And the use of Reconquista? It was more than half a joke. How come all of a sudden nobody knows that?
When I read this it brought to mind David Neiwert's analysis of the coded language adopted by the white supremacist right in order for their ideas to be heard in a mainstream setting, and also the discussions of how nobody took movements like the Dominionists seriously as nobody believed they really could mean what they said. If the Panic Now! wing of U.S. racism has become accustomed to viewing the political rhetoric of their allies as a kind of code, isn't it possible that they assume other political groups are operating the same way? In other words, if the leaders of those scary brown people who are invading talk about the necessity of amnesty or the impracticality of deportation in their public speeches, but yet seem to have this reconquista concept that they discuss among themselves, mightn't the public rhetoric be just a screen for concepts that they know the American public isn't ready to swallow yet? And the fact that all those deluded, pathetic leftists regard the whole thing as joke just shows how truly insidious the whole scheme is.
This is just speculation on my part, but it seems to make at least some sense. (Or is it just obvious?)
David Neiwert had a great post on Minuteman leader Chris Simcox and his rhetorical ploys a couple of weeks back.
1. When, somewhere far upthread, alex mentioned "corporate welfare queens", the image my brain supplied was "corporate welfare drag queens". I then realized that this is only a step away from "corporate welfare drag-racing queens" and so forth.
But that way lies madness and so forth.
2. When a comet appears in the sky, and Bush declares it to be Reagan's soul ascending to heaven then what do we do? (And in less than a century we'll have Gen. Boykin's great-grandson saying "I think I'm turning into an archangel..." as he dies.)
3. One metaphor no one has mentioned so far is Britain circa 1902. The following is a quote from Chrstopher Andrew's history of the British intelligence services Secret Service on the mood of Britain following the Second Boer War:
'Britain emerged from the Boer War with a new sense of imperial frailty. The great Empire on which the sun never set seemed, even to Joseph Chamberlain, one of its greatest enthusiasts, "a weary Titan staggering under the too vast orb of his own fate". The public as a whole, still with little idea of the problems involved in winning wars against guerillas, failed to understand how their army could could have required three years and 450,000 men to defeat rebellious foreign farmers.'
Andrew's book also has some wonderful details like this:
'The colonial secretary ... [who] opposed sending large troop reinforcements to South Africa in the summer of 1899, was convinced that the ID [Intelligence Department (of the War Office)] was exaggerating the size of Boer forces. Much other ID intelligence was ignored. When a copy of the ID manual on South Africa was sent to General Sir Redvers Buller (nicknamed 'Blunder' in the ID and elsewhere) on his appointment as commander-in-chief of the expeditionary force, he sent it back on the grounds that he "knew everything there was to know about South Africa". Another copy of the ID manual which found its way to [the South African province] Natal was captured by the Boers in their first attack, and promptly published in the American press.'
4. SF types (and I'm certainly including myself here) are used to thinking about cultural shifts and world-changing events, and to do so in a dramaturgical frame. It's easy for this kind of plot-ifying turn to drift into conspiracy theorizing when applied to the real world. Let me be clear: I'm not trying to accuse people here of excessive paranoia; I'm not even saying I necessarily disagree with all of the bleak assessments that have been proposed. I do, however, think it's worth recalling from time to time that the complexity of the world inevitably exceeds anybody's (whether it is us, or Dominionist éminences grises) ability to supply it with a narrative structure. Do we really understand what is going on with the GOP power elite any better than the U.S. government understood the Kremlin power elite in the 70's and 80's? And while it's true that those who run the country right now have been pretty successful at pushing an account of the world that is simplified enough for their narrative, such triumph of the will requires enormous effort – reality intrudes, contradictions appear. There are significantly more cracks than there were six months ago. Not that Kremlinological musings should be abandoned, or the possibility of a coming tyranny ignored, but it is also true, as has been said, "Space is big."
Pat Barker's trilogy Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, and The Ghost Road is quite amazing. Many of the characters are historical figures, the central one being a remarkable neurologist and anthropologist named William Rivers. The first volume is set at a Royal Army psychiatric hospital during the period in which Rivers was treating both Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen (the book opens with Sassoon's protest letter that I posted above).
Finished with the War
A Soldier's Declaration
I am making this statement as an act of willful defiance
of military authority, because I believe that the war is
being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power
to end it.
I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of
soldiers. I believe that this war, upon which I entered
as a war of defense and liberation, has now become
a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the
purposes for which I and my fellow-soldiers entered
upon this war should have been so clearly stated as
to have made it impossible to change them, and that,
had this been done, the objects which actuated us would
now be attainable by negotiation.
