I've Been Remiss in My Jack Vance Posts

Jack Vance shares a marked disdain for religion with his predecessor Clark Ashton Smith. Both authors regularly depict religious sects with hilariously absurd doctrines. In the fifth chapter ("The Pilgrims") of The Eyes of the Overworld, originally published in the June 1966 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, the following conversation takes place among a group of pilgrims traveling to a religious festival:


Lodermulch had been asked his opinion of the so-called Funambulous Evangels, who, refusing to place their feet upon the ground, went about their tasks by tightrope. In a curt voice Lodermulch exposed the fallacies of this particular doctrine. "They reckon the age of the earth at twenty-nine eons, rather than the customary twenty-three. They stipulate that for every square ell of soil two and one quarter million men have died and laid down their dust, thus creating a dank and ubiquitous mantle of lich-mold, upon which it is sacrilege to walk. The argument has a superficial plausibility, but consider: the dust of one dessicated corpse, spread over a square ell, affords a layer one thirty-third of an inch in depth. The total therefore represents almost one mile of compacted corpse-dust mantling the earth's surface, which is manifestly false."

A member of the sect, who, without access to his customary ropes, walked in cumbersome ceremonial shoes, made an excited expostulation. "You speak with neither logic nor comprehension! How can you be so absolute?"

Lodermulch raised his tufted eyebrows in surly displeasure. "Must I really expatiate? At the ocean's shore, does a cliff one mile in altitude follow the demarcation between land and sea? No. Everywhere is inequality. Headlands extend into the water; more often beaches of pure white sand are found. Nowhere are the massive buttresses of gray-white tuff upon which the doctrines of your sect depend."

"Inconsequential claptrap!" sputtered the Funambule.

"What is this?" demanded Lodermulch, expanding his massive chest. "I am not accustomed to derision!"

"No derision, but hard and cold refutal of your dogmatism! We claim that a proportion of the dust is blown into the ocean, a portion hangs suspended in the air, a portion seeps through crevices into underground caverns, and another portion is absorbed by trees, grasses, and certain insects, so that little more than a half-mile of ancestral sediment covers the earth upon which it is sacrilege to tread. Why are not the cliffs you mentioned everywhere visible? Because of that moistness exhaled and expelled by innumerable men of the past! This has raised the ocean in exact equivalence, so that no brink or precipice can be noted; and herein lies your fallacy."

"Bah," muttered Lodermulch, turning away. "Somewhere there is a flaw in your concepts."

"By no means!" asserted the evangel, with that fervor which distinguished his kind. "Therefore, from respect to the dead, we walk aloft, on ropes and edges, and when we must travel, we use specially sanctified footgear."


As a resident of the Northeastern United States, I have been insulated from creationist rhetoric for most of my life, so I was unaware that this satirical tour de force was a response to any particular belief. Due, oddly enough, to the technological marvel known as "teh t00bz", I have, much to my dismay, found that this is not the case.

A Most Uncanny Resemblance

I feel bad about upstaging my previous post, but I had to put this one up, with a big tip of the old chapeau to the redoubtable M. Bouffant, from whose blog I "yoinked" the NOAA image.

To my mind, the travel time projection for today's Pacific tsunami:



Bears an eerie resemblance to a detail from Katsushika Hokusai's masterpiece The Great Wave off Kanagawa:



So desu ne?

The One That Got Away

If the lyrics of any song perfectly match the circumstances surrounding that song's place in pop history, that song would have to be If We Never Meet Again, written by Jules Shear, who may perhaps be best known for writing If She Knew What She Wants, which was a hit for the Bangles. In 1988, his band Reckless Sleepers released the album "Big Boss Sounds", which included If We Never Meet Again, an unabashedly pretty (and witty and wise) song about a lost love. Despite its pop perfection, the song was relegated to college radio playlists, and never broke the U.S. top 100 (it hit #89 in Canada according to the wikiwakiwoo). The song was subsequently covered by Philly band Tommy Conway and the Young Rumblers, and hit #48 on the Billboard charts). Perhaps the best known version of the song is Roger McGuinn's cover, on his 1990 "Back from Rio" album.

Youtube has a tragically incomplete video of the original version of the song. The complete video of the Young Rumblers' version (which I had never heard until researching this post) is available on Youtube:



The Roger McGuinn version is also available on Youtube, accompanied by a fan video:



It's hard to conceive how this song failed to be a major hit, which passed into "Standards" status. Yep, this is the one that got away- as wistful as a lost love, and as wise as an older, more mature individual contemplating what might have been.

Note: This post wasn't inspired by a fit of melancholy... it was ultimately inspired by hearing the Byrds' cover of Chimes of Freedom on a local radio station's fantastic "Ten at Ten" feature (tagline: Ten great songs from one great year), which had me busting out the Roger McGuinn.

