Tag Archive: Politics

The Book Stack #3

Dan P.Saturday, April 2, 20160

A selection of what I’ve been reading (minus, in general, food and cooking related books, which I tend to review separately, and over on my SaltShaker blog).

Bacigalupi, Paolo (May 26, 2015) The Water Knife

This book was recommended on io9’s list of the 2015’s best new sci-fi, and so the whole list went into my reading pile along with all the other various lists I’m working through.

This is a gritty, bloody novel set in a dystopian future North America where basically, our water is all disappearing, or at least from the area that is covered in the story, mostly the classic American “West”. The characters are well drawn, the book is well written and fast paced. At times, despite that I enjoyed the story completely, it feels a little like an advertisement for the book Cadillac Desert, by Marc Reisner, a more journalistic look at the problem of disappearing water in that part of the country. The book is mentioned multiple times, and held up as a beacon of “this is where we’re headed” (post-fact, since this is set in the future), and in the end, serves as a key to the climactic scene in The Water Knife. ☆☆☆☆

Corey, James S.A. (June 15, 2011) Leviathan Wakes

I got curious about this book, as it’s a) the basis for the SyFy channel series The Expanse, and b) the author doesn’t actually exist. Well, it’s a pen name for two collaborating writers, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, the former of which wrote a book series that I very much enjoyed called The Long Price Quartet, and he has also been a co-writer with George R.R. Martin of Game of Thrones fame.

Roughly a chapter into the book it was clear that overall, the book and the show were diverging rapidly. In general, the theme remains similar, with some events lining up, but others not, and it quickly seems that the very premise of the book was dropped as, probably, a bit too icky for a television audience, so they looked elsewhere for motivations. The book itself is pretty graphic and I like that it doesn’t portray space, space travel, etc., in the sort of antiseptic conditions that so many sci-fi books seem to take as a given, that for some reason, if we live in space or on other planets, we’ll take better care of those locations than we do of earth. It’s well written and fast paced – despite being nearly 600 pages, I finished it off with casual reading over the course of just a couple of days. At the same time, while I enjoyed it, I didn’t find myself jumping to move on to the next book in the series. ☆☆☆☆

Abercrombie, Joe (2008) Before They Are Hanged

In my last round-up of books I’d started in on The First Law trilogy, and enjoyed the opening volume enough to continue on with the series, and not just because I’ve made a commitment to myself to work my way through the reading list referenced there. Not surprisingly, this book picks up pretty much where the first book left off – maybe a few months later, and continues the various story lines, and at the same time introduces new ones. There does seem to be a bit more of an interweaving of the stories starting to happen, which is what I’d mentioned that some reviewers had said, so I’m glad to see that, and I enjoyed this one even a bit more than the first. On to the third! ☆☆☆☆

Abercrombie, Joe (2008) The Last Argument of Kings

Which, what the heck, let’s just go straight to, even though it wasn’t the next thing up on my in my reading – in fact it got interrupted by reading through a bunch of travel guides for Mexico City and Guadalajara, where I was getting ready to head, and then did, in early March, and which I’m not going to bother to review. Back to this book, and a really great wind-up to the story. Indeed, as foretold by some, the varied and sundry threads all come together. It’s not pretty, it’s not a well woven tapestry of a story at this point. It’s more of an explosive, violent, mashup as the characters from each storyline come running hell-bent for the finish line and all kind of collide there, jostling and stumbling about to get their last moment in the series. What I think I liked most about it, and the series overall, is that it wasn’t predictable, and where things end is not at all where I’d have guessed had you asked me earlier on in the reading. ☆☆☆☆

Lovejoy, Ben (January 27, 2015) 11/9

Described as an un-put-down-able techno-thriller, and obviously with a non-veiled reference to 9/11 thrown in there (though an unrelated story), I was psyched for something gripping and engaging, and, well, techie. It is, no question, a quite good read, and I enjoyed it thoroughly, but I’m also interested in science and engineering and similar topics, and there’s a lot of time in the book spent delving into those arenas where the pace of the book lags. It wasn’t surprising to find out that the author is a technical writer by trade, as the book careens between white knuckled flipping of pages while the characters are engaged in a life and death moment, and then almost like breaking the infamous theater fourth wall, a different character would be doing something that felt like wading through a technical manual to explicate what was going on in the previous, or an upcoming, scene. Great story and indeed gripping and engaging, but by turns, quite put-down-able, at what more or less are, for a techno-thriller, the commercial breaks. ☆☆☆☆

Books (Reviews)

Books, Fantasy, Politics, Science Fiction, Thrillers

The Book Stack #2

Dan P.Tuesday, January 5, 20160

What have we this time around?

