The Command Post has a comprehensive list of ways to contribute to relief efforts in the aftermath of Sunday's earthquake. Personally, I think you can't go wrong with Medecins Sans Frontieres, Oxfam and Red Cross / Red Crescent.
Sorry if this post seems terse and uninteresting, but the alternative was some wank about Voltaire and the Lisbon Disaster of 1755, so direct your gratitude at being spared that to the organisations listed above.
December 30, 2004
December 24, 2004
Speaking of Snark
It is again that time of year which a more honest society would label Annual Get-Us-Out-of-the-Red Month, and consequently time again to dust off the relevant ornaments and rituals. As chatter in the blogosphere confirms, lately a new observance has been added to the tired old collection: a yearly season of bellicose gripe from the Right, gleefully facilitated by the Yellow Press, that "political correctness is killing Christmas". This has pretty much supplanted the regular Church-sourced plaints that the holiday is becoming too commercialised, too indulgent and definitely too much about all the stuff they stole from the pagans in the first place. Swamped by a well-orchestrated campaign designed to help an ascendant Right cling grimly to the security blanket of imagined underdog status while working to further traduce dissenters and nonconformists, the yearly whinges from the pulpit about the true meaning of Christmas didn't really stand a chance.
Like many of the wrong-headed fixations of our media, the "Christmas Must Be Saved!" pageant is another product of the United States' tiresome and apparently unending Culture Wars, and you'd think would be pretty irrelevant to anybody in a country not founded by disagreeable religious fanatics. That said, while Fox commentators, the London Sun and others in the Murdoch empire all sang pretty much the same unimaginative tune, it was nice to see Rupert's loyal minions at the Sydney Daily Telegraph manage to find a local angle to the beat-up, turning the Christmas backlash fiction into another chapter in their campaign to knobble Clover Moore, our new mayor and, not being the preferred candidate of the corporate sector and lacking endorsement of any major party (which these days amounts to the same thing), a favourite quarry of the tabloid; whether on basic Tory principles or because of an actual memo from head office, I couldn't say.
After complaining that the Sydney City Council had failed to bedeck the streets with sufficient holly, trees and tinsel to rival London, Paris or New York, all world metropolises with ten times our population, the campaign drummed up some opportunistic soundbites from Moore's political enemies, mendacious columns from the commentariat and the usual barnyard noises from talkback radio, before fizzling out when it was discovered the quotes attributed to Moore, endorsing a Yuletide approach less offensive to the sensibilities of non-Christians, were never said by her and the Council had in fact spent more on decorations this year than last.
The necessary change of tack involved an absurd jeremiad against the Council's plan to use a techno remix of the Australian national anthem as background music for upcoming New Year's Eve celebrations. Though any claim that such a rendition of Advance Australia Fair would somehow cheapen it misses the obvious point that the song is a trite dirge that would be significantly improved by being entirely replaced with twenty minutes of ear-piercing white noise, nevertheless this tuneless doggerel drew stout protectors to the letters pages of the Tele from the wide-ranging species of cretin who identify their patriotism most strongly with empty symbols like anthems and flags, presumably on the grounds that attempting some real demonstration of love of country involving, perhaps, public service or defence of important institutions of freedom and democracy, might require thought, effort or some other chore. Ah well, at the least, these invented scandals allow the Tele to avoid cluttering their front pages with reports from the debacle that has become of that war they so courageously cheered for, such as today's story of the attack in Mosul, buried on page twenty-two.
Unsurprisingly, the paper uses the same technique in their project of maligning the new mayor that forms the cornerstone of the current political methodology of the Right: in pursuit of an agenda chiefly concerned with servicing a rich business elite, strive mightily to portray yourself a champion of the ordinary yeoman in desperate struggle against an army of gay-marrying Muslim-hugging latte-sippers. As Rove above, so Ailes, and thence Campbell Reid, below.
So ran our little part of the War On Kwanzaa.
A Merry Saturnalia to all my reader(s).
Like many of the wrong-headed fixations of our media, the "Christmas Must Be Saved!" pageant is another product of the United States' tiresome and apparently unending Culture Wars, and you'd think would be pretty irrelevant to anybody in a country not founded by disagreeable religious fanatics. That said, while Fox commentators, the London Sun and others in the Murdoch empire all sang pretty much the same unimaginative tune, it was nice to see Rupert's loyal minions at the Sydney Daily Telegraph manage to find a local angle to the beat-up, turning the Christmas backlash fiction into another chapter in their campaign to knobble Clover Moore, our new mayor and, not being the preferred candidate of the corporate sector and lacking endorsement of any major party (which these days amounts to the same thing), a favourite quarry of the tabloid; whether on basic Tory principles or because of an actual memo from head office, I couldn't say.