Nor'easter

Over the course of the last two days, we have been in the throes of a Nor'easter. Over twenty inches of snow fell in Central Park, and at least one individual was killed by a falling tree limb.

I spent over and hour and a half digging my car out, finding (to much dismay) that a small branch had fallen, putting several small cracks in my windshield. Grrr...

The local roads were a mess, but the major roads were well plowed. The highway I usually drive on to my part-time job was clear, for the most part, but an ancient tree had fallen, blocking one lane of traffic north of Tuckahoe Road. Not having a dashboard camera like some guys, I missed out on a dramatic shot.

When I got to work, the parking lot was clear, the snow had let up. Just so you all feel a twinge of jealousy, I took this picture "on the job":



The storm devastated trees on-site, though:

Dispatches From an Alien Planet

Every time I go to the supermarket to provision my pad, I am struck by how ignorant I am of contemporary popular culture. I have not owned a television for two and a half years now, so I don't recognize most of the faces peering out from the covers of People and US magazines. Periodically, I'll click on an item in the Yahoo "Most Frequently Searched" section (Edit: it's called "Trending Now" in the new Yahoo frontpage) in a misguided attempt to stay "current", then immediately regret finding out who, for instance, "Jon and Kate" are.

Oh, I'm in luck- I just checked out "Trending Now" and found something more to my liking.

On the other pop-culture front, I have not set foot in a movie theater in months. Part of me, though, is considering bowing to the hype-machine and watching Avatar on the big screen... if I were to watch the DVD on my laptop, it would look much like a high-tech remake of The Smurfs.

Who Writes This Stuff Anyway?

So, I was travelling on the 4 Train from Brooklyn to The Bronx (my usual 718-718 trip), and found a Chinese-language newspaper on one of the seats. Struck by an impulse to check it out (mainly to check out what sorts of advertisements would be featured), I found this cute little English dialogue lesson. I have highlighted my favorite lines, which are pure comedy gold:

A: Good evening, Mr. Benson. Thank you so much for inviting me to dinner.

B: Not at all, Mr. Abe. I'm so happy you could me (sic). What will you have to drink? A highball? Or would you prefer a cocktail?

A: Nothing, thanks, I don,t (sic) drink.

B: How about a beer, then?

A: Not even beer, thanks. But please don't let me stop you from having some.

B: Please sit over here, Mr. Abe. I hope you like onion soup. It's the first course.

A: It's a real favorite of mine.

B: Which soup do you prefer, consomme or potage?

A: Usually I prefer consomme.

B: I do too.

A: These are wonderful appetizers. I am extremely fond of caviar on toast.

B: Please help yourself to more.

A: How do you fine (sic) the lobster?

B: It's excellent.

A: I don't believe I've ever eaten such a delicious lobster before.


Am I the only one who'd like to hang out with this Mr. Benson? As long as he's not driving, that is.

The Bastard and the Denialist

Ugh, a friend of long standing has gone full-on wingnut, and regularly e-mails me links to the now-regular AGW denialist screeds in the UK tabloid press, accompanied by gleeful triumphalist rhetoric. Hilariously, he even sends articles he doesn't read, which have provocative headlines, but refute his talking points in body of the text. In one of his responses to a debunking e-mail I sent him, he wrote:

what happened to the ozone hole? global cooling? the K-capacity theory of human population maxing out in 1965? all nonsense.

Now, of course the "global cooling" red herring flogged by denialists has its basis in a Newsweek magazine article published in 1975- an article that did not reflect a widespread scientific consensus.

As far as the "K-capacity Theory" he mentions, note the date he cites. Of course, the carrying capacity of the planet is subject to many factors, such as agricultural modernization, and previously unexploited foodstuffs. Futhermore, the Spectre of Population Control is a common Conspiracy nut bugbear, much like Climate Change denialism.

Well, that leaves the ozone hole. What about the hole in the ozone layer? Well, I sent him the link to the NASA website with a note:

Just because you have decided to become a Flat-Earther, does not mean that the Southern Hemisphere has ceased to exist.

This guy is an intelligent adult, but he is victim, not of a misinformation campaign, but a malinformation campaign. The crux of the problem is that there's a process of "cognitive osmosis" that takes place... a selectively permeable "membrane" (in his case, the Drudge Report) is in place, limiting his intake of data and keeping out any facts not conforming to his preconceived notions. This is accompanied by a tendency to project- in this case, he thinks that he's the one hip to a conspiracy promulgated by politically and economically motivated shysters (funny, he doesn't mention Ian Plimer anymore).

It's pretty depressing shooting down somebody's talking points, and having them keep up the weird proselytizing (what's with righties and poorly sourced e-mails, anyway?). The difference between the reality-based community, and the dogmatic science deniers brings to mind the lyrics to folk-rockers The Waterboys' Whole of the Moon:

I spoke about wings
You just flew
I wondered I guessed and I tried
You just knew

So as not to end on a depressing note, here's a video for said song: