Audiobook Club: God, No!

Well, I suppose that Audible.com 'got me'. Obviously the 'best deal' in terms of using the site is to pay your $14.99/mo fee and choose an expensive/long 'free' audiobook of interest - audiobooks typically being quite expensive. However, the site had a 48 hour sale and I saw that Penn Jillette's God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales (2011; Billiance Audio), read by the author, was $7.49. I like Jillette. He's raw and outspoken about athiesm and libertarianism, and he's typically quite funny to listen to, so I picked it up 'on the cheap'.

Go, No! isn't really a book in the vein of Dawkins, Harris, or Dennet, who try to argue against the practice of religion (or more specifically accepting anything without evidence) with science, logic, and rhetoric. Jillette uses all of these in the book to be sure, but instead he takes the approach of relating his own thoughts about 'free-thinking' and wrapping them around tales about his own experiences. These 'tales' are always quite funny, but tread boldly into topics that I wouldn't be comfortable talking about aloud except in a basement with close friends. When I said above that Jillette is 'raw', I mean that he goes way beyond the kind of language that all but the saltiest mouths would spew. If you know him, you know what you're in for.

The language works within the book's overall philosophy, which is really about the things that the author holds 'sacred'. Things such as family, friends, and freedom. I'll give Jillette one big compliment: he does a really good job of explaining the libertarian philosophy (or at least 'a' libertarian philosophy) in such a way that it doesn't come off as arrogant or off-putting. Maybe it's just me, but I have found that libertarians often come off to liberals in the same way that athiests do to the faithful: as condescending a-holes. Because this aspect of the book is one of its unique contributions to the discourse, I'd like to focus a bit on one of Jillette's specific arguments.

The author makes a point that I guess I'd never really thought about: In many ways, both the 'left' and 'right wings' are cynical philosophies (the left most of all). Both ideologies essentially assume that most people cannot be trusted to do the right thing, and therefore we need many laws and institutions to save us from other people and/or ourselves. In a way it's rather odd that people assume that individuals who often can't manage their own lives very well somehow have the 'inside track' on how to manage something as complicated as a society; read 'your lives'.

Jillette also points out that there's a bit of a self-serving elitism to socialism: liberals often scoff at the 'Tea Party' for voting against their own interests... for a party that's ostensibly 'all about self-interest'. When a liberal votes against his or her own interest, say for redistributive taxation, that's okay though, because he or she has a monopoly on knowing what's best for other people. Also, it's rather odd that some wealthy liberals argue that they should be paying 'their fair share' of taxes since, as far as we can tell, there's no law against paying more than the minimum amount of taxes. It would mean a lot more if, when claiming that you're all not paying enough taxes, that at the very least you started ponying up. When you think of it that way, it all starts to sound a bit like Louis CK's concept of 'believies' - little day dreams that he has about how he'd act in a particular situation that make him feel like he's a good person, without having to actually do anything.

There is, unfortunately, a disproportionate bias towards socialism among skeptics. I say unfortunate here because much like how the US Republican party has married social and fiscal conservatism, this situation marries skepticism with socialism. One aspect of what Jillette advocates is universal skepticism. He gives an example of how years ago he answered a question about his opinion on global warming with 'I don't know', and was lambasted in a news column about how a skeptic could side with the 'Right'. But, as Jillette replied in yet another column, global warming is a very complex, multi-layered scientific topic and he's an entertainer. While he's inclined to believe in warming itself and the potential for anthropogenic contribution, the evidence as to its causes and solutions are so complex that he's been unable to get a clear opinion. Thus, 'I don't know' and not 'I don't believe in it'. It's not right for skeptics to trash what they don't like, and then swallow 'liberal fairy tales' as one friend once called them, without question. There is empirical evidence that many ideas that sound nice and progressive on paper just don't work in practice.

God, No! is interesting if for no other reason than it's quite funny. Because of the nature of his stories and the language, I'm guessing that Penn's appeal will skew quite young - but that's likely where it was to begin with anyway. Ultimately the book's atheism angle pushes an ideal that I've always thought of as more important than arguing over the specific details of religious faiths: that religion itself should be open to the same scrutiny, criticism, and humor that is every other aspect of human life. If you require taboos to prevent criticism of your faith, then what you believe probably isn't solid enough to resist real scrutiny. In describing the myriad sexual acts that he'd perform on the 'living lord', or referring to every faith as 'their particular brand of whack job nuttery' Penn Jillette is certainly breaking taboos. 

Audiobook Club: It...

