Wordful Wednesday: Gridlock
I'm not a big fan of driving. I'd much rather ride a train or a luxury bus or something. Unfortunately, there's really no substitute for the mobility I have in my car. Plus, I drive a '99 New Beetle, and I can park it anywhere. And I'm also comfortable with my manhood, so I can absorb the heckling from other men for driving "a chick car."
In an effort to understand what makes other drivers so bad at what they do, I read (earlier in the year) Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What it Says About Us). In that book, I learned quite a bit about what it is that makes me such a superior driver. Ooh, ow. Bit of a cramp there patting myself on the back. Hate those.
So I can't get away from driving, and I can't get away from other drivers. But why don't we have a better rail system here? I've been to Japan, and taking the trains there was awesome. Granted, we were on vacation and so walking to train stations was no biggie. In fact, we found the Japan Diet (eating lighter meals and walking ten miles a day) was quite effective in streamlining our bods. I need to get in that kind of shape again. Stupid knees. (Note to self: schedule that knee surgery.)
Add the fact that the Fair Elaine doesn't like to fly, and you could call us train people. If the trains were there, of course. And some of them are. Who doesn't like riding the MAX (Portland's light rail system) to the Zoo or the ballpark? Actually, I used to take transit to work four days a week (I had rehearsal one day and needed the flexibility of a car). But the fact that my company paid for my transit pass was the deciding factor in getting me to ride. I also enjoyed all the sleeping reading I could do on the way to work.
If I'd had to pay for my train trips, I'd have been in my car five days a week. No question.
Of course, one of the reasons a lot of folks hate driving is congestion. And that's where Randal O'Toole's book Gridlock: Why We're Stuck in Traffic and What to Do About It comes in. O'Toole, while a big fan of trains, is not a big fan of the transit industry (being, as it mostly is, a government agency).
His book starts with a survey of the history of mobility in America, starting at about 1,500 miles per year per person in the 1800s to the now more than 18,000 miles per person today, and he makes the point that there's a strong correlation between mobility and standard of living. He then points out what a small fraction of our extraordinary mobility is handled by transit. (Especially if you remove New York from the equation.)
The main problem with rail, be it high-speed, commuter, or light rail is that if it's positioned as saving anything (money, emissions, traffic congestion), it just doesn't accomplish that goal.
Of course, many urban planners actually want to increase congestion (in order to force more ridership), and to create higher-density communities that make America more like Europe and Japan. But these behavioral kinds of changes simply don't work, and actually cause housing prices to soar ridiculously high for zero-lot-line homes. If you thought all the postage stamp-sized lots were because of greedy developers, you were only partially right. The local planners create an urban growth boundary to create denser communities. And it stinks.
The other side of this is that just not many people actually ride transit. This book referenced a hilarious article from The Onion titled "98 Percent Of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation For Others." Nice. And then there's the fact that, in Portland's case, building light rail actually decreased the percentage of commuters using transit. Why? Well, because of the costs involved with light rail, bus service had to be pared down. Bummer.
Okay, so rail doesn't reduce congestion. So what? It ultimately pays for itself in cost savings and emissions reductions, right? Well, no. Actually, the costs will never be repaid, especially when you factor in the high cost of construction. And those high costs include the environmental impact. Again, these will never be repaid, as O'Toole points out about Portland's North Interstate light rail:
The environmental impact statement for Portland's North Interstate light rail estimated that the line would save about 23 billion BTUs per year but that construction would cost 3.9 trillion BTUs. This means it would take 172 years for the savings to repay the construction cost. In fact, long before 172 years, automobiles are likely to be so energy efficient that light rail will offer no savings at all.
As he points out, most estimates of savings, be they financial, energy, or emissions, assume that cars will not improve their efficiency. And they will. And if you factor in rehabilitation (the process of maintaining the rail lines, replacing them basically every 30 years), the 172 years goes up even further.
