Central Booking

Ironically, I don't really like humor books. Also, I can't stand Bill Maher. I think he's an ugly, mean-spirited, whiny, self-righteous jerk.

So I will fully admit to being prejudiced against New Rules. I read about a third of this book -- enough, I would think, to have encountered something funny if there were anything funny to be found in it. I didn't laugh. Not once. I didn't even smile.

There were some parts where I was tempted to smile, like this:

No more TV gambling. First there was Celebrity Poker. Then there was Celebrity Blackjack. I saw one show that was just Cammryn Mannheim scratching lottery tickets.

Or this:

...

Actually, I can't find another one. I know there was something else that almost made me smile, but I just spent five minutes wading through tired jokes about Paris Hilton, tired jokes about George W. Bush, tired jokes about Pat Robertson, and copious use of the the word "fuck" in place of a punchline. I feel like I've wasted enough of my life on this crap.

Good job, Bill. You succeeded in publishing a book and getting fired from a TV show. Now go away.

Rarely when reading a book do I have the urge to hurl the book against a wall. I resisted that urge countless times with The Truth Machine, giving in only when I had finally finished reading it. And man, did it feel good.

Written in 1995 by James Halperin, The Truth Machine starts off in the early 1990s and climaxes in the middle of the 21st century. Its underlying plot is a fairly conventional one; the book is mainly an exercise in near future prognostication. I'm used to reading sci-fi books that make outlandish and inaccurate predictions about the future, but I think The Truth Machine takes the cake. Supposedly the author interviewed a lot of really smart people about what was going to happen in the coming decades, which just goes to show how much smart people know.

His predictions veer wildly off track almost immediately, to the point of being humorously absurd. To give you an idea: In 2003 Al Gore is President, most people drive electric cars, oil is selling for $4 a barrel, the war in Bosnia is still going on, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are not. Things get more and more absurd as the years go by.

The central idea of the book is the construction of a glorified lie detector, the "truth machine." The truth machine comes into being through a series of contrivances reminiscent of the founding of Apple Computers, the creation of the Human Genome Project and the establishment of the X-Prize. Never in human history has any project been undertaken in this way, because none of it makes any freaking sense. It makes no sense that the guy spearheading the project is a computer programmer, and it makes no sense that a company that has been given funding to pursue one very specific goal (building the truth machine) would first spend several years doing stuff that is completely unrelated to that goal in order to raise more money. The author manages to communicate his ignorance of corporate finance, computer programming, scientific research, and pretty much every other field he touches on.

He doesn't deal in any significant way with the resistance that would face the introduction of a perfect lie detector into all areas of society, nor with the negative psychological or sociological consequences that it would cause. At one point a character mentions that maybe people have become overly dependent on the truth machine, and that perhaps the part of the human brain that deals with uncertainty has atrophied as a result. Eureka! I thought. An actual interesting idea, 300 something pages into the book. Unfortunately the author goes nowhere with the idea. This book is the worst kind of escapist utopian fiction: It doesn't challenge us to think about the consequences of technological advances; all it shows us are the endless benefits of scientific progress.

Oh sure, there's the moral conflict involving the main character, but that's just the barest of excuses for a lot of gushing about world government and gyrocopters. And even that plot has a saccharine happy ending.

One of the cover blurbs compares this book to Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, and I can only assume that the author deliberately modeled the saga of Pete Armstrong on the tale of Howard Roarke. Unfortunately where Ayn Rand subtly and mercilessly drove her characters to heroic and yet tragic consequences, Halperin's characters just slog along through one trivial difficulty after another until the whole thing mercilessly and anticlimactically ends.

The Publishers Weekly blurb on Amazon reads in part:

His prose is at best workmanlike, and his plotting and character development tend toward the simplistic. Nearly all of his major characters, from millionaire-genius protagonist Pete Armstrong on down, seem to be either the smartest, the richest, the most respected or the most influential people in the world. The traditional qualities of fiction are apparently of only secondary interest to the author, however. As a futurist, Halperin seems primarily concerned with suggesting innovations and then working out their implications over half a century.