For my second Audible.com audiobook, I decided to go with Stephen King's classic It (1986; Viking). I realize that King is probably the most widely read American author, and that his novels are often the recipients of much praise, but for some odd quirk of fate and personal choice, I've only ever read his The Eyes of the Dragon (1987) (and this while I was in elementary school). Since I've found it difficult to read fiction for the past several years, I figured that an audiobook would be a great way to see what I was missing.

*'SPOILAR' WARNING* I'm not going to reveal the end of the book, but I would like to discuss some late-chapter details. So if you, like me, haven't got around to reading this book in the past 26 years, you've been warned. I think that the statute of limitations is up.

It's plot revolves around 7 kids - and later adults - (6 boys and a girl) who are all, for various reasons, social outcasts in the small, fictional town of Derry, Maine. Derry has a history of cyclical horrors, where every 27 years or so, a number of people, mostly children, are brutally killed - each cycle ending with a particularly grievous event. During one such cycle in 1958, the 'Loser's Club', as the kids call themselves, each discover through their own means, that the murders are being perpetrated by an apparently shape-shifting clown who calls himself Pennywise (the origin of the band's moniker, by the way). In parallel to describing their meeting and confrontation with Pennywise as children, the book also tells a parallel story of the same characters in 1985 who, now as adults, learn that the killer clown has returned to Derry and that they must honor a pledge to return and fight the evil once again.

King does a pretty amazing job of weaving the parallel narratives together by using narrative devices that avoid simplistic exposition. I honestly wish that more writers of various mediums could read something like It and see how background information can be conveyed in such a way that doesn't involve long segments of rote, flow-annihilating description. Everything about the book is very 'raw' and the main characters' actions both as children and adults are believable and feel natural (with one notable exception below).

In fact, I found the entire first half of the book (which, unabridged is a 48 hour narration) to be quite gripping. The author is well known for his ability to write suspenseful horror and if It is representative, then I understand why. The book isn't particularly 'scary', per se. But rather the character of Pennywise is plain creepy. He draws out his confrontations, appearing to his prey in forms that are guaranteed to provide the utmost terror, which King puts to good use. I also have to commend the book's narrator, Steven Weber, who does an amazing job of playing each of the different characters, imbuing them with their own personality - most especially the killer clown.

Unfortunately, the second half of the book slides quite a bit. First off, it's revealed what 'It' actually is (kind of). Apparently, the clown is an eternal being representing a sort-of physical manifestation of death and destruction (interestingly, we're led to believe that there are 3 such beings that have existed since the creation of the universe and form a triumvirate that's eerily similar to the Hindu Trimurti). This being, who feeds on life and finds terror to be especially 'delicious', preys on children foremost because they most of all truly believe in their fears.

All of this was pretty cool until I began thinking about it: we learn that the being was attracted to Earth some millions of years ago because it sensed the deliciousness of human imagination. Whereupon it landed in... Maine. Humans arrived in Maine when, maybe 12,000 years ago? I've got nothing against Maine - I grew up right next door and visited many times - but I guess this being was sleeping there just outside of Bangor, excited about how in 106 years or so these humans would come out of the other side of the world that they were living in so that they could feed him?

The book also devolves into some real classic B horror movie stuff as secondary characters start to do some very deus ex machina stuff in the service of setting up utterly anticlimactic encounters. It's not show-stopper material, but it's nevertheless disappointing given the book's earlier high quality.

However, there is one scene in the final act that disturbed the heck out of me - and not in the good 'horror disturbed' kind of way. As the 12 year-olds escape It's clutches for the first time, they come to the realization that their power to withstand the beast comes from their bond of friendship. However, this very bond is apparently also tied to their fear of the beast and, having defeated It, it's now weakening. Because they have one last challenge to overcome before reaching safety, Beverly, the only female member of the group, decides that the only way to keep their bond alive in these final moments is for her to sleep with all six of her friends, one after the other. This is then described in somewhat lurid detail.

Now, I'm no prude and while I don't think that I'd enjoy reading about a ménage à sept among pre-teens under any circumstances, I could envision some sort of plot circumstance where such a thing could be 'justified'. This is not the case in It. I can sort of glimpse at how King tried to set it up, but it just didn't work for me. Unfortunately, throwing something like this into a book without justification is pretty disturbing on all kinds of levels and dampened my feelings on the subsequent coda.