Ultimately, O'Toole concludes that we need new projects for which the taxpayer doesn't have to foot the bill. That means new highways should be built as tollways (electronic tolling reduces the nuisance of tollbooths), and that new transit should be open to private companies who actually pay for the project with user fees. Gas taxes are a diminishing return since cars keep getting more fuel-efficient, so a tax based on driver miles makes more sense. I'm not pro-tax, but if I'm a user of highways, I should be prepared to pay for less congestion.
O'Toole also makes a strong case for the production of driverless cars (maybe like in Minority Report?), a technology which could reduce congestion drastically and also save lives and money. And if I could drive without driving, that'd be awesome! (BTW, I love the title of the chapter, "Dude, where's my driverless car?")
(I'm sure I'd still think the guy in the driverless car in front of me was a moron, though. There might be a Foney Friday in this.)
Well, that about does it for my rambling review of Gridlock. For a few more coherent thoughts, see the Freakonomics Blog post on it.
BTW, I suppose I didn't mention that the book was quite enjoyable, if a bit frustrating in the sense of "politicians are big, fat, liars." But it's not like we didn't know that.
I've also reached another nice, round number in my yearly reading. Gridlock was number 40 for me. I love reaching that number, since I always shoot for at least 52 for the year (a book a week). I'm pretty sure I'll make it again. Woo!
Oh, and Mr. O'Toole has been making the rounds on television since his book came out, including this segment on Stossel:
Next up for me is, well, I don't really have much of anything in progress. I shot over to the library to pick up a copy of Mockingjay when I saw it was on the Bestsellers rack, but it was gone by the time I got there. And I'm not ordering it, I tell you! Besides, my Hold Request will come through soon. I'm 107th of 512 requests. Should be here sometime around my birthday (in November). I can wait. Totally.
I'll admit that I do have a book on loan from the library. Maybe I'll read it. It's titled Sin: A History. It's much shorter than it probably would be if it was titled Sinning: A History. It's got potential Theology Thursday Book Review written all over it.
Or I could just pick something off my To Be Read list…
Fiction Friday: The Last Olympian
Okay, you must have known when I mentioned in my Wednesday post that I had picked up The Last Olympian, that I wouldn't be able to resist reading it before finishing the other book I have that's actually, you know, due back at the library next Tuesday.
Fortunately, it was only a very slight detour, because I couldn't put it down. Rick Riordan did a splendid job with this series, setting up the final confrontation and drama right from the beginning and managing a slam-bang finish in the end.
In Book Five, of course, we get the war that's been brewing since Book One, with the Titans finally making their move on Olympus. Percy Jackson has to figure a way to fight them off and avoid making a prophesied final decision that may destroy Olympus. But then, how does he know he's been reading the prophecy correctly? Especially when he hasn't even heard the whole thing?
I missed Tyson a bit in this one, though he came up like a big man (er, cyclops) in the end. But Percy is definitely the star of the book, making mature decisions and having to live with them. And it was nice of Mr. Riordan to throw his parents a bone, too, letting them get in on the action instead of being sideliners.
I have to state again how nice it is to read a series that's already complete. No annoying waiting for the next book to arrive. Which is why I was bummed that there's another Camp Half-Blood series in the works. And I've already put in my Hold Request for Book One. Sigh.
So at this point I can go back to reading Gridlock, and resist the urge to pick up a copy of Mockingjay if one shows up on the Bestsellers rack. Yeah, no, if one shows up there, I'm totally picking it up. So I'd just better finish Gridlock quickly.
I'm now realizing that I have quite a few titles left on my To Be Read list, and it's nearly September. I need to steer clear of the Library for a while. Like that'll happen.
Wordful Wednesday: The Baseball Codes
I'm a sucker for a good baseball book, and The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: The Unwritten Rules of America's Pastime, by Jason Turbow (with Michael Duca), is an excellent baseball book.
I sometimes find myself defending my position that baseball is just inherently and obviously superior to football and basketball, and there are any number of justifications I can give. I can point out that in baseball, in contradistinction to the other two, you have to finish the game. No clock. If you're up by ten runs in the first inning, you still have to hold your opponent down for eight more innings.
