Ruminate

Last week I had the opportunity to travel to Ruby, Alaska (meta, meta, meta), a small village about 250 miles west of Fairbanks along the Yukon River (leave it to a jazz-dork like me to work in the obvious Monk reference). I had a pretty good time from start to finish… and I’m not just saying that because the Boss travelled with me.

Some things that stood out:

• A beautiful, early morning (small plane) flight in with the moon shining on the icy river in front and the pink glow of the sun about to rise behind. The flight black was glorious and clear as well, miles of visibility from the Yukon flats to the mountains.
• Being back in a village again where things are (ostensibly) simpler and one feels bad not waving to strangers. But the man hauling the mail who gave us a ride from the landing strip told us about his satellite digital television and DSL internet connection.
• Riding in the back of a pickup truck, temp perhaps 0, taking the long way along with our suitcases and a new dogsled destined for another village that was also taking the flight. That was a brisk trip.
• Meeting great people, each unique, but falling into three camps: those who grew up in a place like Ruby, those who could only be happy in a place like Ruby and should be glad to have found themselves there, and those who are there by happy accident.
• The incongruity of discussions about Bosnian wine and good wine brokers in a small house on the bluffs of the Yukon.
• Kids outside actually playing, in groups, without a Playstation or an elaborate playground set. Just a bunch of kids with sleds, sticks, shovels, and imagination. For hours. A trait that seems to be lost when children have so much outside stimulation that they forget that they have the same thing inside.
• Eight year olds buzzing around on snowmachines and four-wheelers.
• Eighty year olds buzzing around on snowmachines and four-wheelers.
• That small-town feeling of not planning too far ahead. Not sure how you will get here or there? Don’t worry, we’ll just ask someone. Could you imagine asking the mailman at your airport to give you a ride and drop you off at City Hall?

It was a fun trip that reminded me of some of the better aspects of a small town where I spent too many years growing up. Not that I plan to move there anytime soon, but there is something appealing about the thought of having a small house above the river replete with satellite internet, television and a well-stocked wine-cellar…

I know technology is difficult for reporters to get their heads around, and they often aren’t specialists… but sometimes I just have to shake my head. In a recent story about Google’s acquisition of Pyra Labs:

The combination of Pyra and Google seems unlikely on the surface. Google helps people find information online, while Blogger helps them publish it.

No, not those talking heads. But you have to admire the evolution of White House media strategy as it evolves. For the last few weeks we have had the Administration arguing for war directly. As this has not been particularly persuasive, and events with the UN (while fun to watch, in a perverse sense) have not gone their way, you can see the beginning of a new approach taking shape. This Sunday we are treated not to more White House flunkeys (and in this category I include Colin Powell, whose about face at the behest of the administration on the issue of Iraq nicely obliterated my misplaced respect for the man), but to actors and actresses. Janeane Garofalo? Mike Farrell? These are the best commentators to speak for those who are against waging war in Iraq?

Of course not. But, taking a page from the same playbook of capitalizing upon dissatisfaction amongst the common man that allowed a pinhead like George W. to get elected in the first place, now the news outlets find room for celebrity spokesmen that are sure to do two things: appease the rich liberals who are oblivious to the cult of celebrity they are a part of, and enrage the supporters on the left, stirring their support for military action. It doesn’t hurt that all those dissatisfied voters will be riled up by those lib-uh-ral celeb-erties that are just mad they can’t book the Lincoln Bedroom any longer, propping up the numbers for a while longer.

The icing on the cake is that these celebs should have said “don’t talk to us” and forced them to talk to dissenters in the ranks of policy wonks and political think-tanks. Instead we get Captain B.J. Hunnicutt, old and traumatized from his time in the Korean M*A*S*H unit, debating about the prospect for a military solution, a prospect more entertaining than Saturday Night Life for someone like Karl Rove. You really can’t make this stuff up.

Check out the fake Caleb Carr comment regarding my little post about his pathetic piece of pedantry disguised as poor sci-fi.

To the poster (Alex) I say: Gee, “Caleb” — you also use the Alaskan company GCI for your internet access? Interestingly enough, one of the many useless pieces of information that I the Internet has given me is a simple method to check an IP address of the sender when a comment is submitted. Perhaps if you had any understanding of the technology you rant about in such a shallow manner you would be able to do a bit better.

The difficulties with “Caleb’s” argument are many:

First, my little weblog claims to be nothing but my opinion. Most novels should be better than 99% of the information that’s here, at least for artistic purposes (and I exclude my serious reviews and poetry, which I think withstand scrutiny), since that is not their point. Too bad Killing Time is not.

Second, you are confused about the nature of the problems we face when it comes to information overload, confusion, and mass media. I attribute this to the kind of shallow reasoning represented by the shallow book in question. That the erstwhile Mr. Carr would bring up similarly superficial attempts at profundity such as those by Steven Spielberg (stick with the Dick, I say, when it comes to Minority Report… Philip K. did it better), almost makes my own point for me.

Finally, if Carr intends to try to find his way back to writing works with any artistic merit, he would do well to go back to Whitman, Dostoevsky, and others, who had (and continue to have) a sharpness of intellect that makes them even more relevant today. Perhaps some Dickens too, while you are at it– that is even more obvious.

The real problem here, as I see it, is that dull arguments like those forwarded by Carr are only good for as long as their apparent novelty can be maintained. When one realizes that it has ever been thus, and that the fundamental issues under discussion really haven’t changed in the past fifty years, just their guises… well, they become distinctions comprising no difference. And boring. Like the book was.