All told, It sets up a strong beginning that perhaps it could never really live up to (although if some of the hackneyed garbage at the end had been simply removed, it would've been better). Such seems to be the case with a lot of horror: An unexplained terror is much more disturbing than something understood. And yet we rebel against this idea: lack of explanation is unsatisfying. Perhaps there's some key to genre in that thought, but I'm not familiar enough to piece it together1.

1That being said, I remarked on a previous blog about how some genres, notably Fantasy and Science-Fiction often suffer from a desire to over-explain everything. Unweaving the rainbow doesn't make it less marvelous, but that physics lecture in the middle of my daydreaming sure can be boring-as-hell. 

Some Difficulties with Historical Narratives...

I've finally managed to choke my way through David Sheff's Game Over: How Nintendo Conquered the World (1999; Random House Digital), which is a fairly dense history of Nintendo, focusing primarily on how they took over the North American market after the 'great videogame crash of 1983'. Unfortunately, I say 'choke through' because I didn't think that the book was particularly good, partially because it doesn't seem to be quite sure of what kind of story it wants to tell (it's got some long, rather uninteresting tangents and unreferenced, 'editorialized' claims). It also stumbles into a few other issues that I've regularly encountered in the odd historical narrative I've read. So, rather than discuss the book itself - which I'm sure won't interest most people - I'd rather use it as a springboard for a larger discussion.

I'm certain that writing a complex history, be it about a single individual, a company, or even a country, is a difficult and daunting task. Books (unless they're written by Terry Pratchett) are organized into sections, and each section is typically centered around a theme or idea. As most of us know, history isn't so neat. One problem is simply historical demarcation: You may date the beginning of the Renaissance to some specific period of the 14th century, but you'd be hard pressed to have noticed a big change if you were living in Florence at the time. Another issue is that multiple major events may be occurring concurrently. If you divide them into separate chapters, you often unintentionally give them the appearance of being much more unrelated than they actually were.

A good author may be able to overcome such issues, but the big killer for me is that of context. The actual state of what was going on around any narrative is absolutely necessary to any interpretation of the past. Without it decisions can seem inexplicable, and events can seem completely random, etc. If you're jumping back and forth in time so that you can parcel your story into neat little concepts, it's easy to lose sight of what the external circumstances were during any given period. This can be brutal, especially in a book about such a fast moving field as technology.

Another issue that specifically applies to narratives about the near-past is solipsism. It's quite common for individuals to narrate the broader themes of history from their own particular experiences. But such a perspective is a disservice to the reader, especially in an ostensibly 'researched' book. For instance, if I were to write a book about computers right now, based only on what I saw while working in the San Francisco Bay Area among academics, I'd probably argue the Apple was the world's dominant PC manufacturer and that 40% of America's population were hipsters. Global markets need to be put into a global context.

Finally, I'd like to bring up a pet peeve of mine that probably has a lot to do with my training as a scientist. It's not really part of the 'historical narrative' per se, but it does tend to show up in the conclusions of a lot of these books about companies or individuals. Let me set it up as a question: Has any piece of hype or prediction from a corporate exec in a tech company ever really come close to becoming reality? I mean like, become realized within say 10 years of when it was predicted to occur? Seriously, I've read countless stories in which executives talk about the 'world of the future', where your fridge communicates with your watch and 'multimedia' becomes the new reality, blah, blah, blah. While the wheels of progress grind ahead inexorably, in the short term, new technology is pretty much the same as old technology, only slightly prettier and a bit faster.

Here's the rub: I'm not criticizing execs for trying to peddle their wares, but rather I'm dumbfounded by how people fall for the hype every single time. I long ago decided that 90% of everything a corporate suit says is BS, and I've taken a wait-and-see approach to every new claim about how 'thing X will be nothing short of a revolution!' And yet, so many technology writers parrot the same junk to their followers. If you're going to end your book with a prediction, how about you stick to the old standbys that pretty much explain everything - price and market. It's tough to predict the future, of course, but I didn't need the title of 'market analyst' to tell you that no one wanted to pay huge sums of money so that their families could sit on the on the couch wearing stupid-looking glasses and watch 3D TVs, for example. I also don't need a book to tell me what the suits are screaming to the press.     

The Net is a Dangerous Place...

I've been a bit troubled by the recent trend among several world governments who've attempted to pass sweeping legislation with the intent of 'regulating' the internet. Some of these bills, such as this one in Canada, basically allow warrantless 'wiretapping' of internet traffic in the name of protecting 'children' from vague threats1. Others, such as the US SOPA or CISPA bills, are ostensibly about preventing online piracy or protecting national security, but the muddied wording and over-reaching nature of the legislation makes any specific intention debatable.

