Bourgeois Nerd

Late Bloomers

2012-01-27T19:57:00.002-05:00

As someone still unsure what he wants to be when he "grows up" and afraid that he's already wasted the best years of his life, these people give me hope.

Damn You, Paris Hilton!

2012-01-24T22:32:00.001-05:00

She's driving native English dog breeds extinct! (BTW, it's funny to see chihuahuas and Siberian Huskies called "exotic.")

Immortal Plants of the Mojave

2012-01-23T17:22:00.003-05:00

The Mojave desert is home to startling numbers of superannuated plants. Methuselah plant, Shmethuselah plant, the Mormon Tea and the creosote is where it's at!

It's Four-and-Twenty BLACKbirds...

2012-01-23T17:03:00.002-05:00

...not four-and-twenty WHITEbirds!

Skimpy Sunday

2012-01-22T01:36:00.000-05:00

(Bill in Exile [NSFW]; Overnight to London [NSFW]; Vincent Lambert [NSFW])

Books on Language

2012-01-21T23:07:00.002-05:00

This marvelous interview warms the cockles of my prescriptivist heart. Some very interesting book suggestions.

(Via Languagehat)

Still Here, Bitches!

2012-01-19T15:35:00.001-05:00

Tortoise species thought extinct is still around, thankyouverymuch.

When The Reader's Away...

2012-01-10T10:18:00.001-05:00

...the books will play! I always suspected something like this, you know. The books are alive!!!

(Via Whatever)

Skimpy Sunday

2012-01-08T00:04:00.000-05:00

(Via Bill in Exile [NSFW])

Fisher/Fishtoria

2012-01-05T14:59:00.002-05:00

In more tales of our coming dooooooooooom at the hands of the animals, here's a fish that imitates an octopus that imitates a fish. The panda-sharks are the shock-troops, and the fish are the spies!

Shark Hybrids

2012-01-05T11:37:00.001-05:00

Last week, pandas were eating meat, and this week, the sharks are hybridizing! This can mean only one thing: panda-sharks! It'll never be safe to go back into the water!

(Via The Awl)

Library Porn

2012-01-04T10:24:00.000-05:00

The 25 Most Beautiful College Libraries in the World

Skimpy Sunday

2012-01-01T04:26:00.000-05:00

(Via Roids and Rants [NSFW]; Will Clark World; Overnight to London [NSFW])

2011 In "Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!"

2011-12-31T15:51:00.001-05:00

We've all already been inundated with end-of-year lists, but I think you can find room for one more. OMG, TEH KUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUTE!

Bourgeois Book Club

2011-12-30T23:35:00.000-05:00

A Talent For War, Polaris, Seeker, The Devil's Eye, Echo, and Firebird by Jack McDevitt

Lost ships, missing colonies, dreadful secrets, assassination attempts: it's all in a day's work for antiquities dealers Alex Benedict and Chase Kolpath. And in a galaxy thousands of years into the future where humanity has spread far into the stars and countless civilizations have risen and fallen, there are plenty of secrets to uncover.

Only three niggles beset me: One, McDevitt uses the "sabotaged aircar" as a plot device way too much. Second, the technology do not always seem convincingly "futuristic." But this universe was originally established in 1989 with A Talent for War, so some "retroism" to its "future" might not be wholly unexpected. Third, the gender politics seem too contemporary, even retrograde. But perhaps the latter two details are not accidental at all. One of the themes of the books is that history is contingent and ultimately mysterious. There are thousands of years of Golden Ages, Dark Ages, and blank spots in their history, and the galaxy they inhabit is in no way a straight line of progress from our time. Just because they have faster-than-light travel doesn't mean they're all that much more "advanced" than us.

But those are really just niggles. Compulsively readable, this series is a tasty genre-melange of science-fiction, mystery, and adventure. Recommended for anyone who likes a nice bit of intrigue and investigation.

Winning Mars by Jason Stoddard

Jere Gutierrez built a network from a YouTube channel. But in a near-future where currencies from virtual reality games are stronger than the dollar and risk-assessment algorithms rule business decisions, "linear entertainment" is waning. So when an Old Hollywood (70s-00s) producer pitches Gutierrez a reality show, a reality show about going to Mars, Gutierrez is first aghast, then intrigued, then hooked. Money woes, technical challenges, and government interference all must be overcome to get eleven contestants of widely different motivations to Mars, where they'll race for fifty million dollars... and their lives.

As I've mentioned before, I'm totally over dystopias. Thankfully, then, despite worries at the beginning, the world of Winning Mars isn't really dystopic. It seems like a real world, with both good and bad aspects to it. IMHO, it is a plausible extrapolation, for the most part, at least from our current vantage point (though undoubtedly in ten years it'll seem completely off-base).

What I enjoyed most about it was its hopefulness and optimism about humanity. Ultimately, it pleads the need for the human imagination and the drive to go forth, making space for adventure and crazy-eyed idealism, taking chances, exploring, pushing, growing. As a child of Trek, this speaks to my very soul.

The Folded World by Catherynne M. Valente

Sequel to last year's Habitation of the Blessed, this is the tale of Prester John's daughters, of the war that brought doom to his kingdom, and the beginning of the end of magical things.

As in Habitation of the Blessed, this is a metafiction more than fiction, a story about stories, about the transmission of stories, and "history." What is fiction, what is history, what is myth, but lies? Can lies be true? It's also about love and war and parenting and religious fanaticism and hatred and death and Apocalypse.

"Beautiful" is the best word to describe it. The language is achingly beautiful. Lovely and haunting, full of melancholy and wistfulness, this is an utterly enthralling and enchanting tale of loss change.

The Unexpected Miss Bennet by Patrice Sarath

Poor Mary Bennet. The middle sister, the "ugly" sister, the dull sister, with none of the vivacity of her younger sisters, or the beauty and sense of her older sisters, the one always overlooked and unappreciated by anyone. Everyone just takes for granted that she's happy with her sermons and her piano practice and her moral superiority. But if that's not all she wants for herself? What if she wants to be heard and seen and appreciated? What if she wants to fall in love?

Some time away from home, an unexpected friendship, and the absence of her overshadowing sisters brings Mary out of her shell and allows her to finally find herself. And even more unexpectedly, along comes a suitor and the most unlikely of the Bennet sisters just might find love after all.

An utterly charming and wonderful confection, highly recommended for those who love Austen or even just sweet historical stories.

2012: The Pandapocalypse

2011-12-30T20:20:00.002-05:00

Bamboo just doesn't cut it anymore; the Pandas have found a taste for flesh! This is just what the Maya predicted! First, they'll hypnotize us with cuteness, and then they'll eat our faces off!

Once Again, I Ask, "Where Are The Green Dancing BOYS?"

2011-12-29T22:53:00.002-05:00

Forget Roswell, there are aliens in Vegas. Alien hookers! Set phasers to "boooooing," straight nerds!

Ho, Ho, Ho, Hoes!

2011-12-25T00:00:00.001-05:00

Merry Christmas!

50 Secrets of the Literary World

2011-12-22T15:31:00.001-05:00

A selection of secrets:

12. Amazon is not "evil" (J Daunt).
15. You don't have to read every book you buy, and you certainly don't have to finish the book you've started.
17. Narrative (aka storytelling) is in our DNA. It's called gossip.
20. Literary fiction is like sci-fi. It's a genre.
23. Two writers, alone in a room, will talk about royalties not art.
38. Ebooks are not the end of the world.

(Via The Hairpin)

"Good Luck On Your Resurrection!"

2011-12-20T21:22:00.001-05:00

Ancient Graffitti

(Via Bookslut)

"Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas. Kiss My Ass. Kiss His Ass. Happy Hannukah!"

2011-12-20T14:43:00.002-05:00

The 12 Days of Christmas Vacation

O Bücherbaum, O Bücherbaum, Thy Pages Are So Unchanging...

