essentialsaltes | Entries tagged with malebutnotnarrow

I found both of these in the LA Time list of books about Los Angeles in the speculative literature sublist.

After Many a Summer by Aldous Huxley is a very odd work. Something like Citizen Kane smashed into The Last Coin with a chunk of mostly annoying philosophy crammed into the middle. While it skewers a certain vision of Hollywood as it may have been in the 1930s, it rides off on its own hobbyhorse quite too far to be recognizable as LA. A crass Los Angeles millionaire funds various charities and research activities, but his obsession is eternal life. I really have to wonder if Jim Blaylock is referencing this novel in The Last Coin, or if it's just a coincidence based on the longevity of carp.

Perhaps my favorite passage has a nice LA nod to a Forest Lawn-esque cemetary:

Was it possible, Jeremy asked Iiimself, that such an object existed? It was certainly not probable. The Beverly Pantheon lacked a verisimilitude, was something entirely beyond his powers to invent. The fact that the idea of it was now in his mind proved, therefore, that he must really have seen it. He shut his eyes against the landscape and recalled to his memory the details of that incredible reality. The external architecture, modelled on that of BoeckUn’s ‘Toteninsel.’ The circular vestibule. The replica of Rodin’s ‘Le Baiser,’ illuminated by con- cealed pink floodlights. With its flights of black marble stairs. The seven-story columbarium, the endless gal- leries, its tiers on tiers of slab-sealed tombs. The bronze and silver urns of the cremated, like athletic trophies. The stained-glass windows after Burne-Jones. The texts in- scribed on marble scrolls. The Perpetual Wuriitzer crooning on every floor. The sculpture . . . That was the hardest to believe, Jeremy reflected, be- hind closed eyelids. Sculpture almost as ubiquitous as the Wurlitrer. Statues wherever you turned your eyes. Hundreds of them, bought wholesale, one would guess, from some monumental masonry concern at Carrara or Pietrasanta. All nudes, all female, all exuberandy nubile. The sort of statues one would expect to see in the re- ception-room of a high-class brothel m Rio de Janeiro. ...
Statues of young ladies crouching ; young ladies using both hands to be modest; young ladies stretching, wnthing, calli- pygously stooping to tie their sandals, reclining. Young ladies with doves, with panthers, with other young ladies, ■with upturned eyes expressive of the soul’s awakening. ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life,’ proclaimed the scrolls. ‘ The Lord is my shepherd ; therefore shall I want nothing.’ Nothing, not even Wurhtzer, nor even girls in tightly buckled belts. ‘Death is swallowed up in viaory’ — the ■victory no longer of the spirit but of the body, the well-fed body, for ever youthful, immortally athletic, indefatigably sexy. The Moslem paradise had had copulations six centuries long. In this new Christian heaven, progress, no doubt, would have stepped up the period to a millennium and added the joys of everlasting tennis, eternal golf and swimming.

But on the whole not a winner.

Greener than you Think (1947) by Ward Moore turned out to be a delightful discovery. A much broader parody than After Many a Summer, it's a disaster story of a scientist who invents a tonic to make lawns grow. And does it ever. One lady buys the first batch and from one lawn springs an earth devouring monster of green. Not a lot of detail about Los Angeles, but a few namechecks that help Angelenos mark the spread of the grass:

The southernmost runners crept down toward Hollywood Boulevard where every effort was being marshaled to combat them, and the northernmost wandered around and seemingly lost themselves in the desert of sagebrush and greasewood about Hollywood Bowl. Traffic through Cahuenga Pass, the great artery between Los Angeles and its tributary valley, was threatened with disruption.

Oodles of casual sexism and racism, although often with a wry touch than seems to point the finger more at the haters:

Nationalists hinted darkly that the whole thing was the result of a plot by the Elders of Zion and that Kaplan's Delicatessen—in conspiracy with A Cohen, Notions—was at the bottom of the grass.

Our protagonist wears many hats in this somewhat overlong story, but spends much of it as a journalist covering the spread, who is ordered out by an editor that would make J Jonah Jameson happy with his level of smack-talk:

The Intelligencer picked you out of a gutter, a nauseous, dungspattered and thoroughly fitting gutter, and pays you well, mark that, you feebleminded counterfeit of a confidenceman, pays you well, not for your futile, lecherous pawings at the chastity of the English language, but out of the boundless generosity which only a newspaper with a great soul can have. Get down to whatever smokefilled and tastelessly decorated room that committee is meeting in and do not leave while it is in session, neither to eat, sleep, nor move those bowels whose possession I gravely doubt.

And one final epitaph for LA, courtesy of Time magazine:

Time, reporting the progress of the weed, said in part: "Death, as it must to all, came last week to cult-harboring, movie-producing Los Angeles. The metropolis of the southwest (pop. 3,012,910) died gracelessly, undignifiedly, as its blood oozed slowly away. A shell remained: downtown district, suburbs, beaches, sprawling South and East sides, but the spirit, heart, brain, lungs and liver were gone; swallowed up, Jonah-wise by the advance of the terrifying Bermuda grass

Like I said, a bit overlong, but pleasantly zany.

Galileo & the Science Deniers is a solid biography of Galileo by Mario Livio, an actual working astronomer. I can't say that his scientific background adds a whole lot to the mix, but it can't hurt. He does bring an interesting flair for art (a subject of some interest to Galileo himself -- dare we call him a renaissance man?). One great illustration is a painting of the Virgin Mary by Cigoli, which features the BVM standing on a moon with craters and shadows. It may be the first such depiction of the Moon, and likely inspired by Galileo's sketches.

The history is presented quite credibly and with plenty of primary sources. Inevitably, it leads to Galileo's trials and tribulations with the Inquisition. It's not hard to draw a very short, denialist line between the Inquisition and modern day science deniers, but this was sadly a disappointment in the book. It's clearly an afterthought, with a paragraph or so wedged in at the end of each chapter to try to give the book some current relevance.

--

I wish Mediocre had managed to be mediocre, but in fact it's just not good.

Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, by Ijeoma Oluo.

One might think the book would be about white male America, but that's probably not even a majority of the book.

