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Recommended Reading: Some Cosmic Perspective

by Major Major Major Major|  March 8, 20212:10 pm| 136 Comments

This post is in: Books, Recommended Reading, Science & Technology

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

– Robert Frost

Recommended Reading: Some Cosmic PerspectiveSo goes the epigraph of Katie Mack‘s excellent new cosmology book, The End Of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking). It is an entertaining and curiously enlightening read about how the universe might end. At 240 pages, it’s a quick and accessible read that somehow manages to cover a great deal of ground. Among its topics:

  • What might the universe be?
  • Where might it have come from?
  • What the heck happened during those first fractions of a second?
  • How might the universe end?
  • Where do universes go when they die?

These first three points are critical to understanding the rest, and Mack, a theoretical cosmologist and science communicator, does an excellent job explaining them. But she spends most of the book drilling down into these last points. She discusses, among other things, the big crunch, heat death, the big rip, bouncing ‘branes, vacuum decay, and life after (heat) death.

I’d always found heat death–the irreversible transformation of all things into tepid soup–to be deeply depressing. Entropy, an unstoppable juggernaut that slowly makes things less organized, will simply have its way with everything. But the things I read in this book really made me reconsider that.

First, heat death is far from guaranteed. The big crunch–a reversal of cosmic expansion–was assumed to be the fate of the universe until George W. Bush was president. Who’s to say this won’t change again? Is another shift in thinking in fact inevitable?

Second, even if the universe’s final form is a uniform just-above-absolute-zero puddle, there’s no reason to believe this is its truly final form. Random quantum fluctuations can theoretically produce any arrangement of particles. At infinite time horizons, one could argue that these fluctuations will produce any arrangement of particles. Including a very temporary consciousness that believes itself to be a human reading this blog post on the Internet. Or a singularity… and we know where those can lead.

Even freaky apocalypse scenarios like vacuum decay, where a change in the Higgs field suddenly creates a bubble of quantum annihilation that spreads inexorably outward at the speed of light, don’t sound so bad in Mack’s telling: there’s plenty of universe out there that’s traveling away from us even faster. In fact, for all we know, this has already happened a bunch of different places. And, at the end of the day, it would be a painless way to go, and literally impossible to see coming.

So, if you’re in the mood for some surprisingly uplifting eschatology, why not pick up a copy? I got mine from the library, but if you’re looking to buy, this Amazon affiliate link will send some scratch to the blog.

What have you been reading lately?

Recommended Reading: Some Cosmic PerspectivePost + Comments (136)

Later Night Open Thread: Quick, Henry, the FLIT!

by Anne Laurie|  March 4, 20212:55 am| 47 Comments

This post is in: Books, Open Threads, Racial Justice

"madam press secretary, does mister biden assert that horton does not in fact hear a who and is perpetuating a falsehood on par with the leadup to the iraq war? i work for the washington post, btw." https://t.co/y8EP8WUomE

— Peloton InfoSec Analyst (Incident Response) (@CalmSporting) March 2, 2021

I don’t actually remember the content of And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street — one of the not-acutally-banned six — but I do remember getting in trouble for publicly criticizing it, back in 1960, when I was in kindergarten. Most of the story-hour books at P.S. 291 were of the genre best described as Worthy Educational Material, designed more to lull the young audience into naptime than to inspire. But one day Mrs. Bookbinder, bless her earnest heart, decided to bring in a copy of the already-vintage Dr. Seuss book that had once inspired her children. And, of course, as a budding literary snob, I was impelled to denigrate it as nowhere near the standards of the author’s later work (not even 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, much less the slyly subversive One Fish Two Fish). Which I probably could’ve gotten away with, if not for the predicatable teacher’s pet…

“I think it was a wonderful story, Mrs. Bookbinder!”

“Yeah, cuz you’re a suck-up.”

So I had to bring home (yet another) Note to My Parents. My poor mother, a nascent English teacher herself, was torn between the honesty of my critique and her immense respect for the social forms. My old man, after explaining (probably not for the first time) that there were many things which were true and yet not to be said in public, introduced me to Mr. Geissel’s original source of fame: the advertising campaign for FLIT, which was popular enough to enter the general awareness as a tag line — I remember it being used in both Pogo and MAD magazine. (And some of those ads, if you click over: hella racist, by 21st-century standards!)

