What I’ve been reading

Posted on March 21, 2009 by drdzoe

– A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway.  I’m not quite sure why I picked up this one, except that I heard it discussed on the radio one day and it caught my attention.  I found Hemingway’s emotional distance from his characters to be a bit off-putting – although it’s written in first-person, the narrator never really discusses his feelings about things, just the events themselves.  But that said, I did enjoy it overall.  Certainly well worth the time I spent on it.

– The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol 3: From Red River to Appomattox, by Shelby Foote.  I wrote about volumes 1 and 2 of this, which I read last summer.  Volume 3 was also excellent, though some of the things in it did annoy me.  In particular, I am an admirer of Grant and his generalship.  I think that Foote, although not the fan of Grant that I am, did him justice in the previous volumes.  But in this one, when Grant squares off against Lee (whom Foote reveres more than I do Grant), I think he gave Grant short shrift.  A warning: Civil War geekery follows.

In particular, look at the discussion of Cold Harbor, admittedly not Grant’s finest moment.  But Foote particularly castigates Grant for not providing detailed planning for the assault, instead setting general goals and leaving it to his subordinates to work out the details.  But about two pages later, Foote discusses Meade and his actions at Cold Harbor.  Meade was the actual commander of the Army of the Potomac, serving under Grant, who was general-in-chief of all of the Union armies, though Grant was present with that army for almost all of 1864.  Foote tells how in the previous battles of the 1864 campaign, Meade had provided the detailed planning, but at Cold Harbor, annoyed at the lack of recognition that he was getting, Meade sat out the planning.

Now Foote does not put two and two together here.  Up until this point, Grant had provided general guidance while Meade provided detailed planning.  But at Cold Harbor, when no one provided detailed planning, Foote blames Grant.  To my mind, the blame here lies primarily on Meade.

But I will say that aside from this, Foote is consistently readable.  I particularly enjoyed his discussion of the gradual collapse of the Confederacy – there was a real sense of poignancy in the abandonment of Richmond, the gradual surrender of the armies in the field, and the sight of the soldiers making their way home as best they could.  (And it was clear Foote would treat this as something special when I realized that I still had 300 pages to go in the book and there was only a month left to the war.)

If you want to read 3000 pages on the Civil War that focuses primarily on the military campaigns, Foote is hard to beat.  (If you want a shorter read that does a better job of covering the entire period, including a more detailed description of how we ended up in the war, I’d recommend James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom instead.)

– The Nibelung’s Ring by Peter Bassett.  I’ve been spending a lot of time listening to the radio show Radiolab lately, and have mentioned it here previously.  One episode that I caught up to on the podcast was about Richard Wagner’s opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen.  I’ve been toying with the idea of trying to pick up opera lately, and this show made Wagner sound extremely attractive.

But Wagner’s opera cycle is a huge work of art – four operas spread over 15 hours in a language that I don’t know.  I figured that I’d need to do a little homework before diving into it.  The Nibelung’s Ring was my homework.  It’s an overview of the operas, covering the musical elements, the plot, and the history of their writing.  Overall, I found it to be a bit fluffy – I did not need to hear about Wagner’s genius quite as much as I did, or how sublime this or that moment is.  But it gave me a basic grounding, and Julie and I have started watching the operas themselves.  So far, we’ve watched “Das Rheingold,” the first opera, and enjoyed it far more than I hoped.  So I suppose I got what I wanted from this book.

– A special bonus movie recommendation: Julie and I went to see “Duplicity” last night.  A great caper flick built around a solid romance in which Clive Owens and Julia Roberts play former spies now working in corporate espionage.  I strongly recommend it – in particular, it makes a great date movie.

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How I became a Randroid (I got better)

Posted on March 6, 2009 by drdzoe

There’s been some talk in the news lately of the disgruntled wealthy, upset about Obama’s intention to raise taxes on the well-to-do to levels a bit lower than existed during the presidency of Saint Ronald, going on strike.  In this, they follow the pattern set out in Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, in which the industrial leaders of the nation all decide to go on strike, resulting in a collapse of the economy and government.  And while I do not intend to argue about the correctness of their action (though I would hope that a discerning reader could, on examination of the tone of this paragraph, deduce what my opinion on the issue might be), this does remind me of my days as a Randroid, or obsessive follower of the teachings of Ayn Rand, lo these many years ago.  And of the tale of the grand romantic quest that led me to this state.

