures by buying a bunch of copies of their own book. As if to underscore the point, the next week it dropped to 14th, and then out of the top 35 entirely. It never returned to the list.
By comparison, the book immediately above Where's The Birth Certificate? when it debuted on the hardcover nonfiction list, Bossypants by Tina Fey, was on the list for its seventh week at the time. It's now in its 20th week, yet to fall out of the top 10. Lest you think I'm cherry-picking, the current top 10 have been on the best-seller list for, respectively, 6, 40, 15, 2, 2, 13, 20, 12, 15 and 6 weeks. There's a lot of stability at the top of the list.
And the bulk-buying symbol showed up again just one week ago... for After America: Get Ready For Armageddon by Mark Steyn, another political current-events book, which is currently in 4th place, one of the pair of 2's.
Just by looking at the title- After America: Get Ready For Armaggedon- can you guess the general gist and tone of the book? Of course you can. It's the same gist as the ones called In Defense Of America or The Coming Armageddon or whatever we're-all-gonna-die-and-it's-all-Obama's-fault book is this week.
This is the other thing: forget the old phrase 'you can't tell a book by its cover'. In this genre, the hell you can't. Is an Ann Coulter book called Demonic really going to be any different from an Ann Coulter book called Treason or an Ann Coulter book called Godless or an Ann Coulter book called Slander or an Ann Coulter book called Guilty: Liberal "Victims" And Their Assault On America or an Ann Coulter book called How To Talk To A Liberal (If You Must) or an Ann Coulter book called If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans? They're all Ann Coulter being Ann Coulter for a couple hundred pages.
It's like the old criticism of Madden games being annual roster updates. All you have to do is look at the author, look at the title, and you've basically got everything there is to get out of it. None of these books are going to be all that much different from the author's usual fare. Someone will buy them for sure, but once those people pull out the little scraps of interesting information, there's not much point to them beyond their one little news cycle.
Needless to say, none of these books are going to be joining the Rapid-Fire Book Club anytime soon. I may buy a lot of books, but every book I buy, I buy with intent to read. I gravitate towards titles that tell me something new, that present new stories, fresh ideas, challenging thoughts.
And there's nothing fresh or challenging in this section.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Rapid-Fire Book Club, Farmers' Market Edition
If you happen to ever be in Madison on a Saturday- ever, even in the dead of winter- and there aren't massive protests going on, the Dane County Farmers' Market is something you really need to do. Every week, enough vendors from around the area set up shop to run a ring around the entire Capitol Square, which when it's not the dead of winter, is exactly what they'll do.
Your task is to walk a lap around Capitol Square- you will go clockwise because the oncoming rush of humanity behind you will force you to- and load up on as much fruits, vegetables, meat (in deer, cow, chicken, turkey, duck, pig, trout, bison, emu and dog-bone varieties), cheese from cows, goats and sheep (minding the sheer volume of bottleneck at the Brunkow Cheese booth surrounding the samples of juusto), baked goods, honey products, maple products, and assorted offerings from auxiliary food stalls without ending up like that guy from the Monty Python skit that got detonated by a wafer-thin mint. And just to keep things interesting, every time you round a corner of the square, there's some sort of person wanting some sort of support for some sort of political cause. Whether we're angry or not.
And then you can buy little trinkets as the market empties out on one corner onto State Street, where you will be assaulted by so many restaurants that you will soon no longer fit into your car and have to walk home, which is why State Street is pedestrian-only, according to the sources in my head.
That established, after nearly bursting, off I went to Avol's Bookstore, just off State, to add two books to my shelves:
*A.V. Club- Inventory: 16 Films Featuring Manic Pixie Dream Girls, 10 Great Songs Nearly Ruined By Saxophone, and 100 More Obsessively Specific Pop-Culture Lists
*Rich, Katherine Russell- Dreaming in Hindi: Coming Awake in Another Language (there was a celebration of India's independence day, which was on the 15th but celebrated today because it's the weekend)
Your task is to walk a lap around Capitol Square- you will go clockwise because the oncoming rush of humanity behind you will force you to- and load up on as much fruits, vegetables, meat (in deer, cow, chicken, turkey, duck, pig, trout, bison, emu and dog-bone varieties), cheese from cows, goats and sheep (minding the sheer volume of bottleneck at the Brunkow Cheese booth surrounding the samples of juusto), baked goods, honey products, maple products, and assorted offerings from auxiliary food stalls without ending up like that guy from the Monty Python skit that got detonated by a wafer-thin mint. And just to keep things interesting, every time you round a corner of the square, there's some sort of person wanting some sort of support for some sort of political cause. Whether we're angry or not.
And then you can buy little trinkets as the market empties out on one corner onto State Street, where you will be assaulted by so many restaurants that you will soon no longer fit into your car and have to walk home, which is why State Street is pedestrian-only, according to the sources in my head.
That established, after nearly bursting, off I went to Avol's Bookstore, just off State, to add two books to my shelves:
*A.V. Club- Inventory: 16 Films Featuring Manic Pixie Dream Girls, 10 Great Songs Nearly Ruined By Saxophone, and 100 More Obsessively Specific Pop-Culture Lists
*Rich, Katherine Russell- Dreaming in Hindi: Coming Awake in Another Language (there was a celebration of India's independence day, which was on the 15th but celebrated today because it's the weekend)
Friday, August 5, 2011
Rapid-Fire Book Club, Toilet Mishap Avoidance Edition
The handle broke on the toilet and I went into Madison while it got fixed. What, you were expecting a geyser of fecal matter to gush forth from the bowl or something?
Anyway. Two books to report today...
Hartston, William- The Encyclopedia of Useless Information
And it's pretty much that. None of the stories are very long, mostly just little factoids, but the thing it has going for it is a lot of stuff my other books don't contain. When I get books like this, I flip through them quick to gauge if there's very much new material in it or just a bunch of stuff that's either in my other books or that I'm already well-aware of. This one passed inspection and I'm likely going to carve it up for prompts that I can expand on here. Just like the other random-trivia books in my arsenal.
Poignant, Roslyn- Professional Savages: Captive Lives and Western Spectacle
In 1882, nonwhite races had a hard time dealing with the Western world. They tended to be regarded as "savages" that needed to be "civilized", something that generally involved one of a couple things:
*Missionaries showing up one day and declaring everything they saw an affront to God and then obliterating entire cultures and replacing them with Bible studies,
*Colonialists showing up one day and declaring everything they saw as property of Europe and then shooting entire cultures until that became true, or...
*The kind of thing that happened to the subjects of this book, a group of Aborigines from North Queensland, Australia. What happened to them was that they were "recruited" by someone from the West, shipped to the West, and paraded around as the "uncivilized" "savages" they, according to the West's sensibilities of the time, were. A lot of the time, the word "cannibal" would be thrown in as well, whether or not that was actually true. Most of the time, a "savage" so "recruited" would never see home again. I mentioned another such instance back during the Vancouver Olympics, that of "Anthropology Days" in the 1904 Games in St. Louis. But a better-detailed story on it can be found at Slate.
