Jupiter Ascending

My decision to watch Jupiter Ascending despite reading the reviews beforehand was based on sociability rather than quality, so this review will focus less on the question of whether it is worth seeing in theaters (if you have a large screen at home, the answer is no) and more on the details; as such, there will be numerous spoilers.

The best way to picture the movie if you have not seen is a combination of the poor man's Dune and Star Wars with an aesthetic but not the heart. The heroine of our story is Jupiter Jones, an illegal immigrant (her words, not mine) with a stupid name and a crappy job. She is the daughter of an English ambassador's son, whose life expectency is governed by the Law of Disney, Parental Division, and a Russian woman. Her soon-to-be-late father is, of course, an astronomer, and like many scientists, is terrible at naming things, in this case his unborn daughter. The choice of the name Jones for our protagonist is no doubt meant to remind us of Indiana Jones, and therefore Harrison Ford, and therefore the good Star Wars trilogy. Our hero is an adventure – IN SPACE! The alliteration is typical of a superhero name, which our heroine definitely is not. The use of the name Jupiter, however, goes beyond this. One can tell from the spelling of their surname that the Wachowskis are Polish rather than Russian, and there is a Polish name, Juspeczyk, that is sometimes transliterated as Jupiter. The most prominent characters in comics with the surname Jupiter are Sally and Laurie Jupiter from Watchmen and the financier of the version of Teen Titans with teenage Ray Palmer, Loren Jupiter (who may be a gender-swapped version of the Watchmen character, given how the DC multiverse/hypertime tends to work). The use of Jupiter in this context makes me wonder whether the Wachowski's protagonist was Polish before the demands of blockbuster movie-making mandated that all Slavs be Russians with ties to criminal activity.

In the world of Jupiter Ascending, humans are not native to Earth – Earth is in fact a long-term plantation. I do have to give the Wachowskis credit for answering the question of why there are humans in space before it irritated the more perceptive members of the audience. In science fiction terms, panspermia, the idea of genetic seeding, is a better explanation than “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” The movie only discusses planting humans, but I must assume that other items were also seeded when the Earth humans were. The deliberate extinction 65 million years ago would certainly provide the opportunity – because of course the movie has to tie in the one extinction event that even a moron has heard of. No doubt the novelization of the movie will fill in some of these details.

Jones is important to the powers that be because she is a genetic recurrence, the exact genetic copy of an important figure in the universe. I should mention that this movie illustrates the common flaw that science fiction writers have no sense of scale. The Empire in Dune does not encompass the whole galaxy, and even the Republic and Empire is limited to its own galaxy. The use of Babylon 5-style hypergates suggests that long distance travel is not as “simple” as putting in coordinates. Since this is a movie rather than a book or television series, the limitations are not explained. But I digress. The idea of a genetic recurrence as the secular equivalent of reincarnation in a human population which is probably in the quadrillions or quintillions is a good idea. The movie makes it clear that the powers that be are looking for a genetic recurrence because the will of Jones' late identical space twin has a clause that drew attention to the possibility rather than some mystical prophecy or some Kwisatz Haderach-y nonsense. In a bit of foreshadowing, Jones is identified as a genetic recurrence when she goes into a clinic to sell her eggs, which her creepy Russian slacker cousin identifies as “harvesting” in order to make money to pay off his debts. Perhaps the Wachowskis used Russians rather than Poles because Russians are an acceptable target for ethnic slandering.

The universe of Jupiter Ascending is a highly aristocratic place, complete with Houses, servants, and planets as properties. Jones is the genetic recurrence of the matriarch (no father is mentioned) of the House of Abrasax, which is a stupid Star Wars name if I ever heard one, although to be fair there are some profoundly stupid names in Dune as well. The House of Abrasax is one of the most powerful Houses of the universe – nobody ever discovers that they are the scion of some piddling mid-rank House in adventure stories – although since we don't see or hear anything about any other Houses, the House of Abrasax might as well be rulers of the universe. The other reason for their importance is their control of the human resources (quite literally) to make the liquid that allows indefinite life provided that you can pay for it. This is not only gross, but also begs many questions regarding the function of the harvesting industry.

Let's take a look at the numbers. The human race, according to the movie, emerged one billion years age on a planet other than Earth. The Earth was seeded 65 million years ago by the Abrasax Corporation. The House of Abrasax is therefore at more than 65 million years old. Kalique, the daughter of the genetic original who exposits at Jones is 14,000 years old and the genetic original was murdered at 91,000 years old. Kalique feels that this was an abrupt and untimely end, but the movie never clarifies what is a normal lifespan for the one millionth of the 1%. This means that if 100,000 years (rounded up to the nearest hundred thousand) is an average lifespan for the member of a House, the House of Abrasax has existed for 650 generations! To put this in perspective, the Empire in Dune is 10,000 years old, and the maximum life span of aristocrats is around 200 years. Houses Corrino, Harkonnen, and Atreides have existed from the beginning of the Empire. Therefore there are at most 50 generations between the foundation of the Empire and Muad'Dib. This is still an absurdly long number of generations for one group of families to consistently hold power, but at least it is within the time frame of human history measured in generations. Assuming that 50 generations is a reasonable time span for space aristocrats, this means that a healthy life span is 1.3 million years! Even at 100 generations, it's still well over half a million years per individual. This exaggerated (and I've never had to use the word 'exaggerated' in a understated sense before) life time would explain why the children of the genetic original behave like petty infants. They are, after all, only tens of thousands of years old. Since there is no suggestion that ordinary humans such as the space navy captain, live any longer than Earth humans, the longevity of the aristocrats is dependent on the liquefied humans. This longevity allows the Houses to maintain dominance over the other races of the universe. Since there are no other products shown of similar importance, I must declare that the spice must flow! - in the most literal and disgusting way possible.

The three primary heirs to the Abrasax fortune naturally fight over control of the resources. Although two are content to use coaxing or intimidation, the third combines these tasteless but expected corporate tactics with the creepiest seduction to ever “grace” the silver screen. I can understand how aristocrats can present a marriage as a business arrangement, and I'm no prude, weaned on Greek and Egyptian myth and history but this is beyond the pale. Luke and Leia didn't know that they were related (although the ret-conned information about the Force suggests that they should have), Jaime and Cersei Lannister have some level of affection for each other, and Pietro and Wanda have serious psychological problems, but a son marrying his own mother (from his own, genetically-oriented perspective) is creepy beyond words. That said, this lack of concern about genetics in a future space society is nothing new. The Spacers of Isaac Asmov's Robot series show no concern for kinship outside of reproduction, but this is made more palatable by an exaggerated avoidance of the Westermarck effect. Not so here. Jones rejects her own son's sexual advances before agreeing to the political marriage.

The aesthetics of the spaceships is different, but not as impressive as some of the reviews indicated. Perhaps a contemporary audience has been spoiled by the abundance of movies and especially video game designs. The extensive use of force fields in the construction of the spaceships is definitely futuristic, but immensely impractical. Here is seen the benefit of using actual models at some stage of world building. There is considerable latitude in spaceship design once you are free of atmospheric considerations, but wide freedom does not equal absolute freedom. If there were peace throughout the realm and nothing ever crashed, then perhaps detached parts of a spaceship would make sense, but it is an absolute that in any adventure set in space the power will fail. In a world full of million-year-old aristocrats, I wouldn't place much faith in the detachable parts having adequate life support or engine capability.

MLK Hike 2015

On Saturday morning, a horde of red neckerchiefs assembled in the Bear Valley parking lot of Point Reyes National Seashore, ready for the Martin Luther King Jr. weekend backpacking trip. Three days and two nights is not a very long trip, but it's the best one can manage during the school year with a miscellany of 'winter vacations'. Sometimes the diversity of the Troop is also a liability. At this point, everyone was clean and energetic. The two Philmont crews had decided that this trip was mandatory in order to test their gear and skills for the summer; this decision considerably swelled our numbers. The smaller Scouts were there also, with all the enthusiasm and boundless energy of the truly young; inexperience in backpacking would dampen this, but not extinguish it.

When the First Emperor ordered maps to be made of all the great roads of his realm, he commanded that the distance in li (imperial miles) be measured in time spent travelling rather than absolute distance, and that the roads be measured both uphill and downhill. On the first day of this trip, the intrepid Red Horde learned the truth and wisdom in this approach. The distance to Sky Camp was not far, but the journey was entirely onwards and upwards (with apologies to C.S. Lewis). The first stop involved a good deal of pack adjustment, as the contents that were still in the city were moved by the rhythm of the trail. When the group crested and then descended, albeit briefly, into camp, everybody set up camp. The wind of the last time the Troop camped here was absent, greatly aiding the speed of setting up. But the gnats, o the gnats, the gnats swarmed around anything breathing out carbon dioxide.

The first event of the afternoon was a round robin of skills. These included orienteering, outdoor safety, proper packing, and of course knots - it wouldn't be a Scout outing without knots. The stories of outdoor safety seemed to become more gruesome and exciting as the groups rotated. After the learning came the fun: the troop divided into two teams and played a game of Capture the Flag which proved to be more hotly contested than most. In light of this dispute, a rematch was scheduled for Sunday night.

