Melinda Snodgrass: The Edge of Reason

I recently read Melinda Snodgrass's The Edge of Reason, a book that I generally enjoyed. It's billed as "A novel of the war between science and superstition," which is a somewhat misleading title, as becomes apparent when you read further. Still, it's a very entertaining book that deserves a wide readership.

Set in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the story is essentially the same story that's been told, well, forever: the question, essentially, of the mental and worldview changes that are forced into relief when "progress" and "tradition" come into conflict. A beat cop with a tormented past that he's desperate to have forgotten gets caught up in the mix because he's "chosen," in a peculiar way, and, lo and behold, becomes the linchpin when he can literally pull the sword from the metaphoric stone.

What Snodgrass does well is tell the story with an air of self-irony; she chooses her puns deliberately, if effectively, and does a good job of casually dropping in references to ancient versions of this theme -- back to Cain and Abel, which saw farming and settlement (Cain) displace/murder the traditional nomadic, shepherdic way of life (Abel), as well as other ancient variants of the same. Snodgrass also manages to work in an interesting twist on the traditional Gnostic narrative, to the point that I will be utterly unsurprised if a character named "Sophia," or some variant, appears in a sequel.

There are two basic complaints I have about the novel. The first is the pacing; the book moves along at different paces, to occasionally awkward result. There's a tension between writing this one short enough as to set up a sequel, while still keeping the story going long enough to show some of the potential for continuance necessary to have a satisfactory setup for the sequel. This is a "push," really, particularly since the end feels simultaneously rushed and needlessly sparse. A second complaint is that this novel, for long stretches, feels like a reinterpretation of American Gods. Hey, I liked that book a lot, too, but I didn't need to read a reinterpretation so soon.

Whether Gaiman's obvious influence on The Edge of Reason is a selling or detracting point, the book was entertaining, read well, and had a lot of nice subtle humor spaced throughout. It also had a few surprises along the way, which is no small feat in a book whose basic plotline is necessarily known from the first words. Bottom line: I'm looking forward to the sequel.

Baby Boning Up on Her Southern Knowledge:

It's t-minus ten days now until we hit the planes back to VA for eight months, which makes Lilja's book of choice yesterday all the more amusing. Now that she's crawling, she's much more inclined to play by herself and amuse herself for good stretches of time -- really good stretches, since she's curious about absolutely everything (though a bit too interested in cables and cords).

Yesterday afternoon, she meandered over to one of the book shelves, pulled a book out, and was just on her belly opening it, turning pages, managing to take the dust jacket off without ripping it (kind of impressive, actually).

Her book of choice?

1001 Things Everyone Should Know About the South.

Incredible choice.

Marooned in Realtime

I don't have any idea what led me to it lately, but I found myself wanting to reread Vernor Vinge's Marooned in Realtime, so I finally broke down and did just that. It kept me from working for a few hours, and I caught myself reading it more slowly than I ordinarily would at times, but it's a magnificent, magnificent book.

I noted when I read it the first time that it was a mix of sci-fi and mystery, and to a point, that's true. It goes far beyond that, though, and it now seems limiting to think of it in terms of either "science fiction" or "mystery." Marooned is that rare creation: a book that truly is its own creation and stands as an achievement on its own. The best thing that I can say about it is that it is a deeply human book -- it sounds trite and all, what with brining up images of stirring pathos and depths of feeling and yearnings and ambitions and hatreds and loves and disappointments and hurts and blah blah blah, but that's all there.

More, it's all in there in a way that none of it feels overdone, none of it feels underdone, none of it is cheesy -- it's all somehow just right.

In my mind, a truly great book wants to find out something about what it means to be human; the best fail at doing so, but they fail spectacularly, because they try to show us something about us. Vinge fails spectacularly at showing us what it means to be human, but he does give those of us in realtime a good few clues to go by.

If you've never read this book, go out now, grab a copy of The Peace War so that you get the background for the story, and then just enjoy.

Clearing off the Book Bar a Bit:

This may sound like strange praise, but I enjoyed Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution so much that I immediately wondered who has tried to improve upon it, rewrite it, or argue against it, and where they might be found, so that I could read them as well. That was the basis of my reaction to this book, which is a monumental achievement and a fantastic read. Anyone interested in American history should read this book at least once; I'd put this on par with Democracy in America in terms of how "must" a read it is. (This means really only that I need to finally get off my duff and finish off DiA myself!).



