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Sat, Jul. 4th, 2009, 05:28 pm
![[i]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) tahnan: Moving
I'd like to take a moment to remind everyone out there that academia is one of the worst ways to try to make a living. An unemployed ordinary person who wants to move will do one of the following: (a) Stay where he is until he finds a job, and then move to wherever that is; (b) Move to where he wants to be, and then look for a job there. An unemployed professor has neither of these options. We're not like accountants and programmers and salesmen and what have you; we don't have the option of looking for a job in May, and if we fail we look in June, and if we fail we look in July, and so forth. There is no searching until you find a job. There's the tenure track search around January, and there's the one-year positions around June (give or take a month in both cases), and that's it. So if a professor hasn't found a job by, say, July, he's not going to have a job for another year. And there's very little point in going to your favorite city and looking for a job there. No matter what city you're in, if it's of sufficient size, someone will be looking for an accountaint or a programmer or a salesman, but academia just doesn't work like that. The upshot, for me and my wife, is that we don't really like Philadelphia at all and have no desire to stay now that my time at the University of Pennsylvania is over. Which means that right now we're packing so that we can move to...well. Boston unless I get a job elsewhere, in which case elsewhere. And that makes it really hard to plan, which is why we don't have a place to live in Boston (what were we going to do if we signed a lease and then I got a job in California?), or for that matter anything lined up there workwise. All we have is three weeks in which to pack up this apartment and drive the stuff, well, somewhere, and we'll kind of see what happens from there. All things considered, this is far and away the worst year I've had since around 1995.
While most of the country has been sweltering in 90-100 degree heat for weeks, in New England we have overcast skies, rain, and highs in the 70s or even 60s for what seems like a month. But we've got some good sun and warmth here for the 4th of July. Meanwhile, what have I been doing? - Oh yeah, rain. People have been having a stupid number of accidents during evening rush on 128, so I have been getting home up to an hour later than usual. This has been taking time away from other things I'd like to be doing. Together with the general heavy load at work, it makes me feel like I need a vacation. It's a good thing I have one...
- The NPL convention is just around the corner, of course, and I have had my arrangements made for a while. There is clear weather in the forecast, with some chance of a passing thunderstorm to interrupt an otherwise rain-free con. And I continue to work on Enigma puzzles and try to build up a string of completes.
- I haven't had a lot of time to work on Math Magic but I did manage to put my name next to one miscellaneous achievement, as well as two "none"s where I showed particular results weren't possible.
- On Ed Pegg's site I saw the link to Al Zimmermann's Son of Darts contest sometime last month. I have some programs running for this but I am not devoting a lot of my time to it right now. There is a whole year to work on it. I am running some fairly lengthy searches to try to get some good results for all the cases; I expect to have 86 points and change when these are done and my initial results for all the cases are posted, which still leaves me needing a breakthrough in better search techniques to have any prizewinning potential.
- The external monitor I use with my laptop died recently, and seeing how it was a 5 year old 17" LCD, I followed the old tradition of upgrading to a much better monitor (in this case, bigger) for about what I paid for the last one (a 23" widescreen, which adds both in area and pixel count approximately 50% more length and a little more height). Of course, at the con, I will have to make do with the laptop screen alone, but con is mostly not about using computers.
- I went to Salem Willows and got in a good session of pinball today, scoring replays on Nascar, No Good Gofers, Attack from Mars, and several on Funhouse, eventually setting a #2 high score on it at 27 million. There were tons of people in the park enjoying the first nice summery weekend we've had all year, and not the largest crowd I have ever seen in the arcade but still a good number of people in there. They have a nice setup with about 16 pinball machines this year, close to the most I have ever seen in there, though for the most part they are the same ones they have had there in years past. There were a few broken ones; their tech is probably out enjoying the nice weather!
