Overview

Reading Log For 2003

THE BOOK OF FIVE RINGS

Miyamoto Musashi

A New Translation from the Japanese by Thomas Cleary (1993)

including

The Book of Family Traditions on the Art of War by Yagyu Munenori

Hardcover

Barnes & Noble Books, New York

2002-12-30 to 2003-01-02

See other translations:

THE BIBLE AS HISTORY (1956, updated 1980)

Werner Keller

Translated from the German by William Neil

Revised by Joachim Rehork

New material translated from the German by B. H. Rasmussen

2002-12-20 to 2003-02-06

In general, Keller argues that archaeology supported Biblical stories. Most chapters end with Rehork disputing Keller based on more recent evidence. I’ve never read such a schizophrenic book.
Many of the arguments made against errancy (THE BIBLE UNEARTHED (2001), etc.) could also be make against this book: A bunch of pottery sherds don’t prove anything; Monarchs use names of ancestors, so you could be talking about two different guys; cities and towns may have more than one name; etc.
Early on, mentions that there are many towns in the Middle East with Biblical names. But he also mentions that these were relatively new towns. There was no continuity of the names. The reason the towns have Biblical names is because of the influence of the Bible on the later settlers, not because the town was really there!
46:

That day [1929] a telegram from Mesopotamia flashed what was perhaps the most extraordinary message that had ever stirred men’s imaginations “We have found the Flood”. The incredible discovery at Ur made headline news in the United States and in Britain.

The Flood—that was the only possible explanation of this great clay deposit beneath the hill at Ur, which quite clearly separated two epochs of settlements

It’s not the only possible explanation.
56:

In all the flood traditions which have been mentioned, problems arise from mankind’s unfortunate tendency to believe what it wants to believe

I couldn’t agree more!
67: Extra-Biblical references to “Abraham” and “Benjamites” were thought to support their existence. It was later discovered that these names were common at the time, and almost certainly did not refer to the Biblical people.
72:

The part of the country which was to become the home of the Israelite people was named by the Romans after Israel’s worst enemies: Palestine comes from Pelishtim, as the Philistines are called in the Old Testament.

97: The story of Joseph and the Potiphar’s wife is mirrored with Egyptian story of Anubis and his brother’s wife.
106: D. B. Redford has 23 reasons why story of Joseph did not take place during the Hyksos period, but rather much later.
116: The Hittites in the Bible are definitely not the archaeological Hittite Empire.
118: Exodus 1:8-11 says that the new Pharaoh “knew not Joseph” Therefore the town of Youssef can’t refer to him!
123: Many details from the story of Moses are shared by that of King Sargon, founder of Akkad in 2360 B.C.
126 ftnt: The German Bible users Ried-Meer = Reed Sea and Rotes Meer = Red Sea. The English Bible makes no distinction. Hebrew Yam Suph = Reed Sea.
127: A caravan of cattle and people can cover 45 miles in 3 days Then why do they wander over a few hundred square miles for 40 years!
140: Egyptian “Book of the Dead” chapter 125 has deceased people make the confession:

I have not made any man sick
I have not made any man weep
I have not killed
I have not commanded any man to kill
I have not done harm to any man
I have not diminished the amount of the foodstuffs in the temples
I have not damaged the loaves offered to the gods
I have not stolen the loaves offered to the dead
I have not had any (illicit) sexual relations
I have not engaged in any unnatural lewdness

141:

The consequence of this renders it difficult for us today to maintain the earlier claim that the Biblical code of laws was unique. This fact may well shake the confidence of many people. We cannot remove this feeling of uncertainty. On the other hand, in consequence of confirmation from non-Biblical sources of the relevant Bible texts, Israel’s relationship to the cultural and historical world around it as well as to the precepts of its neighbors now appears to us in a much clearer light.

172: Despite their mention in early books of the Bible, camels were almost certainly not introduced until much later.
182: Major Vivian Gilbert, a British army officer in World War I writes that a brigade major in Allenby’s army used extremely detailed geographical information in I Samuel for attacking a Turkish emplacement, using the same tactics from the Bible.
219: The relationship between Sheba and Solomon was embellished. The Awwam temple at Marib does not date to the time of Sheba.
260: The deaths of Assyrians in camp before they could attack Jerusalem is possibly attributed to plague.
267: The worship of idols was commonplace during Biblical period: A brazen serpent was worshipped in the Temple at Jerusalem until the time of King Hezekiah of Judah, abound 700 B.C.
284: Despite the “exile” there were still Jews in Judah.
297-298: The birth story of Jesus mirrors that of Cyrus the Great, five centuries earlier.
299:

“Mene, Mene, Tekel, Uparsin” were the words on the wall which have become famous. They mean: “God hath numbered thy kingdom”. “Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting”. “Thy kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians” (Dan. 5:25-28)

299: The king who the book of Daniel calls Nebuchadnezzar was Nabonidus.
310:

In view of the fact that, long before Alexander, the Greeks had been stretching out their feelers in a thousand ways in the direction of Mesopotamia and Egypt, we can only shake our heads in amazement at Jewish ignorance of the ways of the world. Time seems to have been standing still in the little theocracy and the life of its tiny religious community appears to have been influenced only by the Torah, the Law of God.