But then, this was never about the book, right? I suspect it was just Alex’s (though whoever it was, at least they are allowing me to make up for the time I wasted reading the book!) attempt to “elevate” this weblog. An effort no less ironic than it would have been if Carr really had defended himself on the Internet regarding his book that maintains how evil the medium is…

If an author wants to write a book whose primary purpose seems to be to make a point, then either the point she is making better be incredibly profound, or the book so nuanced and textured that you are willing to forgive a little pedantry. Thoreau could craft a fine paragraph. Whitman crafted many fine lines. Camus was a master of atmosphere and deep questions. Dostoevsky wrapped his ideas in signature plots of complexity and unreasonably moving human emotion.

Caleb Carr is capable of none of these things, and his apparent philosophical position is about as deep as Anna Nicole after a blow to the head.

I have read Carr’s more popular early novels: The Alienist, which was an interesting mystery that took great advantage of Carr’s research into late 19th century New York, and then Angel of Darkness, a re-tread of his first book that prompted me to check the cover many times to see if I was reading that first book again. This should have been fair warning of the dreck to come.

In Killing Time, Carr has written a bad science fiction novel whose sole purpose for existence is to support his contention that the Internet is an evil force that must be regulated by the government before it destroys us all. Let me say that I am a fan of much science fiction, and recognize it as a genre that demands close attention, study and craftsmanship. Apparently Carr does not feel quite the same way. There are many wonderful works of speculative fiction that make forceful philosophical points within the framework of a powerful fiction. Killing Time does not.

I can’t bear to synopsize the book, but here is the copy from the book jacket.

In some ways, Carr’s novel is a throwback to the earlist sci-fi, with cardboard characters, unrealistic technology, and an outlandish plot sans any credible explanation of how things got the way they are. In this way it is almost a good children’s book except that, because of the polemical, anti-Internet tone, any sense of wonder or delight, even of the juvenile variety, is lost. The technology is unrealistic, but not fantastic. The plot exists only to convey the “unrestricted information flow is bad” theme.

Perhaps being the child of a Beatnik murderer has driven Carr to an unrelenting and unreasonable need for order and external authority. I don’t know. But I find a deeply flawed philosophical or political message much less offensive than that same position masquerading as a piece of art, which is offensive to readers and writers alike.

I’m glad to know there are other people with keyboard fetishes like mine. I still use and love my clicky IBM keyboard that was made in 1988. Hard to believe there is any piece of computer equipment that dates back to my high school graduation that not only still works perfectly, but is much better than its competitors! This may be the only computer peripheral in which quality has constantly decreased.

There is nothing as nice as typing on a good mechanical keyboard with tactile and audible feedback. And these keyboards go for a song on Ebay (though the shipping– if the bastards will ship it to you– will be a bit more than the featherweight keyboards of today. Plus you get a coiled keyboard cable that is about six feet long so you can remove your nose from the glass of your 21 inch monitor.

There are a few other keyboards I would like to get my hands on. In particular, the Northgate Evolution or similar that combines the mechnical switches with a natural layout. I could live without the touchpad. And I have to live without the $199 price tag!

Here’s an interesting use of numbers for you: since only a million Americans demonstrated against war in Iraq on Saturday, that means that less than 1/3 of 1% of Americans are against it, so the “liberal media” should be ashamed of themselves for lying through their teeth that the protests are significant.

I find this interesting when 20 people blocking access to a clinic that happens to perform abortion is supposed to, at the same time, represent a national moral mandate.

Is it really too much to ask that talking heads have even a basic understanding of 4th grade math? I mean that literally, too, since my son– who really is in 4th grade– was just studying polls, percentages, and representation a few weeks ago.

And while I am at it, France does owe us something… they owe us the respect to treat us as intellectual equals– and honestly– despite the vagaries of our representation in the White House. They don’t owe us the dubious “favor” of rolling over like a lapdog at every stupid idea our shallow representatives manage to come up with. Ironically, by standing up to the bully on the block, France should be gaining more respect from the Cowboy Bush because they are showing true American-style grit. But that would be too logical wouldn’t it?

Man, I am tired of losers who will not ship packages to Alaska. Look, boneheads: we are a US State. UPS, FedEx, and the Post Office all ship here. You don’t have to do anything special to the package (no waterproofing, no customs declarations). You don’t have to know any foreign languages like Alaskanese or Not-From-the-Contiguous-United-States-ian. All you have to do is shove the damn stuff in a box, address them, and mail them just like you would if you were sending a package to your friends in far away and foreign Maine or Washington. We know it might cost a few bucks more, and we are willing to pay. Even the online shipping cost calculators work using those newfangled Zip Code things you all use down in the civilized parts. Believe it or not, we use them too, having given up on smoke signals and semaphores a few years back.

It is especially annoying when the seller says “buyer pays actual shipping cost, we ship UPS or FedEx, no shipments to Alaska or Hawaii.” Why? WHY???

P.S. this is a geek related item because it seems that all the cool geek things I want to buy have this caveat on the part of the pinhead sellers.

Not sure how I feel about this deal. I like what Blogger did with the weblog to make it open and accessible to all, and they have certainly suffered in the last years from becoming too big for their britches: the constantly slow service, downtime, and incredibly slow implementation of useful features (not to mention the inherent limits in providing as web-based application of this sort) drove me away from them. And if there is any company that can take Blogger to the next level (both in simple terms of availability and capability, but also in the more complicated terms of making something more out of weblogs than they are while not “corporatizing” them), it is Google, who has yet to make a bad move as far as I am concerned.

Still, I am of a conflicted nature about weblogging and its use and potential (even though I am posting this in one), a subjet I should come back to when I have the energy…

I too was underwhelmed by Eggers’ Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, thinking that it was way below the work of David Foster Wallace, one of my favorite authors.

But not nearly as underwhelmed as this guy.