I guess I was hoping for something more sociological, or psychological. How white men think more highly of themselves than other groups, regardless of actual competence or status. An in-depth analysis of Lake Wobegon, where all our (white male) children are above average. Or an in-depth look at the improbable successes of the Homer Simpsons of the world, especially as contrasted with the Frank Grimes of the world (replacing Grimey with nonwhite nonmale equivalents). Honestly, these comedic takes have more insight into mediocre white men than this book.

Maybe I was just expecting the wrong content. If the book had been titled Shitty Things White Dudes have done in History, it would have been more accurate, and I could have saved my time. A lot of the book is really more of a polemic for a particular brand of progressivism, without much about the titular mediocre white dude (MWD). One of the first targets is Bernie Sanders, and his failure to be progressive enough on racial issues. While this is an accurate criticism, this is hardly about Bernie being mediocre. The author almost latches onto something with a discussion of Bernie Bros, but beyond mentioning hateful tweets from that corner, there is very little analysis of that phenomenon and how it relates to MWD. Any news article you might have read about some fraction of Bernie Bros voting Trump is more insightful than this book.

There's a long section that is basically a glowing biography of each of the four members of The Squad. While it's a great thing that these women who don't look like the politicians of yesteryear are succeeding, these encomia tell me nothing about MWD.

I don't really even know what to make of her schizophrenic treatment of academia and the NFL. Especially the latter since she claims little knowledge of the sport, so the presentation is somewhat shallow, apart from a focus on the Colin Kaepernick affair (worth discussing, but how does it relate to MWD?), as opposed to, say, Doug Williams. Or Brian's Song, fer crissakes.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/971920.html

Warm Worlds & Otherwise is a 1975 collection of science fiction short stories by James Tiptree, Jr. For those not in the know, Tiptree is a pen name for Alice Sheldon, from back in the days when many women authors of SF were still using initials. I guess I didn't realize the extent to which Sheldon disguised her real identity, which was only know after this collection was published. Which makes Bob Silverberg's introduction that much more amusing, as he discusses the speculation about 'Tiptree': "It has been suggested that Tiptree is female, a theory that I find absurd, for there is to me something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree's writing." It's so over the top, one half suspects Silverberg is providing camouflage, except that he's probably some small part of the reason why female authors were disguising their names.

Anyway, to the stories. Some of them have a bit too much of the 1960s/1970s experimentation with language for my taste. I adore Stand on Zanzibar, so it's not an automatic turnoff, but not everyone is John Brunner.

"The Girl who was Plugged in" won the Hugo for novella, and deserved it. Some of the stuff we take for granted today -- say that if you were in a VR rig and 'controlled' an android, you would come to identify with the android -- is carefully earned here in the story. And while some of the setup is absurd (advertising becomes illegal), some of the details (that influencers 'advertise' the products they use to their fans) probably rings truer now than in 1970.

"The Women that Men Don't See" is pretty astonishing. I can see the Heart of Darkness-y or Hemingway-ish slant that might have confused Silverberg, but.... I'll stop short of saying that no man could have written this story, but I will say that no male science fiction author in 1975 could have written this story. It takes a special sort of genius to craft a story like this and choosing the narrator to be someone torn from the cover of a men's adventure magazine.

Both stories are decades old, but both still resonate.

--

The House in the Cerulean Sea is a lighthearted look at a world where magical, human-ish creatures exist and when these children are located they are sent off to 'orphanages'. Really, they are more to keep them out of the sight of polite society. Our hero is a mild-mannered government functionary at the ministry of magical youth, who makes sure these orphanages are properly run and the children properly cared for. The best part of the book just sets up how meticulous and fair he is at his job. While many in society are prejudiced against magical youth, he just isn't. So he goes about his job assiduously, everything by the book. Great character study in the set-up and early parts of the book.

Ultimately, he's sent to inspect a facility on the extreme end of the spectrum, where some of the most difficult cases are housed. And now that the stage is set, the plot moves dutifully along to its necessary conclusion. Over time, his heart is warmed by his connection with the little inmates, and his heart is stirred still more by the mysterious proprietor of the home.

It has a bit of an Auntie Mame feel about it -- to accept and enjoy our differences in the face of conformity -- done with charm and warmth. But the predictability of the story is a bit of a let-down.

--

The Last of Us Part II obviously picks up a bit after the events of The Last of Us. Let me quote a bit of that previous review: "[Ellie] slowly learns survival skills from you, and ultimately becomes a psychotic killing machine just like you"

In some ways, that's where the story takes off. In the sequel, you are now playing Ellie, and you are kind of a monster and grow more monstrous.

A lot of people complained that after about half the story, your viewpoint shifts to another character, an antagonist to the first. I guess I complain, too. I wanted some completion on Ellie's story, and the shift to someone else was not what I was looking for. Abby's story is also well-realized, and obviously you can sense the parallels being drawn, but it seemed a bit of a cheat.

My biggest disappointment? No Road Trip. The first game took us on a journey halfway across America. This one is largely a tour of Seattle. There's a lot of great variation in Seattle, but I missed that. I perked up when there was a mention of Santa Barbara. But I figured the plot was too far advanced for a trip down the coast from Seattle to California to be coming. And I was right. BUT I WOULD HAVE EATEN THAT SHIT UP WITH A CORDYCEPS FUNGUS COVERED SPOON.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/970195.html

From a Scientific American article on the 'self-domestication' of human beings to be hypersocial.

Love is a Contact Sport

Despite the evolutionary paradoxes of human nature, the perception of who belongs in our group is malleable. H. sapiens as a species has already demonstrated its capacity to expand the concept of group membership into the thousands and millions.

It can be extended further. The best way to diffuse conflict among groups is to diminish the perceived sense of threat through social interaction. If feeling threatened makes us want to protect others in our group, non-threatening contact between groups allows us to expand the definition of who our group is.

White children who went to school with black children in the 1960s were more likely, as they grew up, to support interracial marriage, have black friends, and be willing to welcome black people into their neighborhoods.

...

Most policies are enacted with the assumption that a change in attitude will lead to a change in behavior, but in the case of intergroup conflict, it is the altered behavior -- in the form of human contact -- that will most likely change minds. The self-domestication hypothesis explains why we as a species evolved to relate to others. Making contact between people of different ideology, culture or race is a universally effective reminder that we all belong to a single group called H. sapiens.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/969469.html

Oh my, where to begin?