R. Jonathan Moore's Suing for America's Soul: John Whitehead, the Rutherford Institute, and Conservative Christians in the Courts is apparently narrow in scope, but does an excellent job of taking a single case study to make a point about the greater whole. The extent of its explanatory power was made clear to me when I found myself looking back at it for hints at how to approach a completely unrelated phenomenon -- this either means that I'm woefully off the mark, or that Moore chose his case study and developed his history and argument sufficiently well that it spoke to more than the narrow focus of The Rutherford Institute. I certainly hope it's the latter, and I actually think that is the case. What this book gives, besides a good, concise institutional history and a good, concise location of that institutional history within the scope and sweep of its antecedents, is a glimpse into the workings of the federal courts with regard to First Amendment issues that is easy enough for a non-specialist to grasp, but detailed enough that anyone but a specialist can probably learn something from it (can't speak to whether a specialist would be able to learn from it, being as I'm not a lawyer and all). Readers looking to get more into recent First Amendment issues would do well to include this book alongside God vs. the Gavel or Winnifred Fallers Sullivan's absolutely fantastic The Impossibility of Religious Freedom.

Marci Hamilton: God vs. the Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law

Marci Hamilton's God vs. the Gavel is one of a handful of books to have been published in the last few years to seriously consider the problems attendant with the First Amendment's religion clauses. The book is generally successful in clarifying problems, bringing the relevant caselaw into the mix, and then dealing with the questions of fact, of law and of social impact. That said, though, the book does have some flaws that detract from its argument and impact.

I'll lead with the strengths. Hamilton does a good job of putting the relevant issues in the big First Amendment cases into clear language, thus ensuring that the technical details are not beyond her reader. She also structures her arguments, and the book generally, fairly well -- it's easy to see how she moves through the information and pulls the pieces together behind and in front of her as she advances.

Needless to say, though, both of these compliments have moments where they cut the other direction. Hamilton's reduction of the cases to bare essentials occasionally runs the risk of reducing very complicated decisions to taglines, with all of the attendant distortions that accompany this sort of reduction. At the same time, there is an obvious manipulation at work, and the reader undertakes this book as an explication at their own peril. The opening chapters are very explicatory in nature, but they are merely the foregrounding for the argument to follow, and even that exposition is fairly polemic in nature. Make no mistake: this book is an argument, start to finish, and should be read as such. After all, it proceeds from the premise that Americans have a rose-tinted view of religion and institutionally and, generally, personally believe it incapable of harm.

You'd think that with an opening like that, it would be easy to keep the fact that the book is an argument in the forefront of your mind. To Hamilton's credit, this isn't the case; she's a very gifted writer, and seems to have learned well from her courtroom experience how to structure an argument so as to bring you along with the premises before hitting you over the head with the twist later.

The thing that bothered me the most about the book is the somewhat circular nature of the argument. For Hamilton, the legislature is the correct place to determine whether and when religious individuals or institutions are to be exempted from generally applicable laws, not the courts. Fair enough. The book is essentially structured around two "success stories," though, both of which reinforce the role of the legislature in defining those exemptions by relying on the courts as a check on the legislatures when they go too far in exempting religious individuals and institutions from generally applicable laws. Confused yet? There is a balance that needs to be struck, and I find it to be insufficiently nuanced in this book. It is too easy to get blown to one side or the other, sometimes in different directions in different chapters, and I think that a large part of this has to do with Hamilton's desire to write for a more general audience. Had she written a bit more for specialists, I think that she could easily have resolved some of the apparent tensions and contradictions that mar and undercut her argument.

Still, for all its faults, this is a worthwhile read. It's not a top-notch examination of the relevant questions, but it supplements the best of the best well enough. It has much to say, and unloads a lot of information on readers in a very manageable fashion. To repeat my caveat, though, bear in mind always that this is not an exposition, it is an argument before the bench, so to speak. If that is kept in mind, the book can be profitably read and examined.

William Faulkner and the Limits of History:

At some point down the road, I want to teach a class called something like "The Limits of History," in which we'd look at various theories of and approaches to history per se and see what particularly brilliant theorists and writers have had to say about the matter. Some of it would be on the syllabus "because it has to," like some Hegel and Heidegger, but if I ever get to do this, it'd be hard not to turn it into a William Faulkner on History course.

I know, it's been done, but not often enough. The immediate prompt for this is Absalom, Absalom! (which I finished some time ago, but am just now getting around to thinking about again). There have been plenty of people who have written about Absalom as an approach to the study of history, in the sense that it deal openly, if not necessarily explicitly, with all manner of historiographical problems: how is history to be narrated, how do you account for and perhaps filter ideological biases, what can you do when the narrative relies entirely on metaphor in parts, the problem of interpretation, and, perhaps especially, the question of reconstruction in the act of narration, which brings in the is-is not question of reconstruction itself.