Anyway. Two books to report today...
Hartston, William- The Encyclopedia of Useless Information
And it's pretty much that. None of the stories are very long, mostly just little factoids, but the thing it has going for it is a lot of stuff my other books don't contain. When I get books like this, I flip through them quick to gauge if there's very much new material in it or just a bunch of stuff that's either in my other books or that I'm already well-aware of. This one passed inspection and I'm likely going to carve it up for prompts that I can expand on here. Just like the other random-trivia books in my arsenal.
Poignant, Roslyn- Professional Savages: Captive Lives and Western Spectacle
In 1882, nonwhite races had a hard time dealing with the Western world. They tended to be regarded as "savages" that needed to be "civilized", something that generally involved one of a couple things:
*Missionaries showing up one day and declaring everything they saw an affront to God and then obliterating entire cultures and replacing them with Bible studies,
*Colonialists showing up one day and declaring everything they saw as property of Europe and then shooting entire cultures until that became true, or...
*The kind of thing that happened to the subjects of this book, a group of Aborigines from North Queensland, Australia. What happened to them was that they were "recruited" by someone from the West, shipped to the West, and paraded around as the "uncivilized" "savages" they, according to the West's sensibilities of the time, were. A lot of the time, the word "cannibal" would be thrown in as well, whether or not that was actually true. Most of the time, a "savage" so "recruited" would never see home again. I mentioned another such instance back during the Vancouver Olympics, that of "Anthropology Days" in the 1904 Games in St. Louis. But a better-detailed story on it can be found at Slate.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Rapid-Fire Book Club, Too Much Information Edition
I think I dropped about a pound of sweat in my car today heading to Milwaukee.
See?
Anyway, two books need an adding, obtained via Boswell Book Company, a nice little place on the north side near Lake Michigan...
Kean, Sam- The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World From the Periodic Table of the Elements
Purdy, Dennis- Kiss 'em Goodbye: An ESPN Treasury of Failed, Forgotten, and Departed Teams
You may recall Kiss 'em Goodbye as a source from my article about the Tonawanda Kardex. Why's it here now? Because at the time of the article, I found the book for the first time via Google Books. And now here it is in the Rapid-Fire Book Club. (So that's one sale Google Books has generated.)
While we're here, congratulations to Pyeongchang, South Korea for being awarded the 2018 Winter Olympics. You best have snow when we all roll into town, though.
See?
Anyway, two books need an adding, obtained via Boswell Book Company, a nice little place on the north side near Lake Michigan...
Kean, Sam- The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World From the Periodic Table of the Elements
Purdy, Dennis- Kiss 'em Goodbye: An ESPN Treasury of Failed, Forgotten, and Departed Teams
You may recall Kiss 'em Goodbye as a source from my article about the Tonawanda Kardex. Why's it here now? Because at the time of the article, I found the book for the first time via Google Books. And now here it is in the Rapid-Fire Book Club. (So that's one sale Google Books has generated.)
While we're here, congratulations to Pyeongchang, South Korea for being awarded the 2018 Winter Olympics. You best have snow when we all roll into town, though.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Rapid-Fire Book Club, Catch-Up Edition
With RNG Week over with, we've got a little housecleaning to take care of, and note two books bought from a couple places on State Street in Madison, Pop Deluxe (which is total kicky quirky art-deco items you'd most expect to see in a 60's-retro party room) and Browzers Books (more of a straight-laced campus-side collection of books mostly decades old, the kind of books you find worm-eaten in your attic right before you move except, you know, not worm-eaten):
*Lunday, Elizabeth- Secret Lives of Great Composers
*Nash, Bruce; Zullo, Allan- The Baseball Hall of Shame
Both are extensions of a couple of book series I've patronized previously, although this is the first non-political Secret Lives Of book I've gone after, choosing the composers over authors, directors, First Ladies and personalities from the Civil War.
Also of note is Paul's Books, another campus-side place right next to Browzers I was in the same day and only off the UW-Madison campus on a technicality. It's Browzers, but more so, with a much larger selection and the prototypical dusty, musty imagery that a good book store thrives on. I didn't find anything that caught my eye in there that day- it traded a bit TOO heavily on the older books to the point of being rather outdated for my liking- but that seemed to be more on me than anything, seeing as on the day I was in there I was pretty much tripping over other customers every 30 seconds. (There were, it should be noted, more foreign-language books than I've seen in any other Wisconsin bookstore to date, regardless of size.)
*Lunday, Elizabeth- Secret Lives of Great Composers
*Nash, Bruce; Zullo, Allan- The Baseball Hall of Shame
Both are extensions of a couple of book series I've patronized previously, although this is the first non-political Secret Lives Of book I've gone after, choosing the composers over authors, directors, First Ladies and personalities from the Civil War.
Also of note is Paul's Books, another campus-side place right next to Browzers I was in the same day and only off the UW-Madison campus on a technicality. It's Browzers, but more so, with a much larger selection and the prototypical dusty, musty imagery that a good book store thrives on. I didn't find anything that caught my eye in there that day- it traded a bit TOO heavily on the older books to the point of being rather outdated for my liking- but that seemed to be more on me than anything, seeing as on the day I was in there I was pretty much tripping over other customers every 30 seconds. (There were, it should be noted, more foreign-language books than I've seen in any other Wisconsin bookstore to date, regardless of size.)
Monday, May 23, 2011
A Very Long Reading Assignment
Nick Kristof of the New York Times comes at you today with a quiz, regarding the position of the Bible on various social issues. (It's seven questions and isn't automated, so grab a pen and paper.)
The gist Kristof is getting at- aside from promoting the book Unprotected Texts: The Bible's Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire by Jennifer Wright Knust- is that what the Bible says, and what you think it says, are often two very different things.
So in addition to the seven questions Kristof provides, I'm going to add something: have you ever, at any point in your life, read the entire Bible front-to-back? The whole thing, from Let There Be Light to Jesus at the end of Revelation saying "Surely I am coming soon". Everything. Every word.
The number's uncertain- one unsourced statistic claims 10% of Christians have, a Rasmussen poll claims 31% but it must be taken with a fair amount of salt because it's Rasmussen. Most places that quote a number seem to prefer the unsourced 10% without ever giving a hint as to where that number came from. The number is probably in that ballpark, though. As much as I read, I know I can't count myself in that group.
If you're part of some other religion, substitute the appropriate piece of scripture and ask the same question of yourself. If you're atheist, don't know what to ask of you.
That established to the meager extent we can establish it, here's the next question to consider.
For all the bickering in the world about how Religious Sect X is more true than Religious Sect Y, fill in however you like... never mind your piece of scripture. Have you ever read theirs, back to front? If you're Christian, have you ever cracked open a Koran? If you're Muslim, have you ever cracked open a Bible? Have either of you read a Talmud? Or one of the Eastern texts? I'm willing to bet not.