I would very much like Paul Verhoeven to make a film of this in much the same vein as his excellent take on Heinlein's Starship Troopers, because some deep-level parody is the only way to fully enjoy this tale.

1950s American Engineer Man builds a bomb shelter when the Big Whoops arrives. Inside are AEM, his fat alcoholic wife, his feckless son whom he's putting through law school, his plucky daughter, her plucky friend from school, and a Negro servant. AEM is large and in charge and will shoot anyone who dares disobey him. They're all alive due to his forethought despite this terrible catastrophe. But, when you think about it, is it really all that bad?

AEM: "Well it's hard to take the long view when you are crouching in a shelter and wondering how long ou can hold out. But Barbara [plucky school chum -- I'm not sure this is before or after AEM has had post-atomic war coitus with her] I've been worried for years about our country. It seems to me that we have been breeding slaves -- and I believe in freedom. This war may have turned the tide. This may be the first war in history which kills the stupid rather than the bright and able...

the boys in service are as safe or safer than civilians. And of civilians those who used their heads and made preparations stand a far better chance. Not every case, but on the average, and that will improve the breed. When it's over, things will be tough, and that will improve the breed still more. For years the surest way of surviving has been to be utterly worthless and breed a lot of worthless kids. All that will change."
...
Barbara: I suppose you're right. No, I know you're right. ... Killing the poorest third is just good genetics...

--

Ultimately they leave the shelter [I'm not sure whether this is before or after AEM's daughter tell him that of the three men present, she would most like to have sex with him.] and they've been blasted into the future, which is fortunate since it's not too radioactive. So AEM makes a few more orders and organizes civilization, until they are improbably picked up by the people of the future. With the Northern Hemisphere wiped out by the Whoops, the earth is now ruled by dark-skinned people with white-skinned slaves [I'm not sure whether this is before or after half the case has used the n-word]. Further twaddle ensues. I'll give it this -- it's reasonably engaging and as each section of plot kind of plays itself out, Heinlein comes up with something else interesting to happen. But the whole thing feels.... well, let me just quote a bit more.

[AEM] concentrated on being glad that Barbara was a woman who never chattered when her man wanted her to be quiet.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/966521.html

Matt Ruff's Lovecraft Country doesn't have all that much to do with Lovecraft, but plenty to do with the mid-century experience of racism for black people in America. Certainly, Lovecraft's own ugly racism is mentioned, but not much time is spent on him or his work, and while the plot of the book is full of occult happenings, it is not particularly Lovecraftian. So... I feel a bit suckered by the title. Nevertheless, the novel is still an enjoyable combination of several interrelated story sections focusing on different members of an extended black family and friends.

Soon to be an HBO TV series.

--

Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, by Kate Manne purposes to define and describe misogyny. The book was chosen by the Resistance Book Club, but it may have been biting off more than any of us wanted to chew. My heart sank when I discovered it was a work of academic philosophy. And it does often veer off into minutiae not of interest to me, but efficacious as a soporific (as I found on long plane flights, to my serendipitous joy).

Manne doesn't like the dictionary definition of misogyny (and if taken to extremes, I agree with her), so she sets out to find a suitable thing to which the label misogyny could be usefully applied. I also agree with her general program and she has identified something worthy of discussion -- namely the enforcement of patriarchy. So her definition is "misogyny upholds the social norms of patriarchies by policing and patrolling them". Or per Wiki: "misogyny enforces patriarchy by punishing women who deviate from patriarchy."

But almost everywhere, the concept seems to be fluid, the illustrative examples either maddeningly absent/theoretical or misguided, and the point consequently muddled. Though some of the muddle may be my inability (or lack of desire) to penetrate the dense text.

"Rather than conceptualizing misogyny from the point of view of the accused, at least implicitly, we might move to think of it instead from the point of view of its targets or victims. In other words, when it comes to misogyny, we can focus on the hostility women face in navigating the social world, rather than the hostility men (in the first instance) may or may not feel in their encounters with certain women... Advantages of this approach would include that it 1.avoids psychologism … [and] makes misogyny more epistemologically tractable in the ways that matter here, by enabling us to invoke a “reasonable woman” standard … we can ask whether a girl or woman who the environment is meant to accommodate might reasonably interpret some encounter, aspect, or practice therein as hostile"

I don't see that substituting the psychology of the victim (indeed a hypothetical reasonable woman victim, whose reasonableness and perception of 'hostility' are no doubt predicated to some extent on our own psychologies) eliminates psychologism from the equation.

Manne quite rightly criticized some of Trump's statements, but let's keep her definition of misogyny in mind as we review her examples:

"Rosie O’Donnell (very funnily) questioned his moral authority to pardon Miss Universe for indulging in underage drinking: Trump called O’Donnell a “pig” and a “dog,” among other epithets. Carly Fiorina competed with Trump for the Republican nomination: he implied that her face was not presidential-level attractive. Megyn Kelly, then of Fox News, pressed Trump about his history of insulting women: Trump fumed that she had blood coming out of her eyes and “wherever,”"

Are Trump's insults attempts to enforce the patriarchy? Or are they simply juvenile responses to perceived attacks on him personally (see also Sleepy Joe, Low Energy Jeb, Lyin' Ted, Cryin' Chuck, Conflicted Bob Mueller)? Perhaps a case could be made for Fiorina, since she was trying to usurp the presidency from men, but Rosie and Kelly were doing their jobs as TV people.

One could say that they were 'assaulting the patriarchy' by having the feminine gall to speak up on a national stage (the prerogative of men) and needed to be put in their place. But then we are left with the consequence that telling Ann Coulter to shut up is now automatically misogyny by definition.

Certainly the particular ways that Trump chose to express himself are gross and gendered. One might be tempted to call it misogynistic, but Manne's chosen definition prevents that.