I was also held incidentally responsible, by the educational authorities, for a minor kerfuffle with the parents of a couple of my Italian-American classmates. Apparently the fuss over my brutal emotional assault on Teacher’s Pet impressed those kids enough that, although they’d never mentioned anything about earlier stories, they described the Seuss-inspired scene to their parents. Now, Geissel was talking about his home town in Massachusetts, but in NYC, Mulberry Street was (still is, such as it remains) Little Italy. You find us funny? Are we some kind of joke to you?…

Such is the power of literature, even at its most (pre)elementary level.

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It's weird to put self-cancelation in the "cancel culture" category.

Here, the people doing the cancelling are the people who own the books being cancelled. If the publisher doesn't want to publish something they object to, that's their business. Property rights 'n' all that. https://t.co/OZnl86rEKG

— Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) March 2, 2021

Look on the bright side. Fifteen years from now you can make some bucks selling these old books on Ebay, assuming you actually own some copies, which stop lying almost none of you actually do.

— Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) March 2, 2021

that will show dr. seuss enterprises for ceasing publication of some of their catalogue. they're getting fucking owned now by people buying all these books from them https://t.co/A5tdqEQt4v

— Wild Geerters (@classiclib3ral) March 3, 2021

Later Night Open Thread: <em>Quick, Henry, the FLIT!</em>Post + Comments (47)

They Have A Book to Sell Open Thread: “Luck Favors Only the Prepared Mind”

by Anne Laurie|  March 1, 20218:49 pm| 96 Comments

This post is in: Books, President Biden, Media Mudlarks

"Sometimes a book is so eager to take readers behind the scenes that it neglects to spend enough time on the scenes themselves" https://t.co/ZIRQeHNXqT

— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) February 28, 2021

Louis Pasteur, as per the quip in the title, knew a thing or two about succeeding against the odds. Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes are media mudlarks; they make a living rooting through the sewage outflow of politics, looking for nuggets they can resell. Hey, it’s a living!

Lemieux quotes at length from Washington Post book critic Carlos Lozada’s review, “Joe Biden won the presidency by making the most of his lucky breaks”:

… Four years ago, Allen and Parnes co-authored the best-selling “Shattered,” an examination of Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 campaign, in which they placed the blame largely on the ineptitude of the losing side. In this sequel, they are only slightly more generous with the Democratic nominee. Joe Biden won, of course, but mainly because he “caught every imaginable break.” He was the “process-of-elimination candidate,” emerging from a crowded set of more exciting Democratic contenders. He was “lousy in debates and lackluster on the trail,” prevailing despite “a bland message and a blank agenda.” Biden, they argue, got lucky.

The fiasco of the Iowa caucuses, where the app designed to report the results failed miserably, temporarily obscured Biden’s fourth-place showing. “This was a gift,” a campaign aide later explained. Luck returned when rival Democrats such as Pete Buttigieg (who ended up winning Iowa) and Mike Bloomberg (who won American Samoa) suffered debate night takedowns by Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren — and when Biden survived his own hit from Kamala Harris over his past positions on school busing and desegregation. (That almost cost Harris the subsequent veep nod, Allen and Parnes report.) Fortune smiled again when the entire Democratic Party establishment rushed to Biden’s side after his victory in the South Carolina primary, even if it was less about devotion to him than panic that Bernie Sanders might secure the nomination. “On Super Tuesday, you got very lucky,” President Donald Trump told Biden at their first debate. The Democrat did not disagree…

A simplistic focus on identity is evident throughout the Democratic field, with new aides often hired to make staffs look young and more diverse — only to complicate things by, you know, having ideas of their own that diverged from those of entrenched advisers. Allen and Parnes portray a Biden campaign split along “deep fault lines mostly based on generation, race, ideology, and time in Bidenworld.” Biden was in the middle of it, in every sense, hewing to centrist positions on health care, racial justice and law enforcement, no matter the pressures from his campaign team and his party. He may not have been “Sleepy Joe,” but he remained “Unwoke Joe,” Allen and Parnes quip. “That was the ugly truth many Democrats had to face in the aftermath of the 2020 election: To beat Trump, they had to swallow their progressive values and push forward an old white man who simply promised to restore calm.”

