Hitler Bingo, Books & Booze

The ad bar is full of hip-hop links again, so I'd better post something. Though I'm glad Alex has kept things from going dead in my absence. Still, probably best not to ogle Teddy K down there for too long.

Firstly, I am chagrined to note that the argument "Hitler: not such a bad guy, really" has been taken up by noted nationalist Pat Buchanan. See Matt Yglesias for one of many possible refutations. But also consider this statement:

Because Hitler wanted to end the war in 1940, almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps.

Here there is a vague and bewildering implication that the Holocaust could somehow have been avoided by leaving Hitler in power. There are no doubt hypothetical scenarios that might achieve this, but to blame Britain and France strikes me as bizarre. If war had been avoided (somehow), Hitler might have had less territory in which to build concentration camps, but it seems doubtful he would have been less genocidal in general.

Secondly, I was in DC this weekend, which was a good time but also provoked a serendipitous discovery: used books! Shortly before seeing Zach in a somewhat abridged Othello, I discovered the following at the preposterous price of 50 cents each:

• Ulysses - James Joyce
• A Connecticutt Yankee in King Arthur's Court - Mark Twain
• The New American Bartender's Guide - John J. Poister
• The Year's Best Science Fiction (1992) - Edited by Gardner Dozois

The first three should require little explanation, but the fourth has also been quite a boon so far. I must admit historical minutia sometimes intrigue me, so I was pleased to find the foreword as a comprehensive "State of the Union" overview of where the sci-fi industry was at the time (including prescient predictions as to the lousiness of the then-new SciFi Channel). I'm only a little way in, but so far "Dust" by Greg Egan is the standout -- a fascinating meditation on artificial consciousness and the perception of patterns. Of course, if sex-crazed Moon colonists and weird neurotoxins are more your style, "Griffin's Egg" by Michael Swanwick is also well-worth reading.

The whole book will be very helpful, I think. Science fiction is my native genre, but it's far too easy to stick to a few well-known names (Asimov, Vonnegut, Gibson, Stephenson, etc.) in an effort to avoid the dreck out there. This is the case with nearly everything, of course -- it's easy to stick with what you know. Probably it should have occurred to me sooner to find an anthology or two, but hey, it's easy to forget about short fiction.

Speaking of things I didn't know, turns out there's a drink called the "Doctor Funk":
Doctor Funk

• ½ lime
• ½ lemon juice
• 1 tsp. sugar syrup
• dash grenadine
• 2-3 oz. dark Jamaica, Haitian, or Martinique rum
• Club soda
• ½ tsp. Pernod or Herbsaint bitters

Clearly this needs to be made soon. I may have to share some of the other 2,199 recipes in this thing as well.

Dresden Codak

You should look into it. It is pretty much the reason that I am intrigued by trans-humanism as a nascent philosophy. Also, very few webcomics tackle science, myth, and surreal comedy in quite the same way. It's probably not for everyone, but if you are fascinated by robots or think philosophy can be hilarious, especially when cast in terms of a role-playing game... it's probably your cup of tea.

Zombie Apocalypse, Significance Thereof

I suspect that more of our culture than is immediately apparent is apocalyptic, or based on either an anticipation or desire for change. Even with the extremely cathartic election of Barack Obama, there is a sense that we are about to hit the trough of an economic "long wave", which have tended to occur every fifty to sixty years. The Great Depression was the last such trough, although a case can be made for the late seventies (oil crises, stagflation, and the end of the post-war boom). President Obama brought up the idea of American decline rather early in his inaugural address (at 5 minutes here), though he of course wishes to prevent it.

In any case, the past few decades have already seen communication and entertainment democratized and changed drastically by the Internet and the ubiquity of cellular phones. Technology appears to grow exponentially, which leads to the scenario of technological singularity, in which we create computers that invent smarter computer ad infinitum. While this is not necessarily apocalyptic in the negative sense, it is likely that society would need to be radically altered. Much of Asimov's robot fiction can be seen as dealing with the tipping point of the singularity: the point where robots/computers are competitive with humans, but not completely superior. WALL-E is probably the best recent depiction of post-scarcity humans -- fat and complacent through the simple fact of not having anything useful to do.