I gave up when she constructed her own version of 'humanism' and then alternately agreed with it and tore it apart. From a certain perspective, I can see how that's necessary for her to develop her own ideas and contrast them with other possibilities, but... it was not necessary for me.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/963850.html

I really like Sobel's book on Galileo's Daughter, so I was definitely curious to read this one. It tells the history of the female calculators at Harvard University. How their role changed from the late 19th century into the mid-20th. First as (very modestly paid) numerical calculators, and then examiners of photographic plates, and on into become some of the main organizers of early stellar spectroscopic data, and early studies of variable stars to the first Ph.D. students and dissertations, and on into everything from Oh Be A Fine Girl to spectroscopic binaries, to the discovery that stars are mostly hydrogen and helium, to the law between variable star periods and their intrinsic brightness, one of our first and best rulers for measuring the distance to distant stars.

Just some other details that caught my eye:

The story focuses on the women, but also goes into other activities of the broader Harvard Observatory, including setting up a telescope in Peru near Arequipa, which got involved in some civil unrest "[Bailey] recorded daily events, the din of nearby rifle fire, and his relief that the battle coincided with the cloudy season, 'as otherwise it would sadly interfere with our night work.'" Or Shapley's work on globular clusters showing that we are not in the center of the galaxy. In Shapley's words, "the solar system is off center and consequently man is too, which is a rather nice idea because it means that man is not such a big chicken."

Just after WWII, Cecilia Payne and her husband Sergei Gaposchkin took in the family of Reverend Casper Horikoshi -- a Japanese born missionary whose family had recently been interned at one Heart Mountain camp before now coming to Massachusetts for Divinity school. He and his wife probably had some stories of their own to tell.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/961688.html

DURBIN: I — I’ll just say this: If you, Judge Kavanaugh, turned to Don McGahn and to this committee and say, “For the sake of my reputation, my family name, and to get to the bottom of the truth of this, I am not going to stay — be an obstacle to an FBI investigation,” I would hope that all the members of the committee would join me in saying, “We’re going to abide by your ... wishes, and we will have that investigation.”

KAVANAUGH: I — I welcome whatever the committee wants to do, because I’m telling the truth.

DURBIN: I want to know what you want to do.

KAVANAUGH: I — I’m telling the truth.

DURBIN: I want to know what you want to do, Judge.

KAVANAUGH: I’m innocent. I’m innocent of this charge.

DURBIN: Then you’re prepared for an FBI investigator…

KAVANAUGH: They don’t reach conclusions. You reach the conclusion, Senator.

DURBIN: No, but they do investigate questions.

KAVANAUGH: I’m — I’m innocent.

...

DURBIN: I’m asking about the FBI investigation.

KAVANAUGH: They’re — the committee figures out how to ask the questions, I’ll do whatever. I’ve been on the phone multiple times with committee counsel. I’ll talk to…

DURBIN: Judge Kavanaugh, will you support an FBI investigation…

KAVANAUGH: … I’ll do — I’ll…

DURBIN: … right now?

KAVANAUGH: … I — I will do whatever the committee wants to…

IANAL, and I can hypothetically imagine that this is how a lawyer (or judge) should answer these questions. Nobody idly invites an FBI investigation. But for me, this weaseliness is where Kavanaugh failed the job interview.

<HR>

The whole situation also brought to mind a weird conversation that came up when I was teaching at the girls' high school. Somehow the topic of fraternities and frat parties came up. Now, my vast experience of frat parties amounts to one (perhaps not coincidentally, I was asked by a girl at the dorms, who wanted a male friend along). But having lived in an apartment building next door to a frat house, I had other observations and smellservations to judge from.

Anyway, I cautioned the girls to be wary of fraternities and not to go alone to parties. And I got a lot of pushback. No way! These were exciting boys with nice cars and excellent job prospects. And I soon felt I was just digging a hole -- I was protesting too much, probably couldn't get in, sour grapes.

Anyway, as an entitled white dude, it's easy for me to look at groups of entitled white dudes and recognize them doing entitled white dude things. And nothing in the general description of the party life in Kavanaugh's background is in the least bit surprising or eye-opening. And nothing in Kavanaugh's petulant display is either. Or the treatment he's receiving in the Senate. Not sure where I was going with this. Just venting.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/959611.html

There's been quite the confluence of events. Buzzfeed (don't laugh) ran a deeply researched article about Lawrence Krauss and a number of sexual allegations against him. None violent, but sleazy. Apparently enough to warrant being banned from a couple campuses where he used to work. While I was dimmmmmly aware, for me it was basically internet gossip about someone I don't really know.

I found the article convincing, and icky enough that it bothered me that I remembered that Krauss was a fellow of CSI (nee CSICOP). And I went to the trouble of checking their page of fellows to be sure.

And there are two things that probably made that association leap to my mind. Number one, another Fellow is Benjamin Radford, and he too has been associated with some similar accusations (starting from incidents after a consensual relationship turned sour). Again, I am not the insider here, but I gather that Barry Karr [or maybe Ron Lindsay -- like I said, I'm not an insider] made an investigation, meted out some punishment, and I don't know the ins and outs, other than to say that Radford is still a Fellow, as is his most noteworthy accuser (from where I sit, not being close to any of this). So I feel confident that something was done with at least some semblance of justice. But the episode also pulled additional anonymous whispers out of the ether.

The second thing that probably kept it fresh in my mind was that the latest issue of Skeptical Inquirer noted that Susan Gerbic had been made a Fellow. This was surprising, because most of the Fellows are members of the professoriate in disciplines from physics to psychology. And Susan runs the guerrilla skeptics on wikipedia. I mean, if done right, obviously it's to everyone's benefit for Wikipedia to be accurate, and credulous viewpoints need to be countered by skeptical ones. But...

#1: my brief foray into Wikipedia editing convinced me that it takes a certain kind of person to enjoy and win the Wikipedia editing game. And it isn't me. And I'm vaguely suspicious of the people who find themselves at home in that environment.
#2: Susan's common appearances on the Skepticality podcast did not impress me favorably. In addition to her stated work to push an agenda, it was clear she was also generally a shill for conferences and meetings, etc. Some of the things that pushed me away from greater involvement in organized skepticism (it was not enough that I volunteered to be part of the Independent Investigations Group (an organization I helped name) but to stay in, one would be required to take classes for money -- fuck that).
#3: In short, rather than a skeptic, she strikes me more as a True Believer. Our side is right, and this justifies almost anything.
#4: More recently, I see that Susan is essentially defending Radford on his Wiki page (see the Talk) to keep the page clean of talk of the accusation. Now I don't know that it's notable or meets Wikipedia's standards, but it does bother me that it seems that the truth is less important than defending the people in one's camp.

