Don Quixote and Lady Macbeth

From Stephen King's Firestarter:

Andy moved slowly away from the van.  The other fellow . . . had his gun out now.  He pointed it at Andy.  He was less than fifty feet away.  "I advise you very sincerely not to move," he said in a low voice.  "This is a Colt forty-five and it makes a giant hole."

The young guy with his wife and baby at the picnic table got up.  He was wearing rimless glasses and he looked severe.  "What exactly is going on here?" he asked in the carrying, enunciated tones of a college instructor.

The man with Charlie turned toward him.  The muzzle of his gun floated slightly away from her so that the young man could see it.  "Government business," he said.  "Stay right where you are; everything is fine."

The young man's wife grabbed his arm and pulled him down.

Query: Between the young guy and the wife, who is being practical and who is being romantic?  Who is being reasonable and who is being irrational?  Who is really trying to save lives and who is merely pretending?

Stranger in a Strange Land: 3/5

Today, I finished Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.*  The book has two versions, between which I alternated.  The 1961 publication ran for 160,067 words and won the Hugo Award.  In 1991, the Widow Heinlein published an expanded, original version, which weighed in at 220,000 words.

*I also discovered a new and interesting website.

Since learning to read circa 1988, I have read over 230 books, including 11 in 2010; seen at least 350 movies, including 19 in 2010; read a bazillion cases and statutes; and heard probably over 1,000 sermons and lectures.  Perhaps hypocritically, I appreciate brevity.  I believe that books longer than 500 pages and movies longer than 2 hours should have a blankity blank good reason for the surplus.*  There comes a point where thoroughness gives way to self-indulgence.  I simply don't have patience for that.

*Interesting note: Shakespeare never wrote anything longer than 5 acts.  I'm just sayin.

And I'm afraid that self-indulgence marred an otherwise good story here.  I began in the 1991 version but ran out of steam about three-fourths of the way through.  I got tired of reading extended "conversations" between characters that served little more than to either (a) set the table for something coming or (b) give the author a soapbox.  So I switched over to the 1961 version and still waded through the last 50 or 60 pages.  By "waded," I don't mean to say that those pages were boring or uninteresting; I mean to say that they began as interesting and just went on a little too far.  Even the very last page went one sentence too far.

UPDATE: Just ran across Niven's 4th Law for Writers: "It is a sin to waste the reader's time."

Pirate Latitudes: 3/5

Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton


My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Michael Crichton writes three kinds of books: (1) thrilling blockbusters (or at least wannabe blockbusters), like Jurassic Park or Sphere; (2) contemplations on science and the human condition, like State of Fear or The Lost World; and (3) simply fun historical novels, like The Great Train Robbery, Eaters of the Dead, and, now, Pirate Latitudes. So if you only like Crichton for his Jurassic Park-like thrillers, stay away. If you only like Crichton for his Prey-like contemplations, stay away. But if you like lightweight, easy reading that's fun, give it a chance. It's not his best work, but it's not his worst either. (Sphere and Congo, respectively, get my votes.)

Maybe the best I can do is quote Robert Louis Stevenson's prologue to Treasure Island:

If sailor tales to sailor tunes,
Storm and adventure, heat and cold,
If schooners, islands, and maroons,
And buccaneers, and buried gold,
And all the old romance, retold
Exactly in the ancient way,
Can please, as me they pleased of old,
The wiser youngsters of today:
--So be it, and fall on! If not,
If studious youth no longer crave,
His ancient appetites forgot,
Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave,
Or Cooper of the wood and wave:
So be it, also! And may I
And all my pirates share the grave
Where these and their creations lie!

To paraphrase: If you think boats/pirates/sea adventure are cool, you'll probably like this book. If not, you probably won't.

Scary Book 2009, Take 2

Well, The Dead Zone was a bust.  It's a decent novel with an interesting premise and maybe a few too many pop culture references,* but it just plain wasn't scary.**  At least not in the way that I wanted to be scared.  I want the kind of book that makes me scared to turn the light off.  Why?  I don't know.  Maybe just because it's Halloween.  Ray Bradbury has pulled it off, and Stephen King has pulled it off before.  But I'm not going to either of them for Jeremy's Halloween 2009 Scary Book Extravaganza.  No, sirs and ma'ams, that honor goes to golden-age-of-science-fiction author Richard Matheson.  I really enjoyed What Dreams May Come last summer, though I can't remember if it made me scared to turn the light off.  I do recall the movie having some chilling scenes.