There are also any number of performative issues that can be piggy-backed onto the question, the most prominent of which, I think, is the problem of narrative as both mediator and creator, two different types of performative agency. Is the telling for the tellers, or for the hearers? Who, exactly, is the audience within the narrative, and how does that impact the assumed external audience? Is there a difference in asking this question within a novel, and directing it outward from within the context of a historical narrative?

The title I have in mind, though, is "The Limits of History," meaning I'd not focus so much on what history is -- or even what it is not -- but on what it can and cannot accomplish, as well as the foundational moment of history per se, which I think can be very profitably explored from within Faulkner's written world: did the present ever truly separate itself from the past? If not, what is history that it can be thought of as such? More to the point, how do we read a reconstruction of a past that is always with us, and how do we assign and articulate the point at which the present diverged from the past?

The principal texts I'd have in mind are, of course, Absalom, Absalom!, The Sound and the Fury, and As I Lay Dying, which remains my favorite of the three).

The principal text from the historical side? The Limits of History. What else? Limits is a peculiar book, and the premise and argument are certainly disputable, but it offers a marvelous way to look at history, and at the continual series of "more adequate" histories being produced and ask, "Why? To what end? For whom?"

Just what is history? What are its limitations? What does it mean to reconstruct it? And when does the past become the past, anyway?

Arthur Phillips: Prague

Much of the critical commentary I've seen for Arthur Phillips' Praguepraise it for being a remarkable first novel.

Don't believe a word of it.

It's a remarkable novel, period.

Phillips takes a strange setting for a novel so titled -- Budapest -- and follows five North American ex-pats as they seek themselves and their futures in a city in search of itself and its future. It sounds kind of trite, and were the execution less masterful, probably would have been, but Phillips spins a remarkably complex and nuanced tale. He manages somehow to be bluntly, even brutally honest with his characters, floating between "too compassionate" and "utterly devoid of compassion" in his treatment of them, but never quite hitting either pole. The characters live and breathe on their own, and it's easy to picture the interaction in the cafes or the smoky basement jazz bar.

That there's more going on than meets the eye is driven home by the spectacular second chapter of the novel, "the Horvath Kiado." Ostensibly the story of the Horvath Publishing House, based in Budapest for the best part of 200 years by the time the action in the remainder of the novel takes place, the chapter is an exquisite allegory, the consummate example of the "novel within the novel."

I've had this book on my shelf for a few years, but only recently sat down to give it a read. It's a shame that I waited so long, because I could have enjoyed it a long time ago.

Anyone in search of a great novel could do far worse than to sit down with this one.

Austin Sarat and Christian Boulanger, eds.: The Cultural Lives of Capital Punishment: Comparative Perspectives

The Cultural Lives of Capital Punishment: Comparative Perspectives (The Cultural Lives of Law)is a remarkable and necessary consideration of capital punishment as both the mirror and the reflection of the cultures and bodies politic that retain it.

This is an impressive collection of essays that does much to bear out its stated goal of exploring the "cultural lives" of capital punishment. The editors and essayists take "cultural lives" to mean "capital punishment's embededdness in discourses and symbolic practices in specific times and places." (1) Taking their overall philosophical lead from David Garland, whose works are cited in nine of the fifteen essays and five of the six dealing with Europe and the Americas, the editors and contributors sought to put together a collection that considered the ways that punishment and culture interact and are connected, the ways in which punishment derives legitimacy and meaning from culture and the ways in which punishment defines the lines and sides in socio-cultural and political battles, including but not limited to the famous "culture wars."

The book is divided into three broad geographical areas. The first is Europe and the Americas, with essays concerning Germany, Mexico, Poland and the United States, along with two essays dealing with comparisons of portrayals of capital punishment in European and American films and the European "missionary zeal" directed toward the U.S. In the second section, Central/South Asia and the Middle East, there are essays concerning the Soviet memory and the conflicted approaches to capital punishment in Kyrgyzstan, India, and a particularly interesting pair of essays on Israel and hte Palestinian Authority. The final section concerns "Asian Values," with essays on Japan, China, Singapore and South Korea.

The breadth of approaches taken is extensive for a single volume, and each of the essays has something to recommend it, though they can at times oversimplify issues for the sake of brevity in such a way that may be confusing to readers without an extensive knowledge of the death penalty from a particular national or comparative perspective.

The other major hole in the book is the near-complete absence of religion; it would seem natural that some contributions on the cultural lives of capital punishment from religious perspectives could have been included, and would have made the volume a truly well-rounded contribution. As it is, religion is conspicuous by its absence, and this absence is the greatest weakness of the volume.

Anyone interested in understanding more about approaches to and apprehensions of the death penalty worldwide would do well to read this book.

