“...where were answers to the truly deep questions? Religion promised
those, though always in vague terms, while retreating from one line in
the sand to the next. Don't look past this boundary, they told Galileo,
then Hutton, Darwin, Von Neumann, and Crick, always retreating with
great dignity before the latest scientific advance, then drawing the
next holy perimeter at the shadowy rim of knowledge.”
The first Sci Fi book I ever read was by David Brin. I was hooked instantly and quickly became immersed in the the Uplift Trilogy, and a love affair with Sci Fi was born.
So picking up a Brin Sci Fi novel is a big deal for me. I have been holding on to this one for a while and looking forward to savouring every page.
I didn't. Savor ever page that is. It was over all a little disappointing. Still a great read and I did enjoy it but it certainly didn't engross me the way some of his other novels have. I often get to the end of a good Sci Fi book or trilogy and wish there was more. However by the end of Kiln People I felt like 20% could have been cut and it would have been a better book.
I am still glad I read the book. It was good entertainment and was thought provoking in places. In particular I enjoyed his exploration of the nature of identity.
"The photograph brought a pain to my chest. It made me realize what an awful amount of time I had lost. Precious years that could never be recovered, no matter how much I struggled to bring them back. Time that existed only then, only in that place. I gazed at the photo for a very long time." “The sad truth is that certain types of things can't go backward. Once
they start going forward, no matter what you do, they can't go back the
way they were. If even one little thing goes awry, then that's how it
will stay forever.”
A sweet little book that brought tears to my eyes in a few places. The air of wistfulness, regret and opportunities missed kind of reminded me or reading Persuasion. However Murakami's version of "everything working out in the end" is quite different to Austen's.
Spoiler alert.......
So does most of it take place in his imagination????
The envelope "disappears". She "takes" the record that she had just given him. There is no material evidence that he ever encountered Shimamoto in his adult life. Was it all just the out working of his mid-life crisis? A psychological projection to help him recognize, respond to and finally put to rest the feeling that something was missing in his life?
I had a feeling of foreboding through the latter part of the book so I was surprised when it all worked out so smoothly in the end and he was able to continue his life as a loving father and husband.
Monday, January 7, 2013
My last post was 5 months ago. That doesn't mean that I haven't been reading. I just haven't been keeping up with blogging about what I have read.
In March I made reading goals for 2012. Unfortunately I did not meet any of them.
I think I have counted all the books I read in 2012 but it is possible I have forgotten a few. I am going to make a post and date it 31/12/2012 for the rest of the books that I did not get around to blogging during the year. I might one day get around to writing a short review for each, although realistically I probably won't.
It is a bit tricky to set reading goals for 2013. I am expecting the birth of my son in less than 3 weeks. So I am not sure how much time I will have for reading.
2013 reading goals:
10 Fiction
6 Non Fiction
Blog all of them
One of the first fiction books I want to read this year is Les Miserables. I am looking forward to seeing the recent movie version and I have this "thing" about not wanting to watch a movie version until I have read the book.
I have a lot of cosy science fiction books sitting around that I and dear husband have collected over the last few months from second hand book stores. I love getting emersed in a good Sci Fi. I especially love trilogies. I find it so comforting to know that there are 2 more to come when I get to the end of a great book. The idea with collecting these books recently was that I would have heaps of time for reading in the last few weeks of pregnancy while I sat on the couch with my feet up. Somehow I now don't think I am going to have as much time for doing that as I originally thought. Though I am sure I will get through at least one or two of these books.
For the non-ficiton I have a few books in mind about parenting and baby development. I have a couple on the go already and I am really enjoying them.
Now to catch up on those 2012 entries. Fortunately I have Good Reads to help me remember what they were!
Edit: I just remembered that I read "The Book Against God" by James Wood so that brings the Fiction total up to 14.
“People like it when you tell them things, in suitable portions, in a
modest, intimate tone, and they think they know you, but they do not,
they know about you, for what they are let in on are facts, not
feelings, not what your opinion is about anything at all, not how what
has happened to you and how all the decisions you have made have turned
you into who you are. What they do is they fill in with their own
feelings and opinions and assumptions, and they compose a new life which
has precious little to do with yours, and that lets you off the hook.
No-one can touch you unless you yourself want them to.”
"I can close my eyes and clearly see those lines, like shining arrows, and if I did not see them quite as clear that autumn day in Karlstad, I did know they were there, of that I am certain. And those lines were different roads I could take, and having chosen one of them, the portcullis would come crashing down, and someone hoist the drawbridge up, and a chain reaction would be set in motion which no-one could stop, and there would be no running back, no retracing my steps....