OK, OK.  Without further ado, here is Second Chance Sam's Second Try at Being Scared for Halloween 2009:



Sure looks scary, eh?  One early edition touted it as the scariest science fiction tale you'll ever read.  I shall be the judge of that, my friends.


*While I firmly believe in looking up words I don't know, I get annoyed having to look up a pop culture reference---for the eighty-third time---because I'm reading the book thirty years after it was published.  We sometimes forget that people down the road might not know everything we know as intimately as we know it.  If you want proof, play any version of Trivial Pursuit from before 2000.  And . . . 5 points for anybody who knows who Arthur Bremer is.


**Some might argue that it would be scary to be in Johnny's position.  Meh.  I hate it when people say things like, "The scariest part of 'Salem's Lot was how everybody knew something terrible was happening but nobody did anything but run away."  Bah, humbug.  The scariest part of 'Salem's Lot was when Jimmy, Ben, and Mark go vampire-hunting.  Well, really, any Mark-centric passage.

The towels are kinda scratchy

It's that time of year again: time for me to read a scary book for Halloween.  It all started on Columbus Day 2005.  I had the dark, rainy day off, but The Missus didn't.  By coincidence, I had finished a book just the night before.  The mood was perfect for a classic tale of horror, so I pulled Bram Stoker's Dracula off the shelf.  For the next few weeks, I buried myself in Stoker's masterpiece.  When I turned the last page, I had been more scared and more satisfied than since I saw The Exorcist.  I read Stephen King's It in 2006 and Insomnia in 2007.  In 2008, I read The Shining.  Now, my friends, I burst forth with a new scary book for 2009:



That's right.  I'm entering The Dead Zone.

Stephenie Meyer self-deprecates

Periodically, I like to put quotes that I've written down up on Goodreads.com.  (That's where the quotes you see to your right come from.)  Today, I was looking through those quotes, and I noticed this one from Stephenie Meyer's Eclipse:

[Edward:] "I still think it would be a better story if either of them had one redeeming quality."
[Bella:] "I think that may be the point," . . . "Their love IS their only redeeming quality."

For my part, the Edwardobellan romance did less to redeem the saga than did all the interesting trivia associated with vampires.  Those of you who know both me and the saga well know that there was one romance that would have made the saga compelling for me . . .

A Dab of Paint

One sunny Saturday summer afternoon a few years ago, I pulled out the Strathern classic, Wittgenstein in 90 Minutes and plopped down in a lawn chair next to my tanning wife. I sat down excited about thinking deep thoughts; I stood up ninety minutes later in a different world. Philosophy, I now believed, had become nothing more than a battle of dictionaries. I had become a dab of paint on a canvas trying to interpret the painting around me. From that day until this, I hadn't read two sentences of philosophy since Wittgenstein played Dorian Grey to my portrait.

This morning, I read the prologue to Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy. He advises the reader that

the philosopher is not content to describe the fact; he wishes to ascertain its relation to experience in general, and thereby get at its meaning and its worth; . . . he tries to put together, better than before, that great universe-watch which the inquisitive scientist has anlytically taken apart.

That hot summer day, Wittgenstein took my universe-watch apart. I hope that Durant can put it back together, better than before, over the next 530 pages. Maybe I can't interpret the whole painting, but I can at least get an idea of what's around me.

Twilight (movie): 7/10

After reading all four books in the Twilight Saga and watching the first movie, I have a new theory about Stephenie Meyer. She's a science-fiction fanboygirl who got tired of being the only girl at sci-fi conventions. In this, she is like Matthew Fox, who got tired of being the only cool guy at sci-fi conventions.

I also want to note that Stephenie Meyer and I have similar taste in music. (Ergo, she is also like Matthew Fox in that she is cool.) She credits Muse with inspiring the entire saga. Muse is an incredible band, whom you should listen to. The great songs "Invincible" and "Knights of Cydonia" are my favorites, as well as "Starlight" and most---but not all---the others on their debut album are well worth the investment.

Wash Your Hands Less

For your edification:

Has it ever occurred to you how astonishing the culture of Western society really is? Industrialized nations provide their citizens with unprecedented safety, health, and comfort. Average life spans increased fifty percent in the last century. Yet modern people live in abject fear. They are afraid of strangers, of disease, of crime, of the environment. They are afraid of the homes they live in, the food they eat, the technology that surrounds them. They are in a particular panic over things they can't even see--germs, chemicals, additives, pollutants. They are timid, nervous, fretful, and depressed.