In fact, have you ever read any of the competing piece of scripture at all? And, though the adherents' actions are one thing, how can you judge their faith if you haven't?
The gist Kristof is getting at- aside from promoting the book Unprotected Texts: The Bible's Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire by Jennifer Wright Knust- is that what the Bible says, and what you think it says, are often two very different things.
So in addition to the seven questions Kristof provides, I'm going to add something: have you ever, at any point in your life, read the entire Bible front-to-back? The whole thing, from Let There Be Light to Jesus at the end of Revelation saying "Surely I am coming soon". Everything. Every word.
The number's uncertain- one unsourced statistic claims 10% of Christians have, a Rasmussen poll claims 31% but it must be taken with a fair amount of salt because it's Rasmussen. Most places that quote a number seem to prefer the unsourced 10% without ever giving a hint as to where that number came from. The number is probably in that ballpark, though. As much as I read, I know I can't count myself in that group.
If you're part of some other religion, substitute the appropriate piece of scripture and ask the same question of yourself. If you're atheist, don't know what to ask of you.
That established to the meager extent we can establish it, here's the next question to consider.
For all the bickering in the world about how Religious Sect X is more true than Religious Sect Y, fill in however you like... never mind your piece of scripture. Have you ever read theirs, back to front? If you're Christian, have you ever cracked open a Koran? If you're Muslim, have you ever cracked open a Bible? Have either of you read a Talmud? Or one of the Eastern texts? I'm willing to bet not.
In fact, have you ever read any of the competing piece of scripture at all? And, though the adherents' actions are one thing, how can you judge their faith if you haven't?
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Rapid-Fire Book Club, Get Somebody Warming Up Edition
As I've said before, the early days of a professional sports league always seems to have the most fascinating stories, due to the low-budget, start-up, we-don't-really-know-what-we're-doing-yet nature of things. And yet, they rarely get brought up much when talking about established leagues, due to a tendency to trend towards recent happenings and to limit lists, records and tracked statistics to the "modern era".
Which brings us to today's entry, Fifty-nine in '84: Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball & the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had by Edward Achorn. In 1884, Radbourn had 59 wins and 12 losses, though due to imperfections in stat-keeping back then, other places put him at 60 (the Hall of Fame) or 62 (Radbourn's tombstone). No matter how you count it, it's the all-time record. He pitched 678 2/3 innings, second all-time and four outs shy of the record set by Will White of the Cincinnati Reds five years prior. The record of Radbourne's team, the Providence Grays, was 84-28.
This was, to say the least, in the days before five-man pitching rotations. Or four-man rotations. Or three-man rotations. From July to the end of the 1884 season, Providence didn't even have a two-man rotation. Radbourne didn't pitch every day, but as he started 40 of the Gray's final 43 games, he essentially was their rotation. That's how he wound up becoming the pitcher of record in 63% of the team's games.
This is back when the win-loss record really meant something.
Which brings us to today's entry, Fifty-nine in '84: Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball & the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had by Edward Achorn. In 1884, Radbourn had 59 wins and 12 losses, though due to imperfections in stat-keeping back then, other places put him at 60 (the Hall of Fame) or 62 (Radbourn's tombstone). No matter how you count it, it's the all-time record. He pitched 678 2/3 innings, second all-time and four outs shy of the record set by Will White of the Cincinnati Reds five years prior. The record of Radbourne's team, the Providence Grays, was 84-28.
This was, to say the least, in the days before five-man pitching rotations. Or four-man rotations. Or three-man rotations. From July to the end of the 1884 season, Providence didn't even have a two-man rotation. Radbourne didn't pitch every day, but as he started 40 of the Gray's final 43 games, he essentially was their rotation. That's how he wound up becoming the pitcher of record in 63% of the team's games.
This is back when the win-loss record really meant something.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Rapid-Fire Book Club, Emergency Breakdown Edition
First off, a little driving tip: If your car is going to break down in Madison to the point where you are coasting with no gas or brakes and barely any steering, try to break down in the rightmost lane, directly in front of an auto repair shop that has a large, half-empty strip mall parking lot next door you can dive into.
True story.
While waiting for my car to get fixed (it had something to do with a sensor), I added to the Rapid-Fire Book Club, because I had to do something walking up and down Willy Street for two hours and there was absolutely no way a longer piece was getting done today for all the time sunk into the breakdown...
*Halliday, Ayun- No Touch Monkey! and Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late (five books down the shelf from Eat, Pray, Love; I will be damned if the best-seller list is going to tell me what I read)
*Murrie, Matthew; Murrie, Steve- The First Book of Seconds: 220 of the Most Random, Remarkable, Respectable (and Regrettable) Runners-Up and Their Almost Claims to Fame (it was a buck; can't go too wrong at that price)
True story.
While waiting for my car to get fixed (it had something to do with a sensor), I added to the Rapid-Fire Book Club, because I had to do something walking up and down Willy Street for two hours and there was absolutely no way a longer piece was getting done today for all the time sunk into the breakdown...
*Halliday, Ayun- No Touch Monkey! and Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late (five books down the shelf from Eat, Pray, Love; I will be damned if the best-seller list is going to tell me what I read)
*Murrie, Matthew; Murrie, Steve- The First Book of Seconds: 220 of the Most Random, Remarkable, Respectable (and Regrettable) Runners-Up and Their Almost Claims to Fame (it was a buck; can't go too wrong at that price)
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Rapid-Fire Book Club, Epic Fail Edition
Two of the topics that will most reliably get me to buy your book are:
1. Stupid people.
2. Epic fail.
My bookshelf is littered with those two topics. On one level, it's a way to become less stupid yourself; part of knowing what to do is knowing what not to do. On another level, it's just plain entertaining.
And so it was that The Little Book of Big F*#K Ups: 220 of History's Most Regrettable Moments by Ken Lytle and Katie Corcoran Lytle was added to my ranks.
1. Stupid people.
2. Epic fail.
My bookshelf is littered with those two topics. On one level, it's a way to become less stupid yourself; part of knowing what to do is knowing what not to do. On another level, it's just plain entertaining.
And so it was that The Little Book of Big F*#K Ups: 220 of History's Most Regrettable Moments by Ken Lytle and Katie Corcoran Lytle was added to my ranks.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Rapid-Fire Book Club, Horrifying Cover Shoots Edition
Fey, Tina- Bossypants
Just wrapped it up today, and Tina Fey is not Tina Fey just because she and Sarah Palin look like each other. The book is kind of a cross between memoir and essay collection. Either way, she's hilarious, but particularly in the essays. The two highlights are probably right in the beginning, when she brings up women's body standards, and towards the middle, when she responds to a series of people on various message boards who in all likelihood figured Tina wasn't going to see what they wrote.