Saturday's campfire was (sadly) a Nalgene (c) campfire, since Saturday had been declared a Spare the Air Day. It is annoying, but probably not accidental, that many Spare the Air Days are the same days a group like this might go camping and want to build a fire. For those who do not know what a Nalgene campfire is, I shall explain. Concern for fire safety sometimes, and more and more frequently often, trumps the traditional focus ("hearth" in Latin) of a roaring fire with Scouts around it singing and entertaining each other. Although the heat of the fire on a cold January night is the most noticeable feature of the traditional fire, the way it provides light is a second important role. The third function is the designation of the stage on which the skits are performed. Without a true fire, the heat is absent, but the other two roles can be supplied by a "fire" consisting of flashlights and Nalgene bottles of different colors. The effect is a cold rainbow that illuminates the performances.

The actual performance at Saturday's campfire was no better and no worse than other recent campfires. The food group skits were undercooked, and one was raw - the players were arguing on stages about the skit so long that they ran out of time! I would say more, but I suspect that my dissatisfaction with the skits, although justified, is somewhat colored by my own unreliable memories of my days as a patrol leader. The food group songs were enthusiastic, but the singers often did not know some of the key lyrics. The Troop songs and yells, however, were enthusiastic, and my traditional song worked almost perfectly. The Troop heard some stories about the San Francisco Giants.

That night, around half past nine, the fog rolled in, making everything unprotected extremely wet. For many, this was not a problem: I, however, was sleeping outside. The important parts of my equipment remained dry, and the exterior of my camping pillow (which was now outside my sleeping bag, as I was resting my head on a sweater) proved its durability and usefulness.



Sunday morning was cool and wet, very unlike the dry weather of the previous trip. Even with the unintentional late start, squarely blamed on the boy leadership, there was no chance of truly drying anything, and a few insects were packed with the boys' gear. Everybody filled their water bottles before we left because there would be no opportunity for resupply between Sky Camp and Wildcat, our final destination. The group left Sky Camp at a brisk pace. The woods were cool and the path was easy, but then the group reached the first fork in the road, and the leadership determined that they had led the group a half-mile the wrong way! There was nothing to do other than turn around and dismiss the mistake (unconvincingly) as a "warm-up". It's better to make such mistakes on a trip such as this and learn from them rather than on a trip where there are higher consequences for errors!

The morning was all downhill through the fog, thick enough to cool but thin enough to see clearly - ideal hiking weather. A steady downhill, even in these conditions, begins to weary the legs, but cool weather may not last, so one must take advantage of it when one can. This fog lasted a surprisingly long time.

As the group was approaching the descent to Arch Rock, the sole of my boots detached. I was forced to changed into my camp shoes. which fortunately were tennis shoes rather than sandals. Nor was I the only one whose boots failed - one of the fathers suffered a similar loss. I do not recommend the trail to Wildcat in tennis shoes, certainly not with a backpack.

When the group reached Arch Rock, the Troop ate lunch amidst the day hikers.  Arch Rock is a knob that sticks out into the Pacific. Its top is bare and sandy, with a few scattered rocks. Its edges gradually curve into the surrounding abyss. It is a scenic spot, but somewhat disconcerting. The remaining water supply was considerably greater than that of last time, since the fog had had provided cool weather almost the entire descent.

After lunch, we ascended the hill that was the first barrier on the journey to Wildcat. The initial climb is clear and then gives way to a forest track with many side-tracks, probably deer trails, descending into the brush. Near the first crest was a viewing station, although few members of the Troop took advantage of it, preferring to get as much rest as they could. Past that point, the trail was easy but deceptively long - several cool, covered stretches were nearly identical and planted false hope in the weary soul. The descent into Wildcat appeared at last, and the group lost all the altitude that it had gained since leaving Arch Rock.

We pitched our tents and set up our food areas as soon as we reached Wildcat. This time we did not discover a field mouse nest in one of the food boxes. Wildcat was more crowded than last time, so playing Capture the Flag in the campsite was not feasible. The boys headed to the beach, where they played the second round of the MLK Capture the Flag series and soaked their feet, swollen from the long day's march, in the Pacific Ocean. One food group had split the duties of grubmaster and had a failure of communication; this group was coping admirably with a skimpier meal, but the other groups had enough food to share, whether that was the result of Scout spirit or a practical desire to dispense of food before the next day's hike.

The campfire was once again a Nalgene campfire. The skits were more creative than Saturday night, but I could hardly believe my eyes when one group performed the very same skit as a different group had performed the night before. The song were once again enthusiastic, and the fathers who had come on the trip performed a medley as their contribution to the campfire. There were, of course, more Giants stories.

After the campfire, there was a conference of the leadership, both boys and adults, for debriefing, discussing any disciplinary issues, and planning the next day's route. The Senior Patrol Leader had not been the previous MLK hike on which we traversed this route, so there was much discussion on which route back to the Bear Valley parking lot would quickest, most efficient, and involve the least backtracking.

This night, many Scouts, especially younger ones, decided to sleep under the stars. The weather was drier and windier in Wildcat than Sky Camp, but I was a bit concerned that the little Scouts would not be warm enough. Fortunately, that concern proved unwarranted - some had friends' tents to which they could retreat, while others had the latest, warmest sleeping bags and the ability of all small things to burrow.


On Monday morning, the Troop rose early, although not as early as last time, when the Troop had risen before dawn and ascended the first hill home in the half-light. Further delay, but a necessary delay, came from breakfast. Scout's Own, the non-denominational service which normally takes place on Sunday morning, took place on Monday - given the nature of the long weekend, Monday was an appropriate time for serious contemplation. Scout's Own took place on a knob overlooking the Pacific. The waves crashing behind the emcee and the speakers were so loud it was sometimes difficult to hear.

Once the other adult whose shoes had dissolved had an adequate (though not ideal0 pair of shoes and a large portion of the pack of the struggling little Scout had been redistributed, the Troop headed up the trail. The ascent looked less intimidating in full light. The first crest, indicated by the presence of a water tank was encouraging, but it proved that my memories of this trail from two years ago were rosier than warranted on the matter of the amount of uphill and fire road. It was cool while we traveled. As usual on the last day of a trip, part of the route was trudging steadily onward in anticipation of civilization and a visit to In 'N' Out. The Troop made good time and reached the Bear Valley parking lot an hour later than the last trip.

It's always hard to end these accounts, since a good trip often lacks a dramatic ending - if real-life adventures ended the way stories and movies do,  life would be exhausting and terrifying. The MLK 2015 hike had its ups and downs (both literally and figuratively). It will be remembered well by those who were there, and the unpleasantries will fade away soon, leaving only the recollection of an exciting weekend hike.

Foundation's Finals

The expansion of series beyond their freshness date is a common practice. One can thank the Galactic Spirit that Asimov did not have a child who co-authored with him in his dotage and then continued to dilute his (or her) literary heritage. The final duology of the Asimov-penned Foundation series, Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation, connect the Robot and the Foundation series far more ably than Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth. Although Golden Age series are not as dependent on a Future History as contemporary science fiction, it makes perfect sense that Asimov's last books would connect the characters who represent his most enduring concepts, psychohistory and the Three Laws of Robotics. The connection is far less awkward than the Future History multiverse of Heinlein where everybody sleeps with Lazarus Long! Asimov still has not learned how to write women well (although he certainly appreciates their attributes more publicly than in his classic works), and it's not entirely surprising that that the female companion of the legendary psychohistorian is a robot rather than a woman.

The nature of prequels is a loss of surprise and historical inevitability, but the very conceit of the Foundation series makes this an asset rather than a liability. It may be a bit depressing, however, when the audience knows how many people are going to fail. The tendency of fictional characters to adopt rather than breed is puzzling - in a tight timeline, such as a comic, it is an understandable shortcut, but in a fictional biography of a man who lives a full lifetime, it is puzzling. One almost imagines that there is some sort of aversion to biological granddaughters in fiction!

The revisions in the geography of Trantor are a necessary evil, although the time when Trantor was domed over appears to have been moved forward considerably from the Empire novels. Eras in the Asimovian amalgamated universe seem to be more important in terms of sequential events than absolute dates. The trio of Seldon, Daneel, and Dors Venabili suggests that Asimov would have liked to revive Susan Calvin for his final novels but could not justify a second time-travel incident like that of Joseph Schwartz, especially after the swerve from temporal to spatial research in 1932.

One of the advantage of a novel written by the creator of a series is the restraint in adding discordant elements. The robot-idolizing inhabitants of the Mycogenian Sector and the previously unmentioned rise to high office of Hari Seldon are additions rather than intrusions. Although aliens appear in other works by Asimov, the focus of the Robot-Empire-Foundation series does not allow their participation in the principal narrative; thus the spare focus of a Golden Age 'verse is preserved.