.... If I had punched the man in Karlstad, my life would have been a different life, and I a different man. And it would be foolish to maintain, as so many men do, that it would have come ot the same thing. it would not."
These are longer quotes than I usually include about a book, but I found myself musing over these passages after finishing the book and so I wanted to include them both.
I really enjoyed this book by Petterson. I loved the dual narrative positions of the Norwegian man in his 60's and his recollections of a significant summer when he was 15 years old. A few members of Slim Tomes book club found it slow moving and lacking in grace (compared to some of our other recent books). However I found this novel had a beautiful cadence and was filled with poignant moments and descriptions that evoked such a sense of place and atmosphere.
It would have been amazing to read this book in a cabin in a beautiful forest near a picturesque river. I think I need a reading holiday soon!
“They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?”
"These things, they don't even bear the weight of conversation," he
said, "J.D. Salinger...John Knowles...even James Kirkwood and that guy
Don Bredes...they've destroyed being an adolescent, Garraty. If you're a
sixteen-year-boy, you can't discuss the pains of adolescent love with
any decency anymore. You just come off sounding like fucking Ron Howard
with a hardon.
A book that I found very hard to put down. I read it late into the night, with my eyes burning and my eyelids heavy. And yet, the knowledge that the characters in the story were experiencing a deeper, more intense fatigue than I am ever likely to feel made it impossible for me to put the book down. Also, I just had to know how long and how far the walk would go.
This is only the second King novel I have read, the first being "The Girl who Loved Tom Gordon". Neither of these books are classic King horror, but they both demonstrate that his author is a master story teller. He certainly knows how to get me hooked and keep me turning the pages. My husband bought me a copy of "On Writing" by King for my birthday. I am really looking forward to reading it. Although I doubt that reading it will improve my fiction writing to be anywhere near the quality of Kings.
“There are times when my father’s absence
is as heavy as a child sitting on my chest. Other times I can barely
recall the exact features of his face and must bring out the photographs
I keep in an old enveloped in the drawer of my bedside table. There has
not been a day since his sudden and mysterious vanishing that I have
not been searching for him, looking in the most unlikely places.
everything and everyone, existence itself, has become an evocation, a
possibility for resemblance. Perhaps this is what is meant by that brief
and now almost archaic word: elegy.”
This is the opening paragraph of this beautiful little book. (I had to look up the word elegy).
It is an absorbing story and very well written. I came to love Nuri, despise Mona, feel fondly about Naima, and miss the presence of the father. I think this indicates that Matar had done a pretty good job of engulfing me in his novel.
I am really looking forward to reading his first book In the Country of Men which was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize, and generally received a better reception than Anatomy of a Disappearance. I found this book mesmerizing so I am expecting to be blown away by his first book.
"This is the crux of the issue, the crux of our story. For the shift in the American environmental movement from aesthetic environmentalism to regulatory environmentalism wasn't just a change in political strategy. It was the manifestation of a crucial realization: that unrestricted commercial activity was doing damage - real, lasting, pervasive damage. It was the realization that pollution was global, not just local, and that the solution to pollution was not just dilution..... To acknowledge this is to acknowledge the soft underbelly of free market capitalism: that free enterprise can bring real costs - profound costs - that the free market does not reflect. Economists have a term for these costs - a less reassuring one than Friedman's 'neighborhood effects'. They are 'negative externalities': negative because they aren't beneficial and external because they fall outside of the market system. Those who find this hard to accept attack the messenger, which is science." (Emphasis added.)
Phew! That took me a while to read. But it was well worth it. I was shocked, stunned, angered and incensed by the material I read. And this is for someone who already knew some of the dirty, underhand tactics the Tobacco companies used in the past - so I guess I should not have been so shocked to find similar techniques used by the anti global warming campaigners.
The book is very thoroughly researched and is extensively referenced. Unfortunately, it is not an easy read and is not likely to be become one of those best sellers that nearly everyone reads, or intends to read. I found I got a bit lost occasionally in all the names, abbreviations, historical facts and technical details. But the overall message comes through very clearly.
It you don't have the time, inclination or patience to read the book, you could instead check out the web site or watch the 4 minute interview below.
The web site is worth a look: http://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/index.html
It has a lot of information and links to interesting web sites. It also lists and links to the key documents referred to in the book.
The techniques commonly employed by the merchants of doubt include:
1. Fostering uncertainty and doubt about an issue long after a scientific consensus has been reached.
2.