Towards the end, though, she starts to reprint things she's written elsewhere; if you saw a piece in the New Yorker recently by her, you've basically got two of the later chapters right there. (No, I will not link to it, or tell you the title of the piece for Google purposes. You want to read it that badly, go spend money. You're lucky I even spotted you the 'New Yorker' part.) So it makes for a comparatively weak ending to the book if (IF) you've read any of those reprints the first time, but even if you have, it's not all that big a chunk of the book, and the rest is absoutely worth buying anyway.
Just wrapped it up today, and Tina Fey is not Tina Fey just because she and Sarah Palin look like each other. The book is kind of a cross between memoir and essay collection. Either way, she's hilarious, but particularly in the essays. The two highlights are probably right in the beginning, when she brings up women's body standards, and towards the middle, when she responds to a series of people on various message boards who in all likelihood figured Tina wasn't going to see what they wrote.
Towards the end, though, she starts to reprint things she's written elsewhere; if you saw a piece in the New Yorker recently by her, you've basically got two of the later chapters right there. (No, I will not link to it, or tell you the title of the piece for Google purposes. You want to read it that badly, go spend money. You're lucky I even spotted you the 'New Yorker' part.) So it makes for a comparatively weak ending to the book if (IF) you've read any of those reprints the first time, but even if you have, it's not all that big a chunk of the book, and the rest is absoutely worth buying anyway.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Rapid-Fire Book Club, Curse You Morehead State Edition
If you'll recall, Louisville was in my Final Four. (I also biffed the BYU-Wofford game, and those were actually my only two misses on the day. It's good enough to co-lead my pool.)
I have some unfinished book-club business to handle; got this group a few days ago and need to record it here...
Fischler, Shirley; Fischler, Stan- The Best, Worst and Most Unusual in Sports (evidently given to someone as a Christmas present back in 1980, given the note inside the front cover)
Leon, Vicki- Uppity Women of Medieval Times
Olmert, Michael- Milton's Teeth and Ovid's Umbrella: Curiouser & Curiouser Adventures in History
Smith, Anthony- Explorers of the Amazon: Four Centuries of Adventure Along the World's Greatest River
I have some unfinished book-club business to handle; got this group a few days ago and need to record it here...
Fischler, Shirley; Fischler, Stan- The Best, Worst and Most Unusual in Sports (evidently given to someone as a Christmas present back in 1980, given the note inside the front cover)
Leon, Vicki- Uppity Women of Medieval Times
Olmert, Michael- Milton's Teeth and Ovid's Umbrella: Curiouser & Curiouser Adventures in History
Smith, Anthony- Explorers of the Amazon: Four Centuries of Adventure Along the World's Greatest River
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Save-The-Store Update
Back on February 11, I mentioned that a bookstore in my hometown, Watertown Booksellers, was at risk of being shut down on the decision of Book World VP of Store Operations Antoine Tines, working out of Appleton.
Yesterday, three days after the store closed, this showed up in my inbox.
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
Yesterday, three days after the store closed, this showed up in my inbox.
Good afternoon Aaron –
After much consideration and taking into account the community support and response – the decision has been made to keep Watertown Booksellers open. We will reopen your store Thursday, March 3 –
Thank you for voicing your opinion and Thank you for your continued support -
Antoine M. Tines, CTP ®
Book World, Inc
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
Friday, February 11, 2011
Rapid-Fire Book Club, Save The Store Edition
One of my local bookstores, Book World- or 'Watertown Booksellers', if you go by the big sign out front- is slated to shut down on the 25th. This is apparently the decision of a guy in the Appleton home office, VP of Store Operations Antoine Tines. When I went in today to kill off a gift certificate I got for Christmas, I was handed his contact information, in hopes of making him reconsider.
If you live in the area and you'd like to help- and I'd appreciate it if you did; Watertown is a literary wasteland in its absence- his e-mail is atines@bookworldstores.com, the phone number is (920) 830-7897, the fax- people still send faxes?- is (920) 830-3857, and the address to write in is:
Book World Home Office
1000 S. Lynndale Dr.
Appleton, WI 54914
That done, in addition to a commemorative Super Bowl Champion Packers Sports Illustrated, we have:
*2011 World Almanac (replaces the 2008 edition currently on my shelf)
*Simmons, Bill- The Book of Basketball (yep, this is his reader)
If you live in the area and you'd like to help- and I'd appreciate it if you did; Watertown is a literary wasteland in its absence- his e-mail is atines@bookworldstores.com, the phone number is (920) 830-7897, the fax- people still send faxes?- is (920) 830-3857, and the address to write in is:
Book World Home Office
1000 S. Lynndale Dr.
Appleton, WI 54914
That done, in addition to a commemorative Super Bowl Champion Packers Sports Illustrated, we have:
*2011 World Almanac (replaces the 2008 edition currently on my shelf)
*Simmons, Bill- The Book of Basketball (yep, this is his reader)
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Books VS. E-Books: Fight!
Husna Haq of the Christian Science Monitor put out this article detailing "5 signs that e-books are here to stay," three of which are various themes on 'look how popular they are'.
I haven't heard anyone say that they weren't.
Granted, I for one have expressed a preference for the physical object, way back when I first introduced the Rapid-Fire Book Club. But the advantages of the e-book are so clear- the small size, the portability, the amount of reading material that can be packed into it, the lower cost of producing the product, the speed with which one can obtain a book that they've just heard about or the latest bestseller- that its usefulness is undeniable. I welcome its presence. Anything that gets people reading, or reading more.
But the physical books aren't going away either. Books and e-books can coexist peacefully, which has rather escaped the bulk of people who've written on the topic; most have suggested or implied some sort of existential fight to the death.
So here, in response, are five reasons books aren't going away:
1. Books can be broken and still be readable.
If you drop a steak knife on an e-book, and it pierces and hits the wrong piece of circuitry, you can't read it anymore. You've got a doorstop on your hands. If you drop that same steak knife on a book, you've got a little hole in each individual page. You can still read what's on that page, or worst-case, read around it and make out what the busted part said. You can do a lot of damage to that book and still read it. Even if you tear the book apart page-by-page, with enough work you can put the pages back in order, and still read the book.
2. Pre-existing infrastructure.
Even if you were to not publish one more physical book, you've still got just gobs of them laying around, and not many people are inclined to destroy them. Nor are they going to be subject to some sort of obsolescence-related cancellation of service. You won't open a book anytime soon and see 'This book's service period has expired. Thank you for understanding.'
3. The Internet has a backlog.
Despite the enormous potential of making reading material available online, with this, with Google Books, there are still titles that are going to slip through the net, books you for one reason or another simply cannot obtain in electronic form. You can't flip a switch and make 'books' online. You have to individually introduce each individual book to an online audience. Considering the sheer amount of titles that have been put out over the course of history, that's a task that will take time to complete, if it is ever completed at all.
How much time? You gamers out there, think back to all the times you've tried to achieve hundred-percent completion. Especially think back to those last frustrating percentage points. Now imagine that in real life, on a global scale, over hundreds, maybe thousands of years, and nobody's around to tell you when you've reached 100%. Good luck.