Flash back to the year 1980.  I was a senior in high school, and carrying a torch for a girl who had recently departed for college.  I had dated this girl off and on for much of the previous year, and she was a good match for me.  Smart, beautiful, with a vast reserve of self-composure, and, perhaps most importantly, almost as geeky as I was: I had met her at a game of Dungeons and Dragons, and we had spent much time playing that and other roleplaying games over the past year.

In one of those games, this girl played a dwarf named Dagny Taggart.  I had picked up a hint that the name had some special significance to her, but I never could get her to tell me what it was.  (Did I mention that, in addition to being smart, beautiful, composed, and geeky, this girl could also be terribly mysterious and stubborn?)  But that didn’t matter, because I decided that I was going to find out who this Dagny Taggart was, if for no other reason then because it would give me another hint about what went on behind those beautiful blue eyes that seemed so far away.

Now youngens, let me tell you of an age long ago, an age before they had an Internet.  Today, finding Dagny Taggart would be no problem – after all, she has her own Wikipedia page, which is just one of Google’s 31,900 results from querying on her name.  Finding the meaning of Dagny Taggart would be the matter of a five second websearch, not the cause of a grand romantic quest.  (It makes one wonder how other famous stories would turn out had Google been around.  “Rosebud?  Well, querying ‘Charles Foster Kane rosebud’ returns this post from his mom’s blog about how little Charlie is out playing with his sled.”)

Back then, though, we were in the information dark ages, and the best resource for those looking for answers was something called a Library.  So I went there, intending to find Dagny Taggart, to unlock a little part of my beloved’s heart.

The Encyclopedia Britannica, being much less comprehensive than Wikipedia, was no use.  And the librarian, no substitute for Google, did not help either.

But I was not daunted.  In fact, I was starting to get obsessed.  I had gotten into the habit of closing my letters to this fair damsel with the phrase “Who is Dagny Taggart?”  I was even writing it on the outside of the envelopes.

(Another note to the young: “letters” were what we used to call email, and envelopes were their packaging.  Rather quaint, I know, but you could put messages on the envelopes in ways that you can’t really put them in the email headers (unless you’re particularly geeky, that is, and even then they probably would never get read), so the old ways did have their charms.)

Finally, I reached the last resort, the one thing that no self-respecting teenage boy would ever do, certainly not as a solution to a romantic quest.  I asked my mother.  She, a former English teacher, did not immediately recognize the name.  But it did sound familiar.  After a little thought, she said that Dagny Taggart might be a character from a novel she had heard of back in college, something called The Fountainhead. And so it was back to the library for me.

I did not find Dagny Taggart in The Fountainhead. But I did find something almost as good – I found a high school diploma.  And not just any high school diploma, but the diploma of my romantic idol’s twin sister.  (Did I mention that she had a twin?  No, I suppose I left that part out.)

Don’t get the wrong image here: I did not find a full-sized diploma, all wrapped and sealed, sitting lodged in the binding of the novel.  Ayn Rand’s books aren’t quite that big.  But our high school, in addition to the full scroll, gave graduating seniors a identity-card sized diploma, which I suppose would serve if said graduate wanted to keep a constant reminder of the old alma mater available for constant review in the wallet.  This was that wallet-sized diploma, wedged between two pages of the library’s copy of The Fountainhead.

(I later returned it to my girlfriend’s sister with the words, “The next time you spend four years working to get a bookmark, you might want to be more careful where you leave it.”  She, less charmed by my sense of humor than was her sister, did not appreciate the point.)

With this evidence that I was hot on the trail, it did not take long for me to find that Dagny Taggart, while not a character in Ayn Rand’s 800-page The Fountainhead, was in fact the protagonist of her even longer novel Atlas Shrugged.  I read it, and while I was not at first overly impressed, under the influence of bright blue eyes, I was quickly convinced.

One side note: Atlas Shrugged is in part a mystery story, driven by Dagny Taggart’s quest to find out why the nation’s industrial leaders are disappearing.  In the course of her quest, she finds her one true love, John Galt – featured in the novel’s catchphrase “Who is John Galt?” – and comes to accept his philosophy.  In other words, there are great parallels between the novel and the process through which I discovered it, something that seemed fraught with meaning to my teenage mind and added to the blue-eye factor in my conversion.