Because of this, a straightforward projection of the present system is not particularly comforting, even for those of us inclined -- sometimes feverishly so -- to the creation of "true" artificial intelligence. This of course leaves aside many valid reasons for discontent with society in the present tense. But it does seem that dystopian fiction -- wherein society is projected forward to an appalling but recognizable state -- has fallen out of favor since a peak in the 80s. Blade Runner is the seminal work of film here, and Neuromancer the literary touchstone.

What we have seen recently is the revival of zombie horror, and zombie survivalism as a topic of speculation among young intellectuals. The revival of zombies (as a cultural rather than physical phenomenon) has been especially strong in video games, where zombies provide an inherent atmosphere and an opponent whose physical durability and mental shortcomings have obvious explanations. Post-apocalypticism also traces much of its popularity to the 80s of course, Terminator and Road Warrior being the prime examples. It must be noted, however, that Kevin Costner almost single-handedly killed the genre in the mid-90s with Waterworld and The Postman. Zombies in and of themselves have also been present in American culture since the 60s, most notably in the works of George Romero. Dawn of the Dead is probably the first movie to address the concept of the "zombie apocalypse," though it does so with considerably more pessimism than the current trend, which has synthesized zombies and post-apocalypticism with zeal.

More substantial analyses can be made of zombies and apocalypticism in literature and film, but my immediate goal here has been simply to demonstrate that the downfall of society as we know it is the subject of heavy speculation in some circles. This suggests that a total collapse of the present socio-economic order is seen as either likely or desirable. But consider that in the present trend the agent of destruction is zombies, which are in principle non-existent and fantastical (setting aside "zombie realism", most notably the virus hypothesis and 28 Days Later). In the 80s, the culturally-anticipated apocalypse was the very real threat of nuclear war. Whether such a war was ever likely is dubious, but anyone looking possible causes of the downfall of humanity did not need to look very far. And while singular nuclear weapons remain alarming (see the nuking of Los Angeles in 24), large-scale nuclear war is no longer plausible. Ergo, zombie apocalypticism originates from a sense of discontent with the current course of society, or at least one's place therein.

...This was originally just going to be a lead-in for a post about discontent, but it got a little out of hand, so I'm going to do that another time.

Please comment if you find this interesting and/or think I am full of shit on this.

I can hear my graphics card: not in the sense that I have a powerful fan on it etc., but rather a confluence of two conditions has arisen. Firstly, I have absurd professional quality earphones (because my mom works at Shure). Secondly, The headphone jack on my PC is not particularly shielded from the electromagnetic effects of the rest of the machine. This mean I have been able to detect audibly the transmissions along various buses in my PC, most notably (as far as I can tell), the graphics output.

Dragging windows produces a faint crackling/buzzing sound. Larger windows produce louder noises. Maximization and minimization produce more of a beep. Progress bars tend to fizzle.

I do not think there is any useful application of this phenomenon, other than to tell whether the graphics bus is in use. It fascinates me nonetheless. I used to be able to determine the speed of a dial-up connection from modem noises.

Hmm. I think the keyboard may be involved as well. holding down "shift" brings on a rapid machine-gun rattle unrelated to any action onscreen... or not, as testing it on the desktop suggests. that rattle may be the text cursor refreshing.

That aside, Merry Christmas/Xmas/Atheist Kids Get Presents Day to all. The development of Christmas as a secular holiday is a strange but perhaps unavoidable phenomenon in our culture (brought about, paradoxically, through Christianity's dominance in the culture). It intrigues me, especially as the custom of gift-giving is now ingrained in our economic system as the make-or-break event for retailers.

Our economy is dependent upon the widespread acceptance of a tradition once tied to a religious celebration, which was itself positioned to compete with older religious ceremonies. I think there's a kind of hilarious beauty to the course of history sometimes.

Side note: scroll bars sound sqeaky.

I don't mean to belittle religion or the giving of gifts: I myself am now undertaking to read all the sci-fi novels I got today. First up: Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land, is engrossing so far. Other gifts: Leather jacket, baked goods, socks, sweaters, cash.