2011-12-19T13:46:00.004-05:00

Christmas trees made of books.

(Via Crasstalk Open Thread)

Merry Christmas, Whores!

2011-12-18T23:53:00.002-05:00

This holiday season, remember that reading is fundamental, hunties!

Clue

2011-12-15T11:35:00.002-05:00

The wonders of Clue are many and varied and if you don't "get" it, I don't want to know you!

To Boldly Go Where No Reindeer Has Gone Before...

2011-12-15T10:32:00.002-05:00

Santa's sci-fi ride.

(Via Tor.com)

Fear Is The Mind-Killer, Fear Is The Little Death...

2011-12-15T10:26:00.005-05:00

What keeps nerds up at night? These things. Number seven practically makes me faint just considering it. WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!!!?

(Via Tor.com)

It's A Snowball! It's A White Balloon! It's A...

2011-12-15T10:09:00.002-05:00

Flying Snowman!

I have to admit, I'm with Mr. Scalzi on this one. I'm much more forgiving of fantasy than science fiction with suspension of disbelief. (I mean, the density of lava in Lord of the Rings? We're really going to quibble that Gollum sunk into lava in a moment that had much more to do with the artistic and dramatic themes Jackson had been playing with Gollum the whole trilogy?)

But even with science fiction, I can forgive a lot. Faster-than-light travel? Sure! (In fact, I dislike "hard" science fiction that goes out of its way to not have FTL. Boring!) Teleportation? Sure! Sound in space? Sure! Even there, though, there's a limit. The "red matter" and "supernova threatening the galaxy" thing in the latest Star Trek movie bothered me tremendously. IT DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY! We all have our lines.

Nailbiting!

2011-12-14T22:27:00.002-05:00

There are only four days left to hit the fundraising target for Seed Money. If they don't raise $25,000, then all the donations are void. I can't bear to see that happen! This is a story that needs to be told, and a group of filmmakers who deserve to see their vision come to fruition. Please consider donating, as generously as you can! I know this is a time of year when money can be tight, there are a lot of demands on time and funds, and many worthy causes that need funds. This is not a tax write-off or a charitable contribution, but it's still a good deed.

Walking Brains

2011-12-14T15:14:00.001-05:00

Tiny spiders have brains in their legs!

More Than You Ever Wanted To Know About Bird Genitalia

2011-12-12T21:58:00.003-05:00

So, apparently ostriches and emus and such have penises! And not just any penises, but penises that use lymph instead of blood to erect!

Skimpy Sunday

2011-12-11T00:10:00.000-05:00

(Via Roids and Rants [NSFW]; Bill in Exile [NSFW]; Overnight to London [NSFW])

And the Color of the New Year Is...

2011-12-09T15:28:00.003-05:00

...Tangerine Tango! I like it. I can sort of taste tart fruit juice just looking at it.

(Via The Hairpin)

Edinburgh Surprise

2011-12-08T10:09:00.002-05:00

It seems Santa has a little sister who is both a bookworm and a highly talented artist, leaving incredible book sculptures around the libraries and literary places of Edinburgh. Amazing.

(Via Tor.com)

Now Exiting The Solar System...

2011-12-07T15:25:00.001-05:00

So is this where Voyager falls into a wormhole and becomes V'Ger? Maybe!

On The Care and Feeding of Libraries

2011-12-05T21:08:00.004-05:00

I know I have some (sexxxxxxxxy) librarians in the audience, so here's a Q&A about weeding and collection management with one of the fantabulous Awful Library Books ladies.

Justice Delayed

2011-12-05T21:00:00.002-05:00

Alan Turing's story is a tragedy, one that was finally apologized for in 2009. But his conviction still stands, and it's time for a full pardon.

Dog Day Afternoon

2011-11-28T15:43:00.001-05:00

Dogs originated in East Asia.

Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest used dog hair for textiles.

Skimpy Sunday

2011-11-27T01:36:00.000-05:00

(Postmodernbarney; Roids and Rants [NSFW])

Puritan Politics

2011-11-24T18:26:00.001-05:00

As has become tradition, in preparation for Thanksgiving, I read Sarah Vowell's The Wordy Shipmates. This year, it struck me as very Of This Moment, this moment of unrest and uncertainty, when -- if you'll forgive me a moment of melodrama -- it seems our country, even our world, is crumbling around us. Several passages in particular spoke to me, and I'd like to share them. (Warning: It's about to get political up in here.)

John Adams wrote in the Massachusetts Constitution:

The body politic is formed by a voluntary association of individuals: it is a social compact, by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good.

How can so many people have seemed to have forgotten this? Why are so many people convinced they are "rugged individualists" being oppressed by the government from realizing their potential as world-shattering giants, when the truth is they're mediocrities and would be even worse off than they already are if the magical "market" really did dictate all our lives? Tyranny is to be despised and resisted, but we're so far from tyranny. Yet many seem to feel we're a hop, skip, and a jump away from death camps. Government is not, in and of itself, the enemy! We should be trying to make government better, not cripple or dismantle it, and electing people who are openly hostile towards it.

**********************

Nathaniel Hawthorne:

Let us thank God for having given us such ancestors [the Puritans]; and let each successive generation thank Him, not less fervently, for being one step further from them in the march of ages.

But I think we could do with a bit of Puritanism. Not the scolding, judgmental, hypocritical part, but the literate, intellectual, contemplative, uncertain part. To be a Puritan was to wrestle, every day, with one's soul, to constantly search one's inner self, to try to do as God wills, to try to figure out just if one is saved or not. They lived in a state of constant uncertainty and anxiety. Now, I know a little bit about living in a state of constant uncertainty and anxiety, and it isn't exactly fun, but we seem to have such outsized self-confidence and self-delusion these days that a dose of anxiousness might do us good. As Vowell says, "From New England's Puritans we inherited the idea that America is blessed and ordained by God above all nations, but lost the fear of wrath and retribution."

**********************

Mario Cuomo at the 1984 Democratic Convention (addressed to Reagan, thus the "Mr. President," but I think today it resonates more as a cri de coeur against the modern Republican party and the "1%" in general.):

A shining city is perhaps all the president sees from the portico of the White House and veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well....Maybe, maybe, Mr. President, if you visted some more places; maybe if you went to Appalachia, where some people still live in sheds; maybe if you went to Lackawanna, where thousands of unemployed steelworkers wonder why we subsidized foreign steel. Maybe--Maybe, Mr. President, if you stopped in at a shelter in Chicago and spoke to the homeless there; maybe, Mr. President, if you asked a woman who had been denied the help she neeeded to feeder her children because you said you needed the money for a tax break for a millionaire or for a missile we couldn't afford to use.

Then, as now, we were "in the worst recession since 1932" and the deficit was the "largest in the history of the universe." Proper government is "the sharing of benefits and burdens for the good of all, feeling one another's pain, sharing one another's blessings." Again, we seem to have forgotten how do do this. Everything now is vicious in-fighting, people fighting over whatever scraps they have. "Sharing" is no longer in the American vocabulary, and for the rich it seems a dirty word. Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts, while the poor starve, bridges crumble, and unemployment drags on.

**********************

Vowell:

Protestantism's evolution away from hierarchy and authority has enormous consequences for America and the world. On the one hand, the democratization of religion runs parallel democratization. The king of England, questioning the pope, inspires English subjects to question the king and his Anglican bishops. Such dissent is backed up by a Bible full of handy Scripture arguing for arguing with one's king. This is the root fof self-government in the English-speaking world.

On the other hand, Protestantism's shedding away of authority,...inspires self-reliance--along with a dangerous disregard for expertise. So the impulse that leads to democracy can also be the downside of democracy--namely, a suspicion of people who know what they are talking about. It's why in U.S. presidential elections the American people will elect a wisecracking good ol' boy who's fun in a malt shop instead of a serious thinker who actually knows some of the pompous, brainy stuff that might actually get fewer people laid of or killed.