Michael Crichton, State of Fear (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 455.

Thank you, Dr. Crichton, for everything you gave us.

Fiction

I love reading fiction and only tolerate some nonfiction.  I've read enough nonfiction over the past three years to last me a lifetime, but I have much more nonfiction to read in the future.  Perhaps Isaac Asimov said it best:

It's your fiction that interests me. Your studies of the interplay of human motives and emotions.

That's it.  I love stories, and I love psychology.  Go fiction!

On second thought, most legal nonfiction is really a study of the interplay of human motives and emotions.  Maybe I have chosen the right profession . . . 

Causation Joke

So I'm sitting in Advanced Crim Pro today, and we're talking about how Gerstein violations result in exclusion only if there is a causal connection between the violation and the evidence.  [This is really just a lame lead-up to what I think is a funny quote.]  That got me thinking about this quote from Douglas Adams's Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency:

The complexities of cause and effect defy analysis.

You can take that to the bank.  The moral of the story is that the space-time continuum is

. . . very like a piece of badly put up wallpaper.  Push down a bubble somewhere, another one pops up somewhere else. . . . The only thing that really gets hurt when you try and change time is yourself.

Ah, Douglas Adams.  You left us too soon.

Who's afraid of a little paradox?

Those who've been watching LOST lately are probably thinking a lot about paradoxes and what-ifs.  My personal favorite paradox is the compass.  Alpert gives Locke the compass c. 2004, but Locke gives Alpert the compass (via time travel) in 1954.  If Locke got it from Alpert, and Alpert got it from Locke, where did it come from?

To help explain, here's a nice humorous quote dealing with time travel and paradoxes:

If the Universe came to an end every time there was some uncertainty about what had happened in it, it would never have got beyond the first picosecond.  And many of course don't.  It's like a human body, you see.  A few cuts and bruises here and there don't hurt it.  Not even major surgery if it's done properly.  Paradoxes are just the scar tissue.  Time and space heal themselves up around them and people simply remember a version of events which makes as much sense as they require it to make.

Thus spoke Douglas Adams, so it must be true.

Harry Potter XLIII

While the rest of the world watched Super Bowl XLIII, those at Chez Masten watched Harry Potter IV: The Goblet of Fire.  I just wanted to point out that I love Ralph Fiennes.  He may be my hero.  Even when he plays Voldemort.  But I also wanted to say that if you're trying to get through the Harry Potter series, hold on till you get to the fourth book.  The Goblet of Fire is the book that cinched the series for me.  After I read The Goblet of Fire (or HP4 as those in the know call it), I was hooked.  The night I read the scene with the third task in the Triwizard Tournament, I stayed up and read something like 300 pages.  Over the next week, I read HP5 and HP6 (whatever their real names are).  That's right.  Something like 2000 pages in 10 days.

I thought that was really impressive until I took Practice Court.

Crichton on Science

My junior year, I wrote a paper about C. Wright Mills's book, The Power Elite.  While writing that paper, I learned and thought more about power than I ever had before.  Power is a fascinating topic.  As always, Michael Crichton contributes to the discussion:

"You know what's wrong with scientific power?"  Malcolm said.  "It's a form of inherited wealth.  And you know what assholes congenitally rich people are.  It never fails."

Hammond said, "What is he talking about?"

Harding made a sign, indicating delirium.  Malcolm cocked his eye.

"I will tell you what I am talking about," he said.  "Most kinds of power require a substantial sacrifice by whoever wants the power.  There is an apprenticeship, a discipline lasting many years.  Whatever kind of power you want.  President of the company.  Black belt in karate.  Spiritual guru.  Whatever it is you seek, you have to put in the time, the practice, the effort.  You must give up a lot to get it.  It has to be very important to you.  And once you have attained it, it is your power.  It can't be given away: it resides in you.  It is literally the result of your discipline.

"Now, what is interesting about this process is that, by the time someone has acquired the ability to kill with his bare hands, he has also matured to the point where he won't use it unwisely.  So that kind of power has a built-in control.  The discipline of getting the power changes you so that you won't abuse it.