Joseph Roth: Rebellion

Joseph Roth's Rebellion: A Novelis one of those books that I'll probably wind up reading every couple of years. I first read it seven years ago, on the recommendation of a friend of mine, and found it a great read, though not for the same reasons I loved it this second time through.

There is a great deal that can be said about this novel; maybe the best piece of praise I can offer it, albeit indirectly, is that I cannot for the life of me imagine John Kennedy Toolenot having read this book, probably multiple times. Bear in mind, if you and I have ever discussed books, you know how I feel about A Confederacy of Dunces-- this is high praise indeed.

The prose is simultaneously terse and airy, something of a unique and refreshing combination. The seemingly incongruous interruption several chapters in is a very clever way to drive the plot toward its conclusion, and the constant sequence of reversals that run throughout the novel are a lot of fun to watch develop, particularly since the "hero" of the book is so delightfully oblivious to everything (like I said, Toole read this book, I'm sure of it).

Enthusiastically recommended to anyone looking for a quick, enjoyable read that will stick with you after you're done.

"Damn you, ye Yankee boogers, what's your business?"

Doing a little reading on the Boston Massacre to write a couple of encyclopedia entries, I ran across a delightful little laugh in the midst of Harry Hansen's The Boston Massacre: An Episode of Dissent and Violence:apparently, "booger" was used as a term of derision as far back as 1770.

I decided to look it up in the OED, and discovered, not particularly surprisingly, that 'booger' is generally taken to be a derivative of 'bugger' and means, acc. to the OED, "A worthless or despicable man."

Even knowing that, I don't care, and I don't care how immature it may be, it's funny as hell to run across quotations from primary documents that have people calling each other "boogers."

Speaking of, I still haven't gotten a hold of this bad boy,though I very much want to.

Stephen J. Stein: Communities of Dissent: A History of Alternative Religions in America

I have to confess to being moderately disappointed by Stephen J. Stein's Communities of Dissent: A History of Alternative Religions in America (Religion in American Life),but that is mostly a function of my own expectations, and can be explained in a single sentence: There is not a single footnote or endnote in this book.

Now, for many people, this would pose no problem; after all, what sort of nerd wants to be bothered with that sort of thing? Well, me, usually. I've read some of Stein's other work, and he's both an incisive scholar with a knack for seeing and explaining the unusual, as well as a capable writer. This book, which I approached as having been written for specialists, is more for generalists or for the interested reader, and read in that light, it is a success. Stein does what he does so well elsewhere -- distill the complicated and somewhat strange into the relatable and understandable. He subtly moves the "outside" much closer to the reader's point of view, limiting the felt distance between reader and subject, to nice effect. In so doing, he enables the willing reader to consider such diverse groups such as the Vermont Pilgrims, the Shakers, Christian Scientists and Branch Davidians from a standpoint where they can be approached as groups with plausible beliefs and aims, rather than nutcases and loonies. That is the greatest strength of the book, followed by Stein's ability to link these groups within the broader framework of general American religious history.

I personally would have been happier with a more rigorous treatment, but it is patently unfair to mope about the book that I wish was written, rather than the book that I read. Anyone interested in general American religious history who wants to see how "outsider" groups functioned relative to the perceived norm could do far worse than Stein's treatment.

Torture, Torture Everywhere:

I've a couple of books on my shelf that I'll get around to reading that are "death house confessionals," though of a slightly different sort -- they're confessions written by people that are a part of the machinery of death, such as Rev. Carrol Pickett, a death house chaplain,and Donald Cabana, an executioner.

In a like vein, here's a short read, confessions of a Gitmo torturer, as related by his psychiatrist.

Related: as difficult as this movie would be to watch, I probably will at some point, to see the portrayal of presumably good, or otherwise morally neutral, human beings engaging in evil "in pursuit of the good." (I'll also have to try to take a step back before reading the death penalty books, though; since they're research materials, I'll need to read with some measure of detachment. Matter of fact, I should probably read these books before watching the movie, rather than the other way around.)

Here's Dick Cheney's assessment of the question of doing evil to pursue good:

We have to work sort of the dark side, if you will, spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods available to our intelligence agencies, if we’re going to be successful. That’s the world these folks operate in. It’ll be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.

I'll spare you the redundant "my god, what a horrible human being he is" (though he very much is that), and rather let Nietzsche have the last word:

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

Various Environmental Stories:

The Doomsday Seed Vault is now open in Norway, ready to host millions of seed samples, in case the ecosystem is globally wrecked at some point, or if we find out that GM crops are actually not as bright an idea as initially thought. I had thought that this opened a few years ago, but that may have been only the announcement that it was being developed. Hopefully it won't be necessary for this to be a widespread emotion, but "thank you, Norway."