4. Ease of searching.
Oh, yes. Ease of searching. If you know going in what book you're going after, the e-book, Amazon, anything online is perfect. Type in the name, boom, there it is. And here are a couple related books as well.
There's a caveat, though. You have to know exactly what you want, and if you want a certain category, you can only view a limited number of books at a time- ten on a page, perhaps. And they're bound to only be the most popular in whatever category you're looking at.
But popular books and good books aren't the same thing. If you walk into a bookstore, it is a visual no online source can match. Dozens, hundreds of books, maybe even thousands in the right place within one glance. As many as you can handle, popular, obscure, books you've never heard of, books you never knew you wanted until that exact moment, and the only way they're not related is if the staff has been spectacularly incompetent.
5. Intangibles.
As was stated last March, there's a certain mojo that a book has that an e-book simply cannot replicate. There's more of the feeling that the book is a book, as opposed to a glorified online article. There's more gravitas to it. There's the experience of being in the bookstore itself- the slow-paced meandering along the shelves, the browsing, all the knowledge and literature around you being enlightening yet humbling simply by being abundant in close proximity.
That's also something the Internet can't replicate, not really. We all know how large the Internet is, but you're only looking at one or two glimpses of it at a time. You get the Internet in little bite-sized chunks.
Now walk into a large bookstore. The scale hits you like a ton of bricks. You can look straight ahead and see just how much reading material is in there. You hear references, once in a while, to obtaining the content of 'the entire Internet' somehow. You don't hear similar references about someone reading everything in a bookstore or everything in a library, despite there being much less overall content in a bookstore or library. People are much more aware of the likelihood, or lack thereof, of absorbing the entire content of a bookstore or library, than they are about doing the same with the Internet. It just seems larger.
But for another audience of potential readers, bite-size is the right size. And that's the primary factor: the two types of books attract two different kinds of people. Again to use video games as a proxy, you've got one hardcore crowd that wants Halo and Call of Duty, and another more casual crowd that prefers Peggle and Wii Sports. They both like games. Just not the same kind of games. In the same sense, both the book and e-book people like books; they just have different preferences as to hoe they want to have them. And others like having both: get the books, but when the bookshelf gets overrun, put the overage on the e-book.
In other words, they coexist.
I haven't heard anyone say that they weren't.
Granted, I for one have expressed a preference for the physical object, way back when I first introduced the Rapid-Fire Book Club. But the advantages of the e-book are so clear- the small size, the portability, the amount of reading material that can be packed into it, the lower cost of producing the product, the speed with which one can obtain a book that they've just heard about or the latest bestseller- that its usefulness is undeniable. I welcome its presence. Anything that gets people reading, or reading more.
But the physical books aren't going away either. Books and e-books can coexist peacefully, which has rather escaped the bulk of people who've written on the topic; most have suggested or implied some sort of existential fight to the death.
So here, in response, are five reasons books aren't going away:
1. Books can be broken and still be readable.
If you drop a steak knife on an e-book, and it pierces and hits the wrong piece of circuitry, you can't read it anymore. You've got a doorstop on your hands. If you drop that same steak knife on a book, you've got a little hole in each individual page. You can still read what's on that page, or worst-case, read around it and make out what the busted part said. You can do a lot of damage to that book and still read it. Even if you tear the book apart page-by-page, with enough work you can put the pages back in order, and still read the book.
2. Pre-existing infrastructure.
Even if you were to not publish one more physical book, you've still got just gobs of them laying around, and not many people are inclined to destroy them. Nor are they going to be subject to some sort of obsolescence-related cancellation of service. You won't open a book anytime soon and see 'This book's service period has expired. Thank you for understanding.'
3. The Internet has a backlog.
Despite the enormous potential of making reading material available online, with this, with Google Books, there are still titles that are going to slip through the net, books you for one reason or another simply cannot obtain in electronic form. You can't flip a switch and make 'books' online. You have to individually introduce each individual book to an online audience. Considering the sheer amount of titles that have been put out over the course of history, that's a task that will take time to complete, if it is ever completed at all.
How much time? You gamers out there, think back to all the times you've tried to achieve hundred-percent completion. Especially think back to those last frustrating percentage points. Now imagine that in real life, on a global scale, over hundreds, maybe thousands of years, and nobody's around to tell you when you've reached 100%. Good luck.
4. Ease of searching.
Oh, yes. Ease of searching. If you know going in what book you're going after, the e-book, Amazon, anything online is perfect. Type in the name, boom, there it is. And here are a couple related books as well.
There's a caveat, though. You have to know exactly what you want, and if you want a certain category, you can only view a limited number of books at a time- ten on a page, perhaps. And they're bound to only be the most popular in whatever category you're looking at.
But popular books and good books aren't the same thing. If you walk into a bookstore, it is a visual no online source can match. Dozens, hundreds of books, maybe even thousands in the right place within one glance. As many as you can handle, popular, obscure, books you've never heard of, books you never knew you wanted until that exact moment, and the only way they're not related is if the staff has been spectacularly incompetent.
5. Intangibles.
As was stated last March, there's a certain mojo that a book has that an e-book simply cannot replicate. There's more of the feeling that the book is a book, as opposed to a glorified online article. There's more gravitas to it. There's the experience of being in the bookstore itself- the slow-paced meandering along the shelves, the browsing, all the knowledge and literature around you being enlightening yet humbling simply by being abundant in close proximity.
That's also something the Internet can't replicate, not really. We all know how large the Internet is, but you're only looking at one or two glimpses of it at a time. You get the Internet in little bite-sized chunks.
Now walk into a large bookstore. The scale hits you like a ton of bricks. You can look straight ahead and see just how much reading material is in there. You hear references, once in a while, to obtaining the content of 'the entire Internet' somehow. You don't hear similar references about someone reading everything in a bookstore or everything in a library, despite there being much less overall content in a bookstore or library. People are much more aware of the likelihood, or lack thereof, of absorbing the entire content of a bookstore or library, than they are about doing the same with the Internet. It just seems larger.
But for another audience of potential readers, bite-size is the right size. And that's the primary factor: the two types of books attract two different kinds of people. Again to use video games as a proxy, you've got one hardcore crowd that wants Halo and Call of Duty, and another more casual crowd that prefers Peggle and Wii Sports. They both like games. Just not the same kind of games. In the same sense, both the book and e-book people like books; they just have different preferences as to hoe they want to have them. And others like having both: get the books, but when the bookshelf gets overrun, put the overage on the e-book.
In other words, they coexist.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Rapid-Fire Book Club, Green And Yellow Edition
First off, clearly, this must be done.
And an NFC Champions shirt must be bought. That done, an addition to the Rapid-Fire Book Club was done in the meantime; there was a Barnes & Noble gift card that needed a workout.
