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Segell, Michael.
The Devil's Horn.
New York: Picador, 2005.
ISBN 0-312-42557-0.
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When Napoléon III seized power and proclaimed himself
Emperor of France in 1851, his very first decree did not have
to do with any of the social, economic, or political crises
the country faced, but rather reinstating the saxophone in
French military bands, reversing a ban on the instrument imposed
by the Second Republic (p. 220). There is something about
the saxophone—its lascivious curves and seductive sound,
perhaps, or its association with avant
garde and not entirely respectable music—which has
made it the object of attacks by prudes, puritans, and musical
elitists almost from the time of its invention in the early 1840s
by Belgian Adolphe Sax. Nazi Germany banned the sax
as “decadent”; Stalin considered it a “dangerous
capitalist instrument” and had saxophonists shot or sent
to Siberia; the League of Catholic Decency in the United States
objected not to the steamy images on the screen in the 1951
film A Streetcar Named Desire,
but rather the sultry saxophone music which accompanied it, and signed
off on the scene when it was re-scored for French horn and strings;
and in Kansas City, Missouri, it was once against the law to play a
saxophone outside a nightclub from ten-thirty at night until six in
the morning (which seems awfully early to me to be playing a
saxophone unless you've been at it all night).
Despite its detractors, political proscribers, somewhat
disreputable image, and failure to find a place in
symphony orchestras, this relative newcomer has infiltrated
almost all genres of music, sparked the home music and
school band crazes in the United States, and became
central to the twentieth century evolution of jazz,
big band, rhythm and blues, and soul music. A large and
rapidly expanding literature of serious and experimental
music for the instrument exists, and many conservatories
which once derided the “vulgar horn” now
teach it.
This fascinating book tells the story of Sax, the saxophone,
saxophonists, and the music and culture they have engendered.
Even to folks like myself who cannot coax music from
anything more complicated than an iPod (I studied saxophone for
two years in grade school before concluding, with the enthusiastic
concurrence of my aurally assaulted parents, that my talents
lay elsewhere) will find many a curious and delightful detail
to savour, such as the monstrous
contrabass
saxophone (which sounds
something
like a foghorn), and the fact that Adolphe Sax, something of a
mad scientist, also invented (but, thankfully, never built)
an organ powered by a locomotive engine which could “play
the music of Meyerbeer for all of Paris” and the
“Saxocannon”, a mortar which would fire a
half-kiloton bullet 11 yards wide, which “could level
an entire city” (pp. 27–28)—and people
complain about the saxophone! This book will make you want to
re-listen to a lot of music, which you're likely to understand
much better knowing the story of how it, and those who
made it, came to be.
-
Gibbon, Edward.
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Vol. 2.
(Audiobook, Abridged).
Hong Kong: Naxos Audiobooks, [1788, 1789] 1998.
ISBN 962-634-122-X.
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The “Volume 2” in the title of this work refers to the two
volumes of this audiobook edition. This is an abridgement of
the final three volumes of Gibbon's history, primarily devoted the
eastern empire from the time of Justinian through the fall of
Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, although the fractious kingdoms
of the west, the Crusades, the conquests of Genghis Khan and
Tamerlane, and the origins of the great schism between the Roman and
Eastern Orthodox churches all figure in this history. I understand
why many people read only the first three volumes of Gibbon's
masterpiece—the doings of the Byzantine court are, well,
byzantine, and the steady litany of centuries of backstabbing,
betrayal, intrigue, sedition, self-indulgence, and dissipation
can become both tedious and depressing. Although there are
are some sharply-worded passages which may have raised eyebrows
in the eighteenth century, I did not find Gibbon anywhere near
as negative on the influence of Christianity on the Roman Empire
as I expected from descriptions of his work by others. The
facile claim that “Gibbon blamed the fall of Rome on the
Christians” is simply not borne out by his own words.
Please see my comments on
Volume 1 for
details of the (superb) production values of this seven hour
recording. An Audio CD edition is
available.
- Tipler, Frank J.
The Physics of Christianity.
New York: Doubleday, 2007.
ISBN 0-385-51424-7.
-
Oh. My. Goodness.
Are you yearning for answers to the Big Questions which philosophers
and theologians have puzzled over for centuries? Here you are, using
direct quotes from this book in the form of a catechism of this
beyond-the-fringe science cataclysm.
- What is the purpose of life in the universe?