The specifics of the actual laws vary, of course. Some indemnify corporations against litigation should they provide personal information to the government that violates specific privacy laws, while others allow require internet service providers (ISPs) to keep copious records. Another popular form of bill allows companies to hold web hosting services liable for the content that their users upload. Cutting through the noise, all of these 'initiatives' pretty much have the same thing in common: They all try to argue that things done on the internet are somehow markedly different from things done in other 'mediums', and therefore require that someone be given more power in regulating it.

Not wanting to treat these sorts of issues with the same black-and-white mentality that I've seen used by many pundits, there are obviously aspects to the modern internet that allow rapid, mostly anonymous dissemination of copyrighted and/or even illegal material. In addition, I'm sure that modern criminals are able to use this anonymity to their advantage.

However, I'm sure that the advent of cellular phones was a boon to crime syndicates everywhere, and yet we didn't start widespread warrantless monitoring of the public's cell phone use (before the PATRIOT act anyways, to the best of my knowledge). I think it's pretty safe to say that a criminal element will spring up in any medium where an incentive exists for people to participate in such a thing. To paraphrase Balzac (or G. Gordon Liddy): If crime didn't pay, there would be far fewer criminals. I'm sure that governments would love to trample all over our constitutional rights to privacy, but I'm willing to bet that these 'protection' bills are heavily sponsored by the same folks who want all of the 'anti-piracy' bills to go through (see below).

The problem with 'piracy' is a bit more complicated - I don't think that it's the internet that's the problem, but rather that people place little-to-no value on 'digital' goods. I've had conversations with perfectly reasonable, intelligent people who proudly showed me their collection of ~$25,000 worth of pirated software without batting an eye; but would never think of shoplifting a chocolate bar. It's also clear that the cultures of some entire countries simply don't encourage paying for any media.

All this being said, I'm not exactly sure how fighting this theft is materially any different from fighting any other theft. I mean, every other business is plagued by opportunistic 'free rides'. When I was a kid, people routinely copied tapes and movies, shared books, etc. I never heard lamentations from studio execs and publishers that every time I loaned a CD to someone, it was a lost sale. But all of a sudden, Hollywood accountants come in to tell us that piracy is costing them more by the day than they make in a year and that everyone needs to be monitored to make sure that we're all playing by the 'rules'2.

Call me cynical, but I think that there's more than a little 'rent-seeking' going on here. Giant, powerful corporations are springing out of the technology revolution and seem to be doing just fine, whereas all of these archaic giants are clinging to outdated business models and crying foul. Perhaps a younger generation doesn't 'value' a film at $20, or a hardcover book at $30, or an album at $15, etc. What's the artist's cut on those figures anyways? Methinks that these young turks - the Netflixes, Amazons, Googles, and Facebooks - have found a much more efficient and cost effective content distribution model that leaves all of the good old boys in the dust.

As always some radicals are going to use the internet to organize and cause mischief. Some jerks are going to rip off the occasional Lady Gaga album (though it's questionable if they would have bought it were it not available through pirated means), and many, many fools are going to be too slow to figure out how to keep monetizing what people no longer value as highly as they once did. But in all of this I'm sitting in front of what is undoubtedly the greatest tool in human history in terms of disseminating and democratizing information, fostering cross-cultural interaction, and generally lifting the veil of opaqueness that's settled over that question of 'what's going on over there' for thousands and thousands of years. It's a marketplace of ideas that will compete for mental real estate with a much smaller barrier to entry than traditional mediums - that is, so long as it's kept free of what largely amounts to special-interest sponsored tampering.

The net is a dangerous place, at least in the traditional sense of the word, meaning 'threatening'. The question is 'threatening to whom'?   

1I have this constant, nagging problem with pretty much everything I hear about children (in the broad sense) these days. See, I did all kinds of stuff that I'm now being told is psychologically devastating to children, but I turned out just fine. I played insanely violent video games (there were no ratings back then), watched M-rated movies, read 'adult' fiction, and went to some of the most disturbing sites on the net regularly. In fact, we all did and most of us turned out ok. I'm hard pressed to think of anyone I know who didn't turn out so well that can't be explained by a terrible family situation or a series of 'real life' problems. I certainly can't think of any kid who say, glanced at pornography, only to have his or her life go spiraling out of control despite the best efforts of their family and friends. I think we're yet again completely misplacing our fears in the direction of things that old people can't understand, like rock-and-roll, or comics. Oh, and if you're concerned about the 'legions' of pedophiles lurking on the internet, then don't let your kid use it. Or maybe you could educated them or whatever before you buy them that iPhone.