Selma and Suspension of Disbelief

Suspension of disbelief is an essential component of the cinematic experience, aided and abetted by that human faculty that gives rise to stories, lies, and Plan Bs when the world seems set against you. The darkness of the cinema, only recently swept clear of the glare of cell phones, is a sensory deprivation which the audience has chosen in order to clear the palate for other sensory experiences. This voluntary immersion is especially important for films that take place in other times, whether in the past or future. Selma is about the past, although its release date suggests it is the past representing and commenting on the future - the Chinese government once banned films set in the past for this reason. This representation, however, may not be exact, and above all should not be explicit. The power of such messages are that they infiltrate the mind, allow the audience to ruminate, to understand where the parallels are not exact and thereby encourage a creative response to the social crisis so addressed.

The inability of the creators of Selma to get the rights to use the actual words of Martin Luther King, Jr., is not necessarily a liability. Every school child has heard "I have a dream" so many times that there is a substantial risk that the audience will gloss over it. The torturous rewrites that this legal barrier triggered may have cause audiences to pay more attention to the message. These rewrites, however, are very much in character for the era and therefore do not disrupt the audience's immersion in the narrative.

This immersion lasts throughout the film, only to be broken at the last second by an intrusive song referencing the incidents in Ferguson. Even if King's Selma march were the right comparison to Ferguson, the insertion of this song indicates an astonishing lack of subtlety in an otherwise well-constructed film, the cinematic equivalent of crying out another woman's name in the moment of passion or the study guide that turns a work of literature into a school assignment. The only possible conclusions to be drawn from this are either that somebody involved in the film did not trust his audience to understand the parallels (in which case he should have made a better, more focused, film) or that the parallels between movie and reality are not as strong as the auteurs would wish, and that the addition of the final song is a desperate attempt at "relevance".

Review: In Real Life

Just finished In Real Life, the graphic novel by Corey Doctorow and Jen Wang, selected for Mission Comics and Art's book club meeting which (sadly) will be lacking yours truly. The visual equivalent of a short story, IRL tells the story of Anda, a teenage female gamer who develops a social conscience through her experiences in-game. IRL has a rather simple plot, structured around bullying and gold farming, the practice of hiring cheap labor to mine in-game objects for real cash value, (which of course is not reflected in the pay of the labor force), The exploration of how a perceived injustice on one level (i.e., in-game), may reflect an injustice on another (i.e., in reality) is well-constructed. The characterization is a bit shallow, but sufficient for the short format and appropriate to the personalities of many teenagers. The art has fluid, rounded lines; the portrayal of the female form in the real world sequences is neither idealizing nor grotesque - there are more straight lines and generic shapes in the online world.

Foundation's Filming

Warning: This writing assumes that you have read the entire series, and therefore does not avoid spoilers.

The recent announcement that HBO had bought the right to make a Foundation series, based on the Asimov books, raised some issues. On the one hand, if there’s any company that knows how to treat a book franchise seriously and produce a quality television show, it’s HBO (the disaster that is Will Smith's I, Robot still stings). On the other hand, the Foundation series has some liabilities as the basis of a mini-series or multi-year series. Asimov’s stories are heavy on dialogue and short on action. Although a television show can tolerate talking more than a movie, there must be some action, a feature which is conspicuously lacking in the Foundation series. Furthermore, a key component of psychohistory in the Foundation series is that the actions of individuals do not matter; what matters is the mass socio-economic movement. One might note that this lack of individual impact is the exact opposite, the 'Star’s End' as it were, of what audiences seek in movies and dramas. The collapse of an Empire is a messy affair, and there are many action sequences from which to draw, but would they hold an audience as tightly when the premise of the series is that they will not only fail, but fail to have any impact whatsoever?

Hari Seldon himself is a rebuttal to the notion of psychohistory – it’s hard to imagine more of a personal impact than shaving more than 90% off the Galactic dark ages. The Mule, everybody’s favorite mutant, derails the Seldon Plan, and only the efforts of the Second Foundation reestablish its proper course. Arkady Darell, the plucky escapee from a Heinlein juvenile, not only turns out to be special, but is even a descendant of one of the earlier protagonists, Hober Mallow. It must be admitted that Terminus was settled by a very small founding population, but the idea that one family produces many descendants who have an impact on the history of the Galaxy is redolent of a different, more fantasy-oriented, franchise. Certainly, young Miss Darell would not appear soon in a Foundation series, but if it were successful, there is not a chance that the series would not cover the Mule.

If it is not possible to look to the (First) Foundation for individual actions with consequences, perhaps the Second Foundation is a font of drama. Yet the Second Foundation is not a league of assassins, but a secretive order that nudges the masses when they unwittingly seek to thwart the Seldon Plan. It is hard to imagine something more anticlimactic on screen than a mental push (not even spoken) that causes the individual’s grand plan to fail. Its dramatic success in the Foundation stories is predicated on the ability to treat telepathic communication as vividly as oral communication.

There are some positive aspects to a Foundation series. The key one for HBO, of course, is that it is a true classic science fiction universe which antedates Lucas’ pastiche of ‘40s entertainment. Galactic empires are not, of course unique to Asimov, but the Foundation series possesses elements present in the Star Wars universe that can draw in fans of that franchise while avoiding copyright lawsuits on the part of the Mouse. Trantor, Terminus, and the other one-biome planets are a familiar element to audiences; their distance from Earth mostly prevents the problems of the march of science that John Carter presented during his adventures on Mars. The lack of physical description in Asimov’s stories facilitates casting – although it would be interesting to cast an Asimov look-alike for the part of Seldon. Much of the visuals come from the book covers – at least those which bear any relevance to the contents! The names of Galactic planets are based on classical or pseudo-classical names, providing both ease of pronunciation and coding the nature of the planet. Asimovian nomenclature is mercifully free of the meaningless apostrophes of some science fiction universes, and no debilitating dependence on the ‘exotic’ letters of the English alphabet separates the Foundation universe from Game of Thrones. Even the common language, a frequent stumbling block but necessary evil of the fantasy and science fiction genre, is justified in the Foundation series since the Galactic Empire is a stand-in for the Roman Empire and the common language for Latin. The lack of aliens in the Foundation universe distinguishes this universe from all the other currently active science fiction franchises that operate on a galactic scale.

Being an Asimov fan in the impending arrival of the Foundation series is much like being a citizen of Terminus under the Seldon Plan: you have no control over the many elements coming together, but at least you don’t have to put up with 30,000 years of development hell.

Window of the Soul

Recently, I was reflecting on the idea of cleanliness - clean in body and mind. An unclean mind is a bit like a dirty window - when the window was clean, someone could look out and see the world and other people clearly, but now that it is dirty there are spots where all you can see is the dirty and muck adhering to the window. In those spots, unlike the clean areas, the scene never changes. If you allow the window through which you see the world to become begrimed by these specific forms of filth, every time you look out you will see that grime imposed on the otherwise changeable scene. Even worse is gunk on your side of the window, which you could remove more easily than the grime on the outside. Thus, if you have some interior blemish of soul or mind, you will see that blemish in others and treat it as a normal part of the human condition. So perhaps if you see a fault in all men, you should check that your own window doesn't have some gum stuck to it!

Sand (Hugh Howey)

All good science fiction stories have an element of parable to them; sometimes this element subsumes the harder science, not to the extent that it becomes fantasy, but rather to avoid too many info-dumps. Sand takes place in a world that is devastated, desiccated, and depopulated, where the poor scavenge the sands for the remnants of old civilization in a process of diminishing returns. This is a world where the poor are hucksters, thugs, and prostitutes, while the rich hide behind walls and pretend that their security and status is not built upon the same shifting sands as the poor they revile. There is little about the wealthy in Sand; this is a story about those who little, if even that much. The inhabitants of these shantytowns have a better physical situation than the Fremen of Dune, but a poorer spiritual one.

Scavenging the remnants of the past is the only thing that makes living outside the walls tolerable to the wretched poor. The way in which the same item that once was cheap and plentiful has become a rare artifact creates a permanent impression on the reader. The protagonists, with one exception, make their living by diving for these relics in suits designed to control the flow of sand around them and selling the relics. As in any good sea yarn (and here it would not be remiss to remember that the name 'Sahara' ultimately means 'sea'), there is a hidden realm, rumored to be replete with riches, the fabled city of Danvar. The discovery of the hidden city initiates the bloodshed.

The characters are almost wholly the members of a family whose father fell from a position on power on which his grasp was less than sound, and then deserted his wife and children. His wife is a fallen woman, both through the desertion of her husband and the choices she made later out of desperation, which temporarily fed her children, but would drive them away in the long term. The eldest of the family, born before the family's fall from grace, is the best adjusted and least bitter, but she perpetuates the family habit of eventually betraying the trust of the younger members in order to seek her own self-interest. This betrayal teaches the next eldest that there is no support, even within family, and triggers the next betrayal. The next sibling, the eldest brother, is a ne'er-do-well whose discovery of Danvar precipitates the plot. The middle brother is waiting for his chance to abandon the youngest brother, who will then be alone.

The geology and linguistics are inconsistent. Enough time has passed that the stars of Orion's belt have spread visibly, the city of Danvar is buried a mile deep, the Rockies have crumbled to the extent that the peaks barely rise above the surface of the sands (the Waterworld effect), yet the name of the hidden city remains barely changed, and, more egregiously, the names which the mother of our protagonists gives her offspring are modern names which still have the modern meanings! These errors are less offensive if the story is viewed as a parable, a warning against things to come, exaggerated for the sake of memorability.