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That “simply” is a little deceptive. The 2020 race transpired against the backdrop of a deadly pandemic, widespread racial-justice protests and threats to American democracy emanating from the presidency itself. In “Lucky,” such context matters largely to the extent that it affects the candidates’ rhetoric and fundraising. (George Floyd’s death, for instance, required some “nimble positioning” by Biden, Allen and Parnes write, trying to keep both moderate White voters and party activists happy.) As a result, the moments of high drama in “Lucky” can feel small-bore. Should Biden leave New Hampshire and head to South Carolina before the Granite State’s full primary results are announced, thus potentially alienating supporters there for the general election? (Spoiler: He did leave early. It was fine.) And how do longtime Biden campaign staffers react when the interloping new campaign boss, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, receives a glowing write-up in The Washington Post’s opinion section, complete with a portrait-type photo? “The profile landed like the mother of all bombs in the civil war between the Obama veterans and Biden’s primary crew,” Allen and Parnes overwrite…

“Lucky” provides useful detail to understand Biden’s victory, even if the framing is not particularly novel. What candidate has not experienced some luck or misfortune during a long presidential bid? One time it might be a major health crisis, another time, a self-righteous FBI director. Stuff happens, and the best candidates figure out how to react. “Knowing who he was, and where he wanted to be politically, allowed Biden’s campaign to capitalize when luck ran his way,” Allen and Parnes write in their final pages.

In other words, Biden was more than lucky. And for political reporters as for political candidates, spending too much time on optics is just not a good look.

Basically, the strategy of 99% of all of these horse race access books is to emphasize structural and contingent factors when they help a candidate, and to ignore or downplay them when they don’t, which allows you to create any narrative you want https://t.co/mfG1dWc4Os

— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) February 28, 2021

I plead guilty to thinking that Biden wouldn't win the nomination, and nor would I have voted for him, but when a candidate goes 46-11 at some point you have to consider that maybe what makes an effective campaign and what access journalists consider exciting are not the same

— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) February 28, 2021

Acid test of the Allen/Parnas theory, in what passes for the real world:

It was an throughline of campaign messaging — Biden just didn’t rile up conservatives and so he was painted as a Trojan horse for figures who did. Now it has carried into his presidency, both at political rallies and in his opposition’s messaging in Congress.

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) February 28, 2021

<em>They Have A Book to Sell</em> Open Thread: “Luck Favors Only the Prepared Mind”Post + Comments (96)

Today’s Nontroversy Open Thread: Hunter Biden Has Written A Book

by Anne Laurie|  February 7, 20216:45 pm| 162 Comments

This post is in: Books, Open Threads, President Biden, Our Failed Media Experiment

You know who shouldn’t be writing books? Journalist with proximity to the President. Bob Woodward sat on key information for months that the last president was willing to kill us to boost his election chances. https://t.co/NetTyNB4BT

— Jen Psaki Fan Account (@ArrogantNBlack) February 7, 2021

I heartily endorse this message, at least for Bob Woodward. Political memoirs have a history going back as far as written language, and 95% of the contemporary pearl-clutching over their impropriety seems to come from individuals who wish anybody might be interested in their memoirs, assuming they could ever get down to the hard work of writing them…

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the trump campaign could never quite figure out how to weaponize hunter biden because the current president was like "my son has fucked up but he's a good kid and i love him" and it was a complete anathema to everything they understand.

it was great. https://t.co/1TYSOEMXTT

— Peloton InfoSec Analyst (Incident Response) (@CalmSporting) February 7, 2021

I’ll worry about this when joe puts him in charge of middle east peace and pandemic planning https://t.co/Tj13k4MWpi

— kilgore trout, back in some form (@KT_So_It_Goes) February 7, 2021

This is a laughably incoherent and unworkable standard. Countless books every year are published based on contingent fame, who gives a shit pic.twitter.com/HYBDwVjbxK

— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) February 7, 2021

This explains a lot. Walter Shaub's Hunter Biden bashing is just Shaub having sour grapes pouts and ironically enough showing why the Biden Administration was wise not to hire a Twitter celebrity. https://t.co/JxSGGK3PRm

— Phoenix Woman ?? (@PhoenixWomanMN) February 7, 2021

Today’s Nontroversy Open Thread: Hunter Biden Has Written A BookPost + Comments (162)

Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Non-Fiction

by WaterGirl|  January 31, 20216:00 pm| 175 Comments

This post is in: Books, Guest Posts, Medium Cool with BGinCHI, Popular Culture, Culture as a Hedge Against This Soul-Sucking Political Miasma We're Living In

In case you’re new to Medium Cool, BGinCHI is here once a week to offer a thread on culture, mainly film & books, with some TV thrown in.

Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Non-Fiction

In this week’s MC, let’s talk non-fiction books.

Reading our own Tom Levenson’s terrific book on the South Sea Bubble got me thinking about good non-fiction books. I don’t read too many non-fic books that aren’t work-related, but I did just order this:

Avi Loeb’s Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth

Read an excerpt and was riveted, so can’t wait to dive in.

What non-fiction are you reading or would recommend?

Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Non-FictionPost + Comments (175)

Hogfather Reading Club: Talk Amongst Yourselves

by Major Major Major Major|  December 20, 20203:00 pm| 98 Comments

This post is in: Books, Recommended Reading

Hello and welcome to a special holiday edition of Recommended Reading! Today we’ll be talking about our Light Solstice Reading Club selection, Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather. I’m so happy we could share this reading experience together. I didn’t remember much from my prior read, so this was almost like reading it for the first time. And what can I say? Pratchett is almost always good, but when he’s transcendent, he’s transcendent.

A drawing of Death as the Hogfather
I even made a fanart! Click to embiggen–WordPress made the preview look all mushy.

Hogfather tells the story of the time Santa Cl the Hogfather is, for lack of a better term, killed. By the assassin Mr. Teatime, which is of course pronounced the-ah-tim-eh, though everybody mispronounces it immediately, even if they’ve never seen it spelled. Death must step in and deliver  the presents. Meanwhile a surplus of belief is sloshing around the Discworld, giving rise to the Oh God of Hangovers, the Eater of Socks, and more. We follow various heroes and villains as they navigate this new reality. In the end, balance is restored, reality’s humorless scolds defeated (for now).

Hogfather hits a real sweet spot for me: I’m a sucker for holiday specials, and like Neil Gaiman I think Death is Pratchett’s best character. This book is a pile of contradictions, a god-riddled argument for secular humanism, a rationalist’s paean to irrational belief, where Death is the only character who seems to understand the meaning of life. And it’s so well-engineered that it actually works. In the hands of a lesser author, so many things could go wrong. But they don’t, because this is Pratchett at the top of his very considerable game. Everything comes together in the end for a denouement that I’m not ashamed to admit made me cry a little. Especially Banjo’s fate.

When I read a paperback I dog-ear the bottom corners for favorite passages. I ended up with a lot for this one, sometimes on facing pages. So much to love in this book. As somebody who’s attended his share of Episcopal, Jewish, and Neo-Pagan solstice celebrations, I think Pratchett does a great job capturing the true meaning of Hogswatch–fire and blood, annoying relatives in paper hats, ancient rituals to chase away the smothering darkness with lights and pretty pictures. And big, stupid myths we tell our children. The tiniest worm in the ocean, a red flame in the crushing black depths, speaks volumes in this story. Its life is so irrational, striving against oblivion, and why?

Because otherwise, the universe is just a bunch of rocks moving in curves. Without our sometimes ridiculous applications of the anthropic principle–personified here as a professor–when the sun rises after the darkest day of the year, it’s just a ball of flaming gas. Without the Hogfather–or that silly, pointlessly red worm–we forget ourselves.

And that is why, at this time of the year, we light things on fire. Happy Hogswatch, everyone! What did you all think? Opening discussion question: what does Death sound like in your head?

Hogfather Reading Club: Talk Amongst YourselvesPost + Comments (98)

Nice Things Open Thread

by Major Major Major Major|  December 9, 202012:33 pm| 188 Comments

This post is in: Books, Music, Open Threads

I’ve decided we should have an open thread.

I went to Central Park on Sunday to enjoy the sun. (It was maybe forty degrees, but that’s what long underwear is for!) Clearly I wasn’t the only one who’d had this idea; the park was bustling. But that’s the benefit of being outdoors and masked: bustle isn’t too much trouble.

Still, I was surprised and delighted to find a choir of masked carolers performing at Bethesda Terrace. It’s a beautiful space with great acoustics that always has good musicians performing, so they fit right in. I took a short video, and thought you all might appreciate it. Life felt… normal. It was wonderful.

For a brief shining moment everything feels normal pic.twitter.com/mesf941nyz

— 🍂 Tynan 🍁 (@TynanPants) December 6, 2020


Addendum 1: The Hogfather reading club meeting will be Sunday, December 20 at 3:00pm EST.


Addendum 2: A small bleg, not for myself, pre-cleared with management.

I review submissions for a sci-fi & fantasy magazine called Metaphorosis. It’s up and coming, but it’s got some great stories. The editor would like to do more to emphasize authors from underrepresented groups, while still reading stories blind. The plan is to make special anthologies reprinting stories from said authors, one anthology per ‘group’ (e.g. LGBT, disabled). But paying for reprint rights, commissioning new art, etc. costs money!

So there’s a Kickstarter, and a $15 pledge will get you an ebook of every anthology they end up making.  (Your card isn’t charged unless the goal is met.) Looks like they could definitely use a bit of a boost. If you’d like to see what sort of stories we’re talking about, you can read them all for free at the magazine website.

Nice Things Open ThreadPost + Comments (188)

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