And as I've noted, even as a futurist Halperin is laughably inadequate.

The Truth Machine is a mildly interesting murder mystery drowning in giant sickening globs of technology porn.

Sorry, Snuppy, I didn't care for it.

Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Versus came out when I was a freshman in college. I bought a copy of it in hardcover, because I was excited about the idea of a book that could get its author sentenced to death. Unfortunately I was not, it turned out, quite so excited about reading a 500 page book during my freshman year of college. As the year went on, I became more excited about meals not involving Ramen noodles, and sold the book to a used book store for $7.

All that to say I've never read The Satanic Versus. Despite this fact, my expectations for Haroun and the Sea of Stories were pretty high -- as they would be for any author who has been both knighted and targeted for assassination for his writing. Maybe unfairly high.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories is not a Momentous or Important book. It's just a nice story about a kid named Haroun and his storyteller father, Rashid. When Haroun's mother leaves for another man (who has no patience for "stories that aren't even true"), Rashid loses his storytelling ability and Haroun loses the ability to concentrate on anything for longer than eleven minutes.

The story becomes more and more fantastic as it progresses, with Haroun and Rashid being swept off to Earth's secret second moon on a quest to save the Sea of Stories from being polluted to death by an army of mute shadow people. It is essentially a story about stories, and is filled with allegories, such as the army (also called a "library") of Pages, who must get their act together and work in concert to defeat the story-poisoning Chupwalas.

There are clear parallels with Rushdie's own life, and hints about the insidious nature of fundamentalist Islam. Yet in the end, everything works together to create a compelling story: even the efforts to stop storytelling paradoxically make good storytelling material.

It's an easy read and an engaging story. I suppose it's not fair to expect anything more, although it irritates me when a book jacked is covered with hyperbole and superlatives that the book can't possibly live up to. Stuff like:

"Affectionate, tender, comical and joyful... The exuberance of this book makes one laugh with relief and pleasure."

For the record, I chuckled precisely three times.

Or:

"In telling his tale, Rushdie borrows from sources as disparate as the conventions of the Bombay cinema; the films of Satyajit Ray; comic books and cartoons; Star Wars; and even the jingles on signboards along the highways of Kashmir... It is a performance that dazzles the eye as it erupts triumphantly out of the dark in a display of fireworks."

I mean, seriously? Fireworks? I don't know about all that other stuff, but I've seen Star Wars about a gajillion times and the only reference to it I could find was when one character utters a string of gobbledygook which includes the name "Obi." To me, that review sounds like an exercise in "How can I illustrate my cosmopolitan sensibility and broad liberal arts education?"

Anyway, Haroun and the Sea of Stories is an enjoyable read, if not quite comparable to fireworks or capable of inspiring a fatwa.


This book was suggested by Hayden of Lyric Flight. Next up: The Truth Machine by James Halperin suggested by Neva of Central Snark and PuppyToes.

I've been pretty busy lately with various projects, but we made enough visits at the in-laws over the past couple of weeks for me to finish Foreigner by C.J. Cherryh. It was recommended by Claire from Notes from a Wildcat Fan, a fellow sci-fi buff.

From junior high to college, I read almost nothing but sci-fi. Oh, occasionally I'd pick up a textbook, but I'd quickly get bored and return to Rendezvous with Rama or The Adventures of the Stainless Steel Rat. Lately I haven't read as much sci-fi, partly because I'm trying to broaden my perspective a bit, but partly because frankly most sci-fi novels are a little disappointing. There are a few exceptions -- Frank Herbert's Dune, for example, and most of Philip Dick's work -- but something about sci-fi doesn't lend itself to novels. Sci-fi thrives in the short story format, where a particular idea can be allowed to reach its logical conclusion without outstaying its welcome. Think of the better Twilight Zone episodes.