Or I could point out that a superstar offensive player still has to wait his turn to bat. He doesn't always come up in the bottom of the ninth. You can't just pass the ball to Kobe and hope he can make something happen. That's awesome.
But more than anything, baseball is cool because it's old. It has history behind it. And yes, there are a lot of rules, but they don't cover everything that goes on during a game. For that, it has unwritten rules, the Code by which the players police themselves, their teammates, and the other team. 
As the blog for this book points out, we had an excellent example of the Code in a recent series between the Yankees and Tigers. Yankees left-fielder Brett Gardner took out Tigers shortstop Carlos Guillen (former Mariner, woo!) with a hard slide while trying to break up a potential game-ending double play. (Double play turned, game over, Tigers won, BTW.)
Now, no shortstop or second baseman is going to take exception to an opponent trying to cleanly break up a DP. However, Gardner slid so late that he basically tackled Guillen. He was within reach of second base, so the official rulebook didn't say he'd done anything wrong. But the Code says you don't try to injure another player.
(To be clear, Gardner wasn't trying to hurt Guillen, but his slide was dirty, even if it was unintentional.)
Sure enough, when Gardner came to bat against Tigers pitcher Jeremy Bonderman in the next game, he took one in the leg. He took the hit and ran down to first base. The announcers even commented that he must have known that was coming. The Tigers wanted Gardner to know that a dirty slide wasn't appreciated.
(Note: Bonderman didn't throw at his head. He hit him in the ankle. Not a beanball. Apples to oranges.)
Asked about the plunking after the game, Bonderman responded in line with the Code: "No comment." In other words, it stays on the field.
Retaliation is only one part of the Unwritten Rules, of course, though it's a major one. A player can expect to get brushed back or knocked down, or even drilled, when he commits any number of Code violations. Some will say that it's just a game, let it go, but they miss the point somewhat. In any line of work, there's a code of ethics that doesn't rise to the level that needs to be dealt with by the company that pays the workers. It's kept in house and dealt with person-to-person.
Of course, some of the Unwritten Rules are just plain outdated, or have at least fallen by the wayside. Time was, you'd find yourself getting brushed back if you tried to dig in against a pitcher. Now you see every player doing it. (BTW, my favorite tidbit, and a line I'll have to use, is Nolan Ryan's characterization of bad behavior on a batter's part as "asking for a bow-tie.")
Other rules are just plait out-of-touch with the way the game works these days. The idea that a team shouldn't run up the score is fine and dandy for basketball or football or any other clock-based game. But in baseball, you have to finish the game.
Case in point (BTW, the book covered this, but I remember it vividly), Indians/Mariners in August 2001. I was working in the backyard and had my pickup pulled in back there (filling it with dirt from a patio I was digging), with Dave Niehaus blasting on the speakers, enjoying the M's dismantling the Tribe.
They were ahead 12-0 after three innings. After the Indians scored two runs, the Mariners answered and still led 14-2 after five innings. By the seventh inning, Ichiro!, John Olerud and Edgar Martinez had been replaced by the M's manager. Game out of reach, right? Well, no, because the Indian's promptly scored three runs in the bottom of the seventh. 14-5.
Then four in the bottom of the eighth. 14-9.
Then five in the bottom of the ninth. 14-14. Yeah, you see where this is going, don't you? Ultimately, the Indians scored a run in the bottom of the eleventh to win the game. My blood pressure still hasn't come back down. The way I was ranting back there, the neighbors probably thought I was burying a few bodies.
Now, twelve runs seems like a safe lead, doesn't it? Pulling Ichiro! and Edgar made sense, right? Why waste them in a laugher? But in baseball, once you're out of the game, you're out. It's not like basketball where you can sit your starters until it gets interesting.
I'm realizing that I'm not really mentioning the book much here. But I take that as a compliment to the authors, because their book made me think about baseball, which is awesome.
But getting back to the actual book, I found the section on clubhouse pranks to be absolutely hysterical. The fact that Bert Blyleven was so legendary for giving the hot-foot (lighting a teammate's shoe on fire) that the dugout fire extinguisher was marked "In case of Blyleven, pull" had me in stitches. And the "pig story" from the 1970s Milwaukee Brewers is just a classic. Ask me about it. If I can stop laughing long enough, I'll give you the lowdown. But the upshot is that revenge is a dish best served with a very dirty piglet.