The conclusion is a combination of Steinbeck and Exodus, a satisfying ending to the story of a family that must make great sacrifices to overcome their lot. The ending is positive, but with the realistic ambiguity that Hollywood loves to excise.

Revealing the End Among the Dry Dust

Civilization is a tenuous construct, and this is illustrated nowhere more plainly than in Eric Cline's 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed. Cline demonstrates how the civilizations of that area - Egyptian, Hittite, Mitanni, Mycenaean, Ugaritic - were tied together by trade rather than isolated civilizations and how the best evidence of this trade lies in the exchanges of wealth among the elite, not only in (relative) imperishables, but also in the more fragile goods, whether worn or consumed. He further shows that there were merchants of foreign nations in the capitals of these nations, possibly for generations. The specter of imprecise archaeological chronology rears its head, but Cline handles it as well as can be expected. The source material is richer than in past decades, but all archaeology is feeding on scraps! The interconnection of the civilizations presents a clearer picture of the post-apocalyptic past, but muddies the waters of the lives of the survivors, since the equation of new pottery forms with invasion and a new population is no longer a Euclidean equation. Cline's book is informative, but written in a style too dry for the casual reader, and not technical enough for a professional. Some authors have the skill to walk the via media: in this book, Cline is not among that company.

The Power of One

First of all, a caveat: I wrote this for my book club, so it is a book review that presumes that you have read the book. So, while I often talk in generalities, I do not avoid all spoilers. You have been warned.


I was almost finished with The Girl with All the Gifts, (the cheaper Hachette link is not working right now) by M. R. Carey and truly enjoying it when it occurred to me to look him up online. Then I discovered that M. R, Carey was the pen name of Mike Carey, the author of the 11-volume Lucifer graphic novel series, which I highly recommend, as well as the Unwritten graphic novels, which I started but lost interest in (they weren't bad, though - check the first volume out, and make up your own mind), and the Felix Castor supernatural mystery series, which I have not read. Carey's origins as a comics writer and a screenplay writer are important influences in the strengths and weaknesses of The Girl with All the Gifts.

At first glance, The Girl with All the Gifts has two strikes against it: it is a zombie book (herein called "hungries") and its protagonist is a precocious girl. Either of these, if done less than well, could have ruined the book. The protagonist, Melanie, is a hungry who has maintained her intelligence. Melanie's character is fleshed out (so to speak), and her mentor/schoolgirl crush, Miss Justineau, recieves some character development, but the other characters who round out the principal quartet, Sargeant Parks and Doctor Caldwell, are shallow. The characterization of Parks improves as that of Justineau goes fallow. Melanie is a strong enough character on her own, but the plot demands interaction (it's a zombie book, after all, not a "last man in the world" book), so there is a lot of Justineau in the beginning. Justineau is the force that explains why Melanie is "alive", rather than cannon fodder for Parks' men, and a quite different novel could have been written about Justineau's project. Justineau, however, is fundamentally a plot device in Melanie's world, so once the quartet leaves Justineau's natural domain, her characterization withers and dies on the vine as she persistently engages in mind-numbingly stupid objections given the post-apocalyptic world she lives in. Sympathy for the devil is one thing, giving him your credit card is quite another.

To make a long story short, bad things happen (because of course they do, because it's a zombie book), and the merry band hit the road. Justineau becomes baggage, and Melanie and Parks become the important duo. Parks' changing attitude to Melanie is not really character development as much as revelation of a constant character in differing circumstances. He does not learn as much as one might think, but to say more about that would spoil the ending. Melanie's relationship with Caldwell remains (justifiably) hostile.

The limited sociological detail in the novel is reasonable, since this book is not about the society, but rather about the coming of age (in a strange way) of a little undead girl. The scantiness of the personal relationship is more troubling. The Girl with All the Gifts is not only a novel, but also a screen play, written simultaneously; apparently, the novel's multiple viewpoints are collapsed into the single viewpoint of Melanie in the script. The paucity of description of characters in the book is probably interference from the script process, as are some of the graphic scenes that only touch lightly on the plot. Both movies and comics are collaborative art forms, which means that they are both more than the sum of their parts and divided in complimentary tasks. Some of the details absent from the book would be filled in by the illustrator in a comic or the set designer in a movie.

The scientific explanation of the apocalypse makes a fair amount of sense - at least, it explains how the walking corpses are walking. The explanation of Melanie's functionality is good, as far as it goes. It does answer how a ten-year-old hungry can maintain intelligence, but there are some confusing and inexplicable things about her existence to the ten year mark - human babies don't map perfectly onto animal babies. Only Melanie's total lack of knowledge of her life before captivity excuses the lack of an explanation. The complexities of Carey's other plots makes it probable that he does have one. The resolution of the plot, which is closely tied to Melanie's nature and others like her, is cold and logical, yet hopeful. It would be nice if the movie does not have an artificially happy ending, but Hollywood is rather hopeless in that regard. As in all zombie books, the solution is (or seems to be) a temporary solution, but it does further the standard "future history" of the zombie apocalypse from one generation to two generations. If The Girl with All the Gifts catches the imagination of the zombie-mad masses, I expect that there will be further exploration of undead incubation, child care, and post-human civilization.

Canoe Trip 2014

We gathered on an early Saturday morning in a place from which we could see Angel Island and sites across the Bay. The exercisers arrived before the boys did. A prompt departure was a challenge - military efficiency is not expected, but we still failed to leave before the arrival of the legendary Late Scout. The trip up to Burke's Canoe Trips was uneventful, with some delaying on the road longer than others for their cappucinos. In previous years, a Troop father had generously allowed us to camp on his riverine estate with an apple tree much beloved by small Scouts, but in this year the house was undergoing renovation, so we could not stay there. I could not find the cord which I had bought for this trip and with which I had intended to secure my drybag, so I had to use my shoe laces. Part of being prepared is knowing secondary uses of objects! The supply boat carried our extra water, which our leader had managed to acquire. The first challenge of the river was a choice between a portage and a particularly swift and bushy curve. Many of the Scouts chose to portage, but with skill we avoided the worst traps of the curve.

When we had passed this, we saw a cormorant gliding along the river, heedless of the canoers invading his realm; there were many revelers this weekend, since those who sought adventure had adapted their expectations to current drought conditions. We also saw ducks in a row - I had thought this an image drawn from the repetitive targets of carnival hucksters, but it is a real phenomenon. Six or seven duck were perched on log in an eddy, craving the algal growth below them.

The Troop dad, who had gone home to fetch his kayak, now joined us for a stretch. He was good company and he left before the journey back up-river became too long. The cormorant appeared again, this time on the stump of a high tree, with its wings spread out. Majestic and serene!

The campsite which we had found in lieu of the apple orchard was a RV campground, so we held out  few hopes for it, but our site was surprisingly pleasant and large. It was much better than the land on which we used to camp, the land of the Pomo tribe, which held a large dirt patch and an over-priced convenience store. One Scouts had forgotten his kit, so I lent him one of my two bowls on the promise of a thorough cleaning and remembering to bring his supplies next time.

There was a proper fire pit, so our campfires had actual fires, a nice change from the creatively arranged but hardly warming translucent Nalgene bottles illuminated by flashlights.The skits were in the low moderate range, not bad for the beginning of the year. The yells were reasonably creative, and all the songs were off-key. I spoke on the history of canoes, a rough, unpolished speech, but most works start as uncut diamond.

The Troop settled down quickly after the campfire ended. I had forgetten my warm top for sleeping outside, but the second, interior drawstring of my sleeping bag provided a more than adequate cocoon. The spot which I had selected was ideal, as far as dirt patches go - flat, no sharp rocks or tree roots, no overhanging tree branch to drip on me in the morning. That last proved not be a concern, since the place was too dry for dew. The older boys had decamped to a lower grassy field, but around midnight they returned from the mosquito-laden mere that adjoined the grassy area.

In the morning, the adult group had no breakfast, but a combination of personal rations and an overflow of apples from one of the Scout groups solved the problem. There was a brief Scout's Own, done sufficiently and briefly. By this point, there was only one parent to choose as the speaker.  We returned home early, but everybody had had a good time.

Gorgeous? Only Mostly.

The current exhibit at the Asian Art Museum is entitled Gorgeous, one of those pretentious adjectival titles so beloved of show organizers scrambling for a label, any label, to encompass the miscellany they have scrounged together. My sweetie wanted to see the show, so we went on a pleasant Saturday. The ticket price was reasonable. The exhibit was divided into four parts, although the sequence was not apparent without explicit guidance. I'm still not sure what the justification for the division, other than space, was. Many of the items were very beautiful, quite a few were fairly pretty, some were baffling, and a very few should not have been in an exhibit entitled Gorgeous! The statue of Michael Jackson and Bubbles (the chimpanzee, not Fred Astaire's tap dance tutor) was pretty - a bit tacky and shiny, and something which the Ancien Regime would have loved. The abstract art, especially the paintings, held a tenuous position - my beloved could see no worth in them, but I had to concede that the proportions followed a pleasing geometry. The display of an iPhone offended my very sense of art - not a block carved or painted in the shape or colors of an iPhone, not one constructed or mutilated by the artist, but just an iPhone. Found art requires a context - otherwise, it's just an object! The display of an iPhone as art should also serve as an indictment of the art- and music-starved education of the millennial generation.