You look at the title, Bread Wine Chocolate, and you’re already engaged. I mean, what’s not to like? Clearly three items selected from the book to grab our attention, since in reality, the book is, in order, Wine Chocolate Coffee Beer Bread Octopus. The book came highly anticipated, with suggestions being bandied about that this would be the next big, amazing food book. I clicked a link, put in my Kindle cue to be purchased when it was released, and more or less forgot about it until it showed up one day. I might have left my cursor hovering over the button rather than clicking, had I taken a moment to check out the author, Simran Sethi, a former MTV producer turned news anchor for, oh, MTV, who has gone on to continue work in the media world for various… how can I put this politely… touchie feelie outlets like Mother Earth News and TreeHugger. I’m not, at all, against the environment, sustainability, or anything else of the sort, don’t get me wrong, but it might have had me wondering about her bias in advance, rather than after the fact.

Though in truth, it’s not her bias that ruins this book for me. It’s her writing. I really wanted to like the book. There’s some great, well researched information in it. The problem is, it’s presented in a manner that ping-pongs back and forth between journalistic factual reporting and breathless golly gee whiz wow teen girl gossip style at a pace that would make the cut editors of Reality Bites envious. She also comes across as really, really, self absorbed, self indulgent, and self anything else you might care to insert, as she wings her way across the world with hand-grinder for coffee beans in one hand and an Aeropress brewer in the other, ruing that she isn’t back home with her Keurig machine (oh yeah, all those K-cups are just great for the environment) and her $13 designer chocolate bars. She spends the first couple of chapters of the book outlining what she’s going to cover and why she’s the one to do so, and how much we’re going to appreciate her having done so. Yes, yes, she got down and dirty with the folk who produce these various products, and sampled and tasted and learned to appreciate things at their source. And then promptly trundled back to her hotel to soak in the tub and anxiously write her next words on the balcony at sunset and then jet off to another exotic locale. If you like to hug trees, you’ll probably like this book.

I mentioned in the last book round-up that I had started working my way through a proposed list of the 51 Best Fantasy series. I’m not sure why it didn’t occur to me, that if they’re rated from best, #1, to least best, #51, that progressively, I might like these series less, and less. I’m not sure that will hold true completely – after all, as I mentioned then as well, the Discworld canon wouldn’t even make it onto my list of good, let alone 7th Best. But there does seem to be a slight decline each round. I’ve started in on Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law trilogy, beginning with The Blade Itself. It’s a relatively easy read.

There are things about it I really like – it’s written in a light-hearted tone, with a bit of humor. The series is often compared to Song of Fire and Ice, the Game of Thrones inspiring stack of books, and in some ways, I can see that – the action sequences, the bloody, grisly, details. But in other ways, not so much – the political manipulations and intrigue are there, but more or less ho-hum, there doesn’t seem to be any big, sweeping vista – within the first few chapters it’s obvious that all the lead characters’ lives are going to quite quickly intersect, in a pretty predictable way. Some reviewers have said that that gets turned on its head as the trilogy progresses, and by the end of the third book, nothing will be as anticipated. I can only hope so. It’s interesting enough to continue forward.

One of the finest books from one of the early crafters of modern science fiction, Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination is a long time favorite that I hadn’t read in quite some time. Another list of “bests”, this time from io9, The Essential Cyberpunk Reading List starts off with this one.

Filled with Evil Corporations, interplanetary intrigue, bio-engineering, power, greed, revenge, and the obligatory Sub-Culture, this has all the elements that make for a great cyberpunk read. Given when this was written, in the early 1950s, it’s a brilliant precursor to that movement at a time when “cyber” didn’t yet mean anything and “punk” meant something completely different. Gripping story, fast paced action, and even it’s own “street” language that fits the genre perfectly. It’s a relatively short book (or at least in comparison to some of those I’ve been reading recently), and with its pace, it’s the sort you can sit down and read through on a rainy afternoon.

A couple of years ago I read the book Of Dice and Men, a look back at the early days of Dungeons & Dragons, and, those of us nerds who played it. I was an avid player of the game back in the mid to late 70s, and have continued a fascination with the world(s) created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, the original duo behind the game. I’ve gone on to play computer based games, both early ones that were limited to being installed on your computer and played by one or a couple of people, and on, to MMORPGs, the massive universes created online like Everquest and Worlds of Warcraft.

The earlier book I mentioned was mostly focused on the game itself, and the gamers who took it and ran with it. There was plenty of biographical information about the creators, but you couldn’t call it biography. Michael Witwer’s Empire of Imagination takes another run at it. As he says in the introduction, he couldn’t believe when he started researching the book that no one had ever written a biography of Gary Gygax, who, while not a household name except to those of us in the gaming world, created something that went on to be the foundation for things we take for granted in modern day life, everything from the use of computers for games, to the advent of social media. As he also points out, it’s telling, that in an episode of the pop-culture show Futurama, Gygax’s character is paired up with Lieutenant Uhura, Al Gore, and Steven Hawking – taking on the universe. The book is well written, completely engaging, and for anyone with an interest in the topic, a must read.