I think the book could have benefitted from including some of the more recent additions to the Code, though I suppose the ones I'm thinking about are really more like Stupid Stuff Managers Do, like letting a close game slip away in the seventh inning while their best reliever watches from the bullpen. If you're paying him Closer money, get him in when the game is on the line, even if it's the late-middle innings. Oh, and don't pay money for a closer. You can get good ones for cheap.
Another thing that irks me is all the bunting that goes on early in games. In the National League, you'll bunt your pitchers whenever they come up, sure, but no other player should bunt before the fifth inning unless your team is really struggling to score runs (BTW, you might be struggling to score runs because you're giving away outs by bunting all the time).
Yeah, I've changed my mind. My idea stinks. The book was as close to perfect as it could be. Pick it up and read it.
(Besides, Rob Neyer covered the mangled roles of relievers in Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Blunders.)
Next up is Gridlock: Why We're Stuck in Traffic and What to Do About It.
(Oh, and I caved and picked up The Last Olympian. But I want it known that I'm patiently waiting for my Hold Request for Mockingjay to come through.)
Wordful Wednesday: Peter Pan
I just haven’t had great luck reading classics to the Pancake Eater. In this case though, I think we can definitely blame Disney for throwing a wrench into things.
Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie, is a beloved classic that I thought the Boy might really enjoy since he loves the Disney adaptation. But, of course, Disney made Peter Pan a bit more heroic, and a bit less likely to actually, you know, kill people. And, of course, it's a movie and therefore has the potential to hold the attention of the still barely eight-year-old male.
The book suffers a slight problem common to classics, similar to Mozart's problem of "too many notes." That is, too many words for too little story. This is not to say, of course, that there were no clever words. But clever words, such as Barrie's assertion that mothers go in and tidy up the minds of their children while they sleep, tend to go right over the head of the chillins a bit. It's a question of pacing, really.
Nonetheless, here's my favorite line of the book, showing Barrie's status as an anti-grammar-snob:
Feeling that Peter was on his way back, the Neverland had again woke into life. We ought to use the pluperfect and say wakened, but woke is better and was always used by Peter.
In any case, it can't be denied that Peter Pan is well-written, even if its pacing doesn't suit the 21st Century child all that well. The Boy still enjoyed the final battle between Peter and the Pirates, even though he disagreed with Barrie about Hook's ultimate fate (the movie was clearly right that Hook wasn't killed).
Then there's the question of whether the book suits the average 21st Century adult. And on that count, I'm still up in the air. Because while the book had enjoyable parts, it also had one major problem for me: I didn't really like Peter. Maybe it says something bad about me, but I found Peter to be almost wholly unsympathetic. And make no mistake: Peter Pan is about Peter Pan, and doesn’t spare a lot of ink for much of an actual story once he’s introduced.
Okay, perhaps that's unfair. There's plenty of story about how Peter got Wendy and her brothers to the Neverland, and plenty about how Wendy acted as their "mother." But it's really all secondary to the magnificence of Peter himself. And he's certainly magnificent. I just don't really like him. I did find his trickery aboard Hook's ship quite lovely, and found it hilarious that his really clever bit of subterfuge to get aboard the ship was accidental.
(Does it make me a bad person that I dug Hook as a character? This is not to say I identified with him, but he was quite enjoyable.)
Peter is all-boy, of course, and maybe that's why I couldn't connect with him. Because few of the positive characteristics of boys really stuck out to me. Just the negative ones. Like always insisting on being right. Of course, I never went through this; just ask my sisters. But they have lousy memories, I'm fairly sure. But there's certainly a Boy in my house who suffers this malady. Actually, maybe I'm just reacting to the negative Boy Traits I'm seeing acted out by my nearly nine-year-old. This may well be the key.
In short: I enjoyed the book, just not the main character. And really, I know I'm supposed to love Peter, but I don't. It's like not liking Tom Bombadil (oh, wait, I definitely hate Bombadil). Anybody with me?