Bathroom Readers' Institute- Uncle John's Bathroom Reader: Colossal Collection of Quotable Quotes
Fuller, Alexandra- Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood (suggested by someone on a Fark thread)
Grant, John- Discarded Science: Ideas That Seemed Good at the Time...
Sass, Erik; Wiegand, Steve- The Mental Floss History of the World: An Irreverent Romp Through Civilization's Best Bits
In addition, my birthday brought three Penny Arcade collections: The Warsun Prophecies, Birds Are Weird, and The Case of the Mummy's Gold, which makes that a complete set of the first six books there.
In conclusion, in the interest of equal time, here is the Steelers' equivalent song.
And an NFC Champions shirt must be bought. That done, an addition to the Rapid-Fire Book Club was done in the meantime; there was a Barnes & Noble gift card that needed a workout.
Bathroom Readers' Institute- Uncle John's Bathroom Reader: Colossal Collection of Quotable Quotes
Fuller, Alexandra- Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood (suggested by someone on a Fark thread)
Grant, John- Discarded Science: Ideas That Seemed Good at the Time...
Sass, Erik; Wiegand, Steve- The Mental Floss History of the World: An Irreverent Romp Through Civilization's Best Bits
In addition, my birthday brought three Penny Arcade collections: The Warsun Prophecies, Birds Are Weird, and The Case of the Mummy's Gold, which makes that a complete set of the first six books there.
In conclusion, in the interest of equal time, here is the Steelers' equivalent song.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Easy Answers Where None Exist
Okay.
I've had three days to get my head together. Let's take a run at this.
Almost as soon as the initial events in Tuscon had concluded, before the name of the gunman had been known, one of the very first things circulated online was the now-familiar crosshair map. 20 districts that Sarah Palin wanted for the Republicans, all with crosshairs over them. Gabrielle Giffords, of course, was one of those 20. This was merely the first salvo in what has become an all-out war, the object of which is for each side to pin Jared Loughner's political affiliation to the other side.
This is a fairly straightforward task if you happen to be a Democrat: after all, given the level of eliminationist rhetoric heard from the Republicans and Tea Party over the course of the past few years, crosshair map included, the fact that it was a Democrat that was indisputably the primary target, and the fact that among Loughner's favorite books was 'Main Kampf', thought to be a hallmark of only the furthest of far-right nuts, as well as favoring the libertarian-proposed gold standard, among other things, it would seem clear.
If you're a Republican, it's a tad more difficult, though you're not without ammo of your own. There has been the scattered rebuttal post of Democrats using violence-related rhetoric, though not nearly as eliminationist, along with eliminationist signs, albeit without the added element of someone actually turning that rhetoric into action. There is also a map of states Democrats were targeting to turn blue in the 2008 Presidential election with bullseyes over the most likely states, though it as well comes as less eliminationist and targets no individual in particular. Just as often, though, the tack taken here is that Loughner was simply a random nut who had no coherent political beliefs of any kind, that it is irresponsible to blame any one side, and that for the Democrats to blame the Republicans is nothing more than the exploitation of a tragedy.
That alternate view, that Loughner is simply crazy, is not without merit, though the Republican version of that argument comes with a fair amount of defensive self-interest attached, a suspicion deepened by the rapid excising of eliminationist rhetoric archived online, and one of Palin's staff rebranding the crosshairs on the map as "surveyor's marks". In addition, alongside Mein Kampf on Loughner's reading list is the Communist Manifesto, the equivalent left-wing nutball hallmark.
There is a Democratic he's-just-crazy argument as well, though this argument is largely concentrated in the most thoughtful corners of the party. This argument is steeped in a well-established history of mental illness among a large segment of assassins and attempted assassins. It largely comes without the stipulation that no one party should be blamed, replacing the area of concern with mental illnesses or gun control or, most commonly among all stripes of the party, the general tone of political discourse in America. It may not have led Loughner all the way down his path, but it might have pushed him over the edge.
That last sentiment is about where I fall. True. Loughner's hatred of Giffords began in 2007, when she failed to address to his satisfaction a very oddball question, and the spike in eliminationist rhetoric came in 2008. And all one need really do is look at his mugshot, gaze into his eyes, to see that we are dealing with a very disturbed individual. But at the same time, you can't really call him completely insane. Not legally, at least. An insane person needs, under current law, to not know the difference between right and wrong. The fact that, for example, Loughner is being uncooperative with police, is not saying a word to them while previously he was quite talkative, suggests that he doesn't want to give the cops something to use against him, or at the very least, the thought is going through his mind that this is a very different situation than normal and that he really shouldn't be talking about what he just did. That in turn suggests that even if he didn't think what he did was wrong, someone else would beg to differ. That's all it takes to be legally able to distinguish between right and wrong, which makes you sane and able to be charged as such.
I cannot, in any case, simply dismiss Loughner as an indecipherable nut and be done with it. The ENIGMA code was indecipherable too, until you cracked it. It took a lot of work, a lot of big brains working on a big problem, but the indecipherable became decipherable. Whatever ended up running through Loughner's head came from somewhere. We've already determined, for example, where his hatred for Giffords came from. If we've figured out one piece of the Loughner puzzle, we can figure out others.
Let's go back to that book list. In addition to Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto, there is also a variety of books from any and all parts of the political spectrum, as well as the apolitical. The list consists of: Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Wizard Of Oz, Aesop's Fables, The Odyssey, Alice Adventures Into Wonderland, Fahrenheit 451, Peter Pan, To Kill A Mockingbird, We The Living, The Phantom Tollbooth, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Pulp, Through The Looking Glass, The Communist Manifesto, Siddhartha, The Old Man And The Sea, Gulliver's Travels, Mein Kampf, The Republic, and Meno.
Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center does see a more generic anti-government theme running through the books, and I can concur with that assessment. That doesn't help or hurt any one side- remember, Congress is currently split- but merely says that he doesn't like 'the government'. It doesn't blame any one side in particular, but hurts everyone all the same. That may be reading too much into the list, but one must remember that answers aren't always easy. They're not always black and white. Sometimes the smoking gun simply does not exist, and truth must be found in a long, slow grind of piecing together bit after bit after bit, hoping, in the absence of any clearly-visible moment of completion, that all the bits will one day resemble something recognizable.
Whatever Loughner's beliefs are, or however strong or weak his grip on reality, or however much or little violent rhetoric played a part or even who used more of it, it surely cannot have helped matters. I'm absolutely down with using this incident, this... 'opportunity', as it's been called in some circles (what a strange place to use that word), to do something about mental illness and gun control. These are both fields that really haven't gotten the attention they deserve, and in gun control particularly, everyone is simply too scared of the NRA to think anything is capable of being done, and so usually they don't even try. ('Usually' does not, however, apply here, as several pieces of gun control legislation have been introduced.)
Besides, even if it had absolutely nothing to do with the shooting, even if Loughner's head turns out to be telling him that his cheese is made of teeth, a national moment of reflection on the state of our political discourse is, I think, a good thing. If that is the ultimate lesson that America at large takes from this discussion- that maybe not using eliminationist rhetoric could prevent someone from actually committing eliminationist acts- I for one am willing to let that be the lesson. Does it really matter if it was actually the cause? We've been decrying the tone of discussion anyway.
