China Mieville’s The City and The City

What I love about China Mieville is his imagination. Most of his books are phantasmagorical parades of nightmarish creatures, picaresque characters, dazzling places and mind-bending concepts. The City and The City is less expansive; rather it’s a deep exploration of just one mind-bending concept, one place unlike any previously conceived. It’s also a wonderfully evocative detective story. Comparisons with Philip K. Dick are well warranted, although City is more of an adventure novel and less a work of crushing impact.
Read it!

Star Trek: a Non-Trekkie’s Opinion

As always, spoilers.

I’m not a trekkie. Not because I don’t know anything about Star Trek– I scored dismayingly high on a Trek trivia quiz recently– but because I don’t like it. I enjoyed the original series as a kid, but never became a dedicated follower. I suppose it started to seem silly and self-indulgent with the 3rd movie. I watched Next Generation in college with the rest of Bean Complex housing staff, but by the time Voyager came along I could not watch any iteration of the show. The whole thing just rubs me the wrong way. The military hierarchy, the deus-ex-machina pseudo-science (every problem is solved by re-routing and converting and diverting power, as if the Enterprise is made of Legos), the stiff postures, the orders barked and phasers fired without the least sense of tension….argh.

Star Trek (2009) is a whole new ball game. In the first ten minutes it achieves the impossible: making the quintessential scene of crew-on-the-bridge, confront-enemy-ship, pleasantries-end-and-firing-begins, actually exciting. From there is carries itself as a real movie, developing plot and character in solid fashion, rather than relying on automatic buy-in from a cult following. At the same time, from what I hear, the new movie manages not to alienate said cult-following, but delights them as much as, or more than, me. I’m sure I missed countless references aimed at the trek geeks, but the ones I caught were fun; the doom of the red-clad away team member, Kirk and a green-skinned babe, Captain Pike in a wheelchair, Sulu fencing, Scottie’s signature line.

Quibbles: Kirk’s mother is on the ship? And gives birth at the moment of evacuation? That was a little much. And honestly I feel like I’ve seen someone giving birth in every movie of the past year. The Nokia product placement was especially grating in a future setting. And just where was Kirk’ mother when he enlisted in Star Fleet? I suspect there are some deleted scenes there.
Chekov was cool, but once Scottie shows up he seems redundant. Spock the elder was essential to the story, and really a tragic figure in the end, which was cool, but I felt there was one too many Nimoy scenes.
Everyone is awfully cavalier about creating black holes. I would think you’d want to be very careful about when and where you do that.

My favorite things: how the crew all found their niches as the crisis wore on, not necessarily the roles they were assigned. Rolling cameras giving outer space its 3-dimensional due. Vulcan emotionlessness being a cultural convention rather than a biological fact. Spock and Uhura. Using the alternate history theory to cut loose from the canon. Simon Pegg. The bridge! As a kid, I liked nothing better than imagining I was onboard a spaceship. The bridge reminded me why.

Right and Left

There was this column in the Oregonian by Nicholas Kristof about a study of the different tendencies between self-identified liberals and conservatives. The upshot is, conservatives are more likely to feel disgust and respect for authority. Interesting I suppose, but in my experience, liberals and conservatives alike claim to champion the rights of the individual over the tyranny of the oppressor (government if the opposing party is in power; otherwise the tyrant is corporations, Hollywood, etc.)

In school I learned that Left and Right are two ends of a political spectrum, with a linear progression from one extreme (communism) to the other (fascism). From what few fragments of European political discussion I pick up, this model seems to hold true across the Atlantic. Not so in America. Our two major parties have more or less consistent platforms that are more or less in opposition much of the time, but both claim to be pushing for individual liberty.

The Libertarian Party argues that both parties are tyrannical, just in different areas; socially for Repubs, economically for Demos. They claim to be for freedom across the board, pushing government out of our bedrooms and out of our paychecks, thus transcending the Right/Left dichotomy. Strictly speaking, the Libertarian model verges on anarchy, more of a leftist extreme. Aesthetically, the Libertarian party is incredibly right wing. Their whole platform amounts to cutting taxes, which accounts for half of the Republican platform. (The other half is Evangelical morality, which also has it’s own dedicated proponent in the ironic-name-trophy-holding Constitution Party.) (Biased? Me?) Plus Libertarians always exhibit a surly cynicism commonly seen in right-wingers. Compare the approaches of Rush Limbaugh and John Stewart and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

I think about all this stuff, and I try to understand what people in America mean when they say Right and Left. Well generally what they really mean is Republican and Democrat, even though both parties all all over the political spectrum. But if the spectrum is a viable model, than people ought to fall somewhere along it, even if party platforms have been compromised and muddled over the years. So what does it mean in America to be Right Wing or Left Wing? It’s not a matter of adhering to individual freedom. Lefties want everyone to be free to love who they want and plan their families. Righties want everyone to be free to do their work and keep their earnings. Each side would accuse the other of driving society toward fascism. Righties call it communism, but they’re talking about Iron Curtain communism, not the philosophical principles at the left end of the spectrum.

So how can we define Right and Left? My latest theory is to go by what trips up our leaders. Righties want money. Lefties want sex. Discuss.

Surprise: Waterboarding IS Torture

Apparently I’m a week late in my blogosphere crowings, but never mind. Take a look at this right-wing-talkie-guy who tried out being waterboarded, thinking it would just be a splash in the face. Note that he’s barely on an incline and gets barely a quart of water. Then try a Google image search to see how it’s really done. Also note the marine volunteer, who seems entirely too cavalier and familiar with the process. How many people has he waterboarded? This is how our military functions?