And so I became a Randroid, a philosophy that had particular appeal for your average intellectually arrogant teen, which aptly described my then state.  Over the next few years, I re-read both Fountainhead and Shrugged several times, even making it through the “This is John Galt” chapter in Atlas Shrugged, a hundred-page essay dropped in near the end of the novel for those who somehow missed Rand’s point of view in the preceding 800 pages.  But eventually, after a few years of education broadened my mind, I managed to shake loose my devotion to Rand’s views.

I never did manage to shake loose my devotion to the girl who led me to them, however.  This August, we will celebrate our 25th anniversary.  And I am happy to report that she is just as smart, beautiful, composed, and geeky as she was when she launched me on my grand quest.  And often just as stubborn and mysterious too.

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Imaginary Prosperty

Posted on February 3, 2009 by drdzoe

If you have ever bought a house, you probably have experienced what I think of as imaginary prosperity.

You get the mortgage, you sign all the papers, and you realize that you have just spent hundreds of thousands of dollars.  And suddenly, lesser expenses seem like nothing.  So you happily buy a new couch, carpeting, major appliances, and various other additions to the house, secure in the knowledge that while you are spending thousands on all of these things, that money is nothing compared to what you’ve just shelled out for the house itself.  You spend money that you might not spend under other circumstances, and all because you are already spending so much anyway.

That’s a dangerous financial place to be in.  After all, you don’t really have all that extra money.  Quite the contrary!  But still you spend, and all because you figure hey, what’s another thousand or two when you’re already spending hundreds of thousands anyway.

And that’s where the US government is right now.  We’ve put $700 billion into the financial bailout.  We’re getting ready to pass an $800 billion stimulus bill.  And right now, in the midst of an economic crisis, we are deeply mired in imaginary prosperity.  After all, what’s another couple hundred billion dollars, what with all the other money pouring out of the treasury?

Now don’t get me wrong.  I think we need the stimulus, and I think we needed the bailout.

But I am worried about how we’re going to find fiscal discipline again.  Because we’re going to have to.

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What I’ve been reading

Posted on February 3, 2009 by drdzoe

Coraline by Neil Gaiman. This is a young adult/older kid’s book about a young girl who finds herself in an alternate world with an evil version of her parents. Entertaining, though slight – and there is going to be a stop-action movie of it made by Tim Burton coming out this year. (And oh – Gaiman’s Graveyard Book, which I wrote about here previously, just won a Newberry Medal. Well deserved, in my view.)

The Sharing Knife: Horizon by Lois McMaster Bujold. I’m a big fan of Bujold – she’s one of the handful of authors who I’ll read whenever she comes out with a new book. I’m much less of a fan of this series, which is a combination romance and fantasy-adventure. Not bad, but not her strongest work. But this, volume four, appears to be the end, so I can look forward to having her write in other worlds again.

I am a Strange Loop, by Douglas Hofstadter. I mentioned this in my last blog post. This book examines the nature of human consciousness, walking a fine line between those who claim that consciousness results in some mystical quantity (often referred to as a “soul”), and those who would say that we’re all only a bunch of particles doing their particle thing. Instead, Hofstadter sees our brains as being symbol processing machines that are sufficiently complex to represent and reflect on ourselves. In other words, we are complex feedback loops, capable not only of presenting photographic feedback (as happens, for example, when you turn a TV camera on a television that shows what that camera is recording), but of containing ourselves as a complex symbol susceptible to detailed analytical reflection. Add in a dollop of some of the more interesting math of the twentieth century (the work of Kurt Goedel, who managed to prove that there are truths outside of any mathematical system that cannot be proven using the tools of that system) and you have a book that deeply impressed me.

I’ll go even further: this book has come closest of anything that I’ve ever come across to matching what I think is the source of the self, and will, after some thought, probably go on the short list of books that had a profound impact on the way I think about the world. I’m probably going to write more about this here in the weeks to come – I’m still processing it, deciding where I agree and disagree with Hofstadter, figuring how it all fits into my own world view. But for now, I leave you with this observation by Hofstadter: consciousness is an illusion viewed by an illusion, lacking the solid reality of the things out in the world, but nevertheless real in the eye of the illusion. And we, of course, are the illusion.