312: According to legend, seventy Hebrew scribes were locked away separately and tasked to translate the Torah into Greek. Because they all supposedly independently came up with identical translations, it was referred to as the “Septuagint”, meaning “the Seventy”.
328: The translation for the star “In the East” in Matthew 2:8 is Greek singular “En té anatolé” but elsewhere “the East” is translated as plural “antolai”. This refers to the early (heliacal) rising, which the translators of the Authorized Version could not have known.
336: The story of a chosen child exposed to danger is attached to Sargon of Akkad, Moses, Cyrus the Great, Emperor Augustus, and Oedipus.
350: Mention of Jesus “... in Josephus must be considered a forgery.”
351:

Moreover, the Evangelists linked the crucifixion of Jesus with so many passages from the Old Testament that it would almost be possible to have doubts about Jesus’ crucifixion. Can all these terrible things have been imagined merely for the sake of cross references in the Bible? And it must not be forgotten that Jesus was by no means the first god to be crucified! He had been preceded by fertility gods who suffered and were put to death.

365: Joseph (Josephus the historian) was appointed commander-in-chief of Galilee, captured by Vespasian’s troops in October 67.
367: Josephus tries to reason with the holdout Jews:

O hard hearted men, throw away your weapons, have pity on your country that stands on the edge of the abyss. Look round and behold the beauty of all that you are ready to betray. What a city! What a Temple! What gifts from so many nations! Who would dare to let all of this be given to the flames? Is there one of you who can wish for all this to be no more? What more precious treasure could have been given to a man to preserve—You obdurate creatures, more unfeeling that these very stones!

SLEEPING WITH EXTRA-TERRESTRIALS

The Rise Of Irrationalism And Perils Of Piety (1999)

Wendy Kaminer

Hardcover

Pantheon Books, New York

2002-12-30 to 2002-01-02

3: Confesses that she goes to a homeopath.
8:

I’m not oblivious to the comfort that supernaturalism may provide or unimpressed by the powerful human impulse to believe; nor am I utterly secure in my disbelief. Skepticism is an attitude, not dogma.

161:

Pop gurus prey on existential anxieties and thrive when our fear of being alone and mortal in an indifferent universe is stronger than our judgment. Argue with them. No one who demands worship, however covertly, deserves respect.

178: The widely held pessimism about crack babies in the 1908s was based on scanty evidence. The long-term effects were unknown.
211: The Paula Jones suit against Bill Clinton involved a lot of pop feminist victimization.

Her objective evidence of discrimination—not receiving flowers on Secretaries Day—was laughable.

217: Loving v. Virginia went to Supreme Court in 1967. The Lovings had been criminally prosecuted under Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law. Given a suspended sentence under the condition that they leave the state.
225-226:

Cyberspace is bound to change the way we reason, as well as the way we read, and perhaps because I can’t envision the New Rationalism that supposedly awaits us, I’m already nostalgic for the Old. Hypertext will be the death of argument—those tightly structured skeins of logic that require attentive readers, undistracted by linkages. Interrupt an argument repeatedly, and you defeat it.

231:

Peter Schrag demonstrated the dangers of government by referendum in Paradise Lost, a 1998 book analyzing the California experience. Schrag observed that referendums became the tool of affluent whites, disinclined to support public services for less affluent immigrants and racial minorities. White voters represented about half the state’s population, but 78 percent of the electorate, and they have been responsible for passing the forty ballot questions approved since 1978. The result has been what Schrag termed the “Mississification” of California: a dramatic decline in public infrastructure and especially public schools.

252:

To believe that society can successfully rid itself of religious belief, you have to regard faith as essentially voluntary, and I suspect it is more like an instinctive reflex, a reflection of taste and temperament.

THE ART OF DECEPTION

Controlling The Human Element Of Security (2002)

Kevin D. Mitnick

William L. Simon

Hardcover

Wiley Publishing, Indianapolis

2003-01-31 to 2003-02-16

ix: Picked up blank bus transfers from bus terminal garbage and used a code to punch them in order to ride for free wherever he wanted
xii: social engineer = uses deception, influence, and persuasion against businesses, usually targeting their information. vs. grifter = swindles and cheats people out of their money.
In general, I thought the book was very redundant. The instances where social engineering was mixed with technology (e.g. password cracking) were a bit far-fetched, to say the least.
Every time Mitnick mentioned his exploits, he emphasized that he now knows that what he did was wrong. But using the social engineering principle of telling people what they want to hear, how can we know he is sincere?
All requests for computer and voice mail accounts should be written and require signatures.
208: A double standard: antiviral software does not check for spyware.
246: Feb. 2001 Scientific American: Robert B. Cialdini summarized research on manipulation.
257: Recommends companies provide a copy of his book to all employees. Shameless self-promotion (tongue-in-cheek, I hope)

JAPAN INC.

An Introduction To Japanese Economics (The Comic Book, 1986)

Shotaro Ishinomori

Translated from the Japanese by Betsey Scheiner

Intro. by Peter Duus

Paperback

University of California Press, Berkeley

2003-02-15 to 2003-02-17

The plots never had concrete beginning or endings. I had a hard time distinguishing some of the characters (drawn almost identically).
The wily Tsugawa and the kindly Kudo were obviously more symbolic than literal. Otherwise they seemed to have delusions of grandeur, as if the entire future of Japanese economics rested on them.
104-118: The yen was introduced in 1871 as ¥1 = $1. By April 1949, the rate was set ¥360 = $1. The reason was not known, although it might be because “yen” means “circle.” In August 1971, it moved to a fluctuating-market system. It temporarily floated during the “Nixon shock.”
209-210: Because of the Great Depression, finance minister Takahashi Korekiyo began a bond drive in 1931 to provide revive business and fund the military. Later, when prosperity returned, he decreased national and military expenditures to prevent inflation. He was killed by an angry military on 26 Feb., 1936.
210 ftnt: In 1949, Joseph Dodge came to Japan form the U.S. in order to deal with Japanese inflation, enforcing a balanced budget known as the “Dodge Line.”
254: Kudo:

“Because it’s easy to make a killing on the stock market rather than investing in equipment, U.S. companies don’t renovate their equipment.”