Anyhoo, this had me thinking about CSI having two fairly well documented pervs among its Fellows (and I wasn't so hot about the merger between CFI and the Dawkins Foundation). And so for a long time (when I only knew of one perv) I was reconsidering the bequest in my will to CSICOP. And now there were (at least) two pervs. Now when you look at the list... there are a lot of people I admire, from Susan Blackmore to Daniel Dennett to EC Krupp to Joe Nickell to Bob Park to Eugenie Scott. Maybe two bad eggs isn't too bad a proportion? On the other hand, there's more than enough star power that I really wish they'd get rid of any bad eggs. After appropriate scrutiny.

And then my stepdad died last week. And I read through his will. And I thought a lot more about my own.

And then a miracle... Lawrence Krauss was (at least temporarily) un-Fellowed from CSI. And I note that between looking at the CSI Fellows page a few days ago and now, Susan Gerbic has also vanished from the list, shortly after arriving. This I assume(?) is at her behest.

So we're back down to one perv (that has come to my attention) who served metaphorical time for one incident. All cool?

(Thank lackofgod that pervy Mike Shermer has an entirely separate Skeptic organization for me to shun. It's true, I shunned him for being dumb long before I knew about any pervy accusations, but every little bit helps. Also a shame that James Randi (who gave his name to yet a third skeptic organization) turned a blind eye to Shermer being 'a bad boy on occasion'.)

Seems like I'm down on all the skeptical organizations, but hey it's just some of the people and the organizations that suck. Not the ideas or the truth of the matter. And possibly CFI/CSI has taken a small step to suck less... and can stay in my will.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/955075.html

Invaders from Rigel is part of the larger sample of published SF that inspired the development of Sturgeon's Law.

It is crap.

Mysterious whatever turns Australians blue, but Americans into robots. Space beings. Brain helmets. Artillery shells. Yawn-skim.

But at least I got to the immortal line:

"She swung with that underarm motion which is the nearest any woman can achieve to a throw."

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/953808.html

A post-apocalyptic story where the apocalypse is a plague that takes out most of humanity, and is more fatal among women than men, making women even rarer in the post-world. This sets up a brutal scenario with supply and demand turning women into commodities. Our unnamed medical professional manages to stay safe(r) by cross-dressing, but every interaction with others is fraught with danger. I enjoy a good 'men are pigs' story, but this one may tread a bit over the line into unintentional parody from time to time.
It also bears interesting comparisons to Earth Abides, especially with the beginning of this book set in the Bay Area. But our heroine makes her way into the Rockies, gaining and losing companions from time to time. Some of the best writing and interaction is when she lives on the outskirts of a Mormon settlement that survived slightly better than most of the world due to remoteness and isolation.
Ostensibly a journal, the book occasionally interpolates other stories that the midwife copies into it, but the work as a whole doesn't stick to this formula, to its detriment I think. Certain passages break the illusion, providing information on what's going on in other parts of the world, or giving us the unhappy story of what happens to two former companions after they part ways with the unnamed midwife.
A good read, despite my quibbles.

Crossposts: http://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/948822.html

Science journalist and umbraphile David Baron makes canny use of the upcoming solar eclipse to market this fine story of the 1878 eclipse, and the efforts of the nascent scientific power of the US to observe and record the event in what was then a pretty wild west as the path crossed from Montana Territory through Wyoming and Colorado to Texas.

Among the teams being assembled:

Simon Newcomb and Thomas Edison in Creston, Wyoming.
Samuel Pierpont Langley atop Pikes Peak. (Meteorologist Cleveland Abbe was so struck with altitude sickness, he was obliged to come down the mountain and make what sketches he could.)
Asteroid hunter James Craig Watson in Rawlins, Wyoming.
And a team of six from Vassar, including recent alumnae and astronomer Maria Mitchell, providing witting and unwitting fodder to the controversies surrounding the vote for women, and recent claims on the effects of education on women, epitomized by Clarke's ridiculous-yet-infuriating Sex in Education (1876):

The delicate bloom, early but rapidly fading beauty, and singular pallor of American girls and women have almost passed into proverb. The first observation of a European that lands upon our shores is, that our women are a feeble race ; and, if he is a physiological observer, he is sure to add, They will give birth to a feeble race, not of women only, but of men as well. " I never saw before so many pretty girls together," said Lady Amberley to the writer, after a visit to the public schools of Boston ; and then added, "They all looked sick." Circumstances have repeatedly carried me to Europe, where I am always surprised by the red blood that fills and colors the faces of ladies and peasant girls, reminding one of the canvas of Rubens and Murillo ; and am always equally surprised on my return, by crowds of pale, bloodless female faces, that suggest consumption, scrofula, anemia, and neuralgia. To a large extent, our present system of educating girls is the cause of this palor and weakness.
...
Those grievous maladies which torture a woman's earthly existence, called leucorrhcea, amenorrhcea, dysmenorrhoea, chronic and acute ovaritis, prolapsus uteri, hysteria, neuralgia, and the like, are indirectly affected by food, clothing, and exercise ; they are directly and largely affected by the causes that will be presently pointed out, and which arise from a neglect of the peculiarities of a woman's organization. The regimen of our schools fosters this neglect.

The book does a great job setting the stage for who all the players are, and their preparations and difficulties in getting equipment (or failing to get equipment) to the middle of nowhere, with dangers ranging from Native Americans to feuds between competing railroads.

And then, of course, the event itself is all of three minutes long.

And there is what follows. The good (American science on the upswing, Mitchell drawing a crowd of more than a thousand to hear her lecture at the Woman's Congress in Providence), the bad (Edison's much-touted but not very useful tasimeter, although presaging IR astronomy), and the ugly (Watson's erroneous claim of the discovery of Vulcan, a planet within the orbit of Mercury -- his later misguided efforts to vindicate his view may have inadvertently led to his early death).

Crossposts: http://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/948431.html

Many people have recently opined about the justifiability of punching a Nazi(*) in the face. A surprising (to me) number of people are for it.

