Arthur C. Clarke is 90 Today
If you don’t know who that is, even by name popularity, then you have been asleep and should wake up. Arthur C. Clarke was one of the most influential writers of the 20th century writing books like 2001, Rama, and Childhood’s End, with dozens of books and short stories to his name. And he is 90 years old today. Happy Birthday!You can see his YouTube video here, in which he talks a little about life and the three things he wishes would happen before he dies. They are all good wishes I think. I got the video from Robert J. Sawyer. Thanks Mr. Sawyer! On a side note, Dave Itzkoff at the NY Times wrote this article. In it he said that Arthur C. Clarke’s novel (formally a serialization) Childhood’s End is about “An advanced intelligence arrives from above, creating a utopia by integrating all of humanity into a single mind that thinks and acts as one.” This isn’t actually 100% true and I think it deserves going on the record what the story is actually about.Childhood’s End is about an advanced alien species arriving on Earth and assuming control of everything by displaying amazing feats of power that force all of mankind to suddenly stop bickering and give in to the demands of the Overlords. In fact, by the time the integration of humanity into the next evolutionary stage, which is a hive mind as Itzkoff suggests, occurs, mankind has already entered into a utopian world where everyone has just about everything they need. There is no violence and no war. The worst human trait, according to the Overlords, is human curiosity. So, while the basic premise is true and they do become a hive mind, this doesn’t occur until after a utopia is created by the Overlords. In fact, if you want to be picky about things, from a human perspective, the ending isn’t a utopia at all because it involves the complete extinction of the human race in exchange for a collective of minds that cannot think individual. All individuality is lost in exchange for awesome power. Think of it as humanity turning into the Borg from Star Trek.On a humorous note, I read the first sentence of a Wikipedia article on this book and it too is wrong, only more so. This is why I don’t use Wiki at all, for anything other than very basic knowledge. This is the first sentence on Wiki: Childhood’s End is about humanity’s transformation and integration to an insterstellar hive mind the Occult, man’s inability to live in a utopian society, cruelty to animals, and the idea of being “The Last Man on Earth”. The first part is true up until the Occult part. I don’t know where the whole Occult came from. The way the story plays out it’s almost as if humanity merges with what could be considered God. It’s this powerful single mind / entity that the Overlords cannot join because they can’t evolve anymore, but humanity has the potential, if it doesn’t destroy itself, to reach that plateau. It turns out to be a dirty trick by the Overlords though because they don’t come out in front about what they are up to, which I think would have sparked nuclear war.The second part about man’s inability to live in a utopian society is really very wrong. Actually, this is far from true within the story. The one thing that the Overlords, however, fail to do is remove human curiosity, but in the process they do remove war, famine, and art. Art, it turns out, is a human curiosity, and the only reason the Overlords get rid of it is because they don’t understand it. But there is, at one point, a human colony that takes on art once again and the Overlords show up and sort of analyze it to figure out what the big deal is. They still don’t understand it, but this has nothing to do with not living in a utopia, but far from it.Cruelty to animals? What exactly does that mean? Do you mean kicking puppies for fun? Or food? That is such a vague statement and it can either be a statement laced with personal bias or a statement that doesn’t make sense to the story. The story isn’t about cruelty to animals at all, at least not from my perspective on what that phrase means. Nobody in the story kicks puppies for fun.The last bit is basically true, but it’s sort of misguided. The story isn’t about what it’s like to be the last man on Earth so much as being the last human being in the Universe. When the character that statement refers to actually returns to Earth after sneaking onto an Overlord ship and finding out all the stuff that exists out there, he basically is presented an option: he can continue traveling with the Overlords doing what they do, or he could sit down on Earth’s surface with a recording device and tell the Overlords what’s happening as the Earth is destroyed. Why he chooses the latter route I don’t know, but regardless it has nothing to do with being the last man on Earth, but more to do with being the last man in the universe. That’s a lot more complicated than the former. Anyway, that’s all from me for tonight. Happy Birthday Mr. Clarke!