American universities are the envy of the world. We have armfuls of Nobels. We have some of the smartest, most innovative researchers and scientists in the world. We were founded by some of the most eloquent, literate, and learned men in history. And yet we don't cotton to no book learnin' 'round these parts. We all think we're experts, even if we know nothing. Evolution? Just a theory. Global climate change? A scam. We know nothing about biology or climatology, but, dern it, we don't need no them thar scientists tellin' us what to think! The Bible's all the book we need! We'll spend billions on sports, but cut school budgets to the bone, because those evil teachers' unions are greedy bastards. We landed on the moon and pried apart the secrets of the atom, but we seem to more and more retreat into ignorance and anti-intellectualism.

So now that I've depressed or enraged everyone, I'll wish all of you a very Happy Thanksgiving!

GIVING Thanks

2011-11-24T13:46:00.002-05:00

I have much to be thankful for. But many others, too many others, are not so fortunate. Today, as you gather to give thanks, consider giving to those less fortunate.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T00:00:00.000-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving, all! And what is Thanksgiving but a celebration of awkward white people? I mean, the Pilgrims were hardly smooth customers after all. Squares all the way!

(Via 8Asians)

Water The Money Seed

2011-11-22T21:20:00.003-05:00

Just a reminder that there are only 26 days left for Seed Money funding. They're almost at $6,000, but the goal is $25,000.

Guinea Stud

2011-11-22T17:11:00.002-05:00

A guinea pig on the loose. A pen full of females desperate for love. Two nights of passion. Forty-two offspring. One tired Sooty.

Skimpy Sunday

2011-11-20T00:14:00.000-05:00

(Via Will Clark World; Vincent Lambert [NSFW] Roids and Rants [NSFW]; Bill in Exile [NSFW]; Overnight to London [NSFW])

Bourgeois Book Club

2011-11-18T11:20:00.001-05:00

Prospero Lost, Prospero in Hell, and Prospero Regained by L. Jagi Lamplighter

What if instead of one of his tragicomedies, The Tempest was actually one of Shakespeare's histories, the true story of an exiled Duke of Milan and his daughter? And what if Prospero, his immortal children, and their bound wind spirit servitors guard humanity against the capriciousness and malevolence of the supernatural under the guise of a global corporation unto this very day? That is the conceit of this fantastic trilogy.

When Prospero suddenly disappears, his most faithful child Miranda's world is turned upside down. With the help of embodied wind spirit-cum-detective Mab, she has to unravel the mystery of her father's disappearance, as well as comply with the wishes he left in a message to track down and warn her estranged siblings of the infernal threat stalking them. But as Miranda delves deeper into her fractured family's history, the more mysteries appear, and the darker, and deeper, the threats become. Did her father mind-control Miranda into docile subservience? Are some of her siblings in league with the infernal? Is there any way to piece her fractured family back together? And how are they to rescue Prospero from the very bowels of Hell itself?

Miranda is a wonderful protagonist. Held in a sort of stasis for centuries, Miranda has to deal with feelings for the first time: empathy, vulnerability, fear, compassion, and, perhaps most of all, love. She also must face the secrets that litter her life, secrets that threaten to upend everything she thought she ever knew. She has to, in short, become human.

The Prospero family dynamics are well-drawn and believable. Can you imagine how annoying siblings can be over the course of centuries? Very. But they're family, so you love them anyway. I think Lamplighter strikes a good balance between those two impulses in the sibling banter and interrelationships. Some siblings are closer than others, and some downright hate one another, but in the end, they're still family.

If you're a mythology and folklore nerd like me, you'll love the books for their crazy-quilt mash-up of lore. Greek gods, Hermetic spirits, Japanese ogres, medieval angelology, quasi-Gnostic cosmologies, elves, witches, and Santa Claus all have a place in the Prospero world.

If you're a "pondering the big questions of existence" nerd like me, you'll love the books even more. In between the demon-battling and sibling rivalry, there's some serious theological speculating going on. What is faith? What does it mean to forgive? What is free will? What is sin and redemption? There is a very strong, though thoroughly unconventional, Christianity undergirding the story, but one can be an absolute heathen like me and still appreciate Lamplighter's examination of those questions. However, the only discordant note comes towards the very end of Prospero Regained, when Lamplighter starts to make thinly-veiled condemnations of modern society and the inequities and "immoralities" of it, including an anti-abortion message. I thought that was laying on a bit thick.

A wild melange of Shakespeare, Dante, folklore, mythology, quest, mystery, the Prospero series is a delight. Brimming with whimsy and fantasy, it's marvelous entertainment punctuated by passages of stunning beauty and lyricism.

A More Perfect Heaven by Dava Sobel

All most people know about Nicolas Copernicus is that he "discovered" that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and maybe that he was Polish. If you're a nerd like me, you also know that he was the nephew of a bishop, studied in Italy, and didn't publish his work until he was on death's door. The details of his life are otherwise either a mystery or an irrelevance. Neither option could be further from the truth, however.

From a prosperous Polish family, he came under the care of his bishop uncle, who procured for him a lucrative canonship at the cathedral of Frauenberg. After his studies in Italy, where he trained in both astronomy and medicine, it is there he returned and lived out the rest of his life. The security and authority he enjoyed as a canon allowed him the time and resources to perform his astronomical observations, as well as pursue his other interests, including coinage and the translation of ancient texts. He was a diligent and fair administrator for the lands belonging to the cathedral during a trying time; he lived in a warzone between Poland and the Prussian lands of the Teutonic Knights. Add to that the firestorm of the Reformation and the political intrigues in the bishopric, and his was no dull, obscure life.

As he approached the end of his life, a young mathematician named Rheticus suddenly appeared at his door. A professor from Wittenberg, home of Martin Luther and the very eye of the Reformation, Rheticus had heard of Copernicus's ideas (though his full explication hadn't been published, his ideas were known in intellectual circles), and came to Copernicus for tutelage, despite the dangers of travel and the fact that the bishop had banished all Lutherans from his territory, and also to help him finish and publish his work. Copernicus, fearing ridicule and the specter of his own inaccuracy, had eschewed publication of his masterwork, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, for years, despite the entreaties of friends and even cardinals. Rheticus, however, finally convinced him to publish.

No one, of course, knows precisely what they said to one another, so Sobel uses the facts that are known to construct a short play that comprises the middle section of the book. As a play... it's fine. I think it'd play much better live, as most plays do. In the hands of good actors, it would probably be a really riveting performance.

After his death, Rheticus and Copernicus's friend, Bishop Giese, tirelessly worked to see that his book was circulated and all credit due him given. An unauthorized preface that downplayed his heliocentric theory as a mere hypothesis suitable for mathematical calculation but with no basis in reality sent both of them into a rage. And the reaction of many, including Luther, was one of scorn. Did not Scripture clearly say that the Earth did not move? Mathematicians and astronomers took to his tables and methods of calculation, but mostly disregarded the heliocentrism as well. It was eventually placed on the Index of Forbidden Books and condemned as heresy by the Catholic Church. However, beginning with Tycho (who did not believe in heliocentrism, but admired it nonetheless), Kepler, and Galileo, the book and the system gained wider acceptance and adoption, making way for the whole of modern astronomy and physics.

I found myself become rather fond of Copernicus by the time I finished the book, and Sobel obviously felt the same way. Copernicus comes across as a brilliant, conscientious, learned, kindly man with many friends. But he was also timid, and perhaps too self-conscious, a trait of which I know quite a lot about and sympathize with.

Despite her being one of the most prominent popular science writers of the day, I'd never read any of Sobel's work until A More Perfect Heaven. She is an engaging enough writer, and uses ample quotations from Copernicus himself and his contemporaries to good effect, showing that Copernicus was a great mind, witty and learned. This short, economical account putting Copernicus and his ideas in historical and intellectual context is highly recommended for learning about a very important man who is far too little known generally.