"But scientific power is like inherited wealth: attained without discipline.  You read what others have done, and you take the next step.  You can do it very young.  You can make progress very fast.  There is no discipline lasting many decades.  There is no mastery: old scientists are ignored.  There is no humility before nature.  There is only a get-rich-quick, make-a-name-for-yourself-fast philosophy.  Cheat, lie, falsify---it doesn't matter.  Not to you, or to your colleagues.  No one will criticize you.  No one has any standards.  They are all trying to do the same thing: to do something big, and do it fast.

"And because you can stand on the shoulders of giants, you can accomplish something quickly.  You don't even know exactly what you have done, but already you have reported it, patented it, and sold it.  And the buyer will have even less discipline than you.  The buyer simply purchases the power, like any commodity.  The buyer doesn't even conceive that any discipline might be necessary."

Hammond said, "Do you know what he is talking about?"

Ellie nodded.

"I haven't a clue," Hammond said.

"I'll make it simple," Malcolm said.  "A karate master does not kill people with his bare hands.  He does not lose his temper and kill his wife.  The person who kills is the person who has no discipline, no restraint, and who has purchased his power in the form of a Saturday night special.  And that is the kind of power that science fosters, and permits.  And that is why you think that to build a place this is simple."

"It was simple," Hammond insisted.

"Then why did it go wrong?"

Jurassic Park, (New York: Ballantine Books 1993), pp. 306-07.

I quoted that at length just in case you, like me, remembered Jurassic Park as just an interesting book about dinosaurs.  There's some serious criticism of modern science in there.

R.I.P. Mr. Crichton

Michael Crichton has left the planet.

I remember in fifth grade, watching my brother violently react when my mom interrupted his reading of Jurassic Park.  "Have you ever been so into a book that when somebody rips you out of it you feel like throwing up?"  I got the video game for Christmas that year and watched the movie a billion times.  Then in eighth grade, I finally opened the book and read for days.

In college, I branched out and read The Andromeda Strain.  I thought that I had read better books, but I also thought it had a really interesting premise.  I read Rising Sun, The Terminal Man, and A Case of Need before I stumbled on one of my favorite novels of all time: Sphere.  In my goodreads.com account, Sphere is one of only two books I honor with five out of five stars.  Later, I gave The Great Train Robbery and Travels four stars.

I'm in the process of reading the seven novels of his I haven't read yet.  They don't always rival Shakespeare, but they're always exciting and always interesting and always fun.  I can't say that Mr. Crichton was a good friend of mine, but I can say that I have enjoyed the hours I've spent reading his work.

If nothing else, I hope Mr. Crichton would be honored by my saying that he's the kind of writer who makes me want to write novels.

Law School Odyssey

Week 2 begins today. Last week was one of the longest weeks of my life. Each day, I got up at around 5 o'clock, got to school by 7, and didn't leave until almost 4. Then I came home and read until dinner, usually around 7:30. I'd pick up reading again around 8 o'clock and usually read until nearly midnight or (at least once) 1 o'clock. Then I'd get up a few hours later and start it again. Enough about that. I have big plans this week to not spend quite that much time reading.

In other exciting news, I just finished reading Arthur C. Clarke's 2010: Odyssey Two.

It didn't pack the all-out weirdness of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it might have been just as thought-provoking. The story suggests that maybe we're an experiment being performed by extremely powerful---but not yet omnipotent---beings. That got me thinking: what if all this is just an experiment? Maybe God is busy crafting creatures and species all over the Universe and trying to cultivate love or something like that. In the vein of Douglas Adams, the whole Universe might just be a big ol' psych experiment conducted by mice. "You know, Joe, we had interesting results back in 2005 when we hit New Orleans with two hurricanes. Let's see what happens when we throw another one at'm in the midst of their rebuilding efforts . . . !"

Yesterday, I began the third book in the Space Odyssey saga, the incomparably named 2061.

I Don't Understand the World

But neither do you, so let's be friends.

I just finished reading Michael Crichton's travelogue Travels.  During the first hundred pages or so, I loved it.  He talked about the trials and tribulations of medical school and his own issues with being a doctor.  These are not dissimilar to the qualms I've experienced about being a lawyer.  And I could also relate to his feelings of isolation for appreciating a broader spectrum of life than did his classmates.  Not "better"---just broader.

The next hundred pages or so were equally interesting: they dealt with his experiences traveling throughout the world.  Climbing Kilimanjaro, visiting Shangri-La, smoking pot in Thailand.  I found it fascinating and thrilling, inspiring even.  I wanted to go out and experience this city, my temporary home.  Just find some random place to stick my head in and taste the life blood of Federal City.