Books (Reviews)

Beer, Food, History, Politics, Wine

The Book Stack #1

Dan P.Sunday, December 27, 20150

A selection out of what I’ve been reading recently. They don’t really need an introduction.

I like Charles Pierce’s writing, and he often hits the nail on the head. This book, Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free, is no exception. For the most part, he just lays it out there and shows just how idiotic many things in our country have become. Do I always agree with him? No. But it’s always thought provoking. Does he always make his case? No. He does against the “easy” targets, where he can just point out flaws that probably any thinking person would immediately see. But when it comes to making fun of, which is really what the book is, targets where there are philosophical, moral, ethical, even intellectual debate (particularly with arenas that broach into the world of religious faith), he points, but doesn’t provide the backup evidence, making the assumption that anyone reading his book is of like mind with him, and will simply agree that whatever he’s pointed to is worthy of mockery. For those of us who struggle at times with reconciling science, logic, and faith into a composite whole, those chapters come across a bit smarmy. Still, a recommended read, just to get the mental cogs turning.

Secretly, I grew up kind of wanting to be Alexander Mundy. He was the cat burglar turned spy-thief for the Secret Intelligence Agency of the US government in the late 60s television series It Takes a Thief. The show was inspired by the Hitchcock film To Catch a Thief (1955) starring Cary Grant, and on the flipside, while not acknowledged, is probably in the background of things like the late 2000s show White Collar, and certainly has some influences from the life of Frank Abagnale, whose life then went on to inspire the Spielberg film Catch Me If You Can. All that aside, I had visions of being a cat burglar, when I wasn’t entertaining visions of being a forest ranger or FBI agent. How things change as we grow up. I’ve always maintained a fascination with the news of jewel and art thieves, and while now there’s simply no likelihood of taking either up as a profession, I enjoy reading about the heists. Still one of, if not the largest, diamond theft in history, the story in Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History is a reasonably in-depth analysis of the most likely scenario for how the theft went down. Some of it is clearly speculative, especially attributions of motivations and thought processes lent to the main actor, Leonardo Notarbartolo (after whom I’ve named a Pandaren rogue in World of Warcraft, for those into that sort of thing). And some of it is pieced together from what evidence and testimony was available to the authors, Scott Andrew Selby and Greg Campbell. It’s clearly well researched and very well written. If I have any quibble with the book is that the ending is an awfully quick wrap-up – akin to the sort of thing one sees at the end of a competition show, where the eliminated contestant’s picture is shown for a moment along with a caption of “John Smith is happy back with his family and thinking about what to do next.” One wants to know, “Where are they now? What are they up to?” Well worth a read.

A few months back, Buzzfeed published a list of what they considered the 51 Best Fantasy Series ever written. Now, there’s nothing that says that anyone at Buzzfeed is an expert on the topic, nor that the choice of 51 (why 51?) series was a good one, but I was casting about for somethings interesting to read and thought I’d start in on the list. I quickly read through the first couple of series, I’m not going to go back and review them now as my memory is already getting hazy on them, but I highly recommend all of Patrick Rothfuss’ The Kingkiller Chronicles, Brandon Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archive, and Brent Weeks’ The Lightbringer series, particularly the first, which was one of the best fantasy series I’ve ever read, though the next two series are almost as good. All captured my attention and engaged me, and I was glad to have discovered them via the list. I skipped over A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin (the books behind Game of Thrones) and Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings, simply because I’ve read them in the past. And I’m going to skip the 41 novels of the Discworld saga from Pratchett, because I’ve given them a try, and after 1½ of them, read a year or two ago, I just gave up on them as simply not my cup of weak tea.

Now, to this series, His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, including three novels, The Golden Compass (aka Northern Lights), The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. It feels a bit more like a teen read than an adult fantasy read. Some of that is simply the characters, the primary ones being children in their early teens. But more of it is that it’s written in a borderline puerile style. I found that although I enjoyed them, I wasn’t particularly engaged by them. There’s a lot of railing against what is an awfully thinly veiled Catholic church, and of a government influenced by religious leaders, clearly the author isn’t a fan of either. There’s a lot of moralizing, but it’s very superficial. And in the end, the ostensible resolution is pretty insipid. The first volume has been turned into a movie of the same name, and albeit also pretty kid-oriented and “Hollywood”, is actually better than the book, a rarity in my experience. While not bad reads, there are certainly other books in the genre more worth putting your time into, as noted above.

Books (Reviews)

Books, Fantasy, History, Politics

Tasseography

Dan P.Sunday, September 6, 20150

Originally I was thinking that this blog would just be an archive of previously published works of mine, from various fields, but I’ve decided that it’s also going to be a place for me to comment on my thoughts on things in the world of politics, religion, science, or whatever fields that don’t make sense for the content of my food, wine and travel blog, SaltShaker. Away we go, with a doozy to start off with.