Master of the House of Darts by Aliette de Boddard

Third in de Boddard's Obsidian and Blood series of historical-fantasy mysteries set in the Aztec Empire. When a solider returning from a war to obtain captives for sacrifice dies in mysterious, and mystical, circumstances, the whole of mighty Tenochtitlan is threatened by a curse-disease that soon begins claiming more victims. As in the first two books, Acatl, High Priest of the God of Death, must navigate the treacherous political and magical currents of the Aztec Empire to solve the murder, discover who or what is behind the attack, and stop them. But as his investigation continues, he soon discovers that a powerful sorcerer with a grudge against the Empire, and an incipient coup against the current, ineffectual emperor, may be too much for him to handle. Even gods are frightened.

Another wonderful entry into a fascinating and unusual series. The Mesoamerican setting and the culture and magical systems that go with it are utterly unique in fantasy literature, which still is predominated by European settings and conceptions. Instead of a world of castles and magic wands, it is a world of pyramids and blood, and it is refreshing.

A Library Can Be A Terrible Thing

2011-11-13T21:36:00.002-05:00

Claire Messud, you read my mind: "I feel that my tendency to acquire books is rather like someone smoking two packs a day: it’s a terrible vice that I wish I could shuck. I love my books, and with all their dog-ears and under-linings they are irreplaceable, but I sometimes wish they’d just vanish. To be weighed down by things – books, furniture – seems somehow terrible to me."

I love my books; that much is obvious if you've been reading for more than a minute. I have a terrible time getting rid of them, even though I have really no room for them. It is physically and psychically painful to cull my library. But sometimes I really do feel them weighing on me, or, rather, my need for them weighing on me. At times, I want to just chuck the whole lot of them in a bonfire. I just wish I could come to some sort of equanimity between obsessive hoarding and blithe disregard.

(Via The Little Professor)

Skimpy Sunday

2011-11-13T00:21:00.000-05:00

(Via Roids and Rants [NSFW]; Dudetube [NSFW]; Overnight to London [NSFW]; Papermag)

Somehow, I Don't Think She's A Great Tauntaun Hunter

2011-11-11T12:41:00.002-05:00

Meet the Wampug, the Wampa's smaller, cuter, snortier cousin. If I met that in an ice cave on Hoth, I'd keep warm from the "awwwww"ing alone!

End of Line

2011-11-11T11:45:00.003-05:00

Despite the weddings and the movie openings, 11/11/11 is a sad day for me, because it's the last Binary Day this century. There's something about all those ones and zeroes that soothes me. Hopefully, I'll still be around in 2100 to see the next one, either in my new android body or in some hideously deformed mutant form caused by all the radioactivity from WWIII.

Veterans Day

2011-11-11T11:43:00.001-05:00

A hearty and sincere "thank you" to all veterans for their service. It is always appreciated.

Seed Money

2011-11-10T22:43:00.002-05:00

Let's just say I know a little about gay porn. But even if you know only a little about that subject, chances are you know the name "Falcon," the studio that practically invented modern gay pornography and defined the aesthetic of the gay 1980s and 1990s. And a man named Chuck Holmes is the one who invented Falcon. Pornographer, philanthropist, socialite, he was a fascinating man, one fully deserving of a documentary. But for that to happen, we have to help.

Michael Stabile, the fabulous former producer of The Tim and Roma Show [NSFW], has been working on the Chuck Holmes documentary for a while now, but mounting costs and credit card bills mean he can't finish it without our help. Won't you please help fund this important work about a fascinating and pivotal figure?

He's Only 30! He's Just A Baby!

2011-11-08T22:31:00.002-05:00

Turtles don't like growing up, so they take their time.

Smoked Salmon and Nibbly Things For Everyone, Sweeties!

2011-11-08T13:52:00.002-05:00

An AbFab movie is coming!

Whadda Guy!

2011-11-07T20:28:00.003-05:00

Guy Fawkes may not have succeeded in blowing up Parliament and changing the English government, but he managed to change the English language!

(Via Bookslut)

Skimpy Sunday

2011-11-06T00:44:00.000-04:00

(Via Mimziz [NSFW]; Bill in Exile [NSFW])

Bond Brawl

2011-11-03T10:21:00.002-04:00

Who would win a battle of the Bonds? I don't care, as long as Daniel Craig and Bond-era Sean Connery started making out in the middle of it.

(Via Tor.com)

Kirk-Fu

2011-11-03T10:18:00.002-04:00

Learn to fight the James Tiberius Kirk way! Green chicks dig it!

(Via Tor.com)

Library of Congress

2011-11-02T15:04:00.002-04:00

I visited the Library of Congress once, for far, far too short a time, and it really is as beautiful as this.

Human Hybridity

2011-11-01T15:46:00.001-04:00

Humans are a horny bunch. We'll fuck anything, including our cousins.

Occupy Science Labs

2011-11-01T14:13:00.002-04:00

We can no longer allow Big Rat to monopolize our science labs!

Geek Reading List

2011-10-31T10:14:00.001-04:00

Well, it looks like I'm not actually a geek. I've only read one of these books. And, yes, it's the Tolkein. Hell, I read the Silmarillion!

Bourgeois Book Club

2011-10-31T00:51:00.003-04:00

1493 by Charles Mann

In 1491, Charles Mann presented a new conception of Pre-Columbian America, one whose environment was intensively shaped and tended by its inhabitants. In 1493, he tells the story of the Post-Columbian world, a New World Columbus didn't discover, but created. Indeed, Mann argues that he inaugurated a whole new geological era: the Homogenocene.

Globalization is economically, culturally, and biologically enriching; it is also ecologically, socially, and economically disruptive, destructive, and even devastating. But though it has only been a buzzword for a decade or two, it is not a new phenomenon. Columbus' voyages set off the first wave of globalization, with plants from Mexico, silver from Bolivia, potatoes from Peru, slaves from Africa, diseases from Europe, and silk from China knitting together the world into one economically and biologically unified whole for the first time since the days of Pangaea. (Of course, humans have been trading goods, mixing ideas, trading *ahem* genes, and shaping ecosystems since they first spread out of Africa, but things like the Silk Road were confined to connected continents, especially Eurasia/Africa. That was more (to coin a very, very ugly phrase) "hemisphericalism," and massively important and influential to the shape of history, but it was not the true globalism of the post-Columbus world.)

Mann's aim is to provide the story (or a story, and, by Mann's own admission, an admittedly incomplete and in some points controversial description) of how the world we live in today came to be. As he states on page 79, "In sum: ecological introductions shaped an economic exchange, which in turn had political consequences that have endured to the present." The malaria introduced to Virginia gave African slavery an advantage over the indentured servitude of Europeans, because Africans were mostly immune, Europeans were partially immune, and Native Americans not immune at all. This contributed to the Southern slave society, and it's continued effects on American history. The over-planting of mulberry trees for silk production for the silver trade in China, along with the introduction of maize, tobacco, and sweet potatoes that allowed population growth and the cultivation of hitherto unarable land, led to mountain deforestation, which increased flooding and destabilized the Qing Dynasty. As part of the broader Agricultural Revolution, the introduction of the potatoes to Northern Europe decreased famine and supported larger populations, upon which was built the Industrial Revolution. It also led to the modern agro-industrial complex, complete with monocultures and pesticides, with all of the successes and disasters therein. The transplant of Amazonian rubber trees to Asian plantations also supported the Industrial Revolution, which was built on steam, steel, and rubber.