What: The fully enclosed BattleMech cockpits used in futuristic multiplayer combat in Virtual World Entertainment's BattleTech Centers. A 'Mech pod features a huge viewscreen, a virtual map, a throttle, a joystick for firing a dozen weapons, movement pedals, heat sensors, and other bells and whistles. Here is a demonstration of a 'Mech in action: Why: Inherent in the definition of "arcade" is the sense of variety from one machine or attraction to the next. Not so in the BattleTech Centers, such as the flagship center in Chicago's North Pier. Here you'd just find row after row of pilot cockpits for 30-foot-tall exoskeletal tanks. You'd shut the door, lock in, and familiarize yourself with your BattleMech. And a whole lot of other people would too. Suddenly, you were fully immersed in 33rd century combat, blasting away at your enemies with rockets and lasers. The 'Mechs were all different, and you'd vary your play style based on whether you were in an agile Blackhawk or a lumbering Atlas. The pods' greatest innovation was a concept called "heat," where continuous firing of your weapons would not only deplete their ammunition, but burn out your 'Mech's systems as well. So you had to cool down, play smart, and watch your six. Impact: Launched in 1990, the pods drew gamers from everywhere. A second game, the Martian sled racer Red Planet, debuted in the pods, here shown off by Judge Reinhold, Joan Severance, Nora Dunn, Cheech Marin, and Weird Al. It's overstating things to say that the BattleTech Centers revolutionized arcade gaming, but they were the most ambitious virtual environments of their day. In the 1990s, there were 26 centers across the world, each with at least 12 pods. But by 2000 the main centers in Tokyo and Yokohama shut down, and Dave & Buster's closed its pod installations in the US. The VWE company passed to BattleTech originators FASA, then Microsoft, and now to an operation in Kalamazoo, which supports centers in a few US states. It's a modest old age for one of the greatest videogame systems of all time. Personal Connection: BattleTech co-creator Jordan Weisman and I have been friends for 15 years, working together on the BattleTech Trading Card Game in the 1990s and Pirates of the Spanish Main earlier this decade. At Origins this past weekend, we did something we'd never done before: face each other in a 'Mech pod battle. None of us were very good. While I stumbled about in my 85-ton Deimos, Jordan's son Nate flew circles around us in the much nimbler Shadowcat. By the end we'd actually killed ourselves as often as we'd killed each other, but a splendid time was had by one and all. (Thanks to MechCorps for comping us. You guys rule.) Other Contenders: that game's spiritual godfather BattleZone, where green wireframe tanks bore down on you like death; the Guns 'N Roses pinball machine, with its gun and rose-shaped plungers, snake ramp, and head-banging soundtrack; the gorgeous Don Bluth-animated Dragon's Lair cabinet game, and yes, those are gameplay sequences from 1983; Acclaim's summoning game prototype Magic: The Gathering—Armageddon, the coolest arcade game never produced; the dual-pad Dance Dance Revolution, the only exercise many gamers get; the quest for that perfect game of skee-ball.
A video of our female kitten, Nora, seeking out things to hunt and destroy. I think she's now working on hunting abstract nouns.
To everybody in the world who uses a Gregorian calendar: happy 4th of July! To people in the United States of America: in addition, happy Independence Day!
 Happy Independence day to US Doonzfans. I mean, I still think you made a big mistake, but hey everyone has to leave the nest one day... ;)
Have been away from livejournal for so long that in my attempts to catch up, I actually reached the skip=720 mark and had a ways back to go still, but couldn't because that's apparently as far back as lj goes. And I was skimming in any case, so if there's anything I should read more carefully from the last month or two (I'm not even sure when I stopped, except that it probably had something to do with a spot of firefox failure), please let me know. Thanks, everyone, for all the birthday wishes last weekend! I still have a bunch of emails I owe responses to and plan to write over the weekend, plus a handful of meme answers to put together so I can finally post them. Hopefully I'll mange to get back on top of my to-do list (including the posting and reading of lj entries, among things like job searching and cleaning and packing, and possibly dayshifting) very, very soon... I miss you all! Also, happy Fourth! I have no idea what I'm going to do. Oh, and, I'm back in San Diego. Whee? If anyone feels like going to the Zoo or Wild Animal Park (I still have one guest pass left!) please let me know! I'm also up for tea or movies or general hanging out or whatnot. I can't spend all my time avoiding jobsearching and such, after all.