Tasseography is fortune telling from the reading of tea leaves in cups. I was looking for some sort of cynical connection to the Stanley and Davis Cups from the sports world, some sort of metaphor, that connects to the current brouhahas over “double standards”, or not, in our political and legal system. But nothing occurred to me, so, on to the meat of the matter.

We’ve all read and been following the Kim Davis debacle, the county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples because of her Christian religious beliefs. And now, we’re starting to hear about Charee Stanley, a Muslim woman who is (or was, at this point) a flight attendant who refuses to serve alcohol as part of her duties. The left is gleeful because it feeds into the predictable narrative of the slippery slope that the Kim Davis mess was going to lead to, no matter the claims from the right that “it would never happen”. And the right is up in arms because the left is gleeful, and because a Muslim woman is being treated different from a Christian woman, and therefore, “discrimination against Christians” and/or “Sharia Law is coming to America (because, Obama).”

But there are blatant differences between the two cases that make them stand apart. And there’s no “double standard” as many are quick to claim – at least not so far.

Kim Davis was an elected official, who swore an oath to uphold the laws of the State of Kentucky and the Constitution of the United States. She refused to do so, even when her direct superiors, not liberals by any stretch, ordered her to. Some are claiming that her duties changed, and therefore she hadn’t agreed to what she was being asked to do. There’s some edge of validity to that, but, the duties of her office were to issue marriage licenses, not to decide, based on her personal beliefs, the rightness of those marriages, and nothing actually changed in her duties – she wasn’t asked to sanction gay marriage any more than she was asked to sanction divorce, adultery, interracial couples, or interfaith couples (all things that violate her faith when it comes down to it), just to issue the licenses. She took the legal route, something that she was totally entitled to do, and exhausted it, right up to the U.S. Supreme Court, not a bastion of liberality these days. And she still refused to comply. She was arrested (not by some jackbooted federales, but by her employer, the State of Kentucky). Not for being Christian, not for being conservative, but quite simply, for violating her oath of office, the laws of her state, and the Constitution of the United States. In our country, she has every right to be a bigot, which let’s face it, she is, albeit cloaked in religious rhetoric, but that comes with consequences. I might be more sympathetic if she used the same standards to apply to other situations that equally, or more so, violate her faith – such as had she refused to issue marriage licenses to divorced people, or if she hadn’t herself committed adultery, and been divorced and remarried three times. Actions speak louder than words.

Charee Stanley is an employee of a private corporation. She’s a relatively recent convert to Islam. Yes, part of the duties of being a flight attendant are to serve alcohol to customers – though that’s not a right guaranteed by either law or the Constitution. And, she made arrangements when she converted to Islam (after having already been an employee for a couple of years) to be exempt from doing so – her employer, ExpressJet, agreed to have other employees handle alcohol service so that she wouldn’t have to. Whether that was a legally binding agreement remains to be seen… in court. There’s also no bigotry against those who drink alcohol in her case – she wasn’t attempting to have alcohol service terminated on flights, simply to not have to handle alcohol herself. However, after nearly a year of that arrangement, a fellow employee complained about the situation and her employers decided it put them in an untenable position, because the logistics, given that they’re a small company, didn’t always work out. They approached her about having to serve alcohol, she again declined, citing both her religious beliefs and that she had an agreement with them exempting her from violating those beliefs. They placed her on suspension. She’s suing for lost wages based on them rescinding an agreement that she feels was legally binding. And, just as I support Kim Davis’ right to have made use of the legal system in her fight, Charee Stanley has the same right. She gets to go through the legal process – and we’ll see where it ends up. She’s not getting special treatment because no one wants to offend Muslims, and she doesn’t lose her right to avail herself of the legal system just because she’s not Christian, she’s going through the same process (albeit in local civil court) that Davis did. She’s not asking for a Sharia court. She may prevail, she may not, either way, she’s no longer in her employment position. Just like Davis, though by a different method, she was removed from it. There are simply no facts on which to call “foul” on some sort of treatment double standard.

It’s also worth noting that, given that the cases are proceeding in different states, they are subject to differently written “religious freedom” laws. Kentucky courts and Michigan courts, as ought to be championed by those who feel that the federal government has overreached and that states’ rights should be in play here, may come to different decisions. And that, too, is part of our legal system.

Now, as to the “but Kim Davis was arrested and nothing happened to Charee Stanley” claims of double standards. It’s disingenuous. Let’s look at both. Why was Kim Davis arrested rather than just suspended or fired? Because she’s an elected public official – she can’t be suspended or fired. The choices are two – call for a special election or impeachment. The former is a useless gesture – in the county in which she works, the likelihood is she’d just get re-elected and nothing would be accomplished. Just because the people in her county support her doesn’t mean she gets to violate a Supreme Court ruling – it simply doesn’t work that way. So impeachment. In order to impeach her, they, her employers, the state of Kentucky, have to show criminal dereliction of her duties, or at least some other felony. In order to do that, she had to be arrested and prosecuted, and, no doubt, she’ll be convicted by a judge, because no county or state judge is going to want to go up against the Supreme Court [edit: actually, I think her case is going to be heard in a US District court, which is federal, so virtually assured that she’ll be found guilty]. Then, bet your last dollar, impeachment proceedings will start within 24 hours. Smart lawyers for the State.