Non-Fiction Friday: Mortuary Confidential
This is another case of “I saw the title and had to get it.” I’m tellin’ ya, that New Library Materials RSS feed ruins lives. Or at least ruins my ability to read books I actually set out to read. But it’s great for incidental reading.
Mortuary Confidential: Undertakers Spill the Dirt, by Kenneth McKenzie and Todd Harra, pulls back the curtain on a profession that few of us understand or fully appreciate. I found it just fascinating.
The one downside to the book is that it’s not so much written by McKenzie and Harra as edited and compiled by them. So the quality varies from story to story. But it’s a small gripe for a book that is at turns hilarious and heart-rending.
I’m more and more convinced that in addition to proctologists (thanks Kramer!), morticians would be great people to chat with at parties, because if this book is any evidence, they’ve got some terrific stories to tell. From the twin brother of the decedent showing up at the service in the same suit the dead guy’s wearing, to getting the makeup just perfect on the deceased, only to find out the person who gave you the photo pointed out the wrong lady in it, to the strange questions a young mortician gets from her new neighbors when hosting Thanksgiving at her new house, with her hearse, her boyfriend’s police car, and her friend’s Medical Examiner car parked out front, the funny stories are truly gut-busting.
The sad stories are also really, really sad, but used as messages to the rest of us from those who see all the regrets over broken relationships and unfinished business. Children disowned and not seen again until their viewings, arguments never made-up before death called unexpectedly, or morticians having to embalm good friends.
One thing I was really struck by was how dedicated these folks are to their professions, often handing it down to several generations of successors. And it’s not easy work, requiring late nights and early mornings and not a few interruptions in dating/family life.
If you know next to nothing about the art and science of the mortician business, you’ll probably find this book as enjoyable as I did.
Next review: Peter Pan. I’ve also started The Baseball Codes: The Unwritten Rules of Baseball, and Gridlock: Why We’re Stuck in Traffic and What to Do About It.
Catching Fire, Mockingjay, and Female Narrators
On the whole, I think it's really much more enjoyable to read a book series that's already finished. I enjoyed reading books one through four of the Harry Potter series, but then had the typical wait for the other three, even resorting to pre-ordering the last two. Never thought I'd do that. I did the proper amount of waiting on the Percy Jackson series, so no waiting is required between books (though I did pass up Book Five the other day on the bestsellers rack. Willpower, for the win!).
I'm telling myself that I won't be sucked in to pre-ordering or otherwise purchasing Mockingjay, but I'm not convinced I'll be able to wait for it to show up on the non-renewable/bestsellers rack at the library. And since I've enjoyed the series, maybe I owe the author to purchase it. I could definitely justify it.
Anyway, in order to dull the irritation of waiting for Book Three to come out, I picked up the audio version of Catching Fire. The book (along with The Hunger Games) is read by Caroline McCormick, who I totally had a crush on when she was on Spenser for Hire. Unfortunately, her reading doesn’t quite do it for me. Granted, I have a serious bias against female audiobook narrators in general. Though for the record, Gabrielle De Cuir is awesome (apart from the shameful Si Wang Mu accent in Xenocide, but I choose to imagine that it was a director's decision).
The biggest problem with McCormick's performance is that she doesn't do a single credible male characterization. This is not to say that she should put on a deep tone or anything (any more than a male narrator should go falsetto for a female voice). But there’s just something indefinably male that most narrators of the fairer sex don’t seem to do well. And this is my main reason for not enjoying female narrators.
What do you think? Do you prefer one sex over the other in a voice actor?
But back to Catching Fire. I reviewed it back in December, and my refresher hasn’t changed my opinion that it’s almost entirely awesome. I did feel (though I didn’t write about it in my review) that Katniss went off the rails a bit at the end of the book, which seemed strange for an otherwise level-headed character. She just seemed to de-mature very quickly. But maybe we’re supposed to right it off as stress. Still, it strained credulity a bit to have her descend so quickly into irrationality. Am I off-base here?