After complaining that the Sydney City Council had failed to bedeck the streets with sufficient holly, trees and tinsel to rival London, Paris or New York, all world metropolises with ten times our population, the campaign drummed up some opportunistic soundbites from Moore's political enemies, mendacious columns from the commentariat and the usual barnyard noises from talkback radio, before fizzling out when it was discovered the quotes attributed to Moore, endorsing a Yuletide approach less offensive to the sensibilities of non-Christians, were never said by her and the Council had in fact spent more on decorations this year than last.
The necessary change of tack involved an absurd jeremiad against the Council's plan to use a techno remix of the Australian national anthem as background music for upcoming New Year's Eve celebrations. Though any claim that such a rendition of Advance Australia Fair would somehow cheapen it misses the obvious point that the song is a trite dirge that would be significantly improved by being entirely replaced with twenty minutes of ear-piercing white noise, nevertheless this tuneless doggerel drew stout protectors to the letters pages of the Tele from the wide-ranging species of cretin who identify their patriotism most strongly with empty symbols like anthems and flags, presumably on the grounds that attempting some real demonstration of love of country involving, perhaps, public service or defence of important institutions of freedom and democracy, might require thought, effort or some other chore. Ah well, at the least, these invented scandals allow the Tele to avoid cluttering their front pages with reports from the debacle that has become of that war they so courageously cheered for, such as today's story of the attack in Mosul, buried on page twenty-two.
Unsurprisingly, the paper uses the same technique in their project of maligning the new mayor that forms the cornerstone of the current political methodology of the Right: in pursuit of an agenda chiefly concerned with servicing a rich business elite, strive mightily to portray yourself a champion of the ordinary yeoman in desperate struggle against an army of gay-marrying Muslim-hugging latte-sippers. As Rove above, so Ailes, and thence Campbell Reid, below.
So ran our little part of the War On Kwanzaa.
A Merry Saturnalia to all my reader(s).
December 22, 2004
Blogroll FAQ
December 21, 2004
Borges' Proof
(From Borgs to Borges - what an unfortunate coincidence.) I just finished reading the Penguin translation of Jorge Luis Borges' The Aleph, including prose works from The Maker. This is from the latter:
Hippasus' hypotenuse exists; pi exists. Are they inconceivable, in the same sense as the number of Borges' birds, for being incalculable? And in order for them to be perceived by the mind of God, would it be necessary for Him to calculate them to the last decimal? Even an infinite being would take an infinite time to calculate an infinite series of decimals, I would assume, unless the universe began with the exact value of pi existing ab initio in the mind of God. In any case, if we can conceive of a line with a length that cannot be precisely calculated, we can surely think of a flock without it containing a precise number of birds.
And it's certainly a good thing I didn't take Borges' little joke as seriously as these guys.
Three Borges stories:
Argumentum OrnithologicumFor some reason, Borges' proof reminded me of the story of Hippasus of Metapontum, the disciple of Pythagoras who applied his master's famous theorem to a right triangle with legs each one unit long. The length of the resulting hypotenuse is the square root of two, a number that cannot be calculated, like pi. Pythagoras' cult sought to create a perfect philosophical system based on a geometry of whole numbers; so Hippasus' calculation was a dangerous heresy. Legend has it he made the discovery on board ship and was immediately drowned by his colleagues when they realised its implications - the real story may be a little more involved.
I close my eyes and see a flock of birds. The vision lasts a second, or perhaps less; I am not sure how many birds I saw. Was the number of birds definite or indefinite? The problem involves the existence of God. If God exists, the number is definite, because God knows how many birds I saw. If God does not exist, the number is indefinite, because no one can have counted. In this case I saw fewer than ten birds (let us say) and more than one, but did not see nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, or two birds. I saw a number between ten and one, which was not nine, eight, seven, six, five, etc. That integer--not-nine, not-eight, not-seven, not-six, not-five, etc.--is inconceivable. Ergo, God exists.