If the lesson learned is about mental health issues, great. If the lesson learned is about gun control, great. If the lesson is about the tone of political rhetoric, that words have consequences, great. If the lesson learned is a combination of the three, outstanding.
But let there be a lesson learned. Let us not let the six people killed by this tragedy die for nothing.
I've had three days to get my head together. Let's take a run at this.
Almost as soon as the initial events in Tuscon had concluded, before the name of the gunman had been known, one of the very first things circulated online was the now-familiar crosshair map. 20 districts that Sarah Palin wanted for the Republicans, all with crosshairs over them. Gabrielle Giffords, of course, was one of those 20. This was merely the first salvo in what has become an all-out war, the object of which is for each side to pin Jared Loughner's political affiliation to the other side.
This is a fairly straightforward task if you happen to be a Democrat: after all, given the level of eliminationist rhetoric heard from the Republicans and Tea Party over the course of the past few years, crosshair map included, the fact that it was a Democrat that was indisputably the primary target, and the fact that among Loughner's favorite books was 'Main Kampf', thought to be a hallmark of only the furthest of far-right nuts, as well as favoring the libertarian-proposed gold standard, among other things, it would seem clear.
If you're a Republican, it's a tad more difficult, though you're not without ammo of your own. There has been the scattered rebuttal post of Democrats using violence-related rhetoric, though not nearly as eliminationist, along with eliminationist signs, albeit without the added element of someone actually turning that rhetoric into action. There is also a map of states Democrats were targeting to turn blue in the 2008 Presidential election with bullseyes over the most likely states, though it as well comes as less eliminationist and targets no individual in particular. Just as often, though, the tack taken here is that Loughner was simply a random nut who had no coherent political beliefs of any kind, that it is irresponsible to blame any one side, and that for the Democrats to blame the Republicans is nothing more than the exploitation of a tragedy.
That alternate view, that Loughner is simply crazy, is not without merit, though the Republican version of that argument comes with a fair amount of defensive self-interest attached, a suspicion deepened by the rapid excising of eliminationist rhetoric archived online, and one of Palin's staff rebranding the crosshairs on the map as "surveyor's marks". In addition, alongside Mein Kampf on Loughner's reading list is the Communist Manifesto, the equivalent left-wing nutball hallmark.
There is a Democratic he's-just-crazy argument as well, though this argument is largely concentrated in the most thoughtful corners of the party. This argument is steeped in a well-established history of mental illness among a large segment of assassins and attempted assassins. It largely comes without the stipulation that no one party should be blamed, replacing the area of concern with mental illnesses or gun control or, most commonly among all stripes of the party, the general tone of political discourse in America. It may not have led Loughner all the way down his path, but it might have pushed him over the edge.
That last sentiment is about where I fall. True. Loughner's hatred of Giffords began in 2007, when she failed to address to his satisfaction a very oddball question, and the spike in eliminationist rhetoric came in 2008. And all one need really do is look at his mugshot, gaze into his eyes, to see that we are dealing with a very disturbed individual. But at the same time, you can't really call him completely insane. Not legally, at least. An insane person needs, under current law, to not know the difference between right and wrong. The fact that, for example, Loughner is being uncooperative with police, is not saying a word to them while previously he was quite talkative, suggests that he doesn't want to give the cops something to use against him, or at the very least, the thought is going through his mind that this is a very different situation than normal and that he really shouldn't be talking about what he just did. That in turn suggests that even if he didn't think what he did was wrong, someone else would beg to differ. That's all it takes to be legally able to distinguish between right and wrong, which makes you sane and able to be charged as such.
I cannot, in any case, simply dismiss Loughner as an indecipherable nut and be done with it. The ENIGMA code was indecipherable too, until you cracked it. It took a lot of work, a lot of big brains working on a big problem, but the indecipherable became decipherable. Whatever ended up running through Loughner's head came from somewhere. We've already determined, for example, where his hatred for Giffords came from. If we've figured out one piece of the Loughner puzzle, we can figure out others.
Let's go back to that book list. In addition to Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto, there is also a variety of books from any and all parts of the political spectrum, as well as the apolitical. The list consists of: Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Wizard Of Oz, Aesop's Fables, The Odyssey, Alice Adventures Into Wonderland, Fahrenheit 451, Peter Pan, To Kill A Mockingbird, We The Living, The Phantom Tollbooth, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Pulp, Through The Looking Glass, The Communist Manifesto, Siddhartha, The Old Man And The Sea, Gulliver's Travels, Mein Kampf, The Republic, and Meno.
Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center does see a more generic anti-government theme running through the books, and I can concur with that assessment. That doesn't help or hurt any one side- remember, Congress is currently split- but merely says that he doesn't like 'the government'. It doesn't blame any one side in particular, but hurts everyone all the same. That may be reading too much into the list, but one must remember that answers aren't always easy. They're not always black and white. Sometimes the smoking gun simply does not exist, and truth must be found in a long, slow grind of piecing together bit after bit after bit, hoping, in the absence of any clearly-visible moment of completion, that all the bits will one day resemble something recognizable.
Whatever Loughner's beliefs are, or however strong or weak his grip on reality, or however much or little violent rhetoric played a part or even who used more of it, it surely cannot have helped matters. I'm absolutely down with using this incident, this... 'opportunity', as it's been called in some circles (what a strange place to use that word), to do something about mental illness and gun control. These are both fields that really haven't gotten the attention they deserve, and in gun control particularly, everyone is simply too scared of the NRA to think anything is capable of being done, and so usually they don't even try. ('Usually' does not, however, apply here, as several pieces of gun control legislation have been introduced.)
Besides, even if it had absolutely nothing to do with the shooting, even if Loughner's head turns out to be telling him that his cheese is made of teeth, a national moment of reflection on the state of our political discourse is, I think, a good thing. If that is the ultimate lesson that America at large takes from this discussion- that maybe not using eliminationist rhetoric could prevent someone from actually committing eliminationist acts- I for one am willing to let that be the lesson. Does it really matter if it was actually the cause? We've been decrying the tone of discussion anyway.
If the lesson learned is about mental health issues, great. If the lesson learned is about gun control, great. If the lesson is about the tone of political rhetoric, that words have consequences, great. If the lesson learned is a combination of the three, outstanding.
But let there be a lesson learned. Let us not let the six people killed by this tragedy die for nothing.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Rapid-Fire Book Club, Christmas Edition
The books under the tree this year, of course:
Bathroom Readers' Institute- Uncle John's Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader
Bathroom Readers' Institute- Uncle John's Bathroom Reader: History's Lists
Holkins, Jerry; Krahulik, Mike- Penny Arcade: Epic Legends of the Magic Sword Kings
Holkins, Jerry; Krahulik, Mike- Penny Arcade: The Halls Below
There was also a National Geographic magazine subscription. Magazines don't generally count as Rapid Fire Book Club inclusions, nor for any other book club, but I felt it should be noted.