Now, to my speculation about Mockingjay. And there’s no way to proceed without major spoilerage, so be warned.
Seriously.
Really, spoilers are fixin’ to be happening.
So, we have two of three book in this series featuring a trip to the Hunger Games. And I don’t see how there can be a return trip in Book Three. So I’m very curious to see what action will drive the plot in the finale. Of course, there are a number of Big Questions to be answered, like:
- Will the Capitol be overthrown?
- What’s up with District 13?
- What happened to Peeta?
And of course, no question is more important than this: Peeta or Gale? I’ll show my cards right now. Peeta’s my man. We just haven’t seen enough of Gale to justify Katniss ending up with him, unless Peeta is dead. And I don’t think he’ll be killed off. The only other alternative would be for Peeta to turn out to be Darth Vader. But we’ve already had that drama in Book One.
Pet Theory: Gale will be killed off, the Capitol will be overthrown, and Peeta will be forced to actually kill someone, sullying his clean hands.
Okay, so that wasn’t much in the way of speculation. When I started this post, I had forgotten the ending of Catching Fire.
Anybody else want to jump in here? Speculations? Theories? Preferences for Gale?
Flatulent Friday: Did Somebody Step on a Duck?
Once again I have to explain that my reading is somewhat random, and that the New Materials RSS Feed at Washington County Libraries sometimes squeezes out a title that I just can’t resist. Did Somebody Step on a Duck? A Natural History of the Fart, by Jim Dawson, is just such a title.
(I’d just like to assure you, Mom, that I seriously considered writing this review in the bathroom, as carefully specified in your “If you’re going to make those sounds/talk about that, you can do it in the bathroom” rule.)
I remember a few years ago when I started working with a particular colleague (ten years my junior, but who’s counting?), that one of us let out a loud burp, and I laughed. He let out a sigh of relief and said, “Okay, good. So you still think burps and farts are funny.” I replied that I was both a man of the male gender and still breathing, and so yes I did. I guess he figured an old coot like me (32 at the time) wouldn’t have his juvenile sense of humor. Wrong!
As he evidently did in his previous two books about all things flatulent, Jim Dawson hilariously explores the topic as it impacts pop culture, including forays into famous movie gassy-gags, a discussion of whether Tiger Woods teed off in a different way (watch the video, judge for yourself), and a possible discovery of the world’s oldest joke about breaking wind.
I’ll admit that I laughed uncontrollably a few times, and I’m very much heartened and encouraged that if someone can get three of these books published, maybe there’s hope for my lone bathroom book. It could still happen, people (just as soon as I start seriously writing it).
LOL-funny as the book might’ve been, there was an unfortunate green cloud of political views that obscured some of the humor. I was inclined to dish out a few insults here, but I won’t do it. I also won’t be picking up another Jim Dawson book. I know where to find books with actual intelligent discussion of politics in them. Oops, I guess that was a little insulting. My bad.
And now, a bit more about my personal history with this windy topic. Of course, there were the early days of learning to make the perfect armpit music, the perfect one- and two-handed mouth blast, and all those hours perfecting my trumpet-ish imitation of the early morning music produced by my dad. But the real formative years were in college.
I was gifted with three spectacular roommates during my collegiate career. The first was one of those guys who apparently didn’t think it was dignified to pass gas. And he made that known to the other guys on the floor. Most men reading this would realize that it’s not a good idea to express such heresy in mixed company.
So we, his floormates, took it upon ourselves to learn him a bit. When he went home for the weekend, we had a movie party in my room. His pillow made the rounds, and quite a few rounds were fired into it. I’m not proud of this. But I still bask in the glory of it. And he actually cracked into a smile while trying to be angry the first time he fluffed his pillow when he returned.
Next, I had a roomie who was so incredibly effluvial in the morning and evening as to defy belief. Still burned in my brain is the image of him sitting on the floor in just his jockeys, shaking the timbers of the room, probably annoying our downstairs neighbors with his bass sounds.