- It is not enough to annihilate some baryons. If the laws
of physics are to be consistent over all time, a substantial
percentage of all the baryons in the universe must be
annihilated, and over a rather short time span. Only
if this is done will the acceleration of the universe be
halted. This means, in particular, that intelligent life
from the terrestrial biosphere must move out into interstellar
and intergalactic space, annihilating baryons as they go.
(p. 67)
- What is the nature of God?
- God is the Cosmological Singularity. A singularity
is an entity that is outside of time and space—transcendent
to space and time—and it is the only thing that exists
that is not subject to the laws of physics.
(p. 269)
- How can the three persons of the Trinity be one God?
- The Cosmological Singularity consists of three
Hypostases: the Final Singularity, the All-Presents
Singularity, and the Initial Singularity. These can
be distinguished by using Cauchy sequences of different
sorts of person, so in the Cauchy completion, they become
three distinct Persons. But still, the three Hypostases
of the Singularity are just one Singularity. The Trinity,
in other words, consists of three Persons but only one
God.
(pp. 269–270.)
- How did Jesus walk on water?
- For example, walking on water could be accomplished
by directing a neutrino beam created just below
Jesus' feet downward. If we ourselves knew how
to do this, we would have the perfect rocket!
(p. 200)
- What is Original Sin?
- If Original Sin actually exists, then it must in some
way be coded in our genetic material, that is, in our
DNA. … By the time of the Cambrian Explosion, if not
earlier, carnivores had appeared on Earth. Evil had
appeared in the world. Genes now coded for behavior
that guided the use of biological weapons of the
carnivores. The desire to do evil was now hereditary.
(pp. 188, 190)
- How can long-dead saints intercede in the lives of
people who pray to them?
- According to the Universal Resurrection theory, everyone,
in particular the long-dead saints, will be brought back
into existence as computer emulations in the far future,
near the Final Singularity, also called God the Father.
… Future-to-past causation is usual with the
Cosmological Singularity. A prayer made today can be
transferred by the Singularity to a resurrected saint—the
Virgin Mary, say—after the Universal Resurrection. The
saint can then reflect on the prayer and, by means of the
Son Singularity acting through the multiverse, reply. The
reply, via future-to-past causation, is heard before it is
made. It is heard billions of years before it is made.
(p. 235)
- When will the End of Days come?
- In summary, by the year 2050 at the latest, we will see:
- Intelligent machines more intelligent than humans.
- Human downloads, effectively invulnerable and far
more capable than normal humans.
- Most of humanity Christian.
- Effectively unlimited energy
- A rocket capable of interstellar travel.
- Bombs that are to atomic bombs as atomic bombs
are to spitballs, and these weapons will be
possessed by practically anybody who wants one.
(p. 253)
Hey, I said answers, not correct answers! This is
only a tiny sampler of the side-splitting “explanations”
of Christian mysteries and miracles in this book. Others include the
virgin birth, the problem of evil, free will, the resurrection of
Jesus, the shroud of Turin and the holy grail, the star of Bethlehem,
transubstantiation, quantum gravity, the second coming, and more,
more, more. Quoting them all would mean quoting almost the whole
book—if you wish to be awed by or guffaw at them all, you're
going to have to read the whole thing. And that's not all, since it
seems like every other page or so there's a citation of Tipler's 1994
opus,
The Physics of Immortality
(read my
review), so some sections are likely to be baffling
unless you suspend disbelief and slog your way through that
tome as well.
Basically, Tipler sees your
retro-causality and raises to
retro-teleology. In order for the laws
of physics, in particular the unitarity of quantum
mechanics, to be valid, then the universe must evolve
to a final singularity with no event horizons—the
Omega Point. But for this to happen, as it must,
since the laws of physics are never violated, then
intelligent life must halt the accelerating expansion of the
universe and turn it around into contraction. Because
this must happen, the all-knowing Final Singularity,
which Tipler identifies with God the Father, acts as a
boundary condition which causes fantastically improbable
events such as the simultaneous tunnelling disintegration of
every atom of the body of Jesus into neutrinos to become
certainties, because otherwise the Final Singularity
Omega Point will not be formed. Got that?
I could go on and on, but by now I think you'll have gotten
the point, even if it isn't an Omega Point. The funny thing
is, I'm actually sympathetic to much of what Tipler says
here: his discussion of free will in the multiverse and
the power of prayer or affirmation is not that unlike
what I suggest in my eternally under construction
“General Theory of Paranormal
Phenomena”, and I share Tipler's optimism about
the human destiny and the prospects, in a universe of which
95% of the mass is made of stuff we know absolutely nothing
about, of finding sources of energy as boundless and unimagined
as nuclear fission and fusion were a century ago. But
folks, this is just silly. One of the most irritating
things is Tipler's interpreting scripture to imply a
deep knowledge of recently-discovered laws of physics
and then turning around, a few pages later, when the argument
requires it, to claim that another passage was influenced by
contemporary beliefs of the author which have since been
disproved. Well, which is it?