256 ftnt: In the U.S., banking and securities are separated under the Glass-Steagall Act, which arose from the lesson of the Great Depression.
270 ftnt: Joint operation of banks and securities companies is prohibited in the U.S. and Japan, but is possible to combine securities and trust operations in “universal banking.”

INTRODUCING EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY (1999)

Dylan Evans and Oscar Zarate

UK: Icon Books, Duxford, Cambridge

USA: Totem Books, Lanham, Maryland

Read entirely on 2003-02-17

This is another of the recommended books by the Wachowski brothers.
33: Noam Chomsky showed in the 1950s that a general-purpose computer learning program could not learn a language under the same conditions as a human child. Adult speech contains lots of errors, but no indication of what is correct and incorrect: ‘the poverty of stimulus.”
83: Robert Trivers wrote a famous paper “Parent-Offspring Conflict” in 1974 which argued that children want more than parents are willing to give because every child is twice as related to itself than to its offspring.
93: Children do not develop a Theory of Mind until about 4 ½, and cannot comprehend that others hold beliefs different from their own. Illustrated in the “Sally-Ann” test.

EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS AND THE MADNESS OF CROWDS (1841)

Charles Mackay

Introduction by Martin S. Fridson

Paperback

Wiley Investment Classics, New York

Only includes first 3 chapters: 2002-07-14 to 2002-07-16

Introduction (1996)

2 - 3:

Mackay’s influence extends far beyond the confines of the financial markets. A survey of the media yields allusions to Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds in connection with computer virus protection, the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Halley’s comet, the proliferation of casino gambling, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the Power Rangers.

Foreword by Bernard M. Baruch

Hardcover

MetroBooks, New York

Rest of book: 2003-02-17 to 2003-03-25

Foreword (1932)

xiv::

Although there be no scientific cure, yet, as in all primitive, unknown (and therefore diabolic) spells, there may be potent incantations. I have always thought that if, in the lamentable era of the “New Economics,” culminating in 1929, even in the very presence of dizzily spiralling prices, we had all continuously repeated,“two and two still make four,” much of the evil might have been averted. Similarly, even in the general moment of gloom in which this foreword is written, when many begin to wonder if declines will never halt, the appropriate abracadabra may be: “They always did.”

Money Mania.—The Mississippi Scheme

1: The Mississippi Scheme was perpetrated on France by John Law in 1710-1720.
6: The death of Louis XIV left France with a debt of 3000 millions livres, a revenue of 145 million, expenses of 142 millions per year, leaving only 3 millions to pay interest upon the principal.
7: Informers on tax cheaters were given an incentive of 1/5 of all fines and confiscations.
10: Law make his own currency for French banks. It did better than the national currency, which tended to depreciate. Originally, his maxim was that a banker deserved death who issued paper without the security to back it up.
14: People rushed in to buy shares of Law’s Mississippi project, which promised 120% profit.
30:

Lord Stair, the English ambassador, said, that it was now impossible to doubt of the sincerity of Law’s conversion to the Catholic religion; he had established the inquisition, after having given abundant evidence of his faith in transubstantiation, by turning so much gold into paper.

32: By May 1720, there was twice as much paper specie as government coin.
42: Despite bringing ruin to the French economy, John Law was a true believer that his system would make France the most powerful country in the world, and therefore only invested in France. His only asset upon leaving was a single diamond. “This fact alone ought to rescue his memory from the charge of knavery, so often and so unjustly brought against him.”

The South-Sea Bubble

46: The South-Sea Bubble began when merchants took up the British army and navy debt in 1711 in exchange for certain privileges.
50: Mr. Robert Walpole was the only member of parliament to speak out against the idea:

“the dangerous practice of stock-jobbing, and would divert the genius of the nation from trade and industry. It would hold out a dangerous lure to decoy the unwary to their ruin, by making them part with the earnings of their labour for a prospect of imaginary wealth. The great principle of the project was an evil of first-rate magnitude; it was to raise artificially the value of the stock, by exciting and keeping up a general infatuation, and by promising dividends out of funds which could never be adequate to the purpose.”

55: Descriptions of schemes were often absurd, such as for a wheel for perpetual motion—capital one million, but the most surreal was “A company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is.”
66:

The Duke of Portland spoke in a similar strain, and expressed his great wonder why any body should be dissatisfied; of course, he was a winner by his speculations, and in a condition similar to that of the fat alderman in Joe Miller’s Jests, who, whenever he had eaten a good dinner, folded his hands upon his paunch, and expressed his doubts whether there could be a hungry man in the world.

86-87: The two main ringleaders of the disaster were acquitted, despite public outcry, so as not to bring a Tory minister into power.
87-88: Totaling up the loss to public credit.

The Tulipmania

89: Between 1600 and 1634, English had a mild fondness for Tulips, which spun into Tulipomania.
92: A sailor ate a tulip, thought to be an onion, worth three thousand florins, or about 280 lb. sterling.
93: Tulip prices became listed on the Stock Exchange of Amsterdam in 1636.
96: The Provincial Council of the Hague declared all contracts made up to the height of Tulipomania were null and void. Courts refused to interfere on the grounds that such debts were actually from gambling.

The Alchymists

109: Arthephius: Born in the early part of 12^th century. Claimed to be 1025 years old. His followers tried to prove he was Apollonius of Tyana, who was described by Philostratus.
138: Trithemius: Said to be the first writer who makes mention of the devil and Dr. Faustus, a story which he believed.
147: On Jacques Cœur: (15^th Century), later a member of the court of Charles VII. “...As there is no enemy so bitter as the estranged friend, so, of all the tyrants and tramplers upon the poor, there is none so fierce and reckless as the upstart that sprang from their ranks.”
153: Augurello: (born in 1441)

It is said, that when Augurello applied to him for a reward, the pope [Leo X], with great ceremony and much apparent kindness and cordiality, drew an empty purse from his pocket, and presented it to the alchymist, saying that since he was able to make gold, the most appropriate present that could be made him, was a purse to put it in.