Foreigner is better than the typical sci-fi novel. Cherryh grapples with a topic that's big enough to justify the novel format: How does one cope in an alien society that is superficially similar to human society, but at a fundamental level is so different as to be virtually incomprehensible? The protagonist is Bren Cameron, a diplomat who represents an enclave of humanity whose ancestors crash landed on an alien planet several hundred years earlier. The humans are technologically superior to the native atevi, but physically weaker and vastly outnumbered. Even more troubling, the atevi mindset is confounding to the humans: they have, it is said, fourteen words for betrayal and not one for love. Humanity survives at the whim of the atevi, who allow the humans to survive in exchange for doling out technological secrets. At the start of the novel, the humans are on the verge of giving up their last secrets, and are in need of a diplomatic breakthrough with the atevi to survive.

One of the problems with a novel about a character who is stranded in a culture that is incomprehensible to him is that the frustrations of the protagonist are transferred to the reader. For about 300 pages Bren wanders around, engaging various characters in confusing conversations, intermittently trying to figure out what exactly is going on. There's almost no action to speak of until the last fifty pages or so, which means that there's nothing to keep the reader's interest except the desire to figure out who's on who's side and why various characters keep disappearing on strange errands, and then reappearing a few dozen pages later, breathless and rain-soaked. Frustrating your main character -- who has no choice but to keep slogging through -- is one thing, but frustrating your reader is a dangerous game.

Slowly the complexities of atevi society begin to emerge, and things begin to pick up in the final chapters. There is a reasonably exciting climax, and a satisfying conclusion, which hints at the the possibility of a future of coexistence between humans and atevi. Cherryh's writing style is excellent, and she has obviously has spent a great deal of time working out the details of atevi culture. Foreigner is an interesting, occasionally thought-provoking, and somewhat frustrating novel. Overall it's an enjoyable read, but it's not what I'd suggest if you're looking for a good novel about contact with an alien race. I would recommend Heinlein's Red Planet or Clarke's Childhood's End, off the top of my head. I've also heard that Contact, by Carl Sagan, and The Mote in God's Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle are good.

Next up: Haroun and the Sea of Stories suggested by Hayden of Lyric Flight.

Wow.

I finally finished reading Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstader, suggested by Wolfe from Wolfe's Musings. The book is 742 pages long, and it's not exactly light reading. It's basically an exploration of the idea of intelligence, artificial and otherwise. Hofstader's goal is to shed some light on how intelligence / consciousness / self-awareness happens. I would call him a materialist, in the sense that he believes that there is a physical basis for thoughts, feelings and emotions. He is dismissive of "soulists," who believe that there is some sort of inexplicable metaphysical aspect to consciousness.

The question, in Hofstader's mind, is, "If the human brain is made of essentially the same stuff as a kitchen table or a pocket calculator or a tree, why does the first have a sense of of self -- of being an 'I' -- whereas the others do not? Hofstader begins with the assumption that there is a physical corollary for all the activity that goes on in the brain, and that it is this physical activity that is responsible for thoughts and the sense of "self." He goes on to explore how this physical activity, which seems completely mechanistic and completely unlike the process of thought that we experience, can in fact give rise to a qualitatively different sort of activity occurring at the "higher levels" of the brain. One example of such a system is an ant colony: the individual ants are stupid, acting in response to basic stimula, but the colony as a whole is much smarter.

This kind of qualitative difference between the different levels of a system is key to Hofstader's thesis that critics of the possibility of artificial intelligence have misinterpreted the implications of such limitative notions as Godel's theorem. Godel's theorem states, in essence, that any sufficiently powerful system will contain truths that are not provable within the system. The problem with computers, these critics charge, is that they are stuck within a particular system -- there is no way to program them to realize that there is no solution to a particular problem within the system, even though such a fact would be perfectly obvious to an intelligent person who can "jump out of the system." So the computer is stuck, going round and round (remember the episode of Star Trek where Captain Kirk and crew wreak havoc with a race of robots by acting in a completely illogical manner?), trying to solve the problem with a method that is doomed to fail.