Then I got bogged down in the last hundred pages or so.  He shifted from talking about his physical travels to talking about his metaphysical travels.  He learned how to see auras, travel on the astral plane, and channel some higher level of himself.  He even experienced an exorcism.  These are phenomena with which I am distinctly uncomfortable, and so the reading was very slow and difficult.  But I slogged through it, and I'm glad I did.

The last chapter of the book is called "Postscript: Skeptics at Cal Tech."  In it, he defends his belief in and experience with the paranormal.  He essentially argues that Science and Faith are not opposed in some epistemological battle for explanation and power;  rather, Science and Faith are opposed in much the same way that Christianity and Roman Paganism were opposed in the first century C.E.  It's not a difference in a way of thinking; it's a difference in what you think.  He notes:

Science offers a picture of the world, but its picture is not to be confused with the underlying reality itself.

And later:

This, in essence, is the problem with the scientific view of reality.  Science is a kind of glorified tailoring enterprise, a method for taking measurements that describe something---reality---that may not be understood at all.

Science is very good as far as it goes.  It has certainly produced powerful benefits.  It would be crazy to abandon science or to deny its validity.

But it would be equally crazy to think that reality is a forty-four long.

Before you start thinking that Dr. Crichton, a Harvard-trained physician, has gone all crazy Left Coast on you, he concludes the essay:

The fact is that we need the insights of the mystic [or theologian or philosopher or psychologist] every bit as much as we need the insights of the scientist.  Mankind is diminished when either is missing.

Many scientists and "rational" thinkers deny the value of religion except as a safety blanket.  "Where is the evidence?!" they demand, often adamantly.  But the uncomfortable truth is that we only need as much evidence as we think we need.  We accept the Pythagorean theorem because our eighth grade math teacher told us about it.  Sure, there's evidence out there to prove it, but have you looked it up?  Have you read Pythagoras's notes?  How do you know there isn't some vast conspiracy of math teachers with some strange goal?  Because you've decided---consciously, subconsciously, or unconsciously---that your eighth grade teacher's word is enough.

And non-religious thinkers decide---consciously, subconsciously, or unconsciously---that their Sunday school teacher's word is not.

The merits of your position and mine may never be "known" while we're living on earth.  But that's OK.  I'll try to convince you that I'm right and you try to convince me that you're right.  Why can't we still be friends?

I'm a monster!

I just can’t stop buying books. I bought three last night:

• Richard Matheson: What Dreams May Come
• Arthur C. Clarke: 2001: A Space Odyssey
• an intriguing anthology allegedly edited by Alfred Hitchcock, Tales of Terror

Including several other books I’ve somehow acquired recently, that brings my total up to 73 books that I own but have not read, 11 more than one week ago.

See more progress on: read every book I own

No Mas de Eso

So I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in three days.  On Goodreads.com, I gave it four stars out of five.  Here's my completely arbitrary quality ranking:

1. Deathly Hallows (book 7)
2. Order of the Phoenix (book 5)
3. Half-Blood Prince (book 6)
4. Prisoner of Azkaban (book 3)
5. Goblet of Fire (book 4)
6. Chamber of Secrets (book 2)
7. Sorcerer's Stone (book 1)

I thought the series got better with each book, but I think that probably the top three could be ranked in any order, and so could the bottom four.  So now I can join the ranks of the cultural elite who have read Harry Potter. 

My Harry Potter

In 6th grade, I randomly borrowed a book from the school library, John Christopher's The Guardians.  The next Saturday morning, I plopped into our old blue recliner and started at page one.  I read about Rob's father dying and followed two steps behind as he ran from Conurb.  I helped him dig the hole under the Barrier and hid with him in the cave.  I assimilated into County life, learning archery and sweating during Sir Percy Gregory's interrogation.  And I tried to convince Rob not to betray Mike to the Guardians.  I didn't, however, notice the room gradually brightening or my hunger pangs as morning turned into noon and afternoon.  I turned the last page some time before dinner, wondering at what I'd read and why I'd never read anything like it before.  Two days later, I returned The Guardians and checked out The Prince in Waiting, where I imagined a deep blue vista of desert broken only by the bright orange glow of the Burning Lands in the distance.  That image remains with me, stronger even than some of my real memories. 

In less than a month, I read every John Christopher book our library had.  I think that's when I fell in love with reading.