I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and
I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for
ends which I believe to be evil and unjust.
I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but
against the political errors and insincerities for which the
fighting men are being sacrificed.
On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this
protest against the deception which is being practiced
on them; also I believe that I may help to destroy the
callous complacence with which the majority of those at
home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not
share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to
realize.
S. Sassoon
July 1917
Though now, four score and seven years on, those who insist the Great War remains a necessity have arranged for "the conduct of the war" to become one of "the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed".
Xopher:
Laurie Anderson, "The Dream Before"
Quite spiffy.
Who so list to hount we knowes where is a Baggins
but as for precious (gollum) we may no more
the vayne travaill hath weried us so sore
we are of theim that farthest behinde is lagging
yet by no meanes my precious may our mynde
drawe from the precious that Baggins stole afore
faynting we folowes we leves off therefor
sethens in a nett we sekes to hold the wynde (gollum)
Who list Baggins hount we puts it owte of dowbte
as well as we (precious) spends its tyme in vain
and across mountainses misty in Eriador plain
There is precious, nassty Elvish letters abowte:
Ash nazg durbatulûk for precious
(gollum gollum)
is of the Black Land
we must wrynge the precious from Baggins' thieving hand
A bit obvious, but I haven't seen it yet:
The Ring that can be melted is not the One Ring.
The Dark Lord that can be killed is not the true Lord.
Having thus far been spared reading "The Wheel of Time", but being an obsessive reader of Delany, I apparently traded most people's reaction to #11 for their reaction to #4. I was (un?)fortunately not holding a drink however, so I did not have to clean my monitor or keyboard afterward.
cd, David Goldfarb:
Dan's right. It's Foucault quoting Borges. Also, the original is not "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbus Tertius", but an essay entitled "John Wilkins' Analytical Language".
Recircleround withall and to alewheelcoomb.
Hopinhand carrolling exstaltation - affictions liveloren pricklitness. All down!
Wakering blowsy scentyear ion. Hale Viconteur!
So whether or not the phenomenon is real, this doesn't seem to be the right characterization of it.
Bleah... too few referents.
The 'phenomenon' in question is the rapid velocity of counterfeit money.
The 'this' that is being labelled a mis-characterization' is the description of the velocity of counterfeit money as an instance of Gresham's law.
Humble apologies for any confusion.
At the risk of being accused of picking nits from nits...
The point of Gresham's law is that people don't throw out counterfeit currency, they try to pass it on quickly so they aren't the ones who lose from it
Are you sure about this? According to this definition of Gresham's law, it doesn't sound like the principle applies to counterfeit currency (as it is - by definition - not "legal tender").
So whether or not the phenomenon is real, this doesn't seem to be the right characterization of it.
However:
the velocity of circulation of ... radioactive ... money is higher than that of real money
Just 'A Modest Proposal' from Larry Niven...
(Readers are enjoined to imagine the word 'counterfeit' with a line through it just before the word 'radioactive'. Sadly, the blog engine seems to be preventing me from providing them with the physical experience.)
"file servers ... allow users to share files and programs, regardless of into what machine they are logged"
Somewhere in America, in a remote bastion of chrome and glass, the copyeditors of the ______ publishing demesnes sense a shift in the redactive ether. Their sharpened styluses become pale and brittle, chilled to a color unreadable by photocopiers. The protection offered by their cubicle dividers seems suddenly insubstantial, no shield from the spectral tendrils that probe and measure the inner grammatical engines they have crafted so carefully. Always restless and uneasy in its slumber, the shade of H. W. Fowler has finally been roused to full wakefulness. Wreathed in the tweedy vapors of its indignation, its revenants' eyes slitted Hadean em-dashes, it paws at manuscripts and style sheets, sniffs for subtle signals in the fear emanating from the paralyzed copyeditors. With a coffee-mug-shattering screech it vaults upon its prey, and both fiend and victim vanish, leaving behind only a dense fug of expensive Scottish pipe tobacco. The remaining editorial staff, relieved, stand up and glance over the tops of the neighboring cubicles, curious to see whom they have lost the company of.
Do neurological problems that cause people whose primary language is vocal to vocalize compulsively also cause people whose primary language is sign to sign compulsively?
I'm asking the question seriously. I suspect the answer depends on whether neural short circuit occurs in the language processing center or in the motor areas relating to speech production. In other words, is the compulsory behavior the externalization of language, or usage of the vocal cords?
There are also people for whom writing is a compulsion. I wonder how that relates to signing.
Sara:
I was quite fond of "Electro-woman and Dyna-girl".