This is pretty cool -- scientists are developing nanoscale crystals that are capable of selectively absorbing compounds; the lead photo is of a crystal that can absorb 80x its weight in CO2. This could be a tremendous advance, though the nefarious possibilities are equally conceivable, and I would wonder where these CO2-laden crystals can be stored safely; if they're destroyed, I wouldn't even be able to guess as the immediate impact of hundreds of billions of tons of CO2 hitting the atmosphere essentially instantly. (I'm not altogether sanguine about the "permissive" effect of these crystals, either -- if they do work as "scrubbers," then there's no incentive to develop non-polluting technologies.)

Finally, a study talking about the effect of methane hydrates on the end of the ice ages. I'd read about these a little while back; I think it was Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth. A great book for those interested in the subject.

When Free Trade Isn't:

Seems that Clinton and Obama have spent some time lately quibbling over who has the best response to the problems that NAFTA has created. Not much of a surprise that this comes up now, being that Ohio is one of next week's must-wins, but it occasions a chance to revisit the debate going on right now with regard to free trade.

From the BusinessWeek article:

Doubts are creeping in. We're not talking wholesale, dramatic repudiation of the theory. Economists are, however, noting that their ideas can't explain the disturbing stagnation in income that much of the middle class is experiencing. They also fear a protectionist backlash unless more is done to help those who are losing out. "Previously, you just had extremists making extravagant claims against trade," says Gary C. Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. "Now there are broader questions being raised that would not have been asked 10 or 15 years ago."

Neither candidate will be able to right the ship, of course, but the next four or eight years could be more impactful, more determinative of the nation's economic future than previously thought, particularly if the talk and the policies move, however slowly, back toward protectionism. In my view, a period of modest protectionism may be in order, until the trade treaties begin to be oriented around fair trade, rather than free trade, and until the global impacts of trade are more readily assessible and enforceable through treaty measures.

In the meantime, I'll be very interested in reading Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism, based largely on this review by Chalmers Johnson.

Madan Sarup: Identity, Culture and the Postmodern World

Identity, Culture and the Postmodern World, much to my surprise, turned out to be more of an overview of theories of culture and identity than it was anything else. I had gone into it expecting more original content, and was somewhat disappointed in that aspect of the book, but that disappointment is compensated for by the strength of the material that is there; it's hardly Sarup's fault that it's not the book that I wanted to read -- the book that it is is well worth the time. The book is fluidly written, to the point that in places you have to force yourself to slow down and tread carefully, because it's too easy to get caught up in the prose and ignore the content.

The curious thing is that while this book doesn't offer much in the way of original thought or advancement beyond the theories and constructs that Sarup works through, it's not at all a glorified book report, which is what would ordinarily be suggested by that complaint. As an overview of modernist and postmodernist thought it is great, packing a great deal of information and clarification into a small package without, as I stated above, burdening the text (and reader) as a result.

Still, there is more going on here than is apparent. There are a couple of moments where you have to step back and say "well, of course, that's just obvious, isn't it?" Again, this is deceptive. I'm coming to be of the belief that a truly great insight can come in two broad categories: either eminently resistible or totally obvious. Many of the insights to be found in the great cultural theorists, meaning the insights and theorists that remain relevant (meaning specifically that the particularly conditions of the modern moment haven't rendered them functionally obsolete) are insights that make you say little more than "duh," until you reflect that someone actually had to say it at some point. There are a few such moments scattered throughout this book, and those alone make it worth a read.

A final feature that recommends this book: the range of disciplines and approaches incorporated into Sarup's thought and explication. It is frequently awkward to read a theorist that has cobbled together too many different disciplines and approaches, because they often overlook or misinterpret -- or even just get it wrong because they do not sufficiently appreciate the thought process and viewpoint fostered by the other disciplines. Sarup manages to avoid this throughout the book. It's out of print, unfortunately, but if you can track down a copy, it's well worth going through, one chapter at a time.

I've Been Cited:

I think this is just freaking cool: I'm cited in Mission and Menace: Four Centuries of American Religious Zeal. A little bit strange to have that much work reduced to a footnote and an entry in the bibliography, but a lot more gratifying to see it included that way to begin with!

Sweet! Check the book out -- it's fantastic, start to finish.

Andrew Keen: The Cult of the Amateur

One look at the title of Andrew Keen's book will give you a pretty good idea both of his subjects and his outlook:

The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture

Let me get part of this out of the way: Keen's approach is (obviously) pretty conservative, which is generally fine, except where he can't resist the one-liners and funny quips. Two wisecracks in particular stand out: first, he doesn't seem to think that former Senator George Allen's "macaca" faux pas was all that big a deal, really -- certainly not so offensive or monumental as it was made out to be by all of those "amateurs" out there; and second, he felt the need to describe the ACLU as an organization that goes out of its way to defend possession and manufacture of child porn. These little jabs take some of the steam out of the argument as it develops through the book, not because of my liberal leanings, but because the little asides are flatly unnecessary.