And lastly, there was the sleepwalker (another topic, but just as humorous) who might not have been as gifted at any particular part of the day as the other guy, but he made up for it by basically laying down a good layer of green cloud all day. Really amazing skills. He was also fond of the cough-to-cover-the-sound move, but he generally gave himself away by giggling. We learned that a cough followed by a giggle was a sign to break ranks before his rank break hit us.
And now I can emerge from the bathroom and talk about other things.
Next up, I have a few thoughts on the Hunger Games series, and I’m listening to Catching Fire to have it a bit fresher in my mind before Mockingjay comes out. And I’m reading a book about undertakers.
Wordful Wednesday: The Battle of the Labyrinth
Well, I’ve finally arrived at the point where I can look for a Rick Riordan title on the best-sellers/non-renewable rack at the library. The Last Olympian has been mocking me for months, but I’ve refused to give in to its draw, choosing to take the series slowly.
(You can test me on this and see how long I manage to hold off on Book Five. As long as I don’t see it on the rack, I’m sure I’ll be strong.)
The fourth book in the Percy Jackson series, The Battle of the Labyrinth, takes the story to the beginning of the war we’ve been expecting through the series. Percy is once again called on to take part in a quest, this time into the Labyrinth of the Minoan legends. Along the way, we once again meet a new herd of modernized characters from the vast stores of Greek myth, and it still isn’t getting old.
Rather than go too much into the plot, I’ll just point out something I liked and something I disliked. First, the good news: Tyson was back! The cyclops and half-brother of Percy is easily my favorite character in the series. He’s just an utter delight to me.
On the downside, I have to admit I was confused by the love triangle/square that ended up in this book. Sure, everyone can see a very Ron/Hermione thing going on with Percy and Annabeth, so did we really need another contender for Percy’s affections? Or two more? Because that’s what we ended up with in this book. I’ll admit that I found the Calypso episode to be compelling, but isn’t Percy like fourteen years old?
Okay, one more cool thing: Nico is pretty awesome. I won’t reveal the source of the awesomeness, and I think we all know there’s no charge for awesomeness (or attractiveness).
And so we come to the end of another review, to the place in which I reveal the name of the next book I’ve been reading. Mom, you might want to look away.
The title of the book I’ve just finished is Did Somebody Step on a Duck? A Natural History of the Fart. You can see, though, why I had to pick it up, right? I mean, how could I not? I’ve got a Y-chromosome! You can’t fight nature!
Anyway, look for that review Friday. The possibilities for an alliterative title for that post are very nearly endless…
Sci-Fi Friday: 2010
I toyed with the idea of going with Sci-Friday or Science Fiction Friday, or Sci-Fiday or some such, but ultimately went with something both pithy and easily understood.
We spent last week at the beach, and I don’t know about other folks, but I don’t get much reading done while on vacation. I didn’t pick up my Bible once, though the fact that I’m about three months ahead in my read-through softens the blow somewhat. I really only read about half of a book. Something about being at the seaside makes me want to read science fiction. Normally I’ll just bring along Speaker for the Dead and call it good. But since I had a sci-fi title on my To Be Read list, I figured I’d give it a go.
(BTW, sometimes one sees interesting wildlife at the beach. Baby seal: very cute. Dead adult seal and sea otter: not cute. Cool, though.)
2010: Odyssey Two, by Arthur C. Clarke, is the sequel to the inimitable and enigmatic 2001: A Space Odyssey, the film
version of which has been confusing people and causing less-than-honest people to lie about understanding it for about forty years now.
Somehow I expected 2010 to be its own story, but it’s really not. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. 2001 left a bunch of unanswered questions behind, and 2010 does a nice job of at least hinting at answers to most of them. You find out a bit more of what happened to Dave Bowman,what happened with HAL, where the monoliths come from, and what the folks who sent them were trying to do. So in that sense the book is a complete success.
More than anything, you really get a sense in this book of what an undertaking space travel would be, and all the variables that go into getting from one point to another. Of course, it’s even more of an undertaking than Clarke imagined, seeing as how we don’t have bases on the moon or missions to Jupiter. Bummer about that.