A different item which suffered from lack of context was the quartered pile of rubble in Room 4 of 4. If it were in the vicinity of a bombed-out building like those of Cocteau's post-World War II Orpheus, or next to Grace Cathedral when the grand stairs had been demolished, I could have deemed it art; without that context, an informational poster updating a committee on building progress would be more artistic. And then there was the urinal, well-made and clean, and by no means the ugliest thing in the exhibit. Craftmanship has become rare, but so rare that there is no difference between good design and artistic creativity? If there were an artist in this situation, it was the designer of the urinal model, not the vapid artiste who ordered it from home furnishing.

She Shall Be Called Woman ...

I've been brushing up on Biblical Hebrew lately, and experiencing sympathy pangs for those poor souls studying for their bar mitzvahs (bar mitzvot?).

The most common words of a language tend to preserve irregularities long past the death of their conjugational companions. In olden days, of course, these were not irregularities, but perfectly sensible in the systems of their birth. The erosion of the years and the reform of their now-wayword companions leave them orphaned and oddities which frustrate the beginning student and fascinate the linguistically savvy mind. From the multitude of en-dings for Anglo-Saxon plurals, only "children" remains a once-common "-en" ending, and throws an "r" in the mix for good measure. Seldom do comtemporary English speakers refer to "oxen", and even those who might use "brethren" are more likely to say "brothers".

It is no surprise that the Hebrew words for "man" and "woman" display such irregularities, The plural of  "ish" "man" is "anashim" and plural of "ishsha" is "nashim." The missing nun in "ish" and "ishsha" vanished through assimilation to the previous consonants, and the missing aleph in "nashim" proabably disappeared through its own weakness (I don't think the aleph is an addition, as some might, for reasons I explain below). The three-letter root, then would be aleph-nun-shin. If scholars who have dedicated their lives to the study of the Semitic languages cannot agree on the distribution of the various sibilants (s-sounds) in proto-Semitic, certainly I dare not do so. My suspicion is that the root originally meant "man or human being", and thus, according to the usual androcentricity of gender systems, declined as a masculine. The feminine meaning is probably derivative, and the bewildering multiplicity of "broken plurals" in Arabic, traditionally considered the most conservative of the Semitic languages, allows for odd plural patterns preserved in the much more orderly Hebrew. The root aleph-nun-"s", however, could extend much further back: the basic proto-Indo-European root for "man" is "H1ner", in which the "H1" represents one of the famous laryngeals, possibly a glottal stop, that is, an aleph. The speakers of Indo-European apparently treated "H1ner" as exclusively masculine, but struggled to make it fir into the later declensional patterns. In this case, at least, it seems that :"woman" really is called "woman" because she was created from "man"!

Frame and Fortune

On Wednesday night, I went to a talk at the Commonwealth Club. George Lakoff was promoting his newest book, The Little Blue Book, under the banner of a lecture about framing. Although I do vote as part of my civic duty, I prefer to keep my political views to myself and try to examine the world analytically, so my purchase of a copy of The Little Blue Book was more about getting an autograph of a man whose intellect I respect rather than any political allegiance, The fundamental argument of the book is that Democrats and Republicans use different frames. If two well-meaning people start with different premises, it is quite easy to talk past one another. It is alarming how facile human being can be at self-deception; yet the ability to imagine things as they might be rather than as they are is fundamental to the human capacity of planning and creativity. Here is the nub of the problem, as I see it (and as a fellow human being, I am as blind as anyone else who is reading this): human beings need frames and narratives to process the astonishing amount of information the world throws at us, but this coping mechanism is so ingrained that it is easy to forget it is a tool rather than the only possible representation of reality. The underlying assumptions are buried below layers of reasoning, and an amnesia to this truth leads even the best-intentioned to perceive those who oppose them as stupid or evil or both. Even worse, it blinds one to the assumptions of one's own argument. If you don't know why you believe what you believe, how can you figure out whether it is valid or how to argue pro and con? There's a reason, after all, that true debaters have to understand the opposition's argument as well as their own. Even where there are few facts, and the relevance of those facts are agreed upon, it is not possible for human beings to just look at facts rather than composing a narrative. Human beings are per se creatures of story, and the best we can do is examine how we construct the stories we tell from the world around us and the motivations which drive us.

Royaneh 2012

This year at Royaneh saw a lot of action up on Pioneer Hill. The new flush toilet had some starting difficulties – as unattractive as a kybo can be, it cannot be jammed up. The migration to Big Egypt has not ebbed. Speaking of Egypt, the international Scout this year, Sharif, was from Cairo, and many of the neat things in the Trading Post were Egyptian-themed. It's a testament to the power of Scouting that Mubarak, the former ruler of Egypt, banned Scouting in his country. Opening campfire was a bit rough, as it always is, and some of the first years became confused on Monday about which classes they were taking. Gladiators was restored to a semblance of its rodeo days glory, complete with a rodeo-style opening ceremony. Horsemanship was popular with the Scouts this year, as was Astronomy/SpaceEx merit badge. Scouting heritage appears to have joined the regular stable, rather than remaining a centenary phenomenon. A lot of merit badge classes at Royaneh are doubled, so that you can get two badges at once. It's great to have more badges for your sash, especially at a traditional Fourteener color guard, but part of me does wonder whether the doubling diminishes the information content of each badge.


There was a touch of the plague at camp, but it passed over Fourteen with one unfortunate exception. Other troops, however, were not so lucky – one lost nine kids, half its contingent. The good side effect of the reports of sickness was cooperation with the shower patrol for the dirty little first years. The troop skit was well-executed, thanks to preparation by one of the older Scouts. I missed the first closing campfire because I had whacked my shin, but I did have the pleasure of chasing away some miscreants from a different troop who (believe it or not) wanted to steal the 14 and transport it to the top of camp. Saturday, of course, contained a game of Capture the Flag and some very cold and wet, but poison oak-free Scouts. The Scout leading Sunday's Scout's Own is the descendant of a rabbi and it showed. I do not know where the parent who was scheduled to speak was during the Scout's Own, so I spoke instead.

Monday, of course, brought classes. Beck and I were the uniformed leadership for week 2. Fourteeners were more active during this week, and one of our own designed an Advanced Riflery class. All the first years did the Trail of the Thunderbird. I held my own in the Scoutmaster dance-off on Tuesday, but I did not win. On Wednesday, Gladiators both went long and had a snarled schedule. I'm sure that by next year the staff will have the format streamlined. The skit for the second week was the same as the first, but with a slightly different cast, although all the actors were once again first years. Friday night, of course, was the Troop Feed, which lasted into the wee hours of the morning. Those Scouts who had brought guitars, ukuleles, and other instruments entertained the group, but I didn't get to bed until 3 because I was out with the fire crew cooling the fire.

The Syntakkes Hole, or The Hollow Word

This is the last post on German for a while - the Hawaii adventure awaits. I am bringing my Hawaiian dictionary with me, so there will be linguistic content! But for now, more German. German is notorious among Anglophones for being a case language, the nearest modern one, and many fear it for that reason. If you look at the case system, however, it has a hollow core. In Indo-European languages, and perhaps other families, the core arguments have less case marking than the peripheral ones. A case system decays like a tree (in the case of Latin, like a eucalyptus on fire, once all five cases in feminine singular became -a), from the core outward. The plurals have already become arbitrary, with only a few rules of thumb and that strange little -n in the dative plural, and the only difference between the nominative and accusative is in the masculine (der vs den); all other nominatives and accusatives are the same for their genders and numbers (The pronouns have a similar problem, but that's another post, post-Maui). It's no wonder that the German have developed an obsession with word order! Yet even in languages that are far more meticulous about genders and noun classes and still preserve the nominative-accusative distinction, two participants of the same gender and number can still cause confusion. I was practicing my German composition by describing the plot of Mirror, Mirror (review coming soon), and ran into just such a problem describing the evil queen and Snow White (Schneewittchen, not Schneeweisschen - thanks to Bill Willingham, I know the difference).

The dative forms of German do not always aid in disambiguation. True to Indo-European form, the neuter article  dem shares the dative form of masculine, while the feminine dative singular definite article der shares a form with its masculine nominative counterpart. The plural dative definite article shares its form (den) with masculine singular accusative - perhaps this is why the dative -n hangs on. At least it's not a Russian genitive-accusative!

For now, German retains its cases, but the minute it loses its final -n's it's going to turn into Eastern Dutch!

Wandering Words

I've been thinking more about "separable prefixes," a truly bizarre phenomenon of German, Dutch, Afrikaans, and Hungarian (the last probably acquired the feature from German). The linguistics literati prefer the term "separable particle," which is more apt, since a prefix which wanders to the end of the clause would be a strange prefix indeed. This thing which is not a prefix could not be a clitic, either; a clitic could wander to the end of the clause, but a clitic must hang on some other word, and that is not required of the "separable prefix." Such confusion is not uncommon: the Greeks used the term "tmesis", "a cutting," to indicate a prefix which in certain cases could separate from the verb and go elsewhere in the line of poetry. In that case, however, the Greeks were looking backwards; since tmesis only occurs in forms of the language that tend towards archaism, the separation is actually a conjunction! English has adverbs and prepositions, but the use in a particular verbal phrase must be one or the other. Every grammar of a language is a snapshot, and therefore has features in transition; in the case of German, these features are the "separable prefixes" and a case system on the verge of collapse.