Unfortunately, the argument needs all of the steam it can muster. The basic point is this: the internet has given too many monkeys too many typewriters, and rather than inadvertently whipping out a Paradise Lost, they're basically flinging poo across the web. Fair enough, and hell, maybe I fling my share of poo out there, so tar me with the guilty brush.

Unfortunately, the argument stops there, right were it begins. The "culture" that is being killed? It's not based on any clear concept of culture that can be debated and discussed -- and wouldn't experts who have invested the time and effort into learning about culture from a theoretical point of view be upset by that -- but is presented as essentially an infrastructure of business and management connections that bring talent to the market; Keen's model, such as it is, is clearly of a culture industry, though not nearly so developed as the model that said term would ordinarily reference. Here again is an instance where Keen would be able to make a point, if he knew how to make it, but he essentially leaves it on the table, orphaned.

Keen's book is an interesting enough read, and does happen to provide some useful information on the economic elements of the explosion of poo-flinging monkeys on the web, but drops the ball most noticeably where it could make the biggest impact: the question of privacy. The best thread in Keen's argument isn't his now-paean to the "good old days," now-dirge for the fallen, to whose memory he and the other deposed guardians of a dethroned culture raise glasses and salute is the question of privacy in the world of Web 2.0. This is a legitimate concern, and Keen displays uncharacteristic acumen in working through the problems posed by the web, both via networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, etc.), financial transactions and identity theft, t the basic problem of the extent to which each of us is binarized (unfortunately not Keen's word -- I'll claim it, if that's not already been done). "Binarized" in the book means essentially reduced to just another set of data for the almighty algorithm to calculate when rendering its decisions on what information we seek along our particular paths of enlightenment. Penile discharge -- causes. Ever Googled that one? I hope not, since the cause of that should be obvious, but if you have, and a company like AOL gets hacked (oops!), any joker with a broadband connection can let any other joker know all about it, as well as the advice sites you frequented looking for tips on how to cover an affair, or maybe how to get the wife some antibiotics secretly (after all, if you're discharging . . . ).

Unnecessarily graphic metaphor aside, Keen hits on a legitimate problem, but poses contradictory suggestions as solutions. The biggest contradiction is the suggestion that privacy should be flagrantly and repeatedly violated when "the children" are at stake. Seems reasonable enough, but it raises other discussions that leap from the realm of a gripe about the typing monkeys and into criminology, retributive theory, questions of forgiveness, psychology and physiology, etc. Obviously, this book isn't the place for those types of concerns, but neither does Keen even possess the perspicacity to raise the possibility that his readers may wish to go elsewhere and continue thinking about the issues he's raised on their own.

In the end, the book is a fast, easy read and probably particularly exemplary in what it seeks to do: bitch and moan about how the internet is full of talentless hacks and our ill-defined culture is suffering as a result. Probably a fair gripe, to be honest, although Keen fails to deal adequately with the question of elitism vs. democratization (dismally dealt with when it is squarely addressed). The book is also worthwhile if you need a prod to go into the direction of the question of privacy in the Information Age. Unfortunately for Keen, there are better, more informative ways to get to that point.

Clearing off the Book Bar Again:

Reta Halteman Finger: Of Widows and Meals: Communal Meals in the Book of Acts

Widows is a historical consideration of the notion of koinonia in early Christian communities, and the resonance of koinonia through the centuries. The book is thoroughly researched, with the conclusions clearly and articulately presented. It is well worth reading for anyone interested in Luke, Acts or early forms of Christian socialism (as reported in the Lucan books), but should also appeal, particularly the early chapters, to anyone interested in seeing examples of the power to rationaize a discordant or dissonant "command" from an authority otherwise taken seriously, so long as no dissonance is produced, that is. Informative and insightful.




Bruce Schulman: The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics

This book should be considered mandatory reading for anyone who wants to enhance their knowledge of a pivotal decade in American history. Schulman succeeds in demonstrating that the Seventies -- far from being a temporal placeholder between the Sixties and the Eighties -- were determinative in late-twentieth-century American history. Schulman maneuvers adroitly from Nixon to Reagan, along the way going through the Southern Strategy and the "reddening" of America, the move from integration to 'diversity,' Carter and the Crisis of Confidence, and the major social issues of the time, from "plugging in" to tensions over the idea of the family, and tax revolt. Cogently argued, excellently detailed without becoming burdensome, and fluidly written. This is one of the best general history works I've read in some time. Strongly recommended.