Bathroom Readers' Institute- Uncle John's Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader
Bathroom Readers' Institute- Uncle John's Bathroom Reader: History's Lists
Holkins, Jerry; Krahulik, Mike- Penny Arcade: Epic Legends of the Magic Sword Kings
Holkins, Jerry; Krahulik, Mike- Penny Arcade: The Halls Below
There was also a National Geographic magazine subscription. Magazines don't generally count as Rapid Fire Book Club inclusions, nor for any other book club, but I felt it should be noted.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Rapid-Fire Book Club, Brrrrrrr Edition
Another edition, another trip to Milwaukee's Downtown Books, and this is a bit late in coming; I went several days ago. Good time to get it in; there's a big dump of snow on the ground and a long time before the grass comes back.
Blake, Mike- Baseball's Bad Hops and Lucky Bounces
Crowdy, Terry- Military Misdemeanors: Corruption, Incompetence, Lust, and Downright Stupidity
Kohut, John J.; Sweet, Roland- News From The Fringe: True Stories of Weird People and Weirder Times
Nash, Bruce; Zullo, Allan- The Misfortune 500
Blake, Mike- Baseball's Bad Hops and Lucky Bounces
Crowdy, Terry- Military Misdemeanors: Corruption, Incompetence, Lust, and Downright Stupidity
Kohut, John J.; Sweet, Roland- News From The Fringe: True Stories of Weird People and Weirder Times
Nash, Bruce; Zullo, Allan- The Misfortune 500
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Hawaii's Art Scene and the Shocking Difficulties of the Rapid-Fire Book Club
I am a day back from vacation, and that means I'm back online. This is the first Internet access I've had; I came home to a busted modem. First off, the Rapid-Fire Book Club has two entries to be made:
Farquhar, Michael- A Treasury of Deception: Liars, Misleaders, Hoodwinkers, and the Extraordinary True Stories of History's greatest Hoaxes, Fakes, and Frauds
Keale Sr., Moses K.; Tava, Rerioterai- Niihau: The Traditions of an Hawaiian Island
That second one did not come easy. Hawaii has a vibrant creative culture. They have their own music style (Don Ho, anyone?), and practice it extensively. Pre-existing songs will commonly be covered in the Hawaiian style, and even if you didn't want to hear it, it's pretty tough to get away from. Artists are even easier to find. I stumbled upon one by accident at one point, named Midori, when a painting caught my eye at a gift shop at Byodo-in Temple. As it turned out, she was the gift shop's cashier. (If you happen to be in the area, stop on by; she's quite good. Wish I could link her, but she doesn't seem to have a link to go to.) Dance is particularly alive and well; not just hula can be found, but also urban-style dancing, clubbing, and if you head out to the Polynesian Cultural Center, the show 'Breath of Life' will take it away, especially when the fire comes out. Paintings, sculptures, murals, jewelry, physical movement, and much any other kind of creative expression is completely at home on Oahu.
Except books, apparently.
Sure, there are your Hawaiian books, there are places to buy them. But there aren't many. It's Borders, Barnes and Noble, and then a smattering of utterly forgettable places that you forget even as you drive past them. And it's understandable. In a city that is such a global cultural nexus as Honolulu, visual and aural art can speak to everyone present, but the written word can only speak to those who speak that language. And when English, Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Tagalog, and your more popular European languages all try to fight for airtime in one place, any one book will only have a limited audience.
Which makes it tough to find something good that you aren't just as, or more, likely to find back home.
Eventually, though, I settled on the book on Niihau. The reason for that is, as tough as it was to find a good Hawaiian book, it would be even tougher to set foot on Niihau.
Why? I'm not a native of Niihau. There are only just a few hundred natives of that island, and while they are able to freely travel to and from Niihau, you and I are not. It's known as the Forbidden Island for this reason. Niihau is a place that hangs on, as best it can, to old Hawaiian tradition. Niihauans keep their history primarily through storytelling which sometimes mixes with Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill-style tall tales. The book I purchased was originally published in 1989, and was the first real written history of the island. There are still very few titles out there about the place.
Which, being a guardian of old Hawaiian tradition, likely serves to further explain the dearth of literature on the islands. But seeing as the Hawaiian creative soul has been channeled into so many other outlets, it's rather hard to complain much about it.
Farquhar, Michael- A Treasury of Deception: Liars, Misleaders, Hoodwinkers, and the Extraordinary True Stories of History's greatest Hoaxes, Fakes, and Frauds
Keale Sr., Moses K.; Tava, Rerioterai- Niihau: The Traditions of an Hawaiian Island
That second one did not come easy. Hawaii has a vibrant creative culture. They have their own music style (Don Ho, anyone?), and practice it extensively. Pre-existing songs will commonly be covered in the Hawaiian style, and even if you didn't want to hear it, it's pretty tough to get away from. Artists are even easier to find. I stumbled upon one by accident at one point, named Midori, when a painting caught my eye at a gift shop at Byodo-in Temple. As it turned out, she was the gift shop's cashier. (If you happen to be in the area, stop on by; she's quite good. Wish I could link her, but she doesn't seem to have a link to go to.) Dance is particularly alive and well; not just hula can be found, but also urban-style dancing, clubbing, and if you head out to the Polynesian Cultural Center, the show 'Breath of Life' will take it away, especially when the fire comes out. Paintings, sculptures, murals, jewelry, physical movement, and much any other kind of creative expression is completely at home on Oahu.
Except books, apparently.
Sure, there are your Hawaiian books, there are places to buy them. But there aren't many. It's Borders, Barnes and Noble, and then a smattering of utterly forgettable places that you forget even as you drive past them. And it's understandable. In a city that is such a global cultural nexus as Honolulu, visual and aural art can speak to everyone present, but the written word can only speak to those who speak that language. And when English, Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Tagalog, and your more popular European languages all try to fight for airtime in one place, any one book will only have a limited audience.
Which makes it tough to find something good that you aren't just as, or more, likely to find back home.
Eventually, though, I settled on the book on Niihau. The reason for that is, as tough as it was to find a good Hawaiian book, it would be even tougher to set foot on Niihau.
Why? I'm not a native of Niihau. There are only just a few hundred natives of that island, and while they are able to freely travel to and from Niihau, you and I are not. It's known as the Forbidden Island for this reason. Niihau is a place that hangs on, as best it can, to old Hawaiian tradition. Niihauans keep their history primarily through storytelling which sometimes mixes with Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill-style tall tales. The book I purchased was originally published in 1989, and was the first real written history of the island. There are still very few titles out there about the place.
Which, being a guardian of old Hawaiian tradition, likely serves to further explain the dearth of literature on the islands. But seeing as the Hawaiian creative soul has been channeled into so many other outlets, it's rather hard to complain much about it.
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