Lies: Pullman’s Persecutors
I find this subject to be fascinating really. It seems that a lot of the things being spread right now by, unfortunately, a small sect of religious nuts about Pullman’s The Golden Compass, in light of the recent film adaptation, have been flat out lies. It actually amazes me how gullible people are to believe a lot of the things being said. Here’s an example: In the words of the author, “I want to kill God in the minds of Children…. I want them to decide against God and the Kingdom of Heaven.” I got this quote from here, but you can see it everywhere in this Google search. What? When and where did he say this? As the original link points out, the author, as far as we know, never actually said this. There’s no proof. No citation, not nothing. It was spread through an email as propaganda against the author and the movie. The way it seems to me is that these people, rather than allowing their children to make their own decisions, are attempting to cloud their children from reality. This is just as bad as what they propose Pullman is doing (even though he isn’t). Kids are not idiots. I think adults have this illusion that children can’t understand matters that are adult. We think of them as these fragile creatures, when really they are not stupid or fragile. Kids can handle a lot, if you give them the opportunity to do so. If you read this snopes article, you’ll get an even more elaborate idea of how crazy the propaganda really is. I particularly liked the part where the author of some email or post said they had found a synopsis of The Golden Compass that said the story talked about castration and female circumcision. Where exactly is this magic synopsis? It doesn’t exist. It’s made up. A load of bologna. I tried to find it, using the powerful Google, and came up with nothing consequential. I haven’t finished the book, but I don’t remember there being castration or female circumcision in it.Sadly…people believe this crap. Anyone know of any other similar propaganda schemes against literature? I’m curious what other books were lambasted with such comments.
The Waterboarding Fiasco
Hold on, pause. This is not a politics rant, at least not in the traditional sense. I’m not going to argue the ethics of waterboarding, or foreign diplomacy or anything like that. This is going to be a musing on something I heard on the radio today that just made me stop and go “what?” in that ‘the logic of that statement is escaping me’ type of voice. I won’t bother repeating what the waterboarding fiasco is, as most of you probably already know. There was a short radio section that had some guy talking about two tapes showing waterboarding incidents that were destroyed by the CIA–and created by them mind you. The gentlemen talking about this remarked that he thought , and the CIA thought, this was a brilliant move on their part because we don’t want those tapes getting in the hands of extremist Muslims (his words, not mine). Basically, they’d get mad and have a fun day with the tapes and having it shown on the net and the like would be very bad. On that point I would agree. Here is where things got “what?”-ish. If you don’t want the extremists or anyone babbling about the existence of the tapes and being upset that, my lord, there is evidence that the CIA actually did use waterboarding torture, then why in God’s name would you announce that the tapes exist in the first place! Extremists don’t need the tapes to be pissed off about them. They don’t need to see them. The fact that you’ve just announced that the tapes exist goes completely against the whole point of not playing them on TV. If anything, this is a great example of the CIA trying to cover up evidence of something that is, technically, illegal. And now not only has the CIA talked about it, but so has Mr. Radioman, who has no idea what the hell he is talking about in the first place. If the extremists were going to get mad about seeing the tapes, they’re going to be just as mad now that it’s out in the open that the CIA condones the use of waterboarding to acquire information. Great job idiots. Could this government do any more stupid, idiotic, moronic, imbecilic things? You be the judge. That one up there is high on the list. (P.S.: There’s a possibility I missed something on this story, but either way it sounds stupid to me, so I’m ranting about it.)
My Situation and My Waning Patience
If you’re not interested in learning a little about what has been going on in my life lately, then skip this post. Just a warning. I don’t want anyone to waste a few minutes reading this thinking they are getting something else. I spent the last five years of my life doing the following so I could get to where I am today: going to community college without a direction, trying to find a direction, and ultimately deciding I’m good at writing and realizing I should go in that direction; wrecking my first car and then losing my job when someone stole money from the safe and, needing a scapegoat, they decided “hey, fire the night manager” only to have it come out later that it was the general manager who was actually stealing money, and had been for months; shortly after losing my job, being diagnosed with cancer, having to drop out of community college with Fs in all my classes, after which I spent six months having surgeries and poison injected into my blood stream, which thankfully resulting in me surviving; going back to community college, now realizing how much I actually like school and at this point discovering my strengths as mentioned above, and then spending years, four actually, getting all my schooling done so I could go to Uni; and somewhere intermingled there’s the struggle to get a good paying job, being unable to afford to move out on my own because medical bills make sure you can’t in California, having my second car crap out on me on more than one occasion, and all through that trying to have some sort of social life so the depression of how utterly