The book follows a joint United States/USSR team (Clarke wasn’t quite spot-on on his geopolitical futurism here) as they journey to find out what happened to the Discovery and try to salvage the failed mission. The prose is nice and clear, the new Russian characters are quite enjoyable, and the suspense and mystery are solid. I really have nothing bad to say about it.
My dad recommends that I don’t read the rest of the series. And since he recommended another Clarke title, Childhood’s End, I think I’ll take his word for it. I’m actually fine with reading only part of a series. In fact, I’m so comfortable with stopping in the middle of something that I
(I kinda liked my little joke there. But seriously I have very little else to say. Except that I’ve started The Battle of the Labyrinth and it will probably be my next review. Try to carry on until then. Now, in the comments, you can tell me honestly if you thought my cutting off in the middle was deliberate or not.)
Wonky Wednesday: Your Flying Car Awaits
If I’d posted this last Friday, I was going to go with Futurist Friday, which would’ve been awesome since from the standpoint of Christian Theology, I’m not at all a futurist. (Partial-Preterist, for the record.) But it’s not Friday (I’m finishing this up on a Monday and scheduling it for Wednesday), so I can’t do it. But I had to tell somebody.
Of course, Futurism isn’t limited to the realm of theology. In fact, there are scientists and sociologists who make it their business to predict the future. I even read a geopolitical futurism book not long ago. (I also read a dreadful theological futurist book so nobody else would need to. But that was three years ago.)
Sometimes, futurists get things spectacularly right, but at other times, they spew out things like “Heavier-than-air flight will never be practical as a means of transportation.”
(I wonder if there’s a book of failed theological predictions? 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Is in 1988 ring a bell?)
In Your Flying Car Awaits: Robot Butlers, Lunar Vacations, and Other Dead-Wrong Predictions of the Twentieth Century, Paul Milo presents his personal favorite off-the-mark pontifications from the last century or so, from people who might’ve known better. It’s a delightful stroll through the graveyard of past prognostications.
One problem, Milo points out, is that futurists will often take a recent trend and extrapolate it out into the future, never realizing that it might only be a short-term trend, or there might be a game-changer afoot. For instance, there was a prediction that the world would run short of key minerals, particularly metals, due to demand for things like telephone infrastructure in poorer countries. The futurists didn’t count on cell phone technology, however. Many poorer countries skipped directly from no phones to cell phones, avoiding the mineral-intensive wired phone technology.
Another problem is predicting that change will occur quickly, when it’s always safer to be on the gradual. Many of the predictions about space travel and underwater cities and such definitely could’ve used a bit of the gradual mixed in.
The book goes through predictions about the human body (natural childbirth will be outlawed; we’ll live to two hundred and clone ourselves at will), modes of transportation (flying cars!), scarcity and disasters (worldwide famine; Global Cooling), space travel (lunar and Mars bases; spaceflight isn’t possible), technology (atomic physics is nonsense), future dwellings (megacities and smart homes), living and loving (learning pills; see-through clothing), and the global perspective (an end to war!).
The final wrong-prediction chapter is on predictions of the apocalypse, and he has quite a bit of fun with Christian theologians who’ve been predicting the return of Christ for a couple of millennia now. Of course, I had a problem with his notion that the Gospels predicted Jesus’ return within the first century. (The prediction was for the Destruction of Jerusalem.) There’s also a bit of “chill-out about 2012” in the final chapter, which was nice to see.
After the author spends most of the book flogging the futurists for their brutal predictions, he sums up with some of the good calls that got made, including Jules Verne predicting spaceflight and moon missions, and H.G. Wells predicting the atomic bomb. He even goes back to some of the worst offenders from the previous chapters and points out some of their hits.
I’m at the beach this week, so maybe I’ll get some reading done. Though vacations don’t always work for reading. But I’m a bit of a gimp (recovering from torn ACL/dislocated kneecap), so maybe some reading while enjoying the sound of the surf will be just the prescription.
I’m not sure what’s up next. I’m doing Peter Pan as a read-aloud, and I’ve got a couple of other books in the works, including one I’m specifically bringing along as vacation reading.