I watched my first ever surgery yesterday. It was incredibly quick, very smoothly done, pretty much gore-free, and gave me nightmares. The whole thing took perhaps fifteen minutes, during which I had to sit down four times. Yeah, four. So much for "woohoo I'm all acclimated now!" I have no doubt I've made a lot of progress -- that's obvious -- but I still have a ways to go. I did get to do some cool things (well, cool on my tiny scale of achievements) early on. I got to open up the instrument pack, which I now know how to do in a way that keeps the contents all sterile, and I got to open up the scalpel blade, again in the proper way to keep it sterile. Next time I won't need instructions for those things. I have also been promised a basic course in anesthesia monitoring next time I'm watching surgery. Fortunately, I was physically fine and thus didn't make a major nuisance of myself. I sat down early enough that I didn't have any real trouble. There was just one thing, one motion I saw happen, which I will NOT detail here (you may thank me), that replayed in my mind over and over as I was trying to get to sleep later that night. That one bit had me lying awake in bed and wincing for about an hour. I did finally get to sleep, but wow. I have no doubt I will see it again as I get to sleep tonight. Wibba wibba wibba. The doctor was VERY nice about it. "Are you okay?" "Yep. This is why I'm in here. I used to do this when I saw needles!" (Perfectly matter-of-fact:) "Oh, okay. Wow, you've made a lot of progress already." One of the vet techs was reassuring, too. She told me that the first surgery she watched, she had to leave the room. She came back in a few minutes later for a couple of seconds, then left again and stayed out. There is hope for me yet. I am going to make a major pest of myself over at that clinic until I am calm, cool, and collected in that surgery room.
For those of you who don't know, or were wondering, yesterday I had my wisdom teeth taken out. I'm doing generally okay, and gnomi has been taking good care of me. In the meantime, tomorrow afternoon I'm giving a talk at shul. In honor of the Independence Day holiday, I'm going to speak about one of two topics: either the Jewish roots of Captain America, or the letter George Washington sent to the Jews of Touro Synagogue. More later....
So, a few weeks ago, madwriter asked me if I wanted a Hebrew copy of Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions that had come into his possession. Now, while it's true that I can pronounce Hebrew, I don't read it too well, but I figured why not. After all, Nomi could read it, and maybe one day I'd be able to.
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Dangerous Visions in Hebrew
Photo copyright ©2009 by Michael A. Burstein |
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Dangerous Visions in Hebrew, Frontispiece
Photo copyright ©2009 by Michael A. Burstein |
Danny explained to me why he wanted me to have the book, though, and when he did, I felt a lump in my throat. I said to him, "I'm touched you would consider this gift for us. Rest assured we will treasure the book and keep it with all the other important books in our library." Here's why:
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Book Provenance
Photo copyright ©2009 by Michael A. Burstein. Text copyright ©2009 by Danny Adams. |
In case it's hard for you to read, here's the text on the page:
This book previously belonged to my uncle, science fiction author (and anthology contributor) Philip José Farmer. I brought it from his home in Peoria, Illinois on June 9, 2009. From there I offered it as a gift to fellow sf writer Michael A. Burstein and his wife Nomi.
Thank you, Danny.
 (Okay, I was hoping to be able to do a larger pic than this one, but this is the one that appears to be possible. Click on it to see the full sized one.)
Hey, lumpybeast and I are going to go to the 8:00 showing of Angels and Demons at the Capitol tonight. Anybody want to come and mock with us?
I have things to report, but I don't feel much like writing at the moment. Stay tuned to this station until I get myself together.
mabfan had his wisdom teeth out yesterday, so the theme of this week's Shabbat meal is "relatively easy to eat." We're alone for dinner and have one guest for lunch. So, here's what I made or am making for the meals: Tonight-- Challah and grape juice -- Corn chowder -- Ice cream for dessert Tomorrow-- Challah and grape juice -- Mixed berry soup (recipe from The Moosewood Cookbook) -- Baked ziti with three cheeses (recipe from Epicurious) -- Cheese pie (recipe from introverte) -- Baked squash (method stolen from beckyfeld) -- Ice cream for dessert At this point (T = Shabbat -4.75 hours), everything is made but the cheese pie and the berry soup. ETA: At T = Shabbat -3 hours (5:07 PM), DONE!