bullcrap life can be doesn’t destroy me. Yes, there is some bitterness in there and it stems from the fact that I don’t understand why good people, whether me or the millions of others out there, have to deal with crap like the above. It’s illogical and drives me crazy. Anyway, so when I finally got my acceptances to Uni (all three that I submitted to took me) I had to make the decision of where to actually go. UC Irvine had a good literature and creative writing program, UC Davis was only a safety school, and UC Santa Cruz was beautiful and looked promising. It wasn’t an easy decision. I didn’t want to go to UC Davis mostly because I wanted out of Sacramento for a while. But Irvine and SC were both expensive places to live in (and I generally hate LA…it’s too big for me). Well, fortune came my way when my mother moved to Santa Cruz and offered me a room (for rent mind you, so I had to pay). She’d gotten off the alcohol wagon, looked to now have a stable lifestyle (I was living with my grandmother in her enormous house prior), and it seemed her partner’s job was stable. So I thought “I could save some money on rent and it would make my mom happy to have me around”. I could get my schooling done, and not have to go too far into the hole. Well, we can all be thankful for the Murphy’s law I guess. My car, deciding it now hates me for unknown reasons, is falling apart–the tranny leaks like mad and my rear wheel bearings are about to break. I’m still arguing with the hospital over medical bills, trying to get them to make my life a little easier by doing it right the first time. And that stable home I thought I was moving to that would let me concentrate on my studies? You guessed it, it’s decided to go right to the crapper. My mother’s partner is going to be losing her job, not because she sucks at it mind you but for reasons beyond her control that involves politics and the fact that she doesn’t take crap from anyone, even someone with a degree, and especially when that someone is wrong. This might not be such a problem if it didn’t mean the following was going to happen: they’re moving to Eugene, Oregon, which for those of you that don’t have a map, is not anywhere close to Santa Cruz to make any sort of commute possible. This has all happened in the last weeks of the quarter–i.e. the final stretch and finals. I’ve tried not to think on it too much, and my girlfriend, the wonderful person that she is, is doing a lot of things to keep me happy and trying to keep my mind off of what will eventually happen. I’ve been thrown into a situation that I don’t think any college student should have to worry about: I might be homeless or I might have to drop out of the place I’ve spend such a huge portion of my life trying to get to. You can imagine how I’m feeling at this moment. I can’t work a job because if I do, I lose ALL of my financial aid except loans. That means, I have to work even more, which means losing some of the loans, which means working more, etc. You get what I mean. If I lose that financial aid I cannot afford to live in Santa Cruz, which is a freaking expensive place (three bedroom houses rend for $2,000 to $2,800 in relatively crappy neighborhoods). This puts me in a terrible predicament. I need a new car, or at least a used car that I can finance. I cannot afford to pay rent and the huge deposits that people require so that I can move into a new place, and with rent so high I might not even be able to afford that, especially if it means I still have to commute to campus. My mother found a place for me to stay, but it’s well above my price range and puts me in a position to have to decide between having money to see my girlfriend
Pullman and the Church of Stupidity
I was recently having a discussion with a classmate in my Modern German Fiction class–a relatively interesting class actually–on the subject of the film adaptation of The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. First, I haven’t read all the books so anything I am going to discuss here is from what I have read about the book online and elsewhere and what I have been told by people who have read the book. Second, some of what I’m going to bring up from the discussion from the other day may not be true. I haven’t researched it because it really doesn’t matter considering that the argument I’ll be making it still valid whether what I learned is true or not. Given the history of the relationship between literature and religion I am highly inclined to believe it. Now, as many of you know, Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” series is highly critical of organized religion–Christianity to be specific. Pullman himself is an outspoken atheist as has been said countless times in the news and on his home page. I am not arguing that atheism is the right course for any individual, though I am what one would call a near-atheist, but I am simply making a point that is quite valid historically and presently. My classmate brought up to me that the film adaptation, of which I have mixed feelings about to begin with, was altered in one way that seems rather disturbing and disgusting to me. Nicole Kidman, an actress I at one point had deep respect for, is catholic and refused to be a part of the film if she felt that the religious criticism within the story felt too much like a criticism of her religion. This is remarkably like the sort of hypocrisy of the fellow who played Chef in South Park (the short version being he had no problems playing his role in episodes that bashed Mormonism, Christianity, etc., but left the show as soon as Scientology, his ‘religion’, was addressed in none-too-light a fashion). So they, the film makers, have, according to my classmate, altered the story so that the religious undertones point in a different direction, and are not really catholic in feeling. Now, whether this is true is somewhat irrelevant in my opinion, but I find it morally reprehensible that anyone of any faith would find it necessary to use their influence to manipulate literature. Literature has had a long history of dealing with religious oppression. England saw many a book burnings and books have gone on and off the banned book list in the U.S.