Hippasus' hypotenuse exists; pi exists. Are they inconceivable, in the same sense as the number of Borges' birds, for being incalculable? And in order for them to be perceived by the mind of God, would it be necessary for Him to calculate them to the last decimal? Even an infinite being would take an infinite time to calculate an infinite series of decimals, I would assume, unless the universe began with the exact value of pi existing ab initio in the mind of God. In any case, if we can conceive of a line with a length that cannot be precisely calculated, we can surely think of a flock without it containing a precise number of birds.
And it's certainly a good thing I didn't take Borges' little joke as seriously as these guys.
Three Borges stories:
The Aleph (original translation)More on Borges
The Library of Babel
The Zahir and I
December 19, 2004
The Discreet Charm of the Borg
See below for some trivial context.
Anyone want to hear my little theory of why Berman and Braga replaced the Ferengi with the Borg? Well, you're gonna hear it anyway.
First up I'll admit to accepting his claim that leering pint-sized interplanetary "Yankee traders" simply aren't scary. The Borg really are disturbing; what with the zombie plague references mixed in with that whole absolutely-will-not-stop mojo. So we only really need subtext for amusement's sake.
The usual subtextural theory is that while the Ferengi represent an extreme caricature of capitalism the borg are the ne plus ultra of socialist systems, and a corporate media product like ST:TNG would be much more likely to make villains of the latter and likeable rogues of the former. Amusing enough, but rather obvious and shallow...
Here's mine: Star Trek, like most space opera, is a prime example of the trend in SF described by the label "humanist". Although the characters live in a world where Faster Than Light travel, the electromagnetic transmission of matter, the creation of matter from energy at the touch of a button, are all possible, they are people just like us, largely unchanged by the technology around them. The few cybernetic implants around are medical protheses and those who have them do not regard themselves as enhanced by them - in an early episode (the one where everyone is intoxicated by some alien spore... thingy) Jordy bemoans the fact that he can't see "normally" like other people, even though his visor can detect a wider spectrum of light than average eyes.
The classic example of this belief in both the stability and superiority of natural humanity is Data. Despite his immense intellect, he makes naive errors about the simplest features of human social interactions, needs special hardware to feel emotions and yearns constantly to be a Real Live Boy. Is human personality really that hard to emulate? It's an open question but you'd think Data would be up to it. In the episode where he gets romantically involved with another crew member ("I've written a program just for you.") Spiner has a throwaway line on what he's thinking about. He reels off a long list of the various calculations and thoughts that are simultaneously occupying his positronic brain and it struck me that every time you talk to this guy, you're getting about 5% of his attention while the rest of the brain is thinking about other stuff. Data thinks like that all the time. And yet this was the closest the series ever got to exploring what having a mind like that would be like. Otherwise the usual theme was: no person would really want to be just an android, not even Data.
So - Star Trek is the epitomy of humanist SF: people like us in the future with way cooler toys. Enter the Borg. This society recognises no distinction between the machine and the flesh. It has no interest in culture except as a collection of usable technologies, and the technologies define who the Borg are as much as vice versa. The Borg are all cyphers - they have no human characters (or character development.) And they look like urban goths, with their figure hugging leathers, pale skins and subderma implants. Even the interior of a Borg cube looks like some chaotic neonlit multilevel streetscape.
You know where I'm going with this - the Borg represent everything humanist SF hates about cyberpunk. Stung by the spineless vacuity of their star-trekking SoCal commune, TNG's creators lashed out at what the best in SF were doing away from the Hollywood spotlight and took their revenge in encapsulating every caricaturing whine about Neuromancer and other works in the canon by taking the idea of a society changed in body and mind by the technology it uses into the ugliest, scariest, most unpleasant Bad Guys around. That'll show those hacker punks who laugh that the crew of the Enterprize still use keyboards.
I exaggerate for comic effect - but, ... it bears thinking about...
Good night.
Note about the above - I originally posted this as a test while in the process of fixing the template and then discovered that people were actually reading it (Memo to self: next time try gibberish). I had to delete the whole thing to remove some test comments (don't get me started about Blogger's in-built comments facility) but it seemed churlish not to restore it, even if it was some recycled flotsam I originally wrote at 3 in the morning and posted on the William Gibson discussion board as a joke. (To be precise: here.) Or perhaps I just like the new title and can't think of another context in which I could make that awful pun.