(*)To clarify, unless we're talking about these six Nazis, at best there are 'neo-Nazis' these days, or 'jerks with hateful ideas who are dangerously close to the levers of power'.

I test the Nazi punch hypothesis out in my own mind, and I just find it hard to accept. I mean, what if it was a lady Nazi? In Romeo Must Die, Aaliyah wisely observes that "in America, if a girl is kicking your ass, you do not have to be a gentleman." Honestly, I'm egalitarian enough that if a boy or girl is kicking your ass, you do not have to be a gentleperson.

And yes, if a boy or girl is kicking that helpless person over there's ass, this probably requires some intervention.

But these rules are not just about kicks and asses. They should be good for punches and faces. "Hey you! Anonymous coward punching an unsuspecting guy in the face! What's wrong with you?"

Anyway, some dudes may have some archaic patriarchal misgivings about punching a lady Nazi. Perhaps they could do something else generally considered illegal or antisocial? Maybe they could throw rocks at them or grab their pussies? This new moral hypothesis opens up so many interesting questions!

But it's fraught with so many logistical difficulties. I mean, not every neo-Nazi will go to the trouble of tattooing 88 on his forehead. They might look like anybody! If only we could form an organization that could identify them based on objective criteria and make them wear distinctive clothing or something, so we'd know who to punch.

But there seem to be deeper flaws that worry me. A lot.

If we decide that, for a certain class of people, we no longer have to treat them with the usual rules of civility and humanity, it would seem (to avoid being hypocrites) that other people could use this same hypothesis to justify treating other classes of people as sub-human.

Wait a moment! Have I fallen into Bizarro world? Nazis treating certain classes of people as sub-human is one of the justifications for treating them as subhuman. I have it all backward! It's not that we would be hypocrites to NOT allow other people to think this way in the future. It's that other people thinking that way in the past made US start to think like them.

You can't fight an ideology by implicitly accepting its tenets. You are strengthening it by making it the only way of looking at the world.

Now some have correctly pointed out that neo-Nazis can be experts at using 'the System' to quash opposition. "Oh, we're the victims, save us, save us, Law & Order!"

So then I ask: Why the fuck would you fall into their trap by punching people on the street? Are you stupid?

The good guys also have some experts at using 'the System', from politicians to judges to civil rights lawyers. I'm neither, but I expect they would advise you to refrain from punching people in the face.

Because it does play into their trap. Punch a few Nazis, set fire to a building, and the system might restrict the rights to "habeas corpus, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, the right of free association and public assembly, the secrecy of the post and telephone". In the name of security. To protect the crybabies.

And what is the goal of Nazipunch? What positive result is achieved?

When Obama was elected, the racists were gnashing their teeth, and afraid, and the left held out its hand and said:

And the dummies on the right were afraid Obama was going to grab their guns and put them in FEMA camps.

And so they hid in their bunkers, clutching their guns and bibles, despising the left, falling into their own groupthink, biding their time until... well, until their savior appeared. And they voted for him, to the astonishment of all those who thought they were safely and silently encapsulated in gun-lined bunkers where their unchallenged ideologies couldn't possibly hurt anybody.

And you know what? As dumb as they are, they played by the rules. In the state houses, the governor's mansions, the House and Senate, and now the White House. It's true that "democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time".

Now the shoe is on the other foot.

And the other side is afraid Trump is going to grab their pussies and put them in death camps.

It's all very familiar. Not all that different.

Now this is not to say that everything is fine. Trump's actions have real effects on pussies and Syrians and so on. But do you know how many pussies get contraception coverage on their insurance when you punch a Nazi?

Zero.

If anything, it plays into the hands of crybaby Nazis.

If you are conspiracy minded, well... probably you have already written me off as a closet Nazi, but consider this.

We know the Russians want to create chaos in our country.

We know the Russians have worked hard to get the dumb-dumb right to distrust the government, distrust the mainstream media, and listen only to RT.com and Breitbart.

Fortunately, we on the left are waaaaay too smart to be manipulated by Russian propaganda. Right? Right? No one would be suckered in by the idea that democracy or free speech are inherently flawed concepts, and are better replaced by punches in the face. Angry moron Trump voters wanted to blow up the system. Only idiots would want to blow it up bigger.

A well-known Greenwich Republican called a town worker "nothing but a bloodsucking lazy union employee" and later reached in from behind to place his hand between her legs and pinch her in the groin area, according to the police arrest warrant.

He allegedly replied: "I love this new world, I no longer have to be politically correct," according to the warrant.

I didn't have high hopes for this book, but I heard there might be some Lovecraftian elements. In the sense that a big monstrous being with some powers of mind control was in hibernation deep under the water and gets woken up by the sciences straining too far in one direction, yes it is Lovecraftian. But in any real sense, it is not Lovecraftian. John Brunner wrote many great novels; this is not among them.

Favorite moment: male scientist hero type assumes that attractive female scientists without boyfriends must have something seriously wrong with them. Fortunately, he overcomes this prejudice and marries attractive female scientist.

Anyway, go read Stand on Zanzibar.

So there's been a bit of a kerfuffle.

The enigmachat email list has, over the years, died down in frequency to near moribund levels. But it perked up again with the campaign and questions about ballot initiatives. I gave my opinions. And there was a little back and forth. And then Darnell stuck his nose in with his usual flat-affected poorly-expressed stupidity. Now, I've only met Darnell in person a couple times, and nothing of much note occurred, but most of his email conversation has been repugnant and poorly thought out and expressed, as was this instance. So, because for me, he is only an object of disdain, detestation, and occasional humor, I tried to elicit further commentary from him, hoping to hear him express more poor, repugnant opinions for the edification of all (i.e. so that everyone would know he's an idiot with repugnant views).

But things took a turn.

thefayth went off. "I am deeply distressed by the email I received today on the EnigmaChat mailing list by Mr. Darnell Coleman that continues a cycle of inappropriate statements and behavior over the last 5 years." [my emphasis]

For better or worse, this message hit me before dawn, before coffee, and the first couple responses I saw firmed up my impression, also influenced by certain whispers and gossip, that this was not just about ideas and words, but behavior. And then I fucking went off.