189: The Rosicrucians: derived their name from Rosencreutz, or “Rose-cross,” a German philosopher who traveled the Holy Land at the end of the 14^th century. Their existence cannot be confirmed earlier than 1605.
204: Literature has many references to Rosicrucian mythology, including Shakespeare’s “delicate Ariel” and sylphs (not to be confused with fairies).
230: The Count de St. Germain, in the court of Luis XV, allowed it to be believed that he was 2000 years old, without ever being too explicit. Some believed him to be the “Wandering Jew.”
247: Cagliostro left Strasbourg late 18^th century after people believed him to be the Wandering Jew, the Anti-Christ, etc.
254: Cagliostro convinced Lord George Gordon to write a letter on his behalf regarding the affair of the necklace. Lord George was then found guilty of libel against the Queen of France.
292-293: List of species of divination from Gaule’s Magastromancer and quoted in Hone’s Year-Book, p. 1517. For example:

Stereomancy, or divining by the elements
Acromancy, or divining by the air
Kleromancy, by lots
Omphalomancy, by the naval
Macharomancy, by knives and swords
Astralgalomancy, by dice

Fortune-Telling

294: On the interpretation of dreams:

There is not a flower that blossoms, or fruit that ripens, that, dreamed of, is not ominous of either good or evil to such people. Every tree of the field or the forest is endowed with a similar influence over the fate of mortals, if seen in the night-visions.

297: On omens:

Among the other means of self-annoyance upon which men have stumbled, in their vain hope of discovering the future, signs and omens hold a conspicuous place. There is scarcely and occurrence in nature which, happening at a certain time, is not looked upon by some persons as a prognosticator either of good or evil. The latter are in the greatest number, so much more ingenious are we in tormenting ourselves than in discovering reasons for enjoyment in the things that surround us. We go out of our course to make ourselves uncomfortable; the cup of life is not bitter enough to our palate, and we distill superfluous poison to put into it, or conjure up hideous things to frighten ourselves at, which would never exist if we did not make them.

298: On the number 13 and Death:

The philosophic Beranger, in his exquisite song, Thirteen at Table, has taken a poetical view of this humiliating superstition, and mingled, as is his wont, a lesson of genuine wisdom in his lay. Being at dinner, he overthrows the salt, and, looking round the room, discovers that he is the thirteenth guest. While he is mourning his unhappy fate, and conjuring up visions of disease and suffering and the grave, his is suddenly startled by the apparition of Death herself, not in the shape of a grim foe, with skeleton-ribs and menacing dart, but an angel of light, who shews the folly of tormenting ourselves with the dread of her approach, when she is the friend, rather than the enemy, of man, and frees us from the fetters which bind us to the dust.
If men could bring themselves to look upon death in this manner, living well and wisely till her inevitable approach, how vast a store of grief and vexation would they spare themselves!

The Magnetisers

311: The sympathetic alphabet was a means in which people could communicate thousands of miles apart. Flesh was cut from two people’s arms and transplanted. Then both each feel a magnetic needle on the other’s piece.
323 ftnt:

An enthusiastic philosopher, of whose name we are not informed, had constructed a very satisfactory theory on some subject or other, and was not a little proud of it. “But the facts, my dear fellow,” said his friend, “the facts do not agree with your theory.” “Don’t they?” replied the philosopher, shrugging his shoulders, “then, tant pis pour le faits;”—so much the worse for the facts!

344:

Here we conclude the subject, as it would serve no good purpose to extend to greater length the history of Animal Magnetism; especially at a time when many phenomena, the reality of which it is impossible to dispute, are daily occurring to startle and perplex the most learned, impartial, and truth-loving of mankind.

The Crusades

356: On relics:

A grove of a hundred oaks would not have furnished all the wood sold in little morsels as remnants of the true cross; and the tears of Mary, if collected together, would have filled a cistern.

410:

Such pilgrims as had returned from the Holy Land came back with minds more liberal and expanded than when they set out. They had come in contact with a people more civilised than themselves; they had seen something more of the world, and had lost some portion, however small, of the prejudice and bigotry of ignorance.

428:

It may be remarked as characteristic of this Crusade [of Richard Cœur de Lion], that the Christians and the Moslems no longer looked upon each other as barbarians, to whom mercy was a crime. Each host entertained the highest admiration for the bravery and magnanimity of the other, and, in their occasional truces, met upon the most friendly terms.

437:

In many of the bloody wars which defile the page of history, we find that soldiers, utterly reckless of the works of God, will destroy his masterpiece, man, with unsparing brutality, but linger with respect round the beautiful works of art. They will slaughter women and children, but spare a picture; will hew down the sick, the helpless, and the hoary-headed, but refrain from injuring a fine piece of sculpture. The Latins, on their entrance into Constantinople, respected neither the works of God nor man, but vented their brutal ferocity upon the one, and satisfied their avarice upon the other. Many beautiful bronze statues, above all price as works of art, were broken into pieces to be sold as old metal. The finely-chiselled marble, which could be put to no such vile uses, was also destroyed with a recklessness, if possible, still more atrocious.

The Witch Mania

463:

A misunderstanding of the famous text of the Mosaic law, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” no doubt led many conscientious men astray, whose superstition, warm enough before, wanted but a little corroboration to blaze out with desolating fury.

but it did not follow, as the superstitious monomaniacs of the middle ages imagined, that the Bible established the existence of the power of divination by its edicts against those who pretended to it. From the best authorities, it appears that the Hebrew word, which has been rendered venefica and witch, means a poisoner and divinerness, a dabbler in spells, or fortune-teller. The modern witch was a very different character, and joined to her pretended power of foretelling future events that of working evil upon the life, limbs, and possessions of mankind.