"Truth was first US casualty in Iraq war: study"

Gee, no kidding. It's not as if this is big news -- or shouldn't be, since Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) produced a report cataloguing administration lies in the runup to the Iraq War. Now a new study, jointly funded by The Center for Public Integrity and The Fund for Independence in Journalism, went back and examined public statements made by top administration officials in the lead up to the Iraq War, looking for times when they, shall we say, played fast and loose with the facts.

The tally? 935 lies. I'm honestly not sure whether I'm surprised that the number is so high, or that it feels so low.

Now for one of the kickers: George Soros is a major bankroller of CFPI. Think that's enough to set the dogs a'barkin? You're right -- it is enough.

This one is interesting, because it raises three major complaints about the story, two easily dismissible, one less easily dismissed:

1. The AP Story Neglected to Mention Soros' Involvement.
   Dismissibility: Easy.
   Let's face it, this complaint is basic sour grapes -- to complain about this is a naked attempt to politicize the issue in your own favor by bitching about the politicization of the issue in a way less favorable to you. In other words, Huston would want to see the study "tarnished" by virtue of its association with Soros (don't believe me? Look at the pic in the linked entry). At the same time, he pisses and moans about the fact that this is "old news" whose apparent purpose is to say once again "Bush lied, people died." Thus, for Huston, it's clearly partisan. Maybe. But the solution to that is to . . . make it partisan, only in the other direction?
   
   Pfft. Next.


2. Lies or Mistakes?
   Dismissibility: Moderate.
   This one is less easy to dismiss. Huston says that it is inaccurate to say that Bush lied when Bush was wrong. After all, everyone else -- including those damn good-for-nothing (except being used as a touchstone for stupidity, it seems) Demmykrats!! -- thought that Bush was right about them there WMDs.
   
   In a way, I'd want to say "ok, point taken, that may be a good call" -- except for the pesky little fact that not everyone bought into the official story. Now, these happen to be two of the books that I read in the runup to the Iraq War, and I came away from them (and others) convinced that the WMD issue was smoke being blown rather uncomfortably up my ass. If I can toddle on down to the local bookstore and get my hands on things like that, and can come to what came to be the correct conclusion based on indirect, secondary information, is it not reasonable to expect more from the people who are supposed to have the good info, the real, inside scoop, the stuff they keep classified, presumably for a reason?
   
   Yes, I think that is entirely reasonable, which is why I ultimately dismiss this objection. Is it an outright lie? Maybe not. But does a an act of deliberate omission count as a lie? If this couldn't be called that fairly, and I could see an argument being made (though not necessarily a good one) that this wasn't necessarily a deliberate omission, then does pursuing a policy based on data gathered in pursuit of affirmation rather than information count as a lie?
   
   I'd say so, yes. So while we have to split some hairs and think about what sorts of lies we're talking about, yes, it's still pretty clear to me that in any reasonable look at the situation, these "mistakes" have to be tallied as "lies."



3. They're Watering Down Their Own Accusations.
   Dismissibility: Easy to Moderate.
   Not as easy to toss out as the first, not as difficult to dispense with as the second. Here's the statement in question, from Huston's original post:
   
   Secondly, it is interesting that this "study" claims that Bush "lied" about links with al-Qaida. Yet even they have to massage that claim of a lie into "meaningful ties to al-Qaida." This means that even they are admitting that there are ties with al-Qaida but that they aren't "meaningful."
   Does that mean the "lie" is not that the ties exist but how "meaningful" they are? Instead of a lie we are squabbling over semantics. In essence, Bush DIDN'T lie about ties to al-Qaida, the is just a debate on how "meaningful" those ties are.
   
   I do love how people who would have nothing to do with Chonsky's politics embrace his linguistics -- after all, we're clearly operating under the assumption that "semantics" are "mere semantics" -- i.e., meaningless. Fair enough -- but only if "Furious green machines sleep restlessly." Semantics don't matter? Bah.
   
   That minor gripe aside, what we're talking about goes well beyond semantics, and concerns the reality of the situation; the semantic distinctions, in other words, are significantly more meaningful than mere syntax (which is probably what Huston meant, rather than semantics).
   