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A cascade of colliding ideas

Posted on January 21, 2009 by drdzoe

Of late, I’ve been reading I am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter. I am really enjoying this book – it may end up on that short list of books that change the way I look at the world. (I’ll have to post that list here at some point.)

The book is about human consciousness, about what makes up the “I” that we all feel in our heads. Hofstadter’s view is that the “I” is a special kind of feedback loop – that consciousness occurs when a logical system becomes complex enough to represent and reflect on itself in symbolic form. He ties this to the mathematical work of Kurt Godel (some of the most interesting math out there) and to feedback loops of the sort that you get when you turn a television camera to view the television that shows what the camera is “seeing.” Truly fascinating stuff.

On the way home tonight, I was listening to Radiolab. This is a public radio show and podcast about science, and I strongly recommend it. This week’s episode is titled “Yellow Fluff and Other Curiosities” and is about the nature of scientific discovery. In one part of the episode the hosts interview Paul Davies, director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at the University of Arizona. Davies is examining the question of why we are here – why human beings exist. His view is that human beings exist because we provide a mechanism whereby the universe can perceive itself, that because perception comes only from intelligence, the universe found it necessary to form intelligent life as the means by which it can consider itself. (Rather conveniently for him, this means that the highest purpose in life is to study the universe, for in doing so you are fulfilling the universe’s purpose.)

And the final piece of the puzzle: my view of the purpose of human life. Meaning and purpose are purely subjective constructs. They do not exist in the objective world – they only exist in human minds. Therefore, the universe itself would have no meaning, no purpose, were it not for humanity. If you think that meaning and purpose are important, as I do (though recognizing that “importance” is itself a subjective construct), then the fact that meaning and purpose only exist within human minds is the most important possible purpose of human life. (There’s clearly a lot more than just that. I hope to post more on this at some point.)

As I was listening to the Davies interview today, all of these ideas came colliding together. Suppose Hofstadter is right, and consciousness is a special kind of feedback loop that can understand itself. But if Davies is right, then what we are really considering is not only our selves, but the universe. And, of course, we are part of the universe. So the universe itself is a feedback loop that understands itself, but it does so by using us as its mind.

Break it down a little further. When you think of yourself, do you think only of your mind? Or do you think of your mind and body? I suggest that most people think of their mind and body. But if that’s the case, and if Hofstadter is right in his view of consciousness, then only part of your self (that part that you call your mind) contains the consciousness of the whole.

So apply that to the universe. Our minds are the part of the universe that contain its consciousness. Therefore, we are in a true sense the mind of the universe. And, of course, that ties in with my own views of the meaning of life, because meaning exists only in the mind, and therefore the meaning of the universe exists in its mind, which is our minds.

I’m sure all of this seems fairly confusing. I’m lost in a swirl about this myself. (I literally felt my flesh tingle on hearing the Davies interview as all of this started coming together in my mind, and it isn’t all together yet.) I could only babble about it to Julie at dinner as I ate a rather excellent chicken marsala that she made. And I’m not at all sure where all this is taking me.

But I can’t wait to get there.

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And then I sank into the swamp

Posted on January 5, 2009 by drdzoe

On Saturday, with Julie ensconced in her studio all day, I decided to go for a walk in the woods at Mason Neck. This has recently become one of my favorite places to wander around – there’s a good view of the Potomac on one end and many lovely wooded trails going through the park.

Julie and I have gone on many walks there of late. But while we’ve wandered several of the paths, I’ve never managed to find the elusive Eagle’s Spur, a trail that supposedly leads to an overlook of Kane’s Creek. The trails near there are not well marked, and Julie is always resistant to striking off into the trees.  For some strange reason, she doesn’t much enjoy wandering off the path into unmarked woods. I just can’t figure out why.

I arrived at the park at around 3:30, complete with two apples, an orange, and a compass that Julie gave me for Christmas. I picked up a copy of the trail map (available from a link here, for those who care to play along at home), and I was off.

I missed one turning, wandered in a small loop, and finally found my way to the Eagle Spur trail. The joining point between it and Kane’s Creek Trail is hard to spot, which explains why we had never found it before. But once I wandered in the woods a little near where I thought it would be, the trees opened up into a neat little path, nicely blazed with white reflectors set every fifty feet or so.