http://dafnotes.blogspot.com/2009/07/famous-taz.html Subscribe to the Daily Daf Yomi Summary here. Estate Money and InterestThe Gemora allowed an administrator of an estate to invest the orphan’s money in an investment with favorable terms for them, although this is generally Rabbinically prohibited. The Shulchan Aruch (YD 160:18), based on the Rambam and Rosh, applies this license to all Rabbinically prohibited interest, and extends this to money of charity, money donated to Torah scholars, and money donated for use in a synagogue. What did the Torah Permit?The Gemora quotes a statement of Rav Huna that prohibits charging interest from a non Jew. The Gemora debates why this is prohibited, and how to reconcile this statement with the verse and Mishna that seem to permit such a loan. Tosfos (70b Tashich) asks why the Gemora was concerned with reconciling this Rabbinic law with the verse and Mishna, and answers that the Gemora assumed that the Sages would not prohibit something the Torah permitted. The Taz states in numerous places that although the Sages have leeway to enact their own new prohibitions, they may not prohibit something explicitly permitted by the Torah. The Taz in YD 117:1 applies this to the Rabbinic prohibition on commerce in forbidden foods. Since the Torah explicitly allows one to sell neveilah meat to a non Jew, the Rabbinic prohibition had to allow for such commerce when one chanced upon the forbidden food, so as to not fully prohibit an act the Torah explicitly allows. The Taz in OC 588:5 discusses a question raised by earlier poskim. We find the Sages prohibited the performance of numerous mitzvos on Shabbos (e.g., Shofar, Lulav), due to a concern of one accidentally carrying to perform the mitzvah. Why did the Sages not apply this to bris milah, prohibiting a bris milah which falls on a Shabbos. The Taz says that since the Torah explicitly said that one must perform a bris milah on the eighth day, even if it is a Shabbos, the Sages could not prohibit it. The Chavos Yair 142 challenges this Taz from our Gemora, among others. Our Gemora is an instance where the Sages prohibited an action explicitly permitted by the Torah – i.e., charging a non Jew interest on a loan. Therefore, the Chavos Yair rejects the Taz’s thesis. Later poskim dispute the Chavos Yair’s disproof. The Shla, quoted by the Chasam Sofer (YD 106), says that the Sages did not prohibit charging a non Jew interest, since that is indeed explicitly permitted by the Torah. Instead, the Sages prohibited a Jew from lending to a non Jew at all, and only thereby precluded the Jew from receiving interest from him. The Chasam Sofer (YD 106, 109) says that Tosfos themselves (70b Tashich, 64b v’Lo) seem to support the Taz, and actually explain the Gemora based on his principle. According to Tosfos, when the Gemora challenged Rav Nachman from the verse, the Gemora was stating that since the Torah explicitly allowed a Jew to charge a non Jew interest, the Sages cannot prohibit it. The Chasam Sofer says that the reason the Sages were allowed to do so is due to the exclusions built in to their prohibitions (for livelihood, or for a Torah scholar). Just as the Sages allowed commerce in forbidden food when the Jew chanced upon it in order to avoid explicitly prohibiting an act allowed by the Torah, so too, the Sages allowed charging a non Jew interest in some cases, to avoid explicitly such a prohibition. Rav Moshe Feinstein (Igros Moshe OC 1:134) says that the Gemora’s answer that we read the verse only as tashich – explicitly allowing a Jew only to pay interest, means that the Torah never did explicitly allow a Jew to charge interest, giving the Sages the leeway to prohibit it. See Rabbi Akiva Eiger YD 117 on the Taz for more details. Tosfos (70b Tashich) says that nowadays we lend money to non Jews with interest. Tosfos advances three reasons for this behavior: 1. The economic situation and lack of other professions available to Jews makes the interest necessary for the creditor’s basic needs, in which case it is permitted. 2. Ravina’s answer understood that the prohibition was to limit our interactions with non Jews. Since we are forced into such interactions due to economic circumstances, there is no added interaction that will be prevented by refraining from charging interest. 3. The second version of Rav Huna’s statement does not prohibit interest from a non Jew at all, but only prioritized an interest free loan to a Jew above it. The Shulchan Aruch (YD 159:1) rules that charging interest from a non Jew is prohibited by the Sages, unless the creditor needs the interest for his basic needs, or is a Torah scholar. However, the Shulchan Aruch says that it is permitted nowadays, based on the first two reasons of Tosfos (see Shach 2).