If you want to get a taste of this material, see
“The
Omega Point and Christianity”,
which contains much of the physics content of the book in
preliminary form. The
entire
first chapter of the published book can be downloaded
in icky Microsoft Word format from
the author's
Web site, where additional technical and popular
articles are available.
For those unacquainted with the author, Frank J. Tipler is
a full professor of mathematical physics at Tulane
University in New Orleans, pioneer in global methods in
general relativity, discoverer of the massive rotating
cylinder time machine, one of the first to argue
that the resolution of the Fermi Paradox is, as his
paper was titled,
“Extraterrestrial
Intelligent Beings Do Not Exist”, and, with John
Barrow, author of
The Anthropic Cosmological
Principle,
the definitive work on that topic.
Say what you like, but Tipler is a serious and dedicated
scientist with world-class credentials who believes that
the experimentally-tested laws of physics as we understand
them are not only consistent with, but require, many of the
credal tenets which traditional Christians have taken on
faith. The research program
he proposes (p. 271), “… would make Christianity a
branch of physics.” Still, as I wrote almost twelve years ago,
were I he, I'd be worried about
getting on the wrong side
of the Old One.
Finally, and this really bothers me, I can't close these
remarks without mentioning that notwithstanding there
being an entire chapter titled “Anti-Semitism Is
Anti-Christian” (pp. 243–256), which purports
to explain it on the last page, this book is
dedicated, “To God's Chosen People, the Jews,
who for the first time in 2,000 years are advancing
Christianity.” I've read the book; I've read the
explanation; and this remark still seems both puzzling
and disturbing to me.
- Brozik, Matthew David and Jacob Sager Weinstein.
The Government Manual for New Superheroes.
Kansas City: Andrews McMeel, 2005.
ISBN 0-7407-5462-9.
-
(Guest review by
The Punctuator)
The Government of the Unified Nations has done a tremendous service to
all superheroes: whether alien, mutant, or merely righteous human
do-gooders, by publishing this essential manual filled with tips for
getting your crimefighting career off to the right start and avoiding the
many pitfalls of the profession. Short, pithy chapters provide
wise counsel on matters such as choosing a name, designing a
costume, finding an exotic hideaway, managing a secret identity,
and more. The chapter on choosing a sidekick would have allowed
me to avoid the whole unpleasant and regrettable business with
Octothorpe
and proceed directly to my entirely satisfactory present
protégé,
Apostrophe Squid.
The advantages and drawbacks of joining a team of superheroes
are discussed candidly, along with the warning signs that you
may be about to inadvertently join a cabal of supervillains (for
example, their headquarters is named “The whatever of
Doom” as opposed to “The whatever of Justice”).
An afterword by
The Eviliminator:
Eliminator of Evil Things but Defender of Good Ones
reveals the one sure-fire way to acquire superpowers, at least
as long as you aren't a troublemaking, question-asking pinko
hippie egghead. The book is small, printed with rounded corners,
and ideal for slipping into a cape pocket. I would certainly
never leave it behind when setting out in pursuit of the
nefarious Captain
Comma Splice. Additional information is available on
the Government's
Bureau of Superheroics
Web site.
- Kondo, Yoji, Frederick Bruhweiler, John Moore, and Charles Sheffield eds.
Interstellar Travel and Multi-Generation Space Ships.
Burlington, Ontario, Canada: Apogee Books, 2003.
ISBN 1-896522-99-8.
-
This book is a collection of papers presented at a
symposium organised in 2002 by the American Association for the
Advancement of Science. More than half of the content discusses
the motivations, technology, and prospects for interstellar
flight (both robotic probes and “generation ship”
exploration and colonisation missions), while the balance
deals with anthropological, genetic, and linguistic issues
in crew composition for a notional mission with a crew of 200 with
a flight time of two centuries. An essay by Freeman Dyson on “Looking
for Life in Unlikely Places” explores the signatures of
ubiquitous vacuum-adapted life and how surprisingly easy it might
be to detect, even as far as one light-year from Earth.