The Columbian Exchange did not just involve microbes and plants, of course, but also people. Before Columbus, for the most part Asians lived in Asia, Africans in Africa, Europeans in Europe, and Native Americans in America. After Columbus, the world became (and is still becoming) increasingly mixed. Millions of Europeans, Africans, Asians, and Native Americans flocked to and mingled in cosmopolitan cities like Mexico City, Manila, and Yuegang. Fueled by sugarcane and the labor necessary to work its plantations, African slavery exploded. For centuries, African "immigration" outpaced European settlers two or three to one. But, in one of the most interesting, to my mind, sections of the book, Mann shows that, far from being the passive victims of slavery so often portrayed, African slaves and Indian natives created"maroon" communities that directly challenged European hegemony and tyranny. Throughout the history of slavery in the Americas, runaway slaves militarily vexed European empires, and maintained their own autonomy, politically and culturally.

Mann's story isn't just history. We're still grappling with the tensions, contradictions, and opportunities of globalization today. What began within just a few years of Columbus has only accelerated since, and we're still ambivalent about its visible effects, and ignorant of its invisible ones. Never has it been more enriching, more disruptive, more destructive. Looking at its origins and historical effects could help us grapple with more effectively, emphasizing its positives and ameliorating its negatives.

I continue to stand in awe of Mann's powers of synthesis, as well as his ability to translate his wide-ranging research into a coherent and unlugubrious whole, written with style, clarity, and humor. Particularly enjoyable are vignettes of his wide-ranging travels, which provide concrete and engaging illustration of his arguments without falling into the trap of "Oh, look at these absolutely fascinating natives I've found!" or "I'm a better, more enlightened person than you because I backpacked through Angola on a giraffe's back!" that some travel writing about non-Western places falls into.

1491 was one of my favorite reads of the last several years (and I can't believe I didn't write about it, but all investigations say I didn't, apparently), and 1493 is a worthy successor: entertaining, thought-provoking, and challenging. It presents an entirely different way of thinking about both history and the modern world that many, including me, have never really considered. I can't recommend it enough.

Reality 36 by Guy Haley

2129. The world sucks. Climate change, war, disease, refugees: you know, the usual. Artificial intelligences, cyborgs, uplifted simians and whales, and virtual people are citizens.

Zhang Qifang, a prominent synthetic civil rights activist, is murdered. Three times. His lab assistant goes on the run. Human replicant androids, decades ahead of their projected development, are performing assassinations. In one of the protected Realms, virtual worlds created as immersive cyber-playgrounds turned into nature preserve of a sort, something is fraying the very integrity of its simulated universe. Dodging killer code and killer gunmen, German cyborg ex-solider Klein and super-AI Richards, the world's top private detective, have to unravel the increasingly deadly mystery of how these events are connected, what, exactly, is going on, and who is behind it. The fate of more than one world depends on it.

A gripping science fiction thriller, Reality 36 is aggressively readable. At first I was a bit miffed at the dystopic element. I'm just a little burned out with science fiction dystopia. The world sucks enough as it is; reading about it being even worse in the future is depressing. As someone raised on a steady diet of Star Trek, I want some bold, optimistic futures, damnit! But as Reality 36 progressed, I was pleased that, while it definitely sucked, its world was also "normal" in a lot of ways. Just people going along, living their lives. And there's good stuff happening in this future, too, like space elevators and Mars colonization and civil rights struggles, to go along with the wars and ecological devastation.

Intrigue, violence, and technology make this thrilling read. The rather abrupt and inconclusive ending sets up perfectly for the next book in the series, which will be out in March, though perhaps a little more resolution and a little less set-up, would have made for a better ending. But that is a mere quibble.

Skimpy Sunday

2011-10-30T00:46:00.000-04:00

(Via Roids and Rants [NSFW]; PMB, After Dark [NSFW]; Tottyworld [NSFW]; Overnight to London [NSFW]; Bits of Memory [NSFW])

Wikipedia Serendipity

2011-10-24T23:54:00.000-04:00

I've long had vague memories of this cartoon I used to always rent from the video store when I was little. It was about a teddy bear superhero who lived in a treehouse, and one of his adversaries was a skeleton, but I didn't really remember much more than that. Well, thanks to the power of luck and Wikipedia's Random Article link, I just found it! Thank you, Wikipedia!

Skimpy Sunday

2011-10-23T01:39:00.000-04:00

(Via Mimziz [NSFW])

"It's As If Millions of Seeds Suddenly Cried Out In Terror And Were Suddenly Silence..."

2011-10-22T08:40:00.002-04:00

The Destruction of Alderaan, with pumpkins.

(Via Jim Newell)

Down With Sexy!

2011-10-21T15:38:00.002-04:00

Tired of the "Sexy Nurse" or "Sexy Witch" or "Sexy Prostitute" costumes, ladies? Well, here are some ideas for you to take Halloween back from the tyranny of Sexy!

Old As The Pyramids

2011-10-20T15:28:00.002-04:00

It wasn't all obelisks and mummies; the ancient Egyptians weren't above a cheap fat joke.

Skimpy Sunday

2011-10-16T00:07:00.000-04:00

(Via Mimziz [NSFW])

May The Pawce Be With You

2011-10-11T22:32:00.002-04:00

50 Dogs in Star Wars Costumes. #40, #31, #26, #16 = OMG, TEH CUTENESS!

(Via Richard Lawson)

This Has SyFy Movie Written All Over It

2011-10-10T21:37:00.005-04:00

Run, people! Ruuuuuuuuuuuun! It's Megavirus! Get Frankenstein, Godzilla, the Power Rangers, Team America, and Batman on this before it strikes!

Bourgeois Book Club

2011-10-09T12:00:00.000-04:00

The New Confessions by William Boyd

I'm not really one much for non-genre literary fiction. Just not my bag, you know? But the works of William Boyd, specifically this book, came up in a thread on Crasstalk, and I found myself intrigued.

The New Confessions is the "memoir" of fictional film director John James Todd. Born in Edinburgh at the dawn at the dawn of the twentieth century, Todd's life captures the great upheavals and tragedies of the early twentieth century: World Wars I and II, Weimar Germany, Depression Hollywood, and the Red Scare. From Edinburgh to Belgium, from Berlin to Switzerland, from Hollywood to Tijuana, Todd's eventful life as a filmmaker whose futile struggle to complete a film version of Rousseau's The Confessions (from which, of course, the title derives) over the course of forty years is one of tragedy, triumph, and banality.

In a (fake) memoir such as this, the narrator is, of course, absolutely central. And Boyd's Todd is a very interesting narrator. Like his beloved Rousseau, he is uncompromisingly, unflinchingly honest about himself. Indeed, one of Boyd's triumphs is not to give into sentiment about Todd. He has a hard life, and a particularly sob-story childhood, but really not terribly sympathetic. He's compelling, but not, perhaps, likeable and certainly not admirable. He's impulsive, inconsiderate, a terrible father and husband, flighty, obsessive, and really kinda creepy a lot of times. And, yet, he has charm enough, and "his" writing is funny enough, that though one does not end up particularly liking him, one is still enthralled by his story.

Todd life is one of constant and sweeping changes in fortune, rather dramatically showing that all things, from interwar Berlin to Hollywood careers, are adrift on the winds of chance. Ultimately, life is random and meaningless. Hamish, Todd's school friend who is a prodigy and becomes a mathematician genius, tells him right before the end of WWII that the era they are living in is the Age of Uncertainty, the Age of Incompleteness. Heisenberg and Goedel have demolished all expectation of ultimate truth, leaving the universe to chance. As Todd's movie is incomplete, so is his life; as Todd's career is fraught with uncertainty, so is his life. So are all of our lives. We are always living in the Age of Uncertainty and Incompleteness. We just sometimes manage to convince ourselves that we're not. Perhaps, in a subconscious way, we're so used to uncertainty and incompleteness that we don't even notice it until and unless it becomes particularly blatant and extreme; or, perhaps, deep down we know we live lives of uncertainty and incompleteness, but ignore it; most people don't want to live in a world with no meaning, where randomness is the only constant.

There are rather gross parts of the book, particularly with regards to sex. But I suppose that's part of the brutal honesty. I mean, sex is rather gross.