473: The Frieslanders formed a confederacy in the 11^th century for protection from the Normans and Saxons. They managed their own affairs without nobles or clergy, and practiced true representative government. Their degree of civil and religious liberty was very uncommon for that age.
477:

When religion and law alike recognised the crime, it is no wonder that the weak in reason and the strong in imagination, especially when they were of a nervous temperament, fancied themselves endued with the terrible powers of which all the world were speaking. The belief of their neighbors did not lag behind their own, and execution was the speedy consequence.

480:

Upon this insane and blasphemous charge they were condemned to die. In the criminal registers of Constance there stands against the name of each the simple but significant phrase, “convicta et combusta.”

484: Gilles Garnier burned alive for being a loup-garou (werewolf), and fined the cost of the prosecution.
505: At the close of the 16^th century, some learned men did speak out against witch-hunts: Wierus in Germany, Pietro d’Apone in Italy, Reginald Scot in England. However, these men were vilified by the writings of James VI.
538:

many others voluntarily owned that they were weir-wolves, and many more were forced by torture to make the same avowal. Such criminals were thought to be too atrocious to be hanged first and then burned; they were generally sentenced to be burned alive, and their ashes to be scattered to the winds. Grave and learned doctors of divinity openly sustained the possibility of these transformations, relying mainly upon the history of Nebuchadnezzar. They could not imaging why, if he had been an ox, modern men could not become wolves by Divine permission and the power of the devil.

The Slow Poisoners

565: James I suspected “of being addicted to the most abominable of all offences” with Robert Kerr, a Scottish youth. In many places, the author expresses his extreme distaste of James I. Did this have to do with the politics of his day, or were there other personal reasons?

Haunted Houses

618:

It is to be hoped that the day is not far distant when lawgivers will teach the people by some more direct means, and prevent the recurrence of delusions like these, and many worse, which might be cited, by securing to every child born within their dominions an education in accordance with the advancing state of civilisation. If ghosts and witches are not yet altogether exploded, it is the fault, not so much of the ignorant people, as of the law and the government that have neglected to enlighten them.

Popular Follies of Great Cities

626 & 645: The author rails upon some contemporary playwrights for irresponsibly encouraging children to steal. I am reminded of our current crusades to blame juvenile delinquency on TV.
Several meaningless phrases became suddenly common out of nowhere:
625: “Does your mother know you’re out?” and “Who are you?”
628: “Tommy and Jerry” Perhaps the inspiration for Tom and Jerry cartoon characters?
629: A song about “Jim Crow”

Duels and Ordeals

679: While Swift could see no harm in rogues and fools shooting each other, Steele spoke out against dueling eloquently in a letter to the Guardian:

“A coward has often fought, a coward has often conquered; but a coward never forgave.”

683: Lord Byron fought a sword duel with Mr. Chaworth in 1765, and killed him. Because it was fought without premeditation, Byron was only convicted of manslaughter, and merely paid a fine.

A BOOK OF FIVE RINGS

Miyamoto Musashi

Translated from the Japanese by Victor Harris (1974)

Hardcover

The Overlook Press, New York

2003-03-28 to ?

See other translations:

Translator’s Introduction

1 - 4: Includes a background of Japan’s history. The following are some key dates:

782: Emperor Kammu starts building Kyoto, including Butokuden (“Hall of the virtues of war”) training hall
792: Kondei (“Stalwart Youth”) system established to stiffen the military ranks with professional soldiers, often sons of high families
1100s: Time of internal strife
1390 – 1600: Muromachi period
1573: Oda Nobunaga becomes Shogun
1582: Nobunaga assassinated. Toyotomi Hideyoshi continues reunification of Japan. Revives practice of samurai wearing two swords, “Hideyoshi’s Sword Hunt”
1584: Musashi Miyamoto born
1589: Hieyoshi dies
1600: Tokugawa Ieyasu defeats Nogunaga (son of Hideyoshi) at battle of Seki ga hara
1603: Tokugawa Ieyasu formally becomes Shogun
1616: Ieyasu dies

7 - 10:

Shinmen Musashi No Kami Fujiwara No Genshin, or as he is commonly known Miyamoto Musashi, was born in the village called Miyamoto in the province Mimasaka in 1584. “Musashi” is the name of an area south-west of Tokyo, and the appellation “No Kami” means noble person of the area, while “Fujiwara” is the name of a noble family foremost in Japan over a thousand years ago.

Musashi’s ancestors were a branch of the powerful Harima clan in Kyushu, the southern island of Japan. Hirada Shokan, his grandfather, was a retainer of Shinmen Iga No Kami Sudeshige, the lord of Taktyama castle. Hirada Shokan was highly thought of by his lord and eventually married his lord’s daughter.

10: When Musashi was seven (called Ben No Suke) his father, Munisai, either died or abandoned him. He killed a man with a wooden stick in single combat when he was 13. He next defeated Tadashima Akiyama when he was 16. He fought with the Ashikaga army against Ieyasu at Seki ga hara.

WHY ORWELL MATTERS (2002)

Christopher Hitchens

Hardcover

Basic Books, New York

2003-04-06 to 2003-04-15

3: A humorous writer said—of Mahatma Gandhi—that saints are always to be adjudged guilty until proven innocent. Due to Hitchens’ very elliptic writing style, it is not clear who said that.
25: Orwell made use of his BBC radio experience in NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR (1948). It was revealed in the late 1970s that many of Churchill’s ‘Finest Hour’ speeches were actually recorded and delivered by Mr. Norman Shell, a ‘Children’s Hour’ voice-actor.
43: Orwell criticized Gandhi for being too passive in his resistance.
44: Orwell was not satisfied that the Union Jack was raised before the Abyssinian flag over Addis Ababa after its deliverance from Italian fascism.
69: A passage that was a precursor to 1984:

The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’ — well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five — well, two and two are five.