The following picture, of our kittens, was titled by the male kitten, who was typing at the time. 
Okay, so I now have video capture software. Must ... not ... get ... sucked ... in .... But that let me upload this little clip of a technology misfire from a broadcast last Saturday:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1556  Near the end of 1801, his first year as president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson got a letter from Robert Patterson, professor of mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, containing a page encrypted according to a new method. Patterson described his cryptosystem in detail, and boasted that without the key — which he didn't provide — decryption of his message would "defy the united ingenuity of the whole human race".
After more than 200 years, the code was finally broken by Dr. Lawren Smithline, a mathematician at the Center for Communications Research in Princeton, N.J., using a technique originally developed for biological sequence comparison.
This could be the premise for a new Dan Brown novel, if Patterson's message were sufficiently bizarre and consequential.
Fortunately, his sample encryption turned out to be simply the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. You can read more about the code in an article by Rachel Emma Silverman, "Two Centuries On, a Cryptologist Cracks a Presidential Code", WSJ, 7/2/2009, which also a nice flash animation of the ciphering method. Details of the crytanalysis can be found in Lawren M. Smithline, "A Cipher to Thomas Jefferson", American Scientist, March-April 2009 (subscription required).
One interesting thing in Patterson's letter was his list of desiderata for a system of "secret writing":
1. It should be equally adapted to all languages.
2. It should be easily learned and retained in memory.
3. It should be written and read with facility & dispatch.
4. (Which is the most essential property) it should be absolutely inscrutable to all unacquainted with the particular key or secret for decyphering.
Patterson's system certainly scores well on points 1-3, but as Smithline showed, it fails on point 4. I'm not sure how it compares in strength to some of the better alternatives available in 1801, for example Vigenère ciphers, either in principle or in the cryptanalytic practice of the time. If Patterson's method were combined with a Vigenère cipher, neither Smithline's method nor the standard methods for solving Vigenère ciphers would work, and perhaps the result would have been effectively unbreakable with the methods available in 1801, I'm not sure. In comparison, Bruce Schneier's low-tech Solitaire algorithm is said to effectively unbreakable even with modern techniques and machinery, but it's a good deal more troublesome on points 2 and 3.
In any case, Patterson's system seems never to have been used in practice.
The exchange between Patterson and Jefferson reinforces what we already know about Jefferson's intellectual breadth. In 1801, Jefferson was president of the American Philosophical Society as well as of the United States, and Patterson was the A.P.S. vice-president. For another window on their relationship — and on Jefferson's intellect — see his letter to Patterson of Nov. 10, 1811, on "the subject of a fixed standard of measures, weights and coins".
But reading the biographical sketch of Robert Patterson in Penn's archives reminded me of some other important characteristics of American culture:
Robert Patterson, the son of Robert Patterson and Jane Walkers, was born on May 30, 1743 on a lease-held farm near Hillsborough, County Down, Ireland. His family was respectable, though not affluent. Patterson attended school at an early age and soon became distinguished for his love of learning. He excelled in mathematics, but his family could not afford to pay for a university education. In 1759, when the French invaded Ireland, Patterson enlisted in the militia, and after serving for a year, rose to the rank of sergeant. He devoted himself to his military exercises, and soon became distinguished enough for his skill and good conduct to attract the attention of the officers of a British regiment stationed near Hillsborough, who offered him a commission in the regular army. Patterson refused this commission, choosing instead to return home to work on the family farm.
In October of 1768, determined to try his fortune in America, Patterson embarked for Philadelphia, arriving there almost penniless. After spending a week in Philadelphia, Patterson set out on foot for Bucks County in order to seek employment as a schoolmaster. He was immediately hired at a school in Buckingham.