As to Charee Stanley, her employer also did exactly what works best within the legal system. There were no grounds for arresting her – she didn’t violate a law, all she did was refuse to do something her employer demanded of her. Thousands of employees across the country do that on a monthly basis. The choices were basically three – let it go and let her continue to not serve alcohol, or fire, or suspend her. Obviously they didn’t want to go with the first or this never would have reached this point. If they’d have fired her, she would have sued for wrongful termination based on religion – and likely, she’d have won, because the burden of proof would mostly land on her employers, and it would have been heard in a federal rather than state court. So they suspended her, depriving her of the option of suing for wrongful termination on religious grounds, which is protected by federal law. Instead, all she can do is sue for lost wages in state court, claiming that she had a verbal contract which honored her religious beliefs. But she’s going to have to prove that. Smart lawyers for ExpressJet.

The glee from the left is ridiculous – mostly because it’s unproductive, it actually does betray an anti-Christian prejudice (at least towards the more fundamentalist Christians), and does nothing other than rile people up – but mostly because the situation is simply different. And it’s unresolved in our legal system, and it will be interesting to see what ruling the Michigan courts, generally fairly conservative, make.

The hue and cry from the right is just political rhetoric from, mostly, hate-spewing, generally racist folk who’ve become convinced that our country is on some sort of downward spiral (caused by the black muslim fake american in the white house… yada yada) rather than simply being at one point in the pendulum of political thought that has swung back and forth throughout our history.

At this point we’ll have to wait and see what sort of court ruling Stanley’s (and down the road, probably Davis’) case engenders, at which point, who knows? There may be something to squawk about then, from one or the other or both sides of the political spectrum.

[Update, November 10, 2015 – Interestingly, and I suppose not surprisingly, Charee Stanley has completely disappeared from the news, I can’t find an online mention of her since mid-September, while Kim Davis, though a bit more background, continues to show up in news stories. A short-lived kerfuffle.]

Commentary

Politics

Politics – same pitch, different day

Dan P.Monday, April 20, 20150

Joffe, Josef (2013-11-04). The Myth of America’s Decline: Politics, Economics, and a Half Century of False Prophecies

Quite possibly the best debunking of the misuse of statistics and political rhetoric I’ve ever read. For anyone who laments the loss of bipartisan cooperation in America, and the rise of shrill extremism, this is a must read. I’m just going to include a little excerpt from the book here rather than carry on with my own opinion:

Actually, “the sky is falling” should not be a very lucrative pitch. Such alarms stoke fear and panic; why invest in the future if the clock is running down? But the message has worked wonders since time immemorial because doom, in biblical as well as political prophecy, always comes with a shiny flip side, which is redemption. Darkness is the prelude to dawn. The gloomy forecast reviles past and present in order to promise the brightest of futures. Start with fire and brimstone, then jump to grace and deliverance in the here and now. Listen to Jeremiah as he thunders, “Turn from your wicked ways and reform your actions; then you will live in the [promised] land.” Jeremiah may have been the father of modern campaign politics.

Preachers and politicos take naturally to this one-two punch because ruin followed by renewal is the oldest narrative in the mental data bank of mankind. The device is even older than the verdict of doom— the Mene, Tekel on the palace wall— revealed by Daniel. Start with the Flood, a universal theme played out over four chapters in Genesis, but found much earlier in Sumerian and Babylonian myth, as related in the Gilgamesh Epic dated 2700 BCE. Genesis, written in the fifth or sixth century BCE, expands and embellishes the original. It relates how “the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth.” So He decides to “blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, for I am grieved that I have made them.” The end is nigh, but don’t despair. Mankind will be spared after all, because the Lord selects Noah, who has “found favor in His eyes,” and commands him to build an ark that will save mankind.

So after death by Deluge, it will be rebirth for the righteous led by an ordinary mortal who knows the future, and how to act on it. This story never ends. The Children of Israel were punished for the Golden Calf, the idol that embodied a wicked past, with forty years in the wilderness. Yet if true to the Law and to God’s messenger Moses, they will be rewarded with the Promised Land. As the Resurrection follows the Crucifixion, so misery will segue into salvation, but there has to be a leader, spiritual or political, to show the way: Moses or Jesus, John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan or Barack (“ Yes, we can”) Obama. The pairing of doom and deliverance defines the eternal archetype.