88: He coined the term ‘Cold War’ in an essay called ‘You and the Atom Bomb’, published 19 October 1945:

We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity. James Burnham’s theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications – that is, the kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a State which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of ‘cold war’ with its neighbors.

92: Orwell wrote his only introduction to ANIMAL FARM (1945) for the Ukrainian edition. Most copies were seized in Germany by the American military and turned over to the Red Army for destruction.
148: His story A Clergyman’s Daughter includes Dorothy losing an argument with the village atheist.
158: Pavlik Morozov was an official Communist hero with many statues built in his honor. He was a 14-year old ‘Pioneer’ who had turned in his family for hoarding grain and was killed by the angry villagers.
189:

Stalin’s propagandists were fond of saying that they completed the first Five Year Plan in four years; this was sometimes rendered for the simple-minded as 2+2=5.

my point... and I do have one (1995)

Ellen DeGeneres

Illustrations by Susan Rose

Hardcover

Bantam Books, New York

2003-04-20 Read first half, then skimmed the rest

In a couple places, she mentions being raised Christian Scientist, and not using medicine, etc.
51: Her mantra about competing in the Iditarod: “Icanarod, Iwillarod, Iwinarod, Iditarod”
114-115: Coining grouping terms (like a pod of whales, a murder of crows): a rack of lambs, a Naugahyde of animal rights activists.

THE COMPUTER AND THE BRAIN (1958)

John von Neumann

Paperback

Yale University Press, New Haven

2003-04-20 to 2003-04-21

Originally intended as a Silliman Lecture for Yale University, von Neumann’s health prevented him from ever delivering it.
4: Regarding using analog computers to perform operations. The “differential analyzer” has a basic function of (x ± y)/2, which can be expanded to perform various functions more efficiently than arithmetical operations (x + y, x – y, xy, x/y).
26: Surprisingly, digital machines with precision levels of 1:10¹⁰ and 1:10¹² are justified, despite typical mathematical and engineering precision levels 1:10³ or 1:10⁴.
29: A contemporary digital machine might cost $1,000,000.
30: He predicted that within another decade, computers would have speeds of 10^-8 or 10^-9 seconds per logical action.
44: The nature of a neuron, only emitting a pulse when reaching a threshold of input, indicates a “prima facie” digital character. He admits this includes some idealization.
45: Trans-synaptic stimulation is on the order of 10^-4 seconds, but it may take a neuron 1.5 times 10^-2 seconds to recover from fatigue.
49: Neurons lead artificial components in volume and energy consumption on the order of 10⁸ to 10⁹. The brain’s energy dissipation is on the order of 10 watts.
53: Neurons may perform “and” and “or” operations. Together with “not”, this allows for a complete set of logical operators.
55: Two important measures of a neuron are threshold (minimum stimulation) and summation time (grace period during which two arriving signals will be considered simultaneous.
60: As far as biological memory:

We are as ignorant of its nature and position as were the Greeks, who suspected the location of the mind in the diaphragm. The only thing we know is that it must be a rather large-capacity memory, and that it is hard to see how a complicated automaton like the human nervous system could do without one.

62: Information in a typed letter of the alphabet contains 2 (upper and lower case) × 26 (letters) + 35 (punctuation marks & intervals) = 88 alternatives. Should be evaluated at log₂ 88 ~ 6.45
64-65: Possible mechanisms for memory include axons having conduction varying with time, genes, and chemicals.
70-71: A code may be either complete (possessing all necessary parts to solve a problem) or short (imitating another system).
76: The arithmetical part of the nervous system might have ten- to twelve-decimal precision.
79: However, the brain is statistical, which “...leads to a lower level of arithmetical precision but to a higher level of logical reliability”

QUESTIONING THE MILLENNIUM

A Rationalist’s Guide To A Precisely Arbitrary Countdown (1997)

Stephen Jay Gould

Hardcover

Harmony Books, New York

2003-04-22 to 2003-04-25

50: Modern Seventh Day Adventists, who trace their origin to William Miller, do not salute the flag or join the military because they believe Satan is currently in control of our unwitting secular government.
52: James Watt, Ronald Reagan’s secretary of the interior and prominent member of the Pentecostal Assembly of God, believed we did not have to worry about environmental damage because the world would end soon anyway.
59-60: The Ghost Dance movement among Native Americans lead to the October 28, 1890 Chicago Tribune headline:

TO WIPE OUT THE WHITES
What the Indians Expect of the Coming Messiah
Fears of an Outbreak
Old Sitting Bull Stirring Up the Excited Redskins

73: One of the reasons for the favored interval of 1000 years is 2 Peter 3:8, “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day,” as well as Psalm 90, “For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.”
144: In 1582, Pope Gregory dropped 10 days from the calendar (October 4 to 15) by fiat.
149: Britain, however, did not accept the Gregorian Calendar until 1752, when Parliament dropped 11 days (September 3 to 13).
175: Day-date calculators (including his firstborn son Jesse) take advantage of a 28 year repeat cycle: a 7 year cycle based on the addition of a day each year and a 4 year cycle based on adding an extra leap-year day every 4 years. ® However, my non-Y2K-compliant watch at the time did not use this. I think it was set to “(19)58” in 2003.

ALAS, POOR DARWIN

Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology (2000)

Ed. by Hilary Rose and Steven Rose

Hardcover

Harmony Books, New York

2003-05-05 to 2003-05-11

Less Selfish Than Sacred? Genes and the Religious Impulse in Evolutionary Psychology by Dorothy Nelkin

25: Claims that Robert Wright argues that the legal system cannot blame individuals for their actions (THE MORAL ANIMAL (1994), p. 347 & 203). I don’t recall Wright ever saying any such thing. In fact, looking at those pages later, I can safely say he never did say anything so extreme.
25-26: Mentions the 1995 ABC special “Boys and Girls are Different” without mentioning that this was an ideologically-driven program by John Stossel, with little to no actual scientific oversight.

Anti-Dawkins by Gabriel Dover

This essay generally turns Dawkins in to a straw man.
73: Stephen Jay Gould and Elizabeth Vrba coined the word “exaptation” = established biological functions that did not arise as Darwinian adaptations.

More Things in Heaven and Earth by Stephen Jay Gould

119: Wright’s THE MORAL ANIMAL (1994) claims that a fondness for sweetness in humans is a “classic example of adaptation that has outlived its logic,” which Gould discounts as a “Just-So story” Of all the claims of evolutionary biologists, this is probably one of the easiest to believe.

Sewing Up the Mind: The Claims of Evolutionary Psychology by Barbara Herrnstein Smith

162: Pinker claims that Artificial Intelligence work has validated his computational model of the mind, but

“Rodney Brooks at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT [where Pinker is located] have engineered an impressive menagerie of intelligent-behaving automata that operate responsively and appropriately without previously installed rules, role-governed manipulations or interior symbolic representations.”

164: Stereoscopic vision is not present at birth, but develops gradually.

Taking the Stink Out of Instinct by Patrick Bateson

189: This and other essays critique evolutionary psychology specifically for its claim that human activities are organized into modules. Can’t we have E.P. without the modules?
191: Darwin wrote a book on The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
196: Konrad Lorenz was a member of the Nazi Party. In 1940 he wrote an article that suggested certain individuals should be prevented from breeding.

Different Strokes: Beyond Biological Determinism and Social Constructionism by Tom Shakespeare and Mark Erickson

234: Disabled people make a distinction between impairment (a bodily difference) and disability (the way that society treats people with impairments).

Escaping Evolutionary Psychology by Steven Rose

307: The rate of evolutionary change is measured in “Darwins,” how the average proportional size of any feature alters over the years and is defined as one unit per million years. For example, English sparrows transported to the U.S.A. have lengthened their legs at a rate of around 100,000 Darwins.
Says it would be interesting to calculate the spread of myopia.
317: The authors of classic sociobiological papers of the 1970s and 1980s were asked to reexamine their subjects in Laura Betzig’s 1997 Human Nature: A Critical Reader. Many anthropologists were surprised at how technological advances in the cultures studied had changed social customs.

BOGEYS AND BANDITS

The Making Of A Fighter Pilot (1997)

Robert Gandt

Hardcover

Viking Penguin, New York

2003-05-14 to 2003-05-18

7: Scott Speicher was likely shot down by a MiG-25 on the first night strike of Desert Storm.
19: The concept of a strike fighter was put to the test on 18 January, 1991 when two F/A-18 Hornets took on two MiG-21 fighters while carrying 8000 lbs of bombs each.
25: Chuck Yeager and George H. W. Bush would probably never been accepted in the “new” Navy.
35: A commanding officer of a RAG explains why he wishes there were more women pilots: because each one would not be unique, a cause célèbre.
110: According to Navy aviators, the most serious error in Top Gun was that Maverick was going to quit because someone got killed.
114-115: Description of crash of F-14 piloted by Kara Hultgren. Lt. Matt Klemish, the RIO, ejected barely within the ejection envelope, but Hultgren was too late.
145: Chapter about the female pilot “Shrike,” who is obviously Missy Cummings, a.k.a. “Shrike,” the author of HORNET’S NEST (1999). In perhaps the most serious incident, she cycled the landing gear of her fighter when it failed to indicate a retraction.
268: A favorite poem of aviators is High Flight by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sunspit clouds—and done a hundred things

And while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

OUT OF CONTROL

The New Biology Of Machines, Social Systems, And The Economic World (1994)

Kevin Kelly (executive editor of WIRED)

Paperback

Perseus Books, Cambridge, Massachusetts

2003-05-31 to 2003-06-21

This was another of the books that the directors of the Matrix required Keanu Reeves to read before reading the movie script.
3: “vivisystems” = manufactured systems with features similar to organic systems.
22: Benefits of swarm systems

Adaptable
Evolvable
Resilient
Boundless
Novelty

23: Apparent disadvantages of swarm systems

Nonoptimal
Noncontrollable
Nonpredictable
Nonunderstandable
Nonimmediate

31: Mark Pauline, creator of spectacular battling robots:

Pauline could aim the dragon with a radio-control joystick from a model airplane. He turned Flamethrower’s snout toward the audience, who ducked reflexively. The heat, even from 50 feet away, slapped the skin. “You know how it is,” Pauline said later. “Ecosystems without predators become unstable. Well, these spectators have no predators in their lives. So that’s what these machines are, that’s their role. To interject predators into civilization.”

39: One of the universal biological principles described by Rod Brooks:

When something works, don’t mess with it; build on top of it.