While the suggestion that the creators of ST:TNG devised the Borg as a deliberate caricature of cyberpunk is mere whimsy, it is true that the common depiction of cybernetic organisms - and, for that matter, artificial intelligence - as a repugnant threat to normal humanity demonstrates an uneasiness with the possibility of a post-human future that sits awkwardly with SF's supposed commitment to open-minded futurism. That point, however, is hardly new so I won't belabour it here.
Anyone want to hear my little theory of why Berman and Braga replaced the Ferengi with the Borg? Well, you're gonna hear it anyway.
First up I'll admit to accepting his claim that leering pint-sized interplanetary "Yankee traders" simply aren't scary. The Borg really are disturbing; what with the zombie plague references mixed in with that whole absolutely-will-not-stop mojo. So we only really need subtext for amusement's sake.
The usual subtextural theory is that while the Ferengi represent an extreme caricature of capitalism the borg are the ne plus ultra of socialist systems, and a corporate media product like ST:TNG would be much more likely to make villains of the latter and likeable rogues of the former. Amusing enough, but rather obvious and shallow...
Here's mine: Star Trek, like most space opera, is a prime example of the trend in SF described by the label "humanist". Although the characters live in a world where Faster Than Light travel, the electromagnetic transmission of matter, the creation of matter from energy at the touch of a button, are all possible, they are people just like us, largely unchanged by the technology around them. The few cybernetic implants around are medical protheses and those who have them do not regard themselves as enhanced by them - in an early episode (the one where everyone is intoxicated by some alien spore... thingy) Jordy bemoans the fact that he can't see "normally" like other people, even though his visor can detect a wider spectrum of light than average eyes.
The classic example of this belief in both the stability and superiority of natural humanity is Data. Despite his immense intellect, he makes naive errors about the simplest features of human social interactions, needs special hardware to feel emotions and yearns constantly to be a Real Live Boy. Is human personality really that hard to emulate? It's an open question but you'd think Data would be up to it. In the episode where he gets romantically involved with another crew member ("I've written a program just for you.") Spiner has a throwaway line on what he's thinking about. He reels off a long list of the various calculations and thoughts that are simultaneously occupying his positronic brain and it struck me that every time you talk to this guy, you're getting about 5% of his attention while the rest of the brain is thinking about other stuff. Data thinks like that all the time. And yet this was the closest the series ever got to exploring what having a mind like that would be like. Otherwise the usual theme was: no person would really want to be just an android, not even Data.
So - Star Trek is the epitomy of humanist SF: people like us in the future with way cooler toys. Enter the Borg. This society recognises no distinction between the machine and the flesh. It has no interest in culture except as a collection of usable technologies, and the technologies define who the Borg are as much as vice versa. The Borg are all cyphers - they have no human characters (or character development.) And they look like urban goths, with their figure hugging leathers, pale skins and subderma implants. Even the interior of a Borg cube looks like some chaotic neonlit multilevel streetscape.
You know where I'm going with this - the Borg represent everything humanist SF hates about cyberpunk. Stung by the spineless vacuity of their star-trekking SoCal commune, TNG's creators lashed out at what the best in SF were doing away from the Hollywood spotlight and took their revenge in encapsulating every caricaturing whine about Neuromancer and other works in the canon by taking the idea of a society changed in body and mind by the technology it uses into the ugliest, scariest, most unpleasant Bad Guys around. That'll show those hacker punks who laugh that the crew of the Enterprize still use keyboards.
I exaggerate for comic effect - but, ... it bears thinking about...
Good night.
Note about the above - I originally posted this as a test while in the process of fixing the template and then discovered that people were actually reading it (Memo to self: next time try gibberish). I had to delete the whole thing to remove some test comments (don't get me started about Blogger's in-built comments facility) but it seemed churlish not to restore it, even if it was some recycled flotsam I originally wrote at 3 in the morning and posted on the William Gibson discussion board as a joke. (To be precise: here.) Or perhaps I just like the new title and can't think of another context in which I could make that awful pun.
While the suggestion that the creators of ST:TNG devised the Borg as a deliberate caricature of cyberpunk is mere whimsy, it is true that the common depiction of cybernetic organisms - and, for that matter, artificial intelligence - as a repugnant threat to normal humanity demonstrates an uneasiness with the possibility of a post-human future that sits awkwardly with SF's supposed commitment to open-minded futurism. That point, however, is hardly new so I won't belabour it here.
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