A funny book with a melancholy heart, it's gotten me interested in Boyd's other work.

The Onyx Hall Series (Midnight Never Come, In Ashes Lie, A Star Shall Fall, With Fate Conspire) by Marie Brennan

Below and to the side of London stands the Onyx Hall, darkly glittering domain of the English fae, where a faerie Queen rules with her mortal Prince. This is the secret history of London, from the Elizabethan to the Victorian Age, a London where humans are not alone, and where actions in one world can have devastating consequences in another.

This has been one of my favorite urban fantasy (and never has that genre title been more apt; this is a book about London as much as it is about magic) series for the past several years. Brennan is a masterful writer, weaving together meticulous research with strong characters, all while juggling centuries-long timelines and complicated historical events with aplomb. The London Fire, Halley's Comet, and the construction of the London Underground all come to life with a magical twist.

One of the wonderful luxuries of a series like this is watching the evolution of London, its changing and never-changing character, and the diversity of its inhabitants, both mortal and immortal. This isn't just a world of fairy royalty and rich humans, but one where elf knights and provincial goblins rub shoulders with courtly poets and tavern keepers. Brennan's fae are neither cutesy sprites, D&D elves, nor demons but complex, diverse, and appropriately alien creatures with a variety of personalities and agendas, as well as complicated relationships among themselves and with humans. Another interesting aspect is that Brennan, who studied anthropology and folk lore, intentionally made them English, natives of a country whose fairy lore is much intact or studied than that of Ireland, say. But Brennan also reflects London's cosmopolitan character with supernatural creatures from other cultures, including fauns, nymphs, dwarves, and genies.

A super, super series for any fan of historical or paranormal fiction. With Fate Conspire is, sadly, the last book in the series for now, but depending on sales, there are at least tentative plans for future books chronicling the London Blitz and our present day. Keep up with Brennan's blog for news, and also just because it's a great blog, with interesting, regular content about writing and the fantasy genre in general.

This Shared Dream by Kathleen Ann Goonan

Sequel to In War Times, this is the story of the Dance children, offspring of the previous book's protagonist couple, who were abandoned by their parents and left adrift in an alternate timeline. They live in a "better" world, where the Cold War went very differently and Kennedy was never assassinated. But the nagging memories and dreamscapes of that other world, the one more-or-less ours, haunt them. Jill, the eldest, is experiencing a temporal nervous breakdown. Brian is tortured by the memory of dying in a Vietnam War that never happened. The youngest, Megan, is a researcher obsessed with memory and consciousness, but of all of them the most happy.

When a mysterious man begins following the children, looking for The Device that will be the catalyst for worldwide peace, it is up to their mother, secret agent Bette, to save them and keep The Device from the hands of those who would misuse it. The story goes back and fills in some details of In War Times from Bette's perspective, which I liked. Bette was a bit of a cipher in the last book.

Still a little too much Kennedy-slobbering, and general kumbaya, for my tastes. Still a lot of woo-woo about quantum consciousness and whatnot. Goonan seems to really, really have a thing about Montessori schools. And, really, far too much, IMHO, of the book is taken over with policy prescriptions and educational theories. Goonan lays out her ideals out the way a long-winded Internet commenter might. Our Shared Dream reads like a manifesto spruced up with some narrative. There were hints of this in the latter part of In War Times, but here it is on full display and it is annoying as all hell.

I still think the central conceit, that it's moral, even imperative, to change human nature to get rid of war, is a bit shaky. An analogy to vaccines is made, but I think the difference is free will. Parents make a choice for their children to get inoculated; no one is asked if they want to have their neurology changed in Goonan's world, it's a handful of people clandestinely enacting it. It's hard to say that ending war and human hatred is a bad thing when you look around you and see the state of the world, but I think it actually is, at least as it is gone about here. Yes, it might make a better world, but what right does anyone have to change history, to constantly tweak timelines and human biology to one's desired end through subterfuge, to rob people of their memories, no matter how bad? Is it worth sacrificing those you love for a better world? If we want to evolve as a species, it should be through chance and choice, not conspiracy. It doesn't mean anything otherwise.

I write my reviews as I read so that I don't forget anything, and I just realized that I'm not even half way through This Shared Dream, and I've written all of this stuff that basically amounts to, "I'm pissed off at this book." Why waste my time with a book that pisses me off? Perhaps some day I'll go back and finish just to see how the story of the Dance family ends, but right now I just have no interest in finishing a book I don't like, and I don't like this book.

Naughty In Nice by Rhys Bowen

The latest in the Her Royal Spyness mystery series finds our intrepid sleuth, Lady Georgiana of Glen Garry and Rennoch, great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, escaping the gloom of a London winter on the Riviera, where a stolen necklace and a murdered tycoon provide ample opportunity for Georgie to put her detective skills to use.

Georgie is a great character, neither too Mary Sue nor annoying, and her supporting cast, from fictionalized historical characters such as Coco Chanel and Wallis Simpson to her fully fictional mother, are delightful. If I have one criticism, it's in the romance. The misunderstandings between Georgie and dashing secret-agent Irishman Darcy have gotten a bit tiresome by this, the fifth in the series, and Darcy himself isn't as well-drawn as most of the other characters. I think his cryptic nature is intentional, since he is a bit of a mystery to Georgie herself, but I think it is a problem for the narrative. Bowen needs to come up with some other manner of providing romantic angst, or put them together finally.

But, really, that is a very minor criticism. This series continues to be a light, utterly enjoyable treat, and Naughty in Nice another frothy bon-bon of mystery, glamour, and just a hint of romance.

Skimpy Sunday

2011-10-09T00:00:00.000-04:00

(Via Roids and Rants [NSFW]; Mimziz [NSFW])

For Your Daily Dose Of Type

2011-10-07T20:19:00.002-04:00

Typography Daily

(Via Bookslut)

In The Navy...

2011-10-06T12:43:00.002-04:00

Don't Ask, Don't Tell was always stupid; the military is just so, so gay. Point taken that these posters would not have elicited the same sort of astonished giggles they might today, but I really, really doubt that no one ever raised an eyebrow at them, even then.

(Via Andrew Sullivan)

It's Aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive!

2011-10-05T23:32:00.002-04:00

In keeping with the Halloween season, a long-dead blog has clawed its way from the grave to new life! Welcome back, Tristan!

Hakuna Matata!

2011-10-05T17:13:00.001-04:00

I'm not convinced that this isn't some sort of stealth marketing for the 3-D Lion King, but whatever. OMG, so cute!

It Ain't Easy Being Khaki

2011-10-05T10:14:00.002-04:00

Long-time readers who have had to put up with my nattering on about Star Wars from time to time are well aware of one of my biggest complaints about the prequels: they make the Jedi out to be such dicks! Seriously, the Jedi Order sucks.

Skimpy Sunday

2011-10-02T00:07:00.000-04:00

(Via Bill in Exile [NSFW]; Overnight to London [NSFW]; Mimziz [NSFW])

Thar Be A White Whale!

2011-09-29T22:13:00.002-04:00

In unexpectedly white animal news, a white humpback whale has been spotted in Australia. Don't anyone tell Captain Ahab!

Today Rocks, Tomorrow Guns!

2011-09-29T15:48:00.001-04:00

Fish use tools. They're evolving, people! For too long Man has exploited the oceans; now, the fish will rise up!!!!

Calligraphic Tolkein

2011-09-28T22:03:00.003-04:00

If you're a real nerd, stuff like this makes your mouth water. And if you're a SUPER-nerd like me, and The Silmarillion is your favorite Tolkien, then it's doubly yummy!

(Via Bookslut)

I Want To Make A "Book Depository" Joke, But Won't

2011-09-28T17:18:00.001-04:00

Librarian beefcake. Yes please! They can shelve my reference any time.

(Via Joe. My. God.)