The trail is a nice one, with several little hills, a number of small wooden bridges over marshy lowland, and lots of twists and turns through the woods. At the end it comes to a little stand overlooking a creek populated by several ducks. I quite enjoyed the walk.

But when I reached the end, the only marked route was to return the way I came, and I am not one to meekly retrace my own steps. So instead, I looked at the map, saw that the creek led to the Potomac, and the Potomac led to open parkland, and figured, hey, how hard can it be to find my way out? So, taking advantage of Julie’s absence (because she would not have approved this plan), I set out through the woods.

The sun was getting low in the sky, which was rather convenient, as my path was towards the southwest. At that time of day, at this time of year, it was a simple matter of walking straight at the sun. Well, simple if it weren’t for the swampy inlets that were in my way. I had to detour around them, staying to the hills overlooking the water.

After a while, the ground looked a lot dryer. So I came down off the ridge towards a little valley that led towards the southwest to another hill. Unfortunately, though, it turned out that the valley floor was covered with thick mud camouflaged by a layer of grass. I discovered this when, on taking my second step, both legs sunk down knee deep.

Standing there in the muck, I had a little thinking to do. Perhaps I had come down from the hill too soon. Perhaps, even, I should have stayed on the path, though since the trail was a good ten minutes behind me through unmarked woods, it was probably too late to have that thought. But in any event, it was time for a tactical retreat. So I lifted my leg and, with a little struggle against the suction, pulled my foot out of the mud.

Alas, while my foot came up, my shoe did not follow.  I stood there on one foot, and while I will admit that thoughts of quicksand crossed my mind, I did not dwell on them.  Instead, my mind filled with visions of a two mile barefoot hike through unmarked woods.  That didn’t seem like a terribly good option, so I reached down into the mud, into the hole left by my foot, and retrieved my rather mucky shoe with my now slightly less mucky arm.

After a little trouble getting my other foot and shoe up, I struck for high ground.  Once things were dry, I paused to put my shoes back on.  There was no real difficulty with that, though I did have the rather uncomfortable feeling of having decaying leaves surrounding my socks for the rest of the day.  But not being the sort to let a little thing like sludgy stockings bother me, I looked for a way around the bog back towards civilization.

It was now around 4:15, and the park gates were due to be locked at 5:30.  More importantly, the sun was getting low in the sky, and while my new compass includes a LED light, I did not relish the thought of a midnight stroll through unmarked paths.  And yet, I was not completely without resources.  One apple still remained, so I would not go hungry.  I had my compass and a map of the trails, though half of the map was decaying from where the mud splattered on it.  Most vital of all, I still had my native wits to guide me.

Of course, since it was my wits that had gotten me into this mess in the first place, some might say that they should not be counted as an asset.

After circling the muck some more, I found a spot that looked crossable. It was definitely moist, but there were tussocks that I might stand on.  At least, that’s how it appeared at first glance, but a closer examination, taken when I was halfway across, cast some doubts on that view.  In short, once again I was knee deep in bog.

I was tired of making like a frog (knee deep, get it?), so I decided to spread my weight a bit and ended up crawling out over the mud. I managed to avoid losing my shoes this time, though, so I felt I was doing well.I worked my way up the hill through some pretty thick underbrush, barely managing to avoid getting all scratched. The terrain was clearer at the top of the ridge, and I did my best to work in roughly the right direction. Before long, I noticed that there was a bit of a path through the trees. Soon after that, I spotted a white reflector blazing the way. Somehow, I had found my way back to the original trail. This time, I resisted the urge to avoid the beaten path.

I hiked back out to my car, covered with mud and grinning like a loon over my adventure. And thinking about Julie. I’m not quite ready to admit that she is right to always stay on the trail. But I will say that maybe, in some specific circumstances, she might have a point.

In any event, that was my weekend adventure.  Because while I went for a little walk on Sunday, it was in the tame environs of a shopping mall.

I had to, after all.  I needed a new pair of shoes.

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What I’m reading – the New Year’s edition

Posted on January 1, 2009 by drdzoe

It’s been several months since I’ve last listed what I’m reading.  I’ve read many good pages in that time, though, so let’s catch up with a special year’s-end edition.