There was a blinding flash of crystal clarity that, although I saw Darnell as an object of ridicule with stupid ideas, and that (only in comparison, mind you) I could be Vol-fucking-taire in amusing myself in showing him up... in actual fact, he was causing harm to people. And so:

Thanks, Faith.

I detest Darnell. I have only met him once or twice, so most of my interaction has been online. But that has been quite enough to last a lifetime.

His opinions are usually offensive, and always poorly thought out and expressed.

Current leadership will have to decide whether his poisonous contributions to the club require action within the guidelines of the group.

I am sensitive to the issue of viewpoint discrimination. I wouldn't want him to be removed simply for holding, or even expressing, unpopular beliefs. But it may well be that his behavior has reached a point that necessitates action.

Looking back, Enigma has from time-to-time had its own little basket of deplorables. From the painfully socially inept, to the gropy, to the political morons, to the religious bigots, to the anti-religious bigots (hi!).

The (rarely used) solution has generally been to encourage the deplorables to 'self-deport'. Make it clear that many people in the club don't want them there. And maybe the best way to make that clear is for many people to actually express it to him.

For the sake of our inboxes, people should write to Darnell personally. However, it might be useful as a record if you could also post a comment in Faith's post to the Enigma Facebook group, so that the powers that be can gauge the sentiment of the members.

But while I have the floor...

Darnell... go away and don't come back. I don't want you in my club. Your negative presence distresses many members and detracts from their experience. I fear you may be a psychic vampire who derives some sick pleasure from distressing others; if so, please find help. Or at least find some other group to infest, because the villagers here are sharpening their stakes. If not, just go already.

I realize (both before and after coffee) that this was an extreme and extrajudicial step. But it was also clear to me that the judicial process had been tried, and those who had complained had received no satisfaction. I do feel for the people in leadership of the club, who are in a difficult position. But I mouthed off.

And pretty soon it was clear that the leadership was taking this seriously, and I tried my best to shut the fuck up, and let them work.

But the response to my incendiary post, and a few like it, was fascinating to me.

>>***: I think using a public forum to do this is unjustifiable and unnecessary, and I don't want to be a part of it.

>Thank you for saying that, ***. I agree fully that such an extremely public discussion is, at the very least, unkind.

Aye ***, well spoken sir.

My visceral reaction to the middle comment was: "Absolutely. Yes, it was unkind. I would be mortified if I was accidentally that unkind, no-- rude, to someone. This was calculated and intentional."

But the weight of these comments coming together in a row finally gave me some insight into what it is like to be 'gaslighted' to use the common parlance.

Maybe I was wrong for backing up Faith. Maybe going through official channels was the best way to deal with it. Maybe I was wrong to be intentionally and publicly rude to Darnell. Maybe this is a witch hunt, and for once I'm the torch-bearing idiot.

Then

alpiyn dropped a nuclear bomb. As much as I was feeling gaslighted for picking on a moron who had done nothing worse to me than be a moron, how much worse or more alienated would people feel who had actually been harmed by this moron?

Now, I'm an old fart. And there's a new generation that's taken over. And that's as it should be. But I find it strange that I have (ok, had!) this idea that the younger crowd are much more up-to-date on this shit than the old fart brigade. We old farts roll our eyes at, "Do I have your explicit consent to nibble your left earlobe?" And we old farts who adore the First Amendment are a bit leery of the new guard's desire to curtail unpleasant speech. But I had this idea that the little pupal SJWs of today are out trying to make 'safe spaces' for everyone to enjoy. And at least in this case, it turned out to be a bunch of crap.

But at least I was right about the fuckdoodly First Amendment cuntborking.

When the official response came, part of it was this.

1) Many of these grievances spawn from online interactions and statements from this individual. In particular, many of them come from threads in the enigma-chat emailing list that is primarily populated by older alums of the club. The individual has been removed from these lists, as well as blocked from this group. That being said, it must stated that some in the officership were unaware of the existence of this list, and we believe that many of the current members who attend weekly meetings were also unaware of its existence. In light of this, we wish to formally disavow the enigma-chat list and leave it in the hands of the alumni. The enigma-chat list will remain as an opt-in option for all members, but we will not be responsible for its content. The transition of moderator responsibility shall take place in the coming week.
2) As for the individual’s continued membership in the club, we have yet to reach a verdict. We are speaking with our advisers on the best course of action to take to avoid repercussions.

Now again, I realize the leadership is in a tough position, and everything does have to be done in accordance with the guidelines (as I called for in my original rant), and this may take time. But I still think it's sad that the old farts on the email list get unceremoniously shitcanned, while judgment is reserved in the case of the malefactor. To be fair, this message was released before alpiyn unleashed hellfire.

It's also interesti.. no, infuriating, that some of the messaging has been that all of the complaints have been about just ideas and words. But Faith's message does mention behavior. My message explicitly protects ideas and expression, but draws the line at behavior. Again, I hope that the official response, when it comes, takes into account whether it was merely expression of unpopular views, or if it was behavior that created a hostile environment.

But getting back to one of the shortest of the many soapboxes I've stood on in this rant, enigmachat is too full of the free discourse of ideas and poopoo words to be a part of what the club wants to be in this day and age.

So in conclusion...

Fuck you in your fatherfisting cloaca!

/mic drop

I met Jim in Portland at the HPLFF. I was intrigued by a horror-tinged mystery novel with the action set at a girls' school. Dr. Pookie and I both love a couple such, written by female authors -- Gaudy Night, by Dorothy Sayers & Miss Pym Disposes, by Josephine Tey. It was too much to hope that Smiley's first novel would live up to those. And it doesn't, though it's really of a different genre -- more hard-boiled pulp detective. He has some good, snappy dialogue and character interaction, but there's a lot to be desired. Ostensibly set in Prohibition-era Los Angeles, there are very few details that set the scene in either time or place. Of course, as an Angeleno, one of my favorite things is reading a story set in my town that feels like my town. And it's a consequent bugaboo if it's not done well. As a feminist, another one of my favorite things is female characters that have more than one dimension. And it's a consequent bugaboo if it's not done well. Most of the students at the school may actually have zero dimensions; they are shuttled from a dorm to another place to keep them safe, but I'll be damned if anyone actually ever talks to them, or asks them questions about the murder in their midst.