Although Patterson had a natural talent for teaching, he decided to make more use of his mathematical talents, especially his knowledge of determining longitude through the use of lunar observations, and moved back to Philadelphia to teach navigation. […]
In 1772, with his finances vastly improved, Patterson was persuaded by a friend to invest his money in merchandise and open a country store in New Jersey. However, since he was unsuccessful as a shopkeeper, he was happy to accept a position as Principal of the Wilmington Academy in Delaware in 1774.
At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, his duties as Principal were suspended due to the fact that many of the students at the Wilmington Academy were called home. After removing his family to a small farm near Roadstown, New Jersey, Patterson enlisted as a military instructor in the Delaware militia, then under the command of Colonel John Haslet. He later served under Colonel David Hall, first in the medical corps and then as a brigade major. He remained in the militia until the British army evacuated Philadelphia and New Jersey in 1778, when his brigade was disbanded.
In 1779, after the College and Academy were reorganized into the University [of Pennsylvania], Patterson successfully applied to Dr. Ewing, the Provost, for employment as Professor of Mathematics. He was Professor of Mathematics from 1779 to 1810, Professor of Natural Philosophy and Mathematics from 1810 to 1813 and Vice-Provost from 1810 to 1813.
I don't think that it happens anymore, in the U.S. or elsewhere, that someone becomes university professor without ever having attended a college or university as a student. But America is still a place where immigrants can find opportunities denied to them in their homeland. And it's also a place where people often have second and third chances to find their calling.
One other note in Patterson's bio resonated with me in a personal way:
Patterson resided at nine different locations in Philadelphia, beginning at 148 South Fourth and ending at 285 Chestnut Street. It was said that he only remembered the latter address because the second digit was the cube of the first and the third was the mean of the first two.
I've always had a terrible memory for numbers, and this is exactly the sort of mnemonic that I've always resorted to. For example, after all these years, I still remember the standard Philadelphia telephone area code, 215, by keeping in mind that the second digit is half the first, and the third is the sum of the second and the square of the first. It seems illogical that this sort of thing should help, but it does!
[By the way, I note that determining longitude by lunars was apparently only described as a practical method in 1767 (at least, that was the date when the Theoria lunae juxta systema Newtonianum was published). So for Patterson to start teaching it in 1769 or so was fast work.
I wonder whether he learned about it from Charles Mason, of Mason-Dixon fame, who seems to have spent parts of 1767-68 in the Philadelphia area.]
There's... sunlight!! Still pretty cloudy, but the sun just came out. Happy!
http://ropine.com/yesh/article/cryptorebel-without-a-cause When Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother came out last year, various geeky and liberal bloggers I respect lauded it as A Very Important Book That Today’s Young People Ought To Read. I finally read it and my general reaction was: this is A Very Important Book? WTF?
Obligatory non-spoilery plot summary: Marcus a.k.a. “w1n5t0n” is a high-school student with a gift for hacking, in both the “doing stuff with computers” sense and the “evading security systems” sense. In the wake of a terrorist attack on San Francisco, he is detained without warrant, interrogated about his nonexistent terrorist connections, and finally released with an “we’ve got our eye on you, boy” warning. He vows REVENGE. Hijinks ensue.
I should be a sucker for a novel with this kind of setup, so why did it so thoroughly turn me off? Let me count the ways:
- Marcus is a geek wish-fulfillment fantasy. He sneaks through his school’s high-tech security screens! He passes out DVDs containing a hardened Linux distribution to his friends and classmates, who accept them eagerly! Hundreds of people who only know him over a carefully anonymized network acclaim him as his leader, even as he humbly denies being in control of anything! He shows a teacher who’s a true patriot by quoting the Declaration of Independence! As his first part-time job, while still a high-school student, he implements a cryptographic protocol! Girls want to have sex with him! I realize that the main character of a thriller novel is usually larger than life, but this goes far for my taste; Marcus is so perfect that there’s no room in the novel for him to demonstrate personal growth. And why should he? He was right about everything on the first page and equally right on the last.