Skimpy Sunday

2011-09-25T00:45:00.000-04:00

(Via Overnight to London [NSFW]; DudeTube [NSFW]; Bill in Exile [NSFW]; Mimziz [NSFW])

Yo, Why It Always Got To Be The WHITE Stag!

2011-09-22T22:17:00.004-04:00

In keeping with my never-ending "animals with unusual coloring" fascination, behold: the White Hind of Britain!

(Via Towleroad)

Hate Leads To Anger, Anger Leads To The Dark Side

2011-09-20T22:14:00.002-04:00

There are many more reasons to hate George Lucas than his arrogant, tone-death insistence on "improving" Star Wars into utter twaddle.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

2011-09-20T15:20:00.004-04:00

The importance of the end of Don't Ask, Don't Tell this morning and the resultant relief and comfort it has brought gay servicemembers cannot be overstated.

A Travesty!

2011-09-20T15:06:00.001-04:00

How can any list of the top 10 Asian dog breeds not include the regal, noble pug? My dear, departed Dusty would snort in derision (and then go back to sleep) at such a slight!

Jackpot

2011-09-17T22:36:00.002-04:00

If you were a young gay boy, didn't you long to see a movie about you and your experiences instead of having to translate everything from straight to gay? Well, you might not have gotten your wish then, but you can help the gay boys of today see that by helping fund this movie.

I Think I Know What This Guy Is So Happy

2011-09-16T15:30:00.002-04:00

Shirtless? Striped knee-high socks? Obsessed with having a flat stomach? "For Men Only" indeed!

The Great Courses

2011-09-12T21:59:00.002-04:00

Someone's making money teaching people about history and art and philosophy and all of that "unnecessary" stuff that won't get you a job and is thus, according to modern America's utilitarian approach to higher eduction, useless? Unpossible!

(Via The Bookslut)

Bourgeois Book Club

2011-09-12T11:45:00.000-04:00

Before the Revolution: America's Ancient Pasts by Daniel K. Richter

I have a great interest in Colonial American history. So during a sad pick-over-the-carcass visit to Borders (I could only go the first week, even though the discounts were still relatively paltry; I couldn't bear to go as the discounts got larger but the store grew emptier and emptier. I did that once with a Borders that closed earlier in the year and it was just depressing.) I was pleased to pick up this book by a major scholar in the field of Early American history.

Richter divides pre-Revolutionary history by six character types in the Native and European peoples: Progenitors, Conquistadores, Traders, Planters, Imperialists, and Atlanteans.

The history of the American colonies doesn't start with the Pilgrims or Jamestown or Columbus. (And, no, I'm not talking about Leif Ericsson.) The Progenitors of the medieval period set the stage for the interaction between the two worlds, for both good and ill. Neither Europeans nor Americans came to one another in a historical or cultural vacuum.

The agriculturally-friendly North Atlantic climate of the Medieval Warm Period saw the development of the Anasazi and Mississippian civilizations in America and the Gothic splendor of the High Middle Ages in Europe. The Progenitor cultures that arose in this period set the stage for each continent's circumstances and world view at contact, the Crusading feudalism of the Europeans and the prestige economy of the Americans. The coming of the Little Ice Age, which reversed and then-some many of the advantageous weather patterns of the Warm Period, saw the collapse of the Anasazi and Mississippians and the Black Plague in Europe, but the echoes of each culture and the consequences of their collapse reverberated down the centuries to Contact.

The first Europeans to settle were the Conquistadores. They continued the Crusader zeal of the European Progenitors into a "New" World. But it was not just religious fervor, but ideological fervor as well, that drove them. They wanted to convert the natives, even if they had to kill and enslave them to do it, but they also dreamed of becoming the feudal lords of a new domain, gaining for themselves the positions and power denied them at home as mostly younger sons and lesser gentry. There were really few clear-headed economic bases for colonization. The carving out of "plantations" and some vague notion of Native labor, tenant rents, and such, as well as the ever-popular "there has to be gold here somewhere!" fantasy, were all the Conquistadores had in mind. They were adventurers, not really settlers as such.

But, really, the goal was as much cultural/religious imperialism as actual conquest. They wanted to replicate and improve (because they'd be the ones on top) the feudal system in a new place, as well as bring the Natives into "civilization." The Iberians, already experienced with the conquest and subjugation of native peoples from the Reconquista and the conquest of the Atlantic islands (the Canaries, the Azores, etc.), blazed the path that their European rivals soon followed. But Protestants carried the missionary zeal as much as the Catholics, and had their own colonial experience in Ireland.

The Traders were, as their name suggests, merchants by nature. All people engage in exchange, and both natives and Europeans participated enthusiastically in trade between and amongst themselves, though they did it for very different reasons. For Europeans, trade meant profit, while for Native Americans it was prestige and utility, and neither side ever quite understood that difference, to their sorrows later on. But in the meantime, a very rough, very uneasy sort of balance between native and European political and economic interests emerged. With it, though, came demographic calamity as disease ravaged the Native Americans and brought widespread war as those demographic changes and the demands of trade set tribes against one another.

The vast wave of immigrants who came to the New World in search of land, opportunity, and political stability, as well as religious freedom comprised the Planters, the most famous group of which are undoubtedly the Puritans of New England. They weren't just gentlemen adventurers bent on conquest as the Conquistadores, or merchants bent on more-or-less peaceful trade, as the Traders, but farmers, craftsmen, and most importantly families. But they were a rather distinctly English phenomenon, by and large, while Dutch, Spanish, and French colonialism remained largely in the mode of the Conquistadores and the Traders, and the populations of the non-English colonies in North America remained small. The Dutch, Traders par excellance, though, did help to incubate the African slave-owning that grew to characterize the Planters of the Chesapeake and the Caribbean.

Traders wanted to exchange with Native Americans, not necessarily take their land, and Conquistadores could at least often be satisfied by notional control and labor, but the Planters were the real nail in the coffin of Native autonomy, with their thirst for land. Families meant population growth, and population growth meant ever-larger numbers of Europeans ready and eager for more land. The Planters were "small-folk" squeezed out of the chance for land ownership in Europe and all the more eager because of it to grab it in the "wild" "untamed" New World with its vast expanses of "emptiness." From then on, Native Americans would be pushed, prodded, cheated, and killed for territory to fill this need.

The Imperialists arose in the aftermath of the English Restoration, and envisioned a centrally-controlled regime dominated by the monarch. English colonies were sources of royal income, controlled by royal favorites, and governed without recourse to even the quasi-democratic institutions that Virginia and New England enjoyed. Trade was strictly prohibited in order to maximize royal revenue. African slavery, controlled by many high-ranking courtiers, was encouraged. Religious tolerance was stressed. Dutch Nieuw Amsterdam was taken; the Carolinas, theoretically Spanish territory, were granted to a group of "proprietors." The French in Canada and the Mississippi basin, spread thin as they were, also tended toward the same sort of centralization.

The erasure of the Dutch from the political and economic scene disrupted Indian economies, which, in addition to Planter land-hunger and general antipathy towards Natives and despite the preference of Imperials for peaceful relations with Natives (to better profit off of them and also to better aggrandize their empires with theoretical subjects), eventually led to Native/colonial strife in King Philip's War (New England), the Pueblo Revolt (New Mexico) and flares of violence in Florida. Internally, the centralization of the French and particularly English authority caused civil strife, including Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia.

After the Glorious Revolution in Britain, colonial assemblies and other quasi-democratic bodies became more accepted by the court. Proprietorships ceased. But centralization for the sake of military coordination continued, especially as conflict with the Native Americans increased and the rivalries among the European colonial powers heated up.