Using the popular media to foster this impression of uncertainty by
debating the issue in the popular press rather than in the usual
scientific means of peer reviewed scientific journals, and in some cases long after a consensus has been reached in the scientific literature
3. Invoking the idea of fairness to demanding equal time for their views in the media.
4.
Attacking the messenger - mounting personal attacks against scientists
who have published work that
does not support the political agenda of the "Merchants of Doubt."
Recognize this fallacy anyone? It is the arguement ad hominem.
5.
Presenting information that has no real bearing on, or place in a
scientific debate as if it should convince you of their position. The Heartland
billboard below is a prime example.
Oreskes and Conway respond in the book to the idea of for "fair media" employed in the 3rd technique:
"While the idea of equal time for opposing opinions makes sense in a
two-party political system, it does not work for science, because
science is not about opinion. It is about evidence. It is about claims
that can be, and have been, tested through scientific
research—experiments, experience, and observation—research that is then
subject to critical review by a jury of scientific peers. Claims that
have not gone through that process—or have gone through it and
failed—are not scientific, and do not deserve equal time in a scientific
debate."
The rice video was recently posted on Facebook by a friend and is an example of the fourth technique. The information presented made me cringe. The presenter wants us to believe that just because the total number of CO2 molecules in the whole of earths the atmosphere is very small that global warming can't be true. Umm, what? There is discussion of what level of the atmosphere he stops his count at, density of molecules in the crucial zone, what the CO2 molecules do there, etc. Never mind any discussion of the decades of research and evidence about climate change. And he completely disregards the undisputable fact that CO2 has been increasing at an alarming rate (see image below).
So who are the merchants of doubt? Oreskes and Conway name a few of the key players in their book:
Frederick Seitz
Robert Jastrow
William Nierenberg
Fred Singer
The book presents detailed evidence of their shenanigans in fostering doubt and misinformation on a range of issues - including the risks of passive smoking, acid rain, CFCs and the ozone hole and of course global warming. It also reveals sources of their funding including the tobacco industry and energy companies.
The organisations they often channeled their work and funds through include:
Global Climate Coalition The George C Marshall Institute - founded by Seitz, Jastrow and Nierenbery Heartland Institute
Alexis de Tocqueville Institution
The
GCC has disbanded. Unfortunately the GC Marshal and Heartland
Institutes are still operating. If you click on the links above it will
take you to their wiki pages. Well worth a look.
Here is a recent example of the Heartland Institute's handiwork:
Global Warming has been know about for a very long time.
- It was first reported in the 1930's
- Many scientists have been working on it since the 1950's.
- Climate scientists have largely understood it since the 1970's/80's.
- There has been a scientific consensus that Global Warming is occuring since the late 1980s, however it was not until the early 1990's that there was wide spread consensus that Global Warming is indeed anthropogenic.
If you would like to examine the Global Warming timeline in more depth check out this link: Global Warming Timeline.
Despite this, beginning in the 1990's, there has been a concerted effort by certain groups to undermine this knowledge, particularly in the popular media. Since then the media has largely presented the issue of global warming as if there was still no consensus amongst reputable scientific bodies.
Why?
Oreskes and Conway sum it up very well:
"To acknowledge this is to acknowledge the
soft underbelly of free market capitalism: that free enterprise can
bring real costs - profound costs - that the free market does not
reflect."
At the heart of Global Warming Denial is the ideal of free market capitalism. If you are ideologically opposed to government regulation in general, then you may find yourself specifically opposed to acknowledging any problem for which the most obvious solution is government regulation.
I do not believe that the free market can solve the problem of Global Warming. Capitalism is based on growth, not on restriction. Yes it is true that scientific innovation, in the hands of entrepreneurs, may offer some help to the Global Warming crisis, however it is extremely unlikely that this will be sufficient without regulation by governments to stimulate innovation, and the application of innovation, in relevant areas.
Some have argued that capitalism drives innovation. This is historically not true, as is touched on in the book. All the major innovations of the last century, from transportation to communication, owe their realization to governments. Either because they were originated in government departments (primarily the military) or they are the result of research that has been heavily funded by government grants.
Haven't we learned our lesson from the tragedy of the commons yet? No, free market capitalism will not and cannot solve this problem for us. So what has been the response to global warming by the die-hard free market capitalists? Denial.
The merchants of doubt and those associated with them have been known to
call global warming advocates "Watermelons": green on the outside and
red on the inside. But I am not a communist. I do believe in the free
market but I think it seems very clear that it needs to exist within
boundaries. A free market + sensible government regulation seems to be a
clear answer to me.
Well, that is quite enough ranting from me. What else can I say?
- It's a great book and I highly recommend it.