This volume contains the last published works of Charles Sheffield and
Robert L. Forward, both of whom died in 2002. The papers are all
accessible to the scientifically literate layman and, with one
exception, of high quality. Regrettably, nobody seemed to have
informed the linguist contributor that any interstellar mission would
certainly receive a steady stream of broadband transmissions from the
home planet (who would fund a multi-terabuck mission without the
ability to monitor it and receive the results?), but that chapter is
only four pages and may be deemed comic relief.
- Bawer, Bruce.
While Europe Slept.
New York: Doubleday, 2006.
ISBN 0-385-51472-7.
-
In 1997, the author visited the Netherlands for the first time and
“thought I'd found the closest thing to heaven on earth”.
Not long thereafter, he left his native New York for Europe, where he
has lived ever since, most recently in Oslo, Norway. As an American
in Europe, he has identified and pointed out many of the things which
Europeans, whether out of politeness, deference to their ruling
elites, or a “what-me-worry?” willingness to defer the
apocalypse to their dwindling cohort of descendants, rarely speak of,
at least in the public arena.
As the author sees it, Europe is going down, the victim of
multiculturalism, disdain and guilt for their own Western
civilisation, and “tolerance for [the] intolerance” of a
fundamentalist Muslim immigrant population which, by its greater
fertility, “fetching marriages”, and family
reunification, may result in Muslim majorities in one or more European
countries by mid-century.
This is a book which may open the eyes of U.S. readers who haven't
spent much time in Europe to just how societally-suicidal many of
the mainstream doctrines of Europe's ruling elites are, and how
wide the gap is between this establishment (which is a genuine
cultural phenomenon in Europe, encompassing academia, media, and
the ruling class, far more so than in the U.S.) and the population,
who are increasingly disenfranchised by the profoundly anti-democratic
commissars of the odious
European Union.
But this is, however, an unsatisfying book. The author,
who has won several awards and been published in prestigious
venues, seems more at home with essays than the long form.
The book reads like a feature article from The New Yorker
which grew to book length without revision or editorial input.
The 237 page text is split into just three chapters, putatively
chronologically arranged but, in fact, rambling all over the place,
each mixing the author's anecdotal observations with stories from
secondary sources, none of which are cited, neither in foot- or
end-notes, nor in a bibliography.
If you're interested in these issues (and in the survival
of Western civilisation and Enlightenment values), you'll get a
better picture of the situation in Europe from Claire Berlinski's
Menace
in Europe (July 2006).
As a narrative of the experience of a contemporary
American in Europe, or as an assessment of the cultural gap between
Western (and particularly Northern) Europe and the U.S., this book may
be useful for those who haven't experienced these cultures for
themselves, but readers should not over-generalise the author's
largely anecdotal reporting in a limited number of countries to
Europe as a whole.
- Dyson, Freeman J.
The Scientist as Rebel.
New York: New York Review Books, 2006.
ISBN 1-59017-216-7.
-
Freeman Dyson is one of the most consistently original thinkers
of our time. This book, a collection of his writings between
1964 and 2006, amply demonstrates the breadth and depth of his
imagination. Twelve long book reviews from
The New York
Review of Books allow Dyson, after doing his
duty to the book and author, to depart on his own
exploration of the subject matter. One of these reviews,
of Brian Greene's
The Fabric of the Cosmos,
is where Dyson first asked whether it was possible, using
any apparatus permitted by the laws of physics and the
properties of our universe, to ever detect a single graviton
and, if not, whether quantum gravity has any physical meaning.
It was this remark which led to the Rothman and Boughn paper,
“Can Gravitons
be Detected?” in which is proposed what may be the
most outrageous scientific apparatus ever suggested.
Three chapters of Dyson's 1984 book
Weapons and Hope
(now out of print) appear here, along with other
essays, forewords to books, and speeches on topics
as varied as history, poetry, great scientists, war
and peace, colonising the galaxy comet by comet,
nanotechnology, biological engineering, the post-human
future, religion, the paranormal, and more. Dyson's
views on religion will send the Dawkins crowd around
the bend, and his open-minded attitude toward the
paranormal (in particular, chapter 27) will similarly
derange dogmatic sceptics (he even recommends
Rupert Sheldrake's
Dogs That Know When Their
Owners Are Coming Home). Chapters written some time
ago are accompanied by postscripts updating them
to 2006.
This is a collection of gems with nary a clinker in the lot.
Anybody who rejoices in visionary thinking and superb writing
will find much of both. The chapters are almost completely
independent of one another and can be read in any order, so
you can open the book at random and be sure to delight in what
you find.