Okay, I'm not trying real hard to complete the bookchallenge thing, but I'm trying a little.

Anyway, I was thinking I could get a two-fer with...

Pulitzer-Prizewinning
A Play

Being a vulgarian, I'm not that into drama, but I looked at some of the recent winners, and there were a few that piqued my interest, but I was hoping for a cheap Kindle edition. Or in fact, any Kindle edition. After some frustrating looking, I said fuckit, let's go with the first ever Drama winner from 1917: Why Marry?

It's interesting as a time capsule, but not just for historical interest. I think the reviewer in the link is right that "I think a fascinating paper would be a queer reading of this play, especially because many of Helen and Ernest’s thoughts about marriage are reminiscent of rhetoric currently being used on both sides of the gay marriage/civil union argument."

It's also very timely given the notoriety of Nobel Prize-winner Tim Hunt's recent comments about women in the lab. The main couple in the play are scientists who work together, and it sounds very much like "you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you."

But things stand in the way of their happiness. He's poor-ish, and if he married her, he wouldn't be able to keep her in style, but she doesn't want that, she wants to continue working in the lab, and other characters representing cultural and religious forces disapprove of various parts of the plan. They get worked into a state where she won't marry him on principle, and he won't take her to McGuffinland to continue his research if she's a single lady. They nearly get things worked out to go and live and work together in sin, and that offends everybody. And on to the conclusion.

Anyway, the play may also be of interest to women in the sciences, and those who love them.

From the foreword by the author:
"When this play was first published most people were not thinking along these lines. Such ideas were considered radical then. They will soon be old-fashioned—even on the stage. Kind and discriminating as the critics have been in regard to this comedy (a discriminating critic being, of course, one who praises your play)...
...
They do not object to finding fault with mankind because "you can't change human nature," as they are fond of telling you with an interesting air of originality. But laws, customs, and ideals can be changed, can be improved. Therefore they cry: "Hands off! How dare you!" Man made human institutions, therefore we reverence them."

( Lines )

A History of American Secularism

A fascinating look at the idea of secular government from the Founders to the present, and how the idea has shifted from Enlightenment ideals to the Golden Age of Freethought in the 19th century, when the Great Agnostic Ingersoll could give the nominating speech for a Republican candidate for president (even in the good old days, when Republicans were the party of abolition). To the emergence of fundamentalism in the early 20th and its later common cause partnership with conservative Catholicism, and the response with the freethinker's coalition with liberal Protestantism and (secular) Judaism.

The historical detail is quite excellent, but as the time grows nearer the present, a hint of polemicism arises. I don't disagree with her, but the shift in tone is noticeable in the last chapter or so.

( And yes, the blockquotes )
✓one-word title

Slate tipped me off to South Carolina's amicus brief to the Supremes.

"Furthermore, the traditional family, with the husband as unquestioned head, was the foundation of the Fourteenth Amendment framers’ world. The framers deeply believed the family was the “primary unit of social and political action at the time. . . .” Farnsworth, Women Under Reconstruction: The Congressional Understanding, 94 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1229, 1236 (2000). One senator feared giving women the vote would disturb “‘. . . the family circle, which is even of higher obligation than the obligation of Government.’” Id., (quoting Cong. Globe, 42nd Cong., 2d Sess. 845 (1872)). Thus, Section Two of the Amendment eliminated women from the franchise.
Having this mindset, the Amendment’s framers certainly did not intend to dismantle, but fought to preserve, state marriage laws. Indeed, skeptical congressmen insisted that these remain unaffected by the Amendment. Many feared that state disabilities placed upon married women, such as property ownership, would be undermined by an earlier Amendment draft. However, such concerns were al- layed in the Amendment’s final wording."

I guess this is what happens when you double-down on the definition of traditional marriage -- you know, the kind where wives have no separate legal existence and cannot own property in their own name.

On the lighter side, there's the brief from the gay men married to women, who argue that they would be harmed by legal same-sex marriage: "A constitutional mandate requiring same-sex marriage sends a harmful message that it is impossible, unnatural, and dangerous for the same-sex attracted to marry members of the opposite sex."

Lotsa people want to kibbitz on this one.

Profile

essentialsaltes

May 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

Syndicate

Page Summary

After Many a Summer (Dies the Swan) - Greener Than You Think
Galileo & the Science Deniers / Mediocre
Warm Worlds & Otherwise, The House in the Cerulean Sea, The Last of Us II
Altered Behavior Changes Minds
Farnham's Freehold, by Robert A Heinlein
Lovecraft Country & 50% of Down Girl
The Glass Universe, by Dava Sobel
Entitled White Dude Adventures
Pervy jerks in (and some out of) the skeptical movement
Invaders from Rigel, by Fletcher Pratt
The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, by Meg Ellison
American Eclipse, by David Baron
Nazipunch 2017
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a hand grabbing a human pussy - forever.
The Atlantic Abomination, by John Brunner
Torches and Pitchforks
Girls' Night In, by Jim Smiley
Why Marry? by Jesse Lynch Williams
Freethinkers, by Susan Jacoby
Wait, not just forbidding gay marriage, but we can subjugate our wives, too? Score!

Style Credit

Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Jun. 7th, 2025 09:34 am

Journal of No. 118

Entries tagged with malebutnotnarrow

After Many a Summer (Dies the Swan) - Greener Than You Think

Galileo & the Science Deniers / Mediocre

Warm Worlds & Otherwise, The House in the Cerulean Sea, The Last of Us II

Altered Behavior Changes Minds

Farnham's Freehold, by Robert A Heinlein

Lovecraft Country & 50% of Down Girl

The Glass Universe, by Dava Sobel

Entitled White Dude Adventures

Pervy jerks in (and some out of) the skeptical movement

Invaders from Rigel, by Fletcher Pratt

The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, by Meg Ellison

American Eclipse, by David Baron

Nazipunch 2017

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a hand grabbing a human pussy - forever.

The Atlantic Abomination, by John Brunner

Torches and Pitchforks

Girls' Night In, by Jim Smiley

Why Marry? by Jesse Lynch Williams

Freethinkers, by Susan Jacoby

Wait, not just forbidding gay marriage, but we can subjugate our wives, too? Score!