Philip K Dick Month: Ubik

For this month's meeting of the Science Fiction Book Club, namely Philip K Dick month, I have chosen Ubik, because 1) it is a Dick classic and 2) there is no movie of it. In Ubik, telepathy is commonplace and the privacy of the common man is threatened, so there has arisen a breed of men, called inertials, who can cancel the psionic talents of telepaths. The second feature of this future is half-life, a state of preservation in which the deceased (or, rather, the nearly-deceased) slowly fades away. The third thread of this novel is the ubiquitous "Ubik," a product of a thousand uses, which hardly ever seems to be used the same way twice. The plot follows Joe Chip, the ace but broke tester of Runciter's company, which supplies inertials to privacy-seekers, in a Dickian examination of reality, perception, and decay. Dick's telepathic dystopias seem to have less external freakishness than Bester's, and fewer circus geeks, but there is a greater emphasis on alternate realities and pharmaceutical abuse.

Earth Days

It was a busy weekend, but that's normal for Earth Day. Although our merry band pioneered (pun intentional) the Good Turn, its adoption by the District and Council is a mixed blessing. The powers that be decreed that the Good Turn should take place on the weekend of Earth Day, so we went down to Milagra Ridge between South San Francisco and Linda Mar to remove Scotch broom. There were fewer of us than I had hoped, but I assume the absent contributed to Earth Day elsewhere. Scotch broom has vivid yellow flowers and is much prettier than the bane of my early service project days, ice plant, but it grows quickly and the native animals and insects do not recognize Scotch broom as a suitable habitat. The natural enemy of Scotch broom, sheep (Scottish or otherwise), are not a good solution, since they would eat much more than the Scotch broom. I remember when I first saw Scotch broom in its native Caledonian habitat - it took a moment to remember that in these lands it was not a weed to be exterminated. The sheep, with their heavy wool coats and tendency to block the road, were a much greater threat to humanity.

The ridge was steep, although not forbiddingly so, and covered in both Scotch broom and poison oak. Certain members of our party, being more sensitive to poison oak, were not eager to charge into the thicket, much less rig a hammock and nap there. I'm not terribly sensitive to poison oak, so I was not greatly worried, but the GGNRA volunteers had magic outerwear called TYVEK suits. These suits reminded of hazmat suits without helmets, but they were made of paper, albeit a sturdy kind. The clearing took more energy than I had anticipated, but the results of our labor were satisfyingly visible.

After we had finished our share of weeding, we hiked to the cliff edge and ate lunch. We could see Linda Mar, the controversial golf course, and Pacifica in the distance. The tunnel through the hill below us was not yet open, but its presence prompted much conversation. Our return to the city ended a simple outing, but one that has inspired the attendees.

On Sunday, I went to church, where one of our own, rather than the absent pastor, preached the Word. Apparently I am more comfortable than she with Atonement theology, but the ability to disagree is a wonderful feature of my home church. The one thing that really bothered me, however, and this is not the fault of the church per se, since the words were Bob Marley's, was the reference to "the Daughter" in the communion hymn. I have no problem with emphasizing the maternal qualities of the Godhead - it serves as a reminder that God "the Father" is way of describing God's behavior so that our finite minds can grasp it - nor do I object to the nurturing, maternal qualities of Jesus, who, after all, compared himself to a mother hen, and the Holy Ghost always seems too abstract (for lack of a better term) to cause gender-bending chaos, but I cannot understand why anyone would describe Jesus as "Daughter." Provocation? Perhaps I am looking at this through a prescriptivist lens, when it is meant as a stimulation to discussion.

After church, I went downtown for a concert at Notre Dame des Victoires (I had forgotten about the plural article). I stopped at the church, but not to pray - I could not see the crowd thronging into the church for the concert. As it turned out, the concert was in the school auditorium, not the church proper. I had never been inside NDV before, and never before had I realized how cramped the facilities were for jocks (I was a bookish child and would have been fine).

Trials and Tribe-ulations

A while ago, I purchased a small book on the "pidgins" of Oceania - I put "pidgin" in quotes because the languages in question are actually creoles, but pidgins often develop into creoles and retain the former name. Creoles have a characteristically simple grammar, such that a small book could thoroughly describe them; some languages, such as Quechua, are not so learner-friendly. Since all the creoles, except one, are English-based and derive from a common ancestor, the booklet read more as a comparative grammar than a guidebook. The phonologies were blessedly simple, all basic five-vowel systems, although the pronunciation of /o/ and /e/ varied from language to language.

My fascination with these creoles is honest, but the history of exploitation and racism has poisoned any discussion of these languages. This poison is exacerbated by the linguistic ignorance of most people, who automatically equate simple grammar with simple minds. I have to roll words on my tongue to truly absorb the vocabulary, grammar, and phonaesthetics, but whenever I do this with these languages, I am afraid of charges of racism.

Sehen Sie den "N"?

German class last night! We studied the dative, and the bizarre dative plural -n. In general, German declension seems to be "tattered," filled with remnant consonants and half-declined adjectives which are driving my fellow students crazy. Dative is a hard concept for many English speakers, especially since den Mann is accusative masculine singular, but den Frauen is dative feminine plural. 'The young woman" is die junge Frau and "the young women" is die jungen Frauen, but "young women" is junge Frauen. And all adjectives in the dative have n - der jungen Frau, den jungen Frauen.

And then there are the pronouns! Sie and ihr (the Germans may use capitals, but you can't hear a capital letter) overlap a great deal, and ihnen only partially ameliorates this. In context, however, the meaning is usually clear.

Big Kitty, Rare Kitty

Down at the Commonwealth Club, I attended a lecture on mountain lions by Zara MacDonald, advocate for the Felidae Conservation Fund. The pictures, of course, were enthralling, but MacDonald highlighted the plight and rarity of felids. Large cats need large ranges, and many migration routes are blocked or hindered by highways or suburbs. The average size of California cats are about two-thirds the size of the average American cats, which may be reflection of the smaller territories, but could equally well reflect some genetic quirk of the local population. The Felidae project has activities for every age group - the one for kids is a game called PumaWild, where you play as a puma trying to survive.

http://www.felidaefund.org/
http://www.bapp.org/

Nos Spectaturi Te Salutamus

On a recent Monday, I found myself down at the Commonwealth Club for a talk, "The Ancient Roman World on Film" presented by the Humanities Forum. Dr. Gary Devore from Stanford was the speaker. He spoke about the way directors manipulated the image of cinematic Romans to present them as Us, Them, Both, and Neither. The Romans were Them in The Sign of the Cross (1932), a bland Victorian pseudo-historical piece spiced up and sexed up as only Cecil B. deMille could do. Kubrick's Spartacus (1960) presented a remarkably pro-Communist message for its day, while being aggressively pro-family. Allegiance to a cause and its leader spans the political spectrum. In Anthony Mann's The Fall of the Roman Empire, which Devore described as the "thinking man's epic" in contrast to Ridley Scott's Gladiator (2000), the Romans are both Us and Them, and serve as a warning to our era. Fellini's Satyricon (1969) absolutely rejects the possibility of identifying with the ancient Romans; Satyricon is a reaction to Fascist use of Roman symbols and the Mussolini-penned Roman epic Scipione l'Africano.

Empires and Images

On Thursday, I went with a Meetup group to the art galleries (small but numerous) at the 49 Geary, focusing on the 4th and 5th floors. The art was modern, which meant most of it did not move me, but two galleries caught my attention and my favor.

The Robert Koch Gallery was exhibiting an exhibit called "Photos of Fallen Empires," created by the Israeli photographer Shai Kremer. The Middle East has seen so many empires and kingdoms rise and fall that the detritus from their structures is abundant whenever the next empire did not reuse the materials. The juxtaposition of Iron Age ruins and Israeli military bases raises some questions about the permanency of the current State of Israel.

The other exhibit I liked was in the Gregory Lind Gallery. "Remainders" is an exhibit of Leigh Wells' work in collage. I had never considered that collage could be aggressively three-dimensional: the image of "collage" in my head has always been an image composed of two-dimensional paper. I asked Ms Wells if there were a theme to the exhibit; she said there was not, but that she had listened to the materials and shaped the displays accordingly. I found that interesting, since that is not the way my mind works. I feel the need to impose some degree of order on whatever academic materials I am examining.

I considered buying a copying of Fred Lyon's San Francisco Then, but decided I need to investigate further before buying.

Afterwards, the group went to Pomodoro Pizza, but I'll save those comments for YELP.