2Have you ever tried to read one of these 'End-User License Agreements' that comes with software? They're ridiculous.

A Sober Reflection as I Pass a Milestone...

With the beginning of this month my NSERC PDF will expire, ending my ability to claim that I am bringing 'my own postdoctoral funding' to the table. I figured that this occasion was as good a time as any to reflect on the time that's passed since I completed my Ph.D. in 2009. Anyone who knows me will also know that I'd been generally disappointed with my postdoctoral progress. After what I felt was a very productive and enjoyable Ph.D., I ended up in a position that was completely unsuited to my working style (planned and goal-oriented), and not-conducive to accomplishing my (many) objectives.

It's really the latter that stings the most, because I've had so many people tell me that the ideas that I put together in order to obtain my external funding were great (not to mention that NSERC chose to fund it). However, I never really had the opportunity to work towards those objectives. I became involved in a large collaborative project, which, while interesting in its own right, was rather 'out of my hands' in terms of specific goals and interests. Despite spending a lot of time on the project, I was a 'cog' in a much larger wheel - a very bad position to be in if you're out there trying to make a name for yourself in a competitive field.

I'm not lying when I say that having to write progress reports to NSERC explaining that I hadn't met my goals was a huge hit to my personal pride. At about this time last year, I was in a position where I seriously thought that my best course of action was to abandon all thoughts of pursuing a career in academia. Despite my best efforts, I'd spent 18 months analyzing data for other people, there were no prospects for first author publications on the horizon, and my own project was completely stalled (though I had finished the process of 'protocol development' and could show that the idea would actually work). Unlike my work ethic during my Ph.D., I felt very little motivation to spend long hours in the lab. If this is what post-Ph.D. science was, I didn't want to have anything to do with it - a rather morose thought for someone who'd become as obsessed with science culture as I had.

After a period of serious deliberation involving soul-searching and much solicitation of advice from former colleagues and and advisors, I decided to give postdoc-ing one more try. And so I ended up moving across the country to new institution, bent on working on a new research organism (I've now moved from fish, to flies, to yeast - the next logical step would be dinoflagellates, I guess(?)).

While it was a bit difficult to find my stride again, my sophomore postdoctoral experiences so far have been quite positive. Stanford is an incredible institution, where the caliber of the work is often inspiring1. My work seems to be progressing quite well: I'm writing my first research manuscript in a long while, and I'm thinking of all kinds of interesting avenues to pursue both while here and in the future. Working long hours hasn't been a problem (or a burden, really), which goes to show how much being interested in one's work matters.

In addition to the work, the San Francisco Bay Area is probably the best place that I've lived so far, and even though I've only been here ~7 months, I've already done many great 'extra-curricular' things. The weather is much milder and more conducive to the ice-water flowing through my veins than was Washington, D.C. I'd take the 'not too hot, never too cold' humdrum of Northern California over the awful, hot, humid, Capitol summers any day.

It has been difficult to let go of my disappointment with the past few years, but the seemingly complete 180° turn that my life has taken since moving out West has helped a lot. Though it's often tough to do, if I force myself to look at the positive, I did learn many techniques and protocols during my previous position that I've been able to apply gainfully to my current work. I probably wouldn't be as productive as I am now without that experience under my belt.

While things are looking 'very up', I'm nevertheless not surprised to read about friends abandoning the topsy-turvy, stressful lifestyle of academia for the relative security of industry or elsewhere. I was able to pack my bags and move out west on whim because I didn't have anything 'tying me down', but many people my age don't have that sort of luxury2. The postdoc lifestyle is neither a great place to raise a family, nor to secure one's sanity. But, it does have it's big advantages as well, of course, such as the ability to pursue one's own interests, the freedom to set one's work pace (as long as it's 'frantic' or above), etc. 

With the benefit of a bit of hindsight, I'm glad that I chose to leave my previous position and keep at this science thing. I've got some ideas on the table, some plans for the future and a good thing going. It's a good feeling being able to say that.

1As well as a bit frightening, to be honest. There just aren't many (any, really) Canadian institutions with this kind of money or 'star power'. It's easy to forget that not every lab can produce the kind of work volume that you routinely see here.  

2Well, I had the 'luxury' of moving out here, but that's not to say that it was luxurious. My institutional change happened over a matter of months and was very, very expensive. Given that I didn't have much time to plan for such a large move, it has left me rather penniless.