– The Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin.  A huge fantasy series, four books and counting, each book running from 800-1000 pages.  My kids love them, which pretty much make them required reading for me, if only so that I understand the dinner conversation.  I’ve read all four: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, and A Feast for Crows.  The books center around a massive civil war set in a fantasy world that is a rough analog of England in the high medieval period, with some clear overtones of the War of the Roses, but with magic, undead, and dragons thrown in for good measure.

I’ve got a love-hate relationship with these books.  They are entertaining, with a vast array of generally interesting characters.  But they often lack narrative drive, they bludgeon the reader with ugly war scenes (please, George – I’ve read Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror (which I highly recommend, by the way) – I get that medieval warfare is an ugly thing, one village full of raped and mutilated peasants is enough), and much of the plot is driven by characters doing truly stupid things, which always annoys me.  Most of all, we’re already at around 4000 pages, the story shows no sign of nearing a close.

I’m a fan of large sprawling novels: I don’t believe a book really gets going until around page 800.  But Tolkien and Tolstoy both managed to tell their war stories in around 1200 pages – does Martin’s war really require an order of magnitude more?

So tentatively recommended, but there are definitely some caveats here.  Most of all, Martin, who says there’s still at least three more volumes to go, is already three years late on volume 5, and is getting a little long in the tooth.  Commit to these, and you may be committing to a series that will never reach its end.

– No such caveats for The Graveyard Book, by Neal Gaiman.  Published as a young-adult novel, I found this to be an absolute delight.

The book opens with a dark stranger called “the man Jack” stalking through a dark house with knife in hand.  Having just killed the parents and older child, the man Jack is in search of one last victim, a toddler.  But the unnamed child slips away to a nearby graveyard where he is taken in by the Owenses, a couple of ghosts, who, after arguing about who he looks like, conclude that he looks “like nobody but himself.”  Thus, they name him Nobody Owens, or Bod for short.

The book recounts Bod’s childhood raised in the cemetery by the various ghosts who “live” within, with each chapter taking place two years after the last one.  Young Bod learns much from the ghosts, including how to fade into invisibility, how to instill a frightful chill, and to avoid the ghouls and the less reputable residents.  Finally, when the man Jack returns to take care of unfinished business, Bod is ready, and the final confrontation is a delight that ties together many of the threads that sprang up in the various chapters.

I always love Gaiman’s work, and I particularly loved this one – recommended for anyone.

– Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway, by Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully.  I was talking with a friend recently about the battle of Midway, the turning point in WWII in the Pacific, when the American navy, after being dominated by the Japanese for the six months following Pearl Harbor, finally struck back, sinking four Japanese carriers and seizing the initiative for the remainder of the Pacific war.  (Yeah, I know.  I’m a geek, with lots of geeky friends.  So?)  I mentioned a couple of the standard points told about that battle, how the American torpedo bombers came in low and were shot up by the Japanese fighters, but that put the fighters out of position when the American dive bombers came swooping down from on high to sink the carriers, and how the carriers blew up quickly because their decks were crammed with aircraft getting ready to go attack the Americans.  He gave me a knowing look and said that I really needed to read Shattered Sword, how it would change everything I thought I knew about the battle.  And so I did.

I’m happy to report that the book is excellent, and showed how wrong I was.  Shattered Sword is a revisionist history of the battle of Midway, told largely from the point of view of the Japanese forces, that challenges much of the common wisdom about the battle.  (Those two points I mention above, for example, don’t survive Parshall and Tully’s analysis.)  Apparently, much of the common wisdom was based on the writings of Fuchida Mitsuo, a Japanese officer at the battle, who wrote an early self-serving account of the battle, one that has shaped much of the American understanding of what was the Japanese experienced during the battle.  But Fuchida’s account has been largely debunked in Japan for the past 20 years, though that news hasn’t reached American historians until recently.

The book does an excellent job of describing Japanese naval doctrine, the political maneuvering in their naval command that led to the Midway plan, and the tactics and operational approaches that the Japanese navy used.  That is coupled by a detailed recounting of the day of the battle, one that covers both the military actions, the efforts of the crews of the damaged ships to save them, and detailed descriptions of what it was like to escape from the burning hanger deck of a bombed aircraft carrier.  If you enjoy military history, and thought you knew what happened at Midway, I strongly recommend this book.