   For example: a couple of weeks back I typed up a short review of Christian Parenti's Lockdown America, which happened to contain a very interesting couple of pages on the 1988 California Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act. The act stipulates, among other things, that someone who is "gang labeled" gets extra years added to whatever criminal sentence they may receive. Elaborating on "gang labeled":
   
   How does one earn this dubious distinction? In Fresno, as in most of California, law enforcement uses a standardized list of ten criteria to vet alleged "street terrorists." The determinations include admitting to gang membership; associating with gang members; corresponding with gang members; having one's name appear on a gang document, such as a letter; being identified as a gang member by another police agency; having gang-style tattoos; making gang hand signs; writing gang graffiti; and, most pernicious of all, wearing gang clothing, such as red or blue jackets and babby pants. If a person meets three of these criteria, he or she is entered the Cal Gang database as a known gang member. To be deemed an associate, one need meet only two of the standards.
   This self-amplifying epistemology generates "offenders" at an exponential rate. Consider the escalating sequence: association with "known gang members" plus baggy pants and viola they open a gang dossier on you. Write a letter to your incarcerated cousin, an alleged gangbanger, and you are moved up the scale a notch from "associate" to "active gang member." (122)
   
   The rather elaborate point is this: non-meaningful links are non-meaningful. The italicized criteria in the quotation are ones that I would immediately discount as non-meaningful, so to bring it back into the context of the Iraq runup, I have many questions about these "links." To keep it very simple: from whom to whom, and in what capacity? Chemical Ali could have had a fifth cousin, thrice removed, who happened to be a jerkoff "foot soldier" in an organization that claimed to be linked to "this guy" who claimed membership in al Qaeda. Is that a "meaningful link"? Prima facie, no, absolutely not, and while it sounds like a ridiculous scenario, it's no more -- and I suspect far less -- ridiculous than knowingly *ahem* exaggerating *ahem* links and labeling them "meaningful," whether they were or not.
   
   Bottom line, this objection doesn't stand on its own legs, because the distinction between links and meaningful links is the equivalent to the distinction between hearsay and tangible evidence. The former is useless, while the latter is, dare I say, meaningful.

And, just for old time's sake, courtesy of Write Chic Press, a nice video calling attention to some of the more egregious and bald-faced statements. Enjoy?

Mark Costanzo: Just Revenge: The Costs and Consequences of the Death Penalty

Costanzo's goal in writing this book was to create a small, concise volume that could accompany the selection of readings for courses in such fields as "Criminology, Criminal Justice, Psychology and Law," etc. In this he has succeeded, and the book remains valuable both for its organizaiton and general lines of argument, though it is by now out of date and desperately in need of a revised, expanded second edition.

Costanzo hoped that the book would be beneficial to students primarily because he tried to organize it around themes that naturally arise in class discussions (and elsewhere) when the topic is the death penalty. In this he's done well; the nine chapters surround the history of the death penalty in the U.S.; the legal path from trail to execution; rthe question of the humanity of the death penalty; cost; fairness; deterrence; the question of public support; whether the death penalty is morally justified; and the symbolic politics of the death penalty.

Just Revenge has some strong successes, particularly where the fact that the book is dated is no detriment. Costanzo is strong on the line of cases that defined the death penalty from the legal moratorium through the major changes into the early 90s, culminating in Payne v. Tennessee (18-23) and on the process of voir dire, by which juries are selected for capital trials. Costanzo is right to point out how and why this is really a process of deselection, rather than selection, and briefly but effectively addresses the question of the effect this "death-qualification" has on juries: they are more likely to convict, in part because they are more likely to believe that both sides (prosecution and defense) believe that a) the defendant is guilty and b) that they both expect a jury to return a death sentence.

Costanzo is also particularly strong in the final chapter, on the symbolic politics that surround the death penalty. He recognizes, almost in passing, what many commentators fail to recognize, or to draw attention to: the death penalty is an issue of state control over life itself. Costanzo's conclusion is that "One of the reasons why execution chamgers still exist in America is that the United States has not experienced executions as an overt means of state oppression." (154) Certainly this is true, though it's still somewhat puzzling why more is not made of this issue.

That said, though, there are points where it is clear that the book is 10 years old. The signs range from nitpicky details to large-scale omissions. An example of the former is the claim on p. 10 that five Southern states -- Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas and Virginia -- accounted for 75% of all executions since 1977. True at the time. Now, however, the ranking five Souther states -- Texas, Virginia, Oaklahoma, Missouri and Florida -- account for 65% of the total number of executions. It's a minor detail, and something that both could be corrected in an expanded edition and would be soon enough dated itself, as soon as Oklahoma overtakes Virginia as #2 post-Furman in number of executions.

A larger lack in the book is the almost total absence of the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA). This is understandable, since the book was published in 1997, but AEDPA is one of the most profound legislative acts to touch on the death penalty since the Gregg decision, so it would be nice for a second edition to include some extended treatment of the law and the changes that it brought about (far from "reform," as the bill was touted to be, these changes are singularly regressive and repressive -- all the more reason for greater attention to be paid to them).

Just Revenge succeeds in its aims of providing a great overview of a complex issue in a small package; an expanded second edition, to fill the gaps left in the wake of the first, would make it an even better contribution.