…

In all these narratives, ruin is the means, and rescue the end. Terror is the teaching device that will change the course of history. For all his tirades, every Jeremiah actually wants to be disproved by making his errant flock atone and amend. “Declinism is a theory that has to be believed to be invalidated,” explains Samuel Huntington. It is the opposite of the familiar “self-fulfilling prophecy,” a term coined by the sociologist Robert Merton. The alarm starts out with a “false definition of the situation” and then triggers “new behavior which makes the original false conception come ‘true.’ ” To predict a bank failure is to unleash a run that will actually cause the collapse.

Declinism markets a “self-defeating prophecy.” Since these predictions deal with humans, and not planets or protozoans, they are designed to trigger reactions that lift the curse. Merton puts it thus: Evil does not come true “precisely because the prediction has become a new element” that changes the “initial course of developments.” So to foretell is to forestall— that is the very purpose of Declinism. Take the “impending exhaustion of natural resources” from Malthus to the Club of Rome, which foresaw the end of global growth some forty years ago, especially because of dwindling oil reserves. Myriad changes in behavior— from conservation to exploration— followed, causing oil gluts on the market in the 1980s and a gas glut in the 2010s. The world economy grew twentyfold in this period (nominally). Would that all catastrophes had such a short shelf life!

None of America’s Declinists over the past half century, as presented in the preceding chapter, actually wanted the country to suffer its foreordained fate. The prophecy is designed to be self-defeating, and the structure of augury is always the same: This will happen unless . . . Holding up another nation as a model is to correct one’s own, not to condemn it— from the Sputnik Shock of the 1950s to Obama’s “Sputnik moment” in the 2010s. To praise others is to prod America. Russia, Europe, Japan, et al. will overtake us, unless we labor hard to change our self-inflicted destiny. The basic diagnosis remains constant; only the prescription will vary according to the ideological preferences of the seer.

In politics, “the sky is falling” has yet another purpose. It is no accident that the figure of the prophet, in the legend or on the stump, stands at the center of the narrative. We have to believe in the messenger so that he can rise above us and guide us to a better tomorrow. Hence dramatization and exaggeration, fibbing or even outright falsehood, are part and parcel of the prophecy. To hype is to win. Never mind that the Missile Gap and the Window of Vulnerability were mere myths. Expediency beats veracity in campaigning and sermonizing. And so, hyperbole paves the road from the vale of tears— or to the White House. “Follow me, and ye shall be saved!” is the eternal message. Or in Kennedy’s words, borrowed from Churchill, “Come then— let us to the task, to the battle and the toil. . . .”

Prophet or politico, the strategy is to paint the nation in hellish colors and then to offer oneself as a guide to heaven. The country is on the skids, but tomorrow it will rise again— if only you, the people, will anoint me as your leader. It worked for both John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, who rode all the way to the White House on nonexisting Soviet missiles. Shakespeare wrote the original script. To “busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels” was Henry IV’s advice to his son and successor. The democratic equivalent is to scare up votes with foreign threats. After the election, dawn always follows doom— as when Kennedy called out, “Let the word go forth that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.” Gone was the Soviet bear that had grown to monstrous size in the 1950s. And so again, twenty years later. At the end of Ronald Reagan’s first term, his fabled campaign commercial exulted, “It’s morning again in America. And under the leadership of President Reagan, our country is prouder and stronger and better.” In the fourth year of Barack Obama’s first term, America was “back” and again on top. Collapse was yesterday, today it is resurrection. This miraculous turnaround might explain why Declinism usually blossoms at the end of an administration— and wilts quickly after victory.

Books (Reviews), Commentary

History, Politics

Cooking the Books #2

Dan P.Monday, November 17, 20140

A round-up of some of my recent food reading.

Pollan, Michael (April 28, 2009) In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto

Setting aside that in some ways this is another book with more of the same diet advice that’s been published in countless books, the most interesting part of this is that not only is it well written and engaging without being preachy, but I like that it really explores how statistics and media messages have been manipulated by corporations and government agencies with agendas that aren’t in our best interests. For those who are Michael Pollan fans, this is a must read.

*****

Davis, Michelle & Holloway, Matt (October 7, 2014) Thug Kitchen: The Official Cookbook: Eat Like You Give a F*ck

Yawn. Really, just yawn. Look, I don’t care about people using curse words, but these folks don’t even know how to use them. They’re trying for some weird version of “street cred” and they come across as completely inept at it. It’s as if they wrote the book in a final version with every i dotted and t crossed and all the grammar perfect, and then said, “hey, let’s do a global search and replace on some words like ‘things’ to change it to ‘shit’, and everywhere we use the word ‘delicious’ let’s add in the word ‘fucking’ in front of it”. It comes across as completely formulaic and forced (as it does on their website), and it’s no surprise that they were recently “outed” as a couple of whitebread yuppies just trying to make a name for themselves. It’s a shame, too, because they actually have some decent recipes on the site and in the book, but the quality of those, and the underlying message for healthy eating, just get lost in a big motherfucking pile of word shit. (See, annoying. It doesn’t work when I do it either.)