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The proper care and feeding of monarchs, or Off with their Heads

Posted on December 15, 2008 by drdzoe

I am no fan of monarchy.  In my opinion, a king is just a dictator with a pedigree.  The best ones splurge their peoples’ fortunes on absurd luxuries and launch self-aggrandizing wars.  The worst ones commit crimes of unspeakable horror.  About the best you can say about a monarch is that typical examples of the breed are lazy sorts who rarely work up the energy for a real atrocity, unlike dictators who, generally being self-made men, rarely have the virtue of laziness.

Suppose you’re in charge of a revolt that is far more successful than anyone expected, and you suddenly find yourself in possession of your king.  What should you do?   Should you:

A) Take this opportunity to talk reasonably with the king, now that his evil advisers are far away, and come up with an agreement that will allow the children to be fed and make the kingdom a better place for everyone.

B) Chop off his head.

C) Run away.  Run far far away.

C has its charms.  But kings usually hold grudges, and there’s always room in the budget for a good assassin.  So B is generally the best choice.  Revolutionaries who are also regicides occasionally come to a bad end, as happened with Robespierre.  But often, as with Cromwell and Lenin, things work out remarkably well for them.  (Of course, they often create their own atrocities, but we’ll assume that you, being the reasonable person that you are, will manage to resist that temptation.)

Under no circumstances choose A.  The king will tell you how sympathetic he is to the plight of your people, make a generous deal, and, once you let him go, send in the pikemen to stomp you and your filthy peasant revolt under their mighty boots.  How dare you lay hand on the king!  You’ll be lucky if your death only lasts a week!

(If you doubt the preceding paragraph, see the history of the Peasants’ Revolt.   Admittedly, Richard II, the king in question, came to a bad end.  But that was much later – he managed to outlive the leaders of the Peasants’ Revolt by a good many years.)

That was fun!  Let’s try another question:

The king, a jolly fellow of whom you are rather fond, offers you the post of chief adviser.  Should you:

A) Take it, of course!  Think of the opportunity to do good for your country, and perhaps make a little money while you’re helping out.

B) Tell the king thanks, but you’re too busy right now, what with all the tournaments and having to care for your lands and such.

C) Catch the nearest cross-channel ferry, and keep on going.

Here you might be tempted to choose B, but bear in mind that a king rarely takes it well when you refuse a job from him.  So C is your best option.

By no means choose A.  History is littered with the story of kings’ advisers who came to a bad end.  Consider the case of Thomas Cromwell,  Henry VIII’s chief minister whose downfall came about because the wife he found for Henry was not pleasing to the king’s eye.  Cromwell’s head ended up on a spike on London Bridge.

Why do advisers so often come to a bad end?  Because people generally want to think the best of their king.  So when the government does something bad, everyone wants to think that the good king was led astray by his evil ministers.  (Think about how many stories you know of the good king led astray by evil advisers.  Compare that to the far fewer stories of the good minister who tries to save the kingdom from the evil king.  Ever wonder why all those good kings pick bad ministers?)

A typically undocumented part of the job of chief adviser is to be scapegoat-in-chief: when bad things happen, the king often finds it useful to appease the mobs by throwing his top minister to the wolves.  And since something always goes bad during a monarchy, and since chief advisers are, in spite of their fondest beliefs, always easy to replace, they often find their heads decorating spikes in scenic locations around the capital – not the prominent position they envisioned when they took the job.

But people are too clever to fall for the old bumbling-king-bad-adviser story, you say?  Hmm, I say.  You really need to read some of the opinion pieces that have come out in the last eight years, pieces that described Dick Cheney as the evil puppeteer pulling the ignorant president’s strings.  We may not go in for divine right of kings these days (though some presidents do apparently think themselves chosen by God), but some old traditions are still followed.

So trust me: have as little to do with monarchies as you can manage.  And if by some strange chance you do find yourself in the presence of a monarch, just hope that the headsman works for you.  Because a king is a fine and noble thing, with a regal brow and a mighty cranium.  Which means that his head will look awfully good up on that spike.  A lot better than yours, don’t you think?

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Bye bye AOL community

Posted on December 3, 2008 by drdzoe

Somewhere around 4 years ago, the team that I worked on at AOL, AOL Search, got new management, new management that I did not much care for.  So I looked around AOL and gave some serious thought about what I wanted to work on next.