Hofstader argues, on the other hand, that there is nothing magical about being able to jump out of the system and reflect on whether it is the appropriate system to be using. In fact, in doing this one is still "in" a system -- it's just a bigger system, one that has the ability to think about lower level systems. And one can jump out of that top level system and reflect on it as well -- but then of course one has entered a new system again. There's always another system, at a higher level, no matter how high up you go.

One could question whether you really are jumping "up" a level by thinking about a system of thinking, or thinking about thinking about a system of thinking, or thinking about thinking about thinking about... but I think that's part of Hofstader's thesis. At a certain point these levels blur together, because they are recursive -- meaning they reflect back on themselves. Hofstader uses the works of Escher and Bach to illustrate the concept of recursivity (among other things). For example, there is Escher's stairway that goes up and up until you are back where you started, or the two hands, each of which is drawing the other.

Hofstader believes that self-awareness -- the "I" -- arises from this kind of recursivity. To put it very simply, at the highest levels the brain is a system that deals with symbols, and the "I" is the symbol for the system itself.

There is much, much more to this book. There are lengthy tangents into mathematics, philosophy, biology (the section about the recursion that takes place in the copying of DNA is particularly fascination), etc. I'll admit to skimming some of the sections that dealt with proving some abstract mathematical/logical concept. One nice thing about the book is the way it's organized into sections that alternate between straight exposition of some concept and a fictional dialogue that illustrates the concept. Still, it's not light reading, and I did wish at points that there was a Reader's Digest version that would just give me the main points without going off on a tangent for 30 pages about wasps or something.

Godel, Escher, Bach made me rethink a lot of my preconceptions about consciousness and artificial intelligence, and is well worth reading the next time you have three months to spare.

Next up: Foreigner by C.J. Cherryh suggested by Claire from Notes from a WildCat Fan.

The Kite Runner is a book I never would have read if it hadn't been suggested by Ann from At Home with Ann.

It's really not my kind of book. I'm not really into conventional character-driven dramas, and I almost never read novels that have been written in the past 20 years. When I read novels, it's usually science fiction or "classics." And to be honest, the book didn't really pull me in at first. I might have given up on it if I weren't for my obligations to the Lamest Contest Ever.

I'm really glad I stuck with it though. The Kite Runner is a powerful book; the kind of novel that sticks with you, probably forever. On one level, it's the story of a friendship between two boys. On another level, it's the story of modern Afghanistan. The threads of the two stories are interwoven expertly, and parallel each other in many ways. Both threads are tragic, but both end on a note of cautious hope.

The story begins in the 1970s, when Afghanistan is a poor but beautiful, peaceful and cultured country. The protagonist is Amir, a young boy who lives a sheltered life as the son of a prominent Afghani. Hassan, the son of his father's servant, is Amir's best friend. Because Hassan is a Hazara, one of Afghanistan's underclass, Amir cannot openly acknowledge his friendship with Hassan. The result is a one-sided relationship in which Amir cherishes and relies upon Hassan while simultaneously disdaining and disavowing him.

At the same time, Amir struggles to gain the approval of his father, who doesn't understand his unathletic, bookish son. An opportunity to endear himself to his father arises in a kite-fighting contest. He believes -- with good reason -- that if he wins the contest, he will garner his father's respect and love. Amir becomes so obsessed that when he is unexpectedly thrust into a situation where he must choose between this goal and his friendship for Hassan, he betrays his friend.

From this point, things go rapidly downhill for both Hassan and Afghanistan. You're probably at least a little familiar with the travails of Afghanistan: First the Russians invaded, which was bad enough. But when the Russians left the Taliban took over. The Taliban makes the Russians look like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. After reading this book, I am hard pressed to think of a group that embodies evil more purely than the Taliban. Honestly, I don't think even the Nazis measure up. Occasionally I hear people use the term "American Taliban" to refer to the religious right in this country. I'm not fan of the religious right, but with all due respect, people who use the term "American Taliban" in this way are f***ing retards. Read this book. If you think Pat Robertson measures up to this level of depravity, then you should be in therapy.