*****

Orkin, Ivan & Ying, Chris (October 29, 2013) Ivan Ramen: Love, Obsession, and Recipes from Tokyo’s Most Unlikely Noodle Joint

Most people will probably head to this book for the recipes. After all, why not learn how to make ramen from a westerner who took the time and effort to learn everything he could about the subject and then interpret it and reinterpret it for western palates? And, the recipes sound great, are well written, albeit at times a bit complicated or at least time consuming. But, for me, it was the story of how Ivan Orkin dove into his life and developed his passion for ramen that made the book. Completely captivating.

*****

Sokolov, Raymond (February 11, 2014) Steal the Menu: A Memoir of Forty Years in Food

Part of my introduction to the world of food came through the brilliantly researched and well written articles by Raymond Sokolov in my monthly subscription to Natural History magazine when I was growing up. Later, I would snag a friend’s daily Wall Street Journal after she finished with it, purely to read his restaurant reviews and food writing. His Saucier’s Apprentice and Cook’s Canon were long ago staples of my bookshelf. This book just continues the saga, with an autobiographical look back at how it all happened, along with an insightful look at where food trends are headed in today’s culinary world. For anyone interested in food history, this book is a must to pick up and enjoy.

Books (Reviews)

Food, History, Politics

Is the TSA abusive? I’m not so sure.

Dan P.Saturday, April 30, 20116

I know this won’t be popular, but all this anti-TSA rhetoric is getting tiring. Yes, on occasion, an agent might do something outside of procedure, and a complaint should be made, they should be investigated and if necessary, disciplined or fired. But 14 million people fly through US airports weekly, and we hear about maybe 1 or 2 supposed abuses every week or so, mostly because they’re the exceptions. And then everyone starts blogging and posting about what happened with only the complaint of the passenger to go on, assuming that there’s no other viewpoint to the story.

Sometimes, with the random selection process for screening, that pointer happens to point to a 6 year old kid or an elderly person in a wheelchair, or, like the latest one everyone’s going on about, a pregnant first grade teacher – who maybe, just maybe, opted out of the electronic screening as many pregnant women do because of concerns about “radiation” (which are completely unfounded as well) and then didn’t want to get searched either (in fact, she admits in her now widely circulated letter that she tried to refuse a pat-down and kept demanding to be allowed to go to her flight without being searched, to which everyone is going “aww, let the lady go, she’s a pregnant schoolteacher” – like anyone in line or in the TSA would have known that – it’s “Monday morning quarterbacking” at its worst). Who knows? But taking her at her word without any other input is just dumb. Security experts the world over have noted the rise in the use of prosthetic pregnancy devices that make a woman appear to be pregnant but hide explosives in terrorist attacks.

I have yet to have a negative experience with an agent, nor see anyone harassing a passenger, nor even know anyone who has been harassed. The only incident I’ve witnessed was a woman who refused to remove her shoes, jacket, or any of her metal jewelry or watch because she didn’t trust that she’d get them back when they passed through the scanner, and then got abusive when a female officer offered to do a pat-down search, in private if she wished. Bluntly, I wouldn’t want her passed through.

Last week TSA agents found 18 concealed firearms, 5 cases of other prohibited items concealed in carryon baggage, and 9 people traveling on false identification papers – all in cases where the people tried to get around the automated scanning process and get on a plane without being searched. That says something to me about the worthwhile nature of the security process, particularly the concealed guns.

Perhaps it’s my having been present in NYC during the 9/11 attacks, dealing with losing friends and colleagues, and living with the aftermath, but for me, flying is a privilege, not a right, and personally I have no problem with extra security measures if it might just save my or someone else’s life.

Commentary

Politics

Porteño Food Heritage: Fact or Fiction? An Investigation…

Dan P.Tuesday, December 19, 20060

What’s Up Buenos Aires
NEWS
December 19, 2006

Porteño Food Heritage: Fact or Fiction? An Investigation…

I’m coming late to the party by posting on this topic, but it’s been simmering in the back of my mind for a week or two. In amazingly typical fashion, the local Heritage Commission has declared a new range of food items that are considered “emblematic” of porteño culture. Those of us who live here in our adopted country have become used to outlandish claims in casual and animated conversation by many a local that one plate or another is Argentine in origin. Often, these dishes are ones that anyone who travels the globe or explores the world of food knows existed elsewhere in the world long before Argentina had anything but a native, indigenous cuisine. This time, however, it’s not random conversation with a new friend over drinks, but the government itself stepping in to stake the porteño claims.