Increasing interconnectedness and commerce, both economic and intellectual, characterize the world of the Atlanteans. The economy boomed as the Navigation Acts finally became an asset rather than a hindrance to the colonial economies, giving them incentive to trade between themselves and to be the main suppliers of the British Caribbean colonies. Atlantic trade flourished as New England fishermen, North Carolina rice farmers, Native American deer hunters and beaver trappers, small farmers, and port craftsmen all competed to feed the hungry maws of foreign demand. Blessed with abundant timber and other "naval stores" that overcutting had deprived British shipbuilders of easy access to, American shipbuilding to carry on all this commerce exploded.

Transatlantic trade was not just colonies feeding a gluttonous mother country, though. A consumer revolution brought with it new styles of architecture (Georgian), new customs at table and beyond, new needs (including the tableware necessary to make the new etiquette work), and new products such as china, cloth, and tea. Books and newspapers abounded, tying most of the population into the intellectual life of the Atlantic world.

Slavery was central to the Atlantean world. The slave population increased exponentially, as both royal and colonial governments actively encouraged the trade and new laws enshrined the status of all children born to slave mothers as slaves. Indentured servitude declined as conditions in England improved and the planters of Virginia and Maryland consciously discouraged it due to the threat the eventually-freed could present to their power. Indeed, slavery was as much a cultural as an economic statement. Much of the South was settled by Barbadoans and other British Caribbean colonists for whom slavery was ubiquitous. To have a slave was a mark of power and social standing.

Atlantean America became increasingly multicultural. In addition to African slavery, immigration from not just England, but Ireland, Wales, Scotland, France, and Germany, swelled colonial populations. Places such as Pennsylvania provided easily-accessible, cheap, plentiful, and fertile land for settlement and the chance at prosperity that home couldn't provide, and the Quaker governments provided the religious freedom many craved.

Native Americans were fully integrated into the Atlantic trade. In addition to the aforementioned deerskin and beaver pelts, they traded meat and captives from enemy tribes to be sold as slaves in exchange for copper kitchen implements, guns, horses, and woven cloth. Indeed, goods were made specifically for the Indian trade, according to their specific needs and desires. Both politically and economically, Native nations played European powers against one another. Though the British produced more and better goods, options were always carefully kept open with Spain and France. They'd learned that over-reliance on single source was unwise.

But the booming Colonial economies and populations, the insatiable thirst for land and lots of it, brought with it more Native conflict. Great migrations of Native groups occurred all throughout the Eastern Seaboard and beyond, as groups battered by war, disease, slave raiding, and economic disruption tried to find some place, any place, to live without interference. Alas, they never really found it. Many no sooner settled somewhere than they were off again. Many weren't even really tribes, but agglomerations of various groups that ended up together through migration, adoption, or assimilation.

The "French and Indian War" or the more apt, due to the fact that the Indians really were no more allied to the French than they were to the British and fought for their own reasons not the French's, "Seven Years' War," shattered the Atlantean world. British and Indian relations, Colonial and Indian relations, and British and Colonial relations, all broke down as a result of the war. At the very moment of British imperial victory, the seeds of the Revolution were sown, as the Proclamation of 1763 that limited Colonial settlement beyond the Appalachians and the taxes imposed to pay for the war, which led to a general sense of disconnect between Colonial and British interests, alienated the colonists. Meanwhile, the Native Americans were left facing the British alone, their tactic of setting the various imperial powers of North America now void with the French now off the scene and the Spanish not really able to extend their power beyond newly acquired New Orleans. And Colonial animus towards Native Americans had only grown during the war. Sharing was no longer on any Europeans' lips.

Bountiful quotations from primary sources and a focus on the big picture of European colonization make this a solid and important work of history. Though neither as sweeping and awe-inspiring a synthesis as American Colonies, nor approaching that book's erudition and readability, Before the Revolution is still a worthy and pleasurable read for those interested in Colonial history.

In War Times by Kathleen Ann Goonan

In the midst of WWII, the Holocaust, and the Manhattan Project, a Hungarian physicist invents a half-biological time machine with which she thinks she can end war forever. But it is to an American physics student-cum-jazz saxophonist that she gives the plans and the theory behind the device for development. It is he we follow through the war years and beyond as he struggles with love, loss, friendship, combat, marriage, and fatherhood.

The scientific advances and the soul-searching about those scientific advances of the Second World War and the Cold War that preoccupied so many in that era provides the perfect backdrop for the book, because the story is very much concerned about science and technology, about their use and abuse, about how and even if you can determine what use they're put to. If you can change the past, should you? Who gets to decide?

Jazz plays a large and important role in the narrative. Frankly, though, all the jazz talk, the name-drops and the song titles and such, flew right over my head. I know next to nothing about jazz. I skimmed it, and probably shouldn't have, since obviously there were supposed to be parallels between the jazz and the science. I just couldn't make myself.

If you're one of those hard science fanatics who complain that Star Wars shouldn't count and anything with faster-than-light travel is bullshit, then you won't be pleased with the "quantum consciousness" and "time is all in our heads, maaaaaaaaaan" stuff that comprises the scientific underpinnings of the story. It's all a bit New Age-y, woo-woo, Deepak Chopra-ish for my tastes, but the story is good enough that I could look past that. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories and Camelot mythologizing we fall down into at the end, which, for me, seeped out some of the book's enjoyment factor. If there's one thing I can't stand it's Boomers waxing poetic about the Kennedys.

But it is a riveting read, with a great love story. Jazz, time-travel/alternate universes, and WWII. What more can you ask for? A sequel has just been released, which I plan to read, so stayed tuned for that in a future edition of Bourgeois Book Club.

Heart of Iron by Ekaterina Sedia

The tale of a Russian aristocrat's maturation in a rapidly changing Russia. In St. Petersburg, where she is one of the first women to be admitted to university, Alexandra Trubetskaya meets a strange Englishman, befriends Chinese students, and becomes embroiled in international intrigue. Running from agents of both the British and Russian empires, from the canals of St. Petersburg to the streets of Moscow, from Siberia to China, can one girl change the fate of nations and avert a war?

Yet another book in which you don't know you're in an alternate reality until you really start getting into it, and also another entry into the steampunk(-ish) genre, like a locomotive with only half the coal needed for its journey, the story just ran out of steam in the middle. After a good start, I grew progressively less interested until I gave up out of ennui. When it expanded from the confines of St. Petersburg into a chase across Siberia, something just changed. Also, Florence Nightingale is a villain and Spring-Heeled Jack is a thing. Very, very disappointing.

Astronomy Photographer of the Year

2011-09-12T10:18:00.003-04:00

Congratulations to the winners of the 2011 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. Pretty, pretty pictures!

(Via Tor.com)

Skimpy Sunday

2011-09-11T00:05:00.000-04:00

(Via Overnight to London [NSFW]; Mimziz [NSFW])

There Are Far Too Many Macros On The Internet...

2011-09-09T13:55:00.002-04:00

...but it's worth it to get this one.

(Via Choire Sicha)

Skimpy Sunday

2011-09-04T01:05:00.000-04:00

(Via Bill in Exile [NSFW]; Mimziz [NSFW])

It Always Comes Down To Marketing

2011-08-30T15:26:00.002-04:00

In science, as in everything else, you gotta have a gimmick.

Infinite Despair

2011-08-30T13:25:00.004-04:00

I'm always intrigued by those who react with existential dread in the face of the concept of infinity, because that isn't my reaction at all. I'm intrigued and awed by infinity, but I find a sort of wonder, even comfort in it. To have something vast, vaster even than I can conceive, to be insignificant for both good and ill, isn't scary, but kind of liberating. I find the finite -- things ending, things running out -- much scarier than the infinite.

Skimpy Sunday

2011-08-28T00:27:00.000-04:00

(Via San Lumos [NSFW]; Bill in Exile [NSFW]; Mimziz [NSFW])

I Never Got To Read THIS Kind of Book In School!

2011-08-24T22:18:00.003-04:00

This is not really how I ever wanted to see my hometown and alma maters in the national news.

(Via Towleroad)