Movie Review: "Footnote"

On Wednesday I went to the Clay Theater and watched Footnote, the 2011 Cannes film from Israel by Joseph Cedar about the conflict between two Talmudic scholars, father and son. I assume that the Clay was airing it because it is Passover. The tension between the father and the son is vividly portrayed, and the score dramatizes the highly intellectual scenes. My favorite is a scene shows the elder scholar feverishly researching an insight critical to the plot. A flurry of images, like a mental montage, adds vibrancy to the scene and reflects the way the brain of many scholars function when they are high on research work. I had trouble empathizing with a father who found his son's accomplishments a slight to himself - I am more familiar with stage parents than the reverse. I did NOT like the abrupt ending - it seemed intellectually dishonest.

I plan to return to the Clay to watch The Lady, about Aung San Suu Kyi. I have read about the recent election in Burma and read Guy deLisle's The Burma Chronicles to better understand the conditions inside the country. If they show Monsieur Lazhar at the Clay, I will go there; otherwise, I shall have to find a theater that is showing it.

Gefunden

Another poem (this time German) for your edification and delight
Goethe

Gefunden

Ich ging im Walde
So für mich hin.
Und nichts zu suchen
Das war mein Sinn.

In Schatten sah ich
Ein Blümchen stehn
Wie Sterne leuchend
Wie Äuglein schön.

Ich wollt es brechen
Das sagt es fein
Soll ich zum Welken
Gebrochen sein?

Ich grub's mit allen
Ein Würzlein aus,
Zum Garten trug ich's
Am hübschen Haus.

Und pflanzt es wieder
Am stillen Ort
Nun zweigt es immer
Und blüht so fort.

A Germanic Fly In Amber

I've been taking a German course over in Berkeley, and my memories of the difficulties are coming back, even if I like the language more than Mark Twain. Cases and genders are like bread and butter for me, but the truly bizarre feature of German is the Separable Prefix, a grammatical abomination in a linguistic Limbo between adverbs and prepositions. The infinitive of the verb "to call (on the phone)" is "anrufen", but "I call the doctor" is "Ich rufe den Artzt an." This example is not so bad, but a sentence with the verb "aufpassen" produces the bizarre sentence "Passen sie auf den alten Hund auf?", "Are you taking care of the old dog?" in which the last "auf" refers to the "passen" at the beginning and the first "auf" governs "Hund" - at least there are no reflexives combined with it!

Le Printemps

Le Printemps

Charles d'Orléans

Le temps a laissé son manteau
De vent, de froidure et de pluie
Et s'est vêtu de broderie,
De soleil riant, clair et beau ...

Il n'y a bête ni oiseau
Qu'en son jargon ne chante ou crie.
Le temps a laissê son manteau
De vent, de froidure et de pluie.

Riviere, fontaine et ruisseau
Portent en livrée jolie
Gouttes d'argent d'orfèvrerie;
Chacun s'habille de nouveau.
Le temps a laissé son manteau.

Troop Fourteen:Rainy Day Hike

On Saturday, March 24, a small but intrepid band of Fourteeners braved the rain to attend a hike. The weather was bad and would get worse as the day passed. Since so few had dared the weather, the acting Senior Patrol Leader decided to change the hike from Mount Tamalpais to the Presidio; this way, the hike could serve as a test for the rain-worthiness of each Scout's equipment. Most of us ditched our lunches in cars at the beginning of the hike, but some hungry Scouts were unwilling to abandon food, even for a few hours. We walked down Lovers' Lane to the waterline. Then we headed to Fort Point, where the waves were crashing against the rocks. At first it seemed that the fort was closed, and none of us had planned to buy entrance tickets, but Bruce McKleroy spoke with the attendant . The fort opened ten minutes later and the group explored the fort. I had not visited Fort Point since sophomore year in high school, and had forgotten how Spartan the living conditions had been. The struts of the Golden Gate Bridge loomed overhead like a red metallic spiderweb. We left too early for my taste - I suppose I shall return soon on a better day when I can take proper pictures. The Senior Patrol Leader then led us up the hill and along the Ridge Trail past Camp Rob, where one of the first place patrols camped a year or so ago. The Presidio is within the Scout district, so permits are much easier to obtain than for trips beyond (which, sadly, includes Pacifica, which has some nice trails). If anyone plans to camp there, prepare for wind, but even a night at Camp Rob would count as a night for Camping Merit Badge. Bruce McKleroy explained that only the military had access to the area of the Ridge Trail when the military controlled the Presidio. Now it is a pleasant hike, even though the yellow mud along it was extremely slippery. We passed Julius Kahn Playground, a locus for stories of childhood injuries, and returned to Broadway and Lyon before noon. The total distance covered was 6.7 miles, not too challenging for a patrol outing and a breeze for the Troop.

Review: The Hunger Games

Note (2/24/22): This has been edited to remove an offensive term. Saying what it was would negate the effect of the edit, and seeking to know what it was would prove the seeker more interested in finding offense than reading the remaining content.

Circumstances, related to the rainy conditions of Saturday's Scout hike resulted my double viewing of the film version of The Hunger Games. I do not regret watching it twice, since the Venn diagram of friends and acquaintances with whom I saw it did not overlap. The Hunger Games is a well-made film, and I would watch it again, although I probably would not buy the DVD. The transition from novel to film always entails simplification and externalization of details which books can present in an introspective manner. Although the Treaty of the Treason, in which the Capital set forth the terms of the Hunger Games, appears prominently in the film (an instance of cinematographic externalization), there is no mention of the "reward" that the winner of the Hunger Games earned for his or her District. In the book, the winning District receives extra rations to stave off malnutrition and starvation. Its omission makes the Capital's abuse of the districts more offensive, but also eliminates an obvious motivation for the Districts' complicity in this appalling ritual. The book uses third-person limited narration, and thus ignores the omnipresent cameras necessary for the viewing pleasure of the citizens of the Capital; the film never lets you forget about the cameras, in an attempt to condemn the audience in the theater as well as the Capital. It is a valiant attempt, but the freakish appearance of the Capital citizens, who look like the world's most fashion-challenged parade, compared to the normal (if rustic) dress of the residents of the Districts, creates to much visual dissonance to succeed. The depiction of the reaction of District 11 to a key moment in the movie seems heavy-handed; Rue, the female tribute from District 11, is described merely as dark-skinned in The Hunger Games, but her District is shown as the "black" district with one token white guy. Then the Peacekeepers (who are as ominous as the name suggests) bring out the water cannons. The racism in the world of the Hunger Games is an oblivious racism against all Districts, rather than one predicated on contemporary American racial fears.

Romney's Run 2: Religious Rhetoric Run Rampant

As I was browsing the news this week, I noticed an Pew article that claimed Americans think there has been too much talk of religion in this election cycle. The sources for the article seem to have a rather limited view of the term "American," since it talks almost exclusively about supporters of Romney or Santorum. In short, Romney's supporters think that there has been too much rhetoric about religion, whle Santorum's supporters think that there has been too little. The difference between the two, it seems to me, is how far the individual supporter conflates religion and political ideology. Romney's membmership in the LDS is a stumbling block for many evangelical voters, but Romney's heretical tendencies (in the eyes of evangelicals) does not change the fact that the LDS is a powerful, monied, and socially conservative organization which evangelicals would otherwise love.

Even if Romney's views about the nature of the world are heterodox, Santorum's religious affiliations are also problematic. Perhaps Santorum does not feel quite as vehemently about non-Christians as the pastor with whom he recently associated. If, however, Santorum still desires the evangelical vote, a pastor who would rather expel those live in darkness than lead them to the light of Christ might not be the best companion in adversity. This is not a left-right matter: Obama, when he gets around to campaigning, should not associate himself with Louis Farrakhan. The subtext of this pastor's comments is racism, and there are plenty of non-white Evangelicals in the US who might be deterred from voting Republican a

The Illustrated Man

To call Bradbury a science fiction author is insufficient; it conveys an impression of fascination for technology which he lacks. Bradbury's prose contains a bucolic note, a nostalgia for a rural world long lost, one never known to the science fiction readers playing stick ball on the streets of New York. In this corpus, Mars is not so much a physical place as it is a metaphysical Faerie, and the fear, hatred, and misunderstanding of women by his male protagonists a reflection of an old-fashioned but stunted model of masculinity. The science takes a back seat to verbal magic.

The first story in The Illustrated Man, "The Veldt," is an effective evocation of the savagery in the infantile breast. "Kaleidoscope" suffers from the impotency of the characters (I hesitate to call them protagonists, since they do not and cannot effect any change.) "The Other Front" has some rhetorical power, but suffers from the attenuation of historical change - in this case, the elimination of Jim Crow. Perhaps this story would resonate more strongly for contemporary minorities. "The Highway" displays a nice prose style, but depends too much on the context of the era in which Bradbury wrote it. "The Man" displays the pros and cons of any mid-20th century story involving religion (always Midwest Christian, of course). The idea of the cosmic Christ is intriguing, but all writers who attempt it are too coy for the original audience and too obscure for the current audience. "The Long Rain," set on a Venus which serves as a complement to Bradburian Mars, is a depressing, if compelling, narrative, whose characters slowly decline in the fashion of military stories. "The Rocket Man" illustrates Bradbury's theme of emotional alienation, but may contain the truth of a sea widow's life. "The Last Night of the World" is a mood piece. "The Exiles" features a literal literary Mars. It shows Bradbury's use of Mars as The Other Place, an Aristotelian rather than Platonic externalization of censorship fears. "No Particular Night Or Morning" is the most extreme example of the theme of alienation - the protagonist cannot create emotional attachment to his past self or even what he has made. This ends as well as one might expect. "The Fox and the Forest" is a solid but not extraordinary fugitives-in-time tale, and does not cater to Bradbury's main strengths.