AOL was in trouble – that much was obvious to any observer.  The Time Warner merger had been a terrible mistake for both companies.  Broadband was eating AOL’s core business, and none of the strategies to address it had worked out.  AOL badly needed some area where it could shine.  And while there were lots of areas that I could have worked, I wanted to be part of AOL’s renaissance – to be in an area that could make a difference for the company.  In my mind, the answer was community.

AOL had practically invented online community for the masses.  It was a leader in that area, and years before there was a MySpace or Facebook, AOL community products like Message Boards, Hometown, Member Directory, and Chat was the way for non-geeks to communicate online.

But in the wake of the Time Warner merger, when synergy was going to save the company, AOL had lost its way.  AOL had stopped paying much attention to those community products.  And so, just when new online community giants like MySpace and Facebook were becoming the darlings of the web, AOL’s community products were looking a little rundown.

But I had worked on the search pieces of several of those community products, and I thought that AOL could still be a player n those areas.  If anything could save AOL, I reasoned, it would be community.  And so I transferred into the community development team.

Alas, it looks like nothing could save AOL.  Anyway, community couldn’t do it, not the way that AOL did community.  Building a giant one-size-fits-all community product failed.  (That would be AIM Pages, which was to be a huge MySpace-style state-of-the-art profile system, on which I was overall architect.)  Because AOL had to have a huge instant hit, and community products don’t work like that.  It takes a long time and a lot of hard work to be an overnight success in the community business – you have to let the systems evolve in ways that users want.  And AOL just did not have the patience.

Meanwhile, AOL let all those good old community products wither further.

After it became obvious that AIM Pages was not going to save the company, AOL tried something new.  Kevin Lawver came up with the idea for Ficlets, and he persuaded management to let him build it as a model of a new kind of community.  Build lots of small, cool, community products, communities-in-a-box.  Go after that long tail.  Instead of building one gigantic community product, build lots and lots of little ones on top of a shared infrastructure.

But it was not to be.  Again, AOL did not have the patience to nurture something small and wonderful.  If it couldn’t bring in millions of pageviews on day one, AOL wasn’t interested.

AOL’s just announced that they are shutting down Ficlets.  This comes about a month after they shut down Hometown, AOL Pictures, and Journals.  AOL is, basically, dropping out of the community business.  They still have some products, the result of acquisitions like Bebo, but the old AOL community products, the ones that were the pioneers in online community, and the new AOL products, the ones that could have led the way to an AOL renaissance, are all being killed.

And that’s just too bad.

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Four reflections on the election

Posted on October 23, 2008 by drdzoe

1. For the last eight years, we have had a president who is breathtakingly reckless on policy matters.  For the eight years before that, we had a president who was breathtakingly reckless on personal matters.  The country has suffered as a result of all of this recklessness.

Is it any surprise that one of Obama’s great strengths in this campaign is his calmness, that the country is drawn to his cool level-headed temperament?  Or that it is turned off by McCain’s fiery shoot-from-the-hip attitude, an attitude that suggests another four more years of recklessness?

I think we’re all ready for a little bit of steadiness.  I certainly know that I am.

2. One thing that I find fascinating in this campaign is the phenomenon of racists for Obama.  There’s been several reports of campaign workers going door to door and being told that the resident intends to “vote for the n****r.”  Things have gotten so bad that people are finally putting aside all those wedge issues and voting their own interest, and Obama’s race is the greatest wedge issue of them all.

3. I wonder sometimes if this country would have ever elected a black man if it weren’t for the great vortex of special circumstances in which we find ourselves now.  Two never-ending wars, a financial meltdown, a never-ending stream of executive incompetence over the last eight years: it’s taken an awful lot to get people to a point where race seems irrelevant, but history has provided.  And it should be easier next time.

4. I must admit: Obama’s race is not irrelevant for me.   IMHO, race is the centerpiece of the history of America.  It has always been the dark stain on our rhetoric about freedom, rhetoric that was often written by slaveholders.  It was the root cause of the Civil War, the American Illiad.  Even today, after that great war, after the great civil rights struggles, it still lingers as a central division in American life.

The 150th anniversary of the issuance of the final Emancipation Proclamation, that great document that eliminated slavery, will be on January 1, 2013.  I want to see a black president give a speech commemorating that moment.  Nothing would better symbolize how far we have come.  Nothing would provide a more hopeful next chapter in the great tragic tale of American race relations.  And it looks like I may get my wish.

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