Amir and his father eventually flee to the U.S. (the East San Francisco Bay area, to be specific -- about an hour from where I live). But Afghanistan -- and his betrayal of Hassan -- continue to haunt him, and in the book's final act he finally has an opportunity to "be good again." The final few chapters are so riveting and haunting that you won't be able to put it down.

I don't want to give you the impression that this is a "political" book. It's not at all. It's the story of a young boy who becomes a man against the backdrop of the unfolding tragedy of Afghanistan. I highly recommend it.

I decided to read Fast Food Nation (suggested by Kat from MagicKat) in its entirety before posting any comments, because I didn't want to post something like "So far, it doesn't sound so bad..." and then get to something truly horrifying in the next chapter. So now that I've read all of it, my verdict is...

It doesn't sound so bad.

Fast Food Nation is a well written, fascinating, and well-researched book. Also a fairly quick read, actually. Schlosser has a very engaging prose style. However, his goal seems to be to shock people into rethinking their affinity for fast food, and in that, he failed, at least in my case.

First of all, I'm a heartless conservative bastard, so his anecdotes about low-paying non-union meatpacking jobs and teenagers slaving away for minimum wage at stultifying, unskilled jobs have no effect on me. Does it bother me that unions can't seem to get any traction at fast food restaurants? Not really. Am I troubled that fast food workers get paid beans for making fries? Again, no. Ditto for the fact that McDonald's is putting traditional restaurants out of business in Germany. Good for them.

I won't go into my reasoning in detail here, but suffice it to say that I think that the enforcement of a minimum wage is a meaningless gesture that probably does more to hurt working class people than help them. It essentially cuts off the bottom rung of the employment ladder, making it harder for unskilled workers to find jobs and increasing the incentive for employers to automate tasks rather than hire people to do them, not to mention send jobs overseas. And who do you think is hurt by the price increases caused by the minimum wage (assuming that the evil fast food companies don't simply absorb the cost out of the goodness of their hearts)? Well, presumably people who spend a large portion of their income at fast food restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations, and other service establishments that pay minimum wage. That's right, the working poor.

As for the unions, they have their place, but if a union can't seem to generate much interest in a particular industry, it's generally because either (a) the working conditions and compensation aren't really that bad or (b) most of the employees don't care much about the job, probably because it's a part time or temporary job for them. Oh sure, the fast food giants and big meatpacking companies do their part to discourage unionization, but so does every industry. If the auto workers can unionize despite the wishes of GM, so can the meatpackers. If they don't care enough to get their act together, why should I?

Yeah, yeah, the workers are illiterate and unskilled, don't speak English, and may not even be legally allowed to work in the U.S., so I should feel really bad for them. And yet... they're pouring over the border looking for meatpacking jobs. Sounds more like a problem with the Mexican economy than with the U.S. meatpacking industry. I'm not sure I see how the meatpacking industry is to blame for the existence of large numbers of unskilled, uneducated people in the world. Oh, and if you were born in the U.S. and you have no job skills, maybe you should have paid more attention in shop class.

That's not to say that working in a meatpacking plant sounds like a good time. It sounds absolutely horrific, to tell you the truth, and it sounds like there are some very greedy, inhuman jerkwads running the places. Buying a Big Mac doesn't make them greedy, inhuman jerkwads though. That's just they way they are. Although I bet they'd rethink their jerkwadness if a lot of people stopped buying Big Macs.

And then of course there's the stuff about how fat we are because we eat too much fast food, and how it's going to give us diabetes and heart disease and kill us. Except that I'm not fat, and I don't let my kids eat tons of junk food, so we're fine. The rest of you can do what you want.

To me, the only really troubling revelations in the book were regarding hamburger meat. Basically what I learned from this book is: Don't eat hamburgers from a fast food place. And for the love of all that's holy, don't eat hamburgers from a school cafeteria. And if you buy hamburger from the store, make sure you cook it really well. Because, well, there's a lot of shit in hamburger.

Next up, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini suggested by Ann from At Home with Ann.