"The Visitor," once again set on Mars, this time a futuristic leper colony, shows the destructive impulse of forsaken men. The gynophobia of many of Bradbury's characters appears clearly here when the William's unusual talent becomes an analog for both food and sex and Williams himself is called "a wife," which means (in in-universe terms) he must be dominated and cannot be shared. "The Concrete Mixer" features an atypical Martian invasion, but I have yet to understand the theme. "Marionettes, Inc." is a fine horror story - I believe it was adapted for The Twilight Zone. "The City" is an effective Cold War-era horror story about revenge and death. The distance, however, is out of proportion to the theme, and might encourage the impression that science fiction writers have no sense of scale.

"Zero Hour" is a tale of children's sight where adults are blind. It is a warm and fuzzy tale with a cold underbelly. "The Rocket" is a bittersweet story of a father's love for his family and the sacrifice of his greatest dream. The last story in the collection, "The Illustrated Man," did not engage me - it is a rather weak framing device for stories that are considerably better and more effective.

Nerd Nite #23: The Squid Boddhisattva

Last night, I went to Nerd Nite #23 at the Rickshaw Stop. The features were brain chemistry, Humboldt squid, and piracy (although I did not stay for the last).  I followed the brain chemistry talk fairly well - certainly the conclusions made sense to me, although I did start out with a bias against the mixture of Buddhist terms and neuropsychology. East and West, never the twain shall meet! It's the same feeling I get whenever scientists talk about the "God particle" - one shouldn't mix scientific and religious terms without precise definition (a precision which both chemistry and theology demand).

The second talk, on Humboldt squid, was my favorite. At this point, I should remind the audience of three things: first, that Humboldt squid are not giant squid; second, that Humboldt squid are named after the Humboldt current, not Humboldt county; third, Humboldt squid are not made into calamari. The cute marine biologist spoke about the "squid invasion," which has extended to Canadian waters from Mexican shores, and whether the squid were marauders or colonists (the difference is the presence of squid babies). Researching the answer proved challenging, since to find anything in the middle of the ocean, much less watery translucent squid eggs, is nearly impossible. Unlike some Nerd Nite presentations, this one left me with a few questions I want to e-mail to the researcher, such as the following: since bear-borne salmon guts are an important source of nitrogen for inland forests, do bear-borne squid (who have already eaten the salmon the bears would have) have the same nitrogen-movement impact as bear-borne salmon?

Martin Buber's Bagel

 Those who know me well know that I have long had a fascination with clusivity, a highly useful grammatical feature. The two types of clusivity are inclusive and exclusive; which only appear in the first person and the non-singular grammatical numbers - or so I thought until recently. The first person inclusive means "I and you (but not other people)," whereas the first person exclusive means "I and someone else (but not you)." Thus, a Hawaiian translation of the title of Martin Buber's theological treatise I and Thou would be Kaua (first person inclusive dual) rather than Maua (first person exclusive dual). The logic of clusivity suggests a rigid limitation to the plural and whatever other non-singular forms a language may contain; clusivity by its nature is "I and X".

Language, however, is not logical; if it were, Zamenhof would not have needed to invent Esperanto. Clusivity distinctions is the standard for Polynesian languages, but formerly I had thought it well-behaved. Samoan is an ergative Polynesian language, a standard-bearer among linguists for its phonological transparency. Samoan has several form for each pronoun, but only a few concern us. The exclusive dual has forms ma and maua, while the inclusive dual has forms ta and taua (these forms are cognate with Hawaiian maua and kaua). The -ua component of taua and maua is related transparently to the common Polynesian word lua "two," so if one wanted to create a singular inclusive, the form ta would be an appropriate choice, but what would it mean? In Samoan, the first person singular inclusive is used when the subject ("I") has an emotional involvement in the verb.

Now let us apply this distinction to Martin Buber and a delicious lox bagel. If someone else saw Buber eating a bagel and heard Buber say "We (inclusive) are eating a bagel," the other person might think that Buber was sharing his bagel with God. If God can do all things, surely he can share lunch with one of his favorite theologian! If, however, Buber was aware that he alone was consuming the bagel, the dual pronoun acquires a different meaning. The bagel would be in the third person ("he/she/it"), and therefore cannot be the "X" of "I and X." The pronoun does not mask a reflexive; Buber is not eating himself! The first person inclusive singular indicates emotional involvement in the verb. Perhaps he was very hungry from thinking profound thoughts prior to devouring the bagel; perhaps this is the best (or worst) bagel he has ever eaten.

This seems bizarre, but there may be hints to its origin in other Austronesian languages such as Malay. When I was examining a basic Malay phrase book, I found an interesting phenomenon; a sentence which I would have translated as "I see you" was rendered as "We (inclusive) see" - kita, which contains -ta. The object of the sentence, in other words, had been incorporated into the subject. The verb "to see," however, is a transitive verb and therefore requires an object that is seen. The other sentence of this type which caught my attention was "We (inclusive) love," which meant "I love you." From this sentence it appears that the inclusive forms indicate emotional content if they accompany a transitive verb. This is odd but comprehensible from an Anglophone perspective. Apparently, the singular use of the inclusive has stripped away the plurality of the concept and left only the emotional core, a Star Sapphire of pronouns.

Pinnacles Trip

On March 4 and 5, the troop traveled to Pinnacles National Monument, which it had not visited for more than twenty years. The Scoutmaster could not attend, so Beck Diefenbach and I were the uniformed leaders. We left the city early, since the trip to Pinnacles National Monument was far away compared to other trail heads. The campsite lay between a broad parking lot and stream well-hidden by vegetation, so no hiking was required.

When we had struck camp and eaten lunch, we went up to Bear Gulch Day Use Area to meet the rock climbing instructors who would help us in the afternoon. Alas, we disembarked too early and therefore hiked up to the proper site. After the climbing instructors had given a brief orientation, they handed off the climbing gear to the Scouts. We hiked the Moses Spring Trail and Bear Gulch Cave trail, where the instructors split the Scouts into two groups. The less experienced Scouts went to the closer and easier climbing site, while the more ambitious went to a wall above Bear Gulch Reservoir. Some of the Scouts had climbed before and were naturals, one so much so that I compared him a spider monkey (apparently so did my colleague), while others were new to the sport but willing to challenge themselves - one of the latter group accomplished the highest-rated ascent of the day. The Scouts were having an enormous amount of fun, but soon it was time to leave and return to camp.

 
The campfire that night was short but lively.  The requisite skits and yells were done by food groups rather than patrols,  since there were not enough members of some patrols to sustain a skit. Each patrol within a food group received the full amount of points for the group, rather than the insane proportional distribution system briefly used during my Scout career. The skits were short, but I have to give credit for an effort to include as many of the group as possible within the skit. The Troop Staff began the acclimatization of the younger Scouts to the traditions of summer camp and Royaneh by teaching Gazalla. My contribution, The Chickens Get Into The Tomatos, was more frivolous, and the timing of the round was off. That round sometimes works and sometimes does not. The campfire closed rather early. Some Scouts went to their tents, but others remained around the fire for another hour. I told them about the importance of Venus, which was shining brightly that night, and regaled them with the story of how Orion ended up in the night sky.

On Sunday morning we woke up early; some of the Scouts woke up especially early and exercised. The energy of teenagers never ceases to amaze me. On a lighter note, one of the fathers who had set up his tent under a tree discovered that the quail roosting in the tree for the night had expelled their waste upon it. When I saw this, I was glad that I had moved my sleeping bag out from under the same tree!

After a short and inspirational Scout's Own, we traveled to the trail head for the Old Pinnacles Trail. There was a portable latrine, but I was worried (unnecessarily, as it turned out) about the possibilities for changing into uniform for traveling back to San Francisco. We hiked along West Fork Chalone Creek to Balconies Cave, where the trail passes through the cave. We ascended through the cave – the Scouts loved it! When I visited the caves many years ago, I had descended through the cave rather than ascended. It was a slippery experience, especially with the backpacks of the time, which were nowhere near as compact as those of today. Fortunately, all the Scouts helped each other with the backpacks. There were a few wet spots in the cave this time, but nothing that adequate footwear could not handle. When we had almost reached the end of the cave, one of the Scouts, who had experience climbing, could not stay away from the walls. Perhaps he has some gecko in his ancestry!

Here are some more photos taken by my colleague, Beck Diefenbach:

We exited the cave and walked beneath the Balconies Cliff, a massive rock formation with a vertical green channels from the spring rains. Several Scouts spotted people, tiny in perspective, perched upon the rocks above the caves through which we had come. They must have climbed there. One Scout expressed a desire to live atop the rock, while others made the morbid jokes so typical of youth and Classicists. The walk back to the cars felt much longer than the way in, but dreams of In N Out spurred the tired troop onward!