Does anyone here remember the show "Waldo Kitty"? In first grade, I got the teacher to let me sign my papers as Waldo Kitty (and then for a while as his girlfriend Felicia).
CHip:
I know at least one person who counts the lecture on Rodin in Stranger to be one of the best passages by Heinlein. And the passage certainly made a big impression on me when I first read Stranger as a teenager.
Re: Diana Wynne Jones
DWJ's Power of Three was the first hardback I ever bought new for myself (and I had to special order it too). Strangely, I never read anything else by her when I was a kid. Also, for whatever reason, it is apparently one of her least known works (going by the order that the recent reprints of DWJ appeared anyway).
Re: Schoolhouse Rock
I think my favorite ones were the pronoun one (damned if I can remember any of those long names though), and perhaps the Fours one ("Figure eight, is double four...").
(Response to Bill Shunn waaay back at the top of the thread...)
Bill:
Some friends of mine that have two dogs long ago took to reporting back with a single hexadecimal digit...
Ask not for whom the kid sleeps...
Well, I say he does have to shoot me now.
So shoot me now!
.... not again ....
wherein he encouraged me to write my own Narnia stories if I didn't like "The Last Battle."
Just a few posts before I saw this I had decided to ask if there was anyone else here that disliked _The Last Battle_. As for me, I loathed it. Of everything I read while growing up, there is no other book which I remember as even coming close to striking me as so violently wrong. (The end parts of it anyway, which are, of course, the only parts I remember - I suspect I only read it once... Hmm? Why, yes, I was raised by decidedly non-theistic parents, why do you ask?)
However, it would never have occurred to me to feel betrayed by Lewis, as authors were such abstractions to me - stories and characters were the meaningful reality. Not that I felt that _The Last Battle_ was a betrayal by the characters either, as they were barely recognizable as the people I cared about from the other volumes. So, fortunately, my experience reading _The Last Battle_ did not sour the rest of the series for me, and I happily reread the other books lots of times (although I often skipped _Prince Caspian_ since I found it a bit dull).
Going back to authors-as-abstractions: there were two authors who actually did have a non-abstract presence for me. One was Edward Eager, as one of his books (_Seven Day Magic_ I think) seemed to be set, if perhaps not in the same Connecticut town where I lived, then at least in a neighboring one. ("Whaddaya say we walk to Wilton? Whaddaya say?") The other was Tolkien, which was due to the picture on the back of each volume of the Ballantine edition with its accompanying mysterious exhortation regarding "courtesy to living authors". (An epigram that imprinted itself on me so strongly that even as an adult I expect I would be unhappy reading any other edition.)
And to skip around again: it's cool that Lewis would give that advice about coming up with your own ending...
I think it helped that I read the books as a child incapable of taking anything less than literally. So I had no idea that it was all a Christian allegory,
I was this way too. I do remember being told as a kid that they were supposed to be Christian stories and thinking that really strange. I mean, ok, Aslan did a death-and-resurrection-y thing that sort of corresponded to my (rather sketchy) knowledge of the Christ story (the lamb bit in _Dawn Treader_ wouldn't have meant anything to me...), and _The Magician's Nephew_ did a creation story thing, but so what? These were stories not myths or whatever the Bible was, and stories were other places to exist in. Treating them as coded references to irrelevant things like religion would be completely batty.
So it was striking when, a few months ago, the daughter of some friends was watching the BBC version of _The Silver Chair_, and the witch went off on this glaringly obvious metaphor about how the Overland and the sun were just a dream, etc...
Given that this was the first time I had noticed the subtext to this scene, I was also made aware of just how long it had been since I'd looked at the series. (So, thanks to the folks in this discussion for reminding me that I was going to dig these out and read them again. :) )
I found Lewis's "heaven" to be incredibly vital and tangible.
It's interesting to read the interpretation of someone who found the end of _The Last Battle_ to be a compelling vision. I've been trying to think how to provide some particulars as to the reason for my reaction, but I can find few memories of any concrete details from the book. I think it seemed as if dead characters were being reanimated in some grotesque fashion, and everyone was being ejected from the universe that felt real into one that felt false and threatening. I felt coerced in some way.
Anyway, sorry for going on so long...
I was pointed to the Ghost Town link by some blog or other a couple of weeks ago, so it's been diffusing through the blogosphere for at least that long.
Given the time period compared to the usual diffusion rate in the 'sphere, I suppose that either Ghost Town comprises particularly large blog particles (blogons? blogomers?) or that the topology between Making Light and some of the other blogs I read has some especially viscous patches.
Hmm, I wonder what would constitute blog electrophoresis?
One scene, preserved from the era when Tor was releasing science fiction on tapestries, can be found here.
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