The one that seems to have generated the most controversy is the milanesa a la napolitana, that ubiquitous local version of a weiner schnitzel topped with ham, cheese, and a bit of tomato sauce – most of the controversy coming from the juxtaposition of “milanesa” (from Milan) and “napolitana” (from Naples). The milanesa part is easy, pounded thin, breaded and fried slices of beef or veal are called cotoletta alla milanesa in Italy, or, a Milan style cutlet, since before the first Italian set foot on South American soil. While the name “a la Napolitana” is both claimed locally to come from the idea of Neapolitan pizza or from a restaurant called El Napolitano that existed in the 1940s here over by Luna Park; at best, this is simply a renaming of the classic Neapolitan saltimbocca alla Sorrentina – pounded thin, floured or breaded, fried slices of veal topped with Parma ham, mozzarella, and a fresh tomato sauce. The dish has been around since long before anyone from Sorrento headed to Argentina. One can even look at things like schnitzel “cordon bleu”, a dish dating back to some unknown time in the history of L’Ordre des Chevaliers du Saint Esprit, the organization of knights famed for their luxurious banquets since 1578… this dish a breaded cutlet topped with a thin slice of ham and melted cheese – only missing that bit of tomato sauce.

Better to have claimed the matambre a la pizza – while matambre may merely be an adaptation of cima a la genovese from Liguria, the idea of topping it with those same pizza ingredients has got to be uniquely porteño… though, I haven’t researched that one thoroughly.

I might also have to give them pizza a la faina – while both pizza and faina exist in other places and cultures, since before Buenos Aires was founded, the use of the faina, or chickpea bread slice, as a top crust while eating a pizza does seem to be uniquely porteño.

Beyond that, the Commission has added in such things as vermú, or vermouth – not, thankfully, claiming that it was invented by Argentines, but claiming the tradition of drinking it as integral to local custom. I’m not sure how that differs from their Italian forefathers and mothers, but it’s now official.

Of course, this all follows on 2003’s claims by the same Commission to empanadas, asado, y dulce de leche – hmmm… empanadas, beyond existing in one form or another in every culture that produces pastry, are a pretty clear Spanish import, even if they’ve evolved to an art form here; the asado, a big part Spanish influence on the gaucho culture here – but is it anymore elaborate or a part of the culture than, say, the norteamericano weekend barbecue, or the still extent Spanish version of the same? The last, a claim that’s been up for grabs and dispute for a long period of time. Though I couldn’t prove it one way or the other, I’d be hard pressed to accede to a claim that dulce de leche was invented either here or in Uruguay – the idea that no one was caramelizing milk and sugar back in Europe before local colonization is, to my mind, unlikely, though I’d be willing to be proved wrong on that.

Other dishes that are apparently up for consideration include sorrentinos – round, plump, large ravioli. True, elsewhere in the world no one calls them sorrentinos, but there’s nothing unique about them other than the name – which apparently also comes from a local restaurant called Sorrento that was located on Av. Corrientes here – though this is also up for dispute, I’ve seen more than one claim that the name comes from a restaurant called Sorrento that was located in Mar del Plata – still here in the province of Buenos Aires.

I’ve seen one proposed idea for a bife a caballo – a steak topped with a fried egg. I’ve even seen discussions in different forums about the whole a caballo “phenomenon”, claiming that it’s extraordinarily common here. Okay, I’ve seen it offered on steaks, I’ve seen it on lomo sandwiches and hamburgers. But it’s not exactly ubiquitous, and it’s certainly not uniquely Argentine. I can get a fried egg atop a piece of beef at any diner in the U.S., and probably throughout most of Europe. Even the a caballo, or “on horseback”, has been called a cheval, with the same meaning, in France for centuries.

On the dessert front – the vigilante – a deceivingly simple plate of queso blanco served accompanied by a thick slice of dulce de batata or dulce de membrillo – sweet potato or quince jelly is a common dessert here. While certainly more common than in many other places, I’m not sure I’d call it unique – I’ve had the same in Mexico, I’ve had the same in France. The name, once again, is as far as I know, unique to Argentina. The tarantela – more or less a classic charlotte with a caramelized coating and an apple and custard filling. The torta rogel or milhojas – interleaved pastry with dulce de leche and/or chocolate. The budín de pan – basically a sweet loaf of bread, or even a steamed bread pudding.

All this is not to take away from Argentine or porteño culture and cuisine. As has been said in many a cooking forum, and by many a chef throughout the world, “there’s nothing really new in the cooking world, it’s all been done by someone, somewhere, before.” What is unique to the culture here is the blending of these various imports, along with what remains of the indigenous cuisine, and imports from other parts of both the country (locro, carbonada…) and Latin America. Rather than picking out individual dishes and claiming them as unique, or even integral to only this culture, especially when such claims are easily disproved, what Argentines could easily celebrate is the amazingly rich melting pot of these varied dishes. There is probably nowhere else on the planet where this particular melding of ideas, techniques, and recipes, both classic and modern, come together in such a seamless blend. That’s something to be truly proud of.

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