–when such a list existed here–and various other countries, many for religious reasons. It is especially irritating when religious reasons are used to remove books that criticize religion. Religion, having brought itself up from the woodworks and solidified its value in modern society, must be open not only for interpretation, but criticism too. The day that we don’t allow literature to express itself as it always should have is the day that literature loses value. Kidman, if she has actually done as I’m told, has done something I feel is a direct insult to the very craft she has made herself a part of. Actors are there to entertain all of us as they play a role. Sometimes a message is sent, sometimes not, but in either case they have influence on society. The fact is that “His Dark Materials” criticizes the catholic church and should be left unchanged. It is irrelevant if a few people get upset, or if the church itself wages a pointless campaign to stamp out religious criticism, which some groups have tried to do with Pullman’s works and have failed miserably at. The fact is that we need criticism in this world of all ideals. People who are secure in their beliefs are not affected by criticism in the first place. For Pullman, his criticism came in the form of a trilogy of fantasy books for kids. Some might find this disturbing, that an author would target children to plant ‘evil ideas’ in their heads. Pullman, however, isn’t targeting kids to plant ‘evil ideas’. He’s doing what an author is supposed to do: tell a good story for kids. Do most kids realize that Pullman is talking about the catholic church? Probably not. Adults likely see it, but the books aren’t meant for adults, even if an adult can just as easily enjoy it. The idea that the ideals present in “His Dark Materials” may, ultimately, be left out disturbs me. What are we teaching children these days? Not to think for themselves? Is this the future of the education system? Brainless automatons who simply repeat the same ideals over and over that they learned from their parents or elsewhere? Kids, especially, should ask questions and should ask them with the intention of figuring things out. How often do we see criticism of religion in the classroom? What I mean is that things like the crusades, the use of religion to enslave blacks, etc. are often either ignored or glossed over. This isn’t to say that I would like to see children culled from being religious. Quite the opposite. I think children need to be aware of the dark side of religion so they can make a decision as to whether they really believe or not. Perhaps parents would hate this sort of doctrine, but the idea of living in a society of people that cannot think for themselves scares me to death. The church has tremendous influence on society, and exerts that influence to push for the inclusion of its ideology in classrooms and in quelling the voices of literature–such as Pullman. There are certainly a number of religious folks who are great people, and I know many of them. But what sets them apart from people such as Kidman in this instance is that they are aware of their history and past and of the present. They know that their religion has been used to
Having Withdrawals…
Maybe I’m just crazy, but I’m having withdrawals right now from reading. Finals have basically started here at UC Santa Cruz, which means I have a total of four essays to write. I mentioned earlier that I wasn’t going to be reading during this period because I just had so much work to do. Well, now that I’m officially not reading for my own enjoyment I’ve found myself craving it. Literally. I’m writing one of my shorter essays because it is due tomorrow and right in the middle I stopped and wanted to reach for my book. Then it occurred to me that I intentionally didn’t bring any reading with me because I needed to stay somewhat focused–this post being a diversion of course. The sooner these blasted finals are over the better. I think the good news, at least, is that three of my essays are going to be exceedingly simple. My Modern German Fiction class requires a final 6-8 page essay on a topic of my choice, approved by the professor of course. I think my topic will be easy to do in that space and I won’t have to worry too much about revision since I know what I’m going to talk about.One of my other essays is a rewrite of a previous essay, which is required even though I really don’t see a point. That shouldn’t be too hard. I have an A- and a B on my two essays thus far in that class, and doing a revision of the B essay shouldn’t be too hard. To be honest I’m not too concerned with my grade so long as it is a B or above. I know a lot of people work really hard to get As, but I see little point in putting that sort of pressure on myself. I like not having to work too hard to get my Bs and As, which for the most part is the case anyway as I’m fairly sufficient at writing essays and being productive.The third essay is for the same class as above. We’re reading The Manifestoes of Surrealism by Andre Breton and the essay has to be an argument paper that addresses one of the points that Breton makes during his manifestoes. It’s somewhat difficult, but I think I can manage.The last essay will be the hardest. It’s for my opera class and it has to be 5-7 pages addressing some aspect of the opera Moses und Aron by Shoenberg. The problem? I cannot stand this opera. I like what is being said, but the music is so utterly horrible to me that I actually had a headache at the end. It’s not even opera. So it’s going to be difficult to address this opera I think, but I imagine I will have plenty to say on some points. We’ll see how that goes. But in the end, I’m having withdrawals. Does anyone else have this problem sometimes?