78: The high oxygen content of Earth’s atmosphere makes it unstable. James Lovelock proposed that any planet that had life would have odd imbalances in its atmosphere. Mars and Venus have stable atmospheres, therefore they do not harbor life.
106: Erwin Schrödinger defined “negentropy” in the 1950s as a quality of the life force to indicate it pushes in the opposite direction as thermal decay. I thought most calculation indicated that life always increases entropy.
Chapter 9: Pop Goes the Biosphere Discussion about how the machines ran Biosphere 2 probably influenced the dialog of The Matrix Reloaded.
151: Tests of the members of Biosphere 2 indicated increased levels of pesticides in their blood, despite its absence inside. Due to their rapid weight loss, toxins deposited decades earlier were being flushed.
239: Mentions Jean Baudrillard’s use of “the desert of the real” Which was quoted in The Matrix.
258-263: Agentinean author Jorge Luis Borges defines a theory of a library with a continuum of all possibilities written words. This was seen in The Matrix Reloaded when a continuum of Neos is in the TV monitors in the Architect’s room.
289: Parasites replicators in artificial biospheres This probably influenced how Agent Smith replicates in The Matrix Reloaded.
309: Danny Hillis proposes parasitic programs, which try to (literally) crash avionics software, which would ultimately make it stronger.
335 & 338: Typical examples of evolved solutions indicate cumbersome, non-intuitive nested functions (trigonometric functions, IF/THEN, etc.).
346: Physicist Doyne Farmer proposes a list that defines life:

Patterns in space and time
Self-reproduction
Information storage of its self-representation (genes)
Metabolism, to keep the pattern going
Functional interactions—it does stuff
Interdependence of parts, or the ability to die
Stability under perturbations
Ability to evolve

348: Hyperlife = “a particular type of vivisystem endowed with integrity, robustness, and cohesiveness—a strong vivisystem rather than a lax one.”
361: Stephen Jay Gould said that the “morphology of humans hasn’t changed in 25,000 years from Cro-Magnon.” Isn’t this what pro-evolutionary psychologists argue?
373:

Natural selection is a very grim natural reaper. Darwin made the bold claim that, at the very heart of evolution, many small deletions in bulk—many small wanton deaths—feeding on the throwaway optimism of minor variation could, in a counterintuitive way, add up to something truly new and meaningful. In the drama of traditional selection theory, death plays the star role. It works single-mindedly by attrition. It is an editor that knows only on word: “No.” Variation counterbalances the one-note song of death by giving birth to a new in cheap abundance. It too knows only one word: “Maybe.” Variation cranks out disposable “maybes” in bulk, which are immediately mowed down by death. Bulk mediocrity is dismissed by wanton death. Occasionally, the theory goes, this duet produces a “Yes!”—a starfish, kidney cells, or Mozart. On the face of it, evolution by natural selection is still a startling hypothesis.

374: A scenario for non-random mutation was proposed by Jan Christaan Smuts in 1926, called internal selection. DNA self-repair mechanisms pick and choose which errors to correct.
376: The author poetically describes the (now thoroughly refuted) process of recapitulation. Causing me to lose much of my respect for him.
377: The curious thing about monsters, is that there seem to be categories of them, as if following internal laws, such as the position of a nostril of a mammal cyclops, or two-headedness, rather than other numbers.
390: A human embryo only needed to divide 50 times to produce the trillions of cells needed for a baby.
406: Theoretical biologist C.H. Waddington: “Life might be defined as the art of getting away with it.”
452: At a Macy Conference on cybernetics, McCulloch said:

I don’t particularly like people, never have. Man to my mind is about the nastiest, most destructive of all the animals. I don’t see any reason, if he can evolve machines that can have more fun that he himself can, why they shouldn’t take over, enslave us, quite happily. They might have a lot more fun, invent better games than we ever did.

This sentiment was echoed in Agent Smith’s monologue in The Matrix.
453: Three theories why the cybernetics movement died:

Cybernetics was starved to death by the siphoning away of its funding to artificial intelligence.
It was the victim of batch-mode computing. Those in charge of university mainframes were not willing to commit the computer cycles.
It tried to put the “observer inside the box” leading to an infinite regress of observers videotaping other observers.

THE HEDGEHOG, THE FOX, AND THE MAGISTER’S POX

Mending The Gap Between Science And The Humanities (2003)

Stephen Jay Gould

Hardcover

Harmony Books, New York

2003-06-22 to 2003-06-25

1: Russian fairy tales begin with our equivalent of “once upon a time”: zhili byli (literally, “lived, was”).
Includes a long discussion of the method of how books were censored by the Papal authority, and not always very completely.
106: Gould takes issue with Wordsworth:

Sweet is the lore which nature brings,
Our meddling intellect
Distorts the beauteous forms of things.
We murder to dissect.

204: Gould explains in detail the unfortunate incident where zealous critics of E. O. Wilson pour water on him during a debate.
242: Discussing Wilson’s quote on ethical issues (from CONSILIENCE (1998), page 260).
243: Wilson states on page 262 that moral “codes, whether judged by outsiders as good or evil, play an important role in determining which cultures flourish, and which will decline.” But the Roman Empire flourished for a very long time through slavery.

SOPHIE’S WORLD

A Novel About The History Of Philosophy (1994)

Jostein Gaader

Translated from the Norwegian by Paulette Møller

Paperback

Berkley Books, New York

2003-06-25 to 2003-06-27
2007 paperback:

While this did have a fairly good summary of Western Philosophy, it’s fiction-within-fiction premise was a bit over the top. The end reminded me of some of Heinlein’s later works.
52: The Oracle at Delphi A recent Scientific American article claimed that the oracle spoke comprehensively, while this and other sources claims she spoke in gibberish, which even after interpretation by the priests would still be obscure.
54: An excerpt from the Hippocratic Oath:

“I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked nor suggest any such counsel, and in like manner I will not give to a woman means to produce an abortion.”

Is this correct? I’ve also heard that it included euthanasia.
152: On the origin of “to view” and how it relates with “insight” or “to know”: “wise” and “wisdom” come from German wissen, Norwegian has viten which has same root as Indian vidya, the Greek idea, and the Latin video. I knew someone named “Vidya”...
175: St. Augustine (354-430 A.D.