- The book is stuffed with infodumps about computer technology, the glorious Sixties, and other things that the author clearly thinks You Should Know, but which do nothing to advance the plot or reveal the character. It’s almost as bad as the sex scenes in a Gor novel. Here, I’ll prove it: I randomly open the book to pages 258–259. On page 267, the third paragraph begins “It’s unbelievable today, but there was a time when the government classed crypto as a munition…” and goes on for a whole page.
- Given the undercurrent of the author hectoring the next generation about what they should care about, the book’s flirtation with youth-worship—at one point Marcus’s movement adopts the slogan “Don’t trust anyone over 25”—is just… odd. And as regime-threatening movements go, Marcus’s network is curiously homogenous. They’re young. They’re geeky enough to ruin a perfectly good video-game console to run Linux on it. They seem to have the same taste in music and recreation (two critical points in the plot involve a rock concert and a LARP, respectively). Most of the main characters are white or East Asian; the role of racism in the government’s suppression of civil liberties is barely mentioned.
- Most people willing to risk arrest and long-term detention for exercising their civil rights are not just trying to exercise their civil rights, but trying to use those civil rights to accomplish something. Paul Robert Cohen appealed to the Supreme Court for the right to display “Fuck the Draft” on his jacket; while the legal system only cared about the first word, Cohen cared about the entire sentence. By contrast, in Little Brother, the movement’s enthusiasm for civil liberties is completely disconnected from any larger political program. Marcus and his friends want to “take it [the country] back”, but for what do they want to do with the country once they have it? End the war in Iraq? Liberalize the immigration laws? Repeal the provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that have discouraged high-tech startups from floating initial public offerings? I have no idea.
The Israeli author Amos Oz once said that when he has a question to which he knows the answer, he writes an essay; when he has a question to which he doesn’t know the answer, he writes a novel. I’ve enjoyed Doctorow’s previous work—both fiction and non—but Little Brother is a novel that should have been an essay.
1 Had I been teaching that class, I would have pointed out that John Adams had signed the Declaration of Independence as a delegate from Massachusetts and then, twenty-two years later, signed the Alien and Sedition Acts.
2 Losing his virginity doesn’t count.
3 OK, a Gor novel would have the sex scene within five pages of any random selection, not ten, but then again, the Gor novels are printed in smaller type.
4 Cf. Stanley Fish’s remark, in There’s No Such Thing As Free Speech and It’s a Good Thing, Too, that the only speech that can be completely free is speech that nobody cares about listening to.
I just came from an interesting demonstration called a "cosmic walk". (People who were at NHC last year might have seen this there. I saw only its after-effects then.) The presenter laid out a long rope in a spiral, maybe 8-9 feet across with spacing around a foot. (I'm too lazy to do that math.) Each eighth of an inch represents 1.5 million years. There is a pillar candle in the center and about 30 tea lights at designated places along the rope. As one person walked the spiral lighting candles the presenter narrated. The pillar candle is the big bang, followed nearly immediately (the candles are too big to be accurate) by the formation of the universe. The progression then goes through various highlights -- the emergence of the first stars (much bigger than our current ones), the emergence of elements other than hydrogen and helium, the first cell, and so on up through the formation of land, contintental drift, the rise and fall of the dinosaurs, the rise and fall of mega-fauna, etc, ultimately leading to the emergence of homo sapiens. The presentation mapped this to the days of creation in B'reishit. (The narration continued on with milestones way too close together to be represented as candles, by the way.) What partcularly struck me with this was the clustering. I'm sorry I wasn't in a position to take a picture. After the initial flurry there are long stretches, billions of years, where nothing happens. (You could argue that the presenter chose the points to mark, but I -- not a scientist, to clarify -- did not notice any missing.) And then,, around the time of the dinosaurs, things start happening very quickly; the last dozen candles (maybe more) occupied only a few feet. I found the spiral to be a more-effective representation than the conventional straight timeline, even though it's inherently distorting (inner legs are not the same length as outer legs). I wonder if that's just nifty or if it is in fact a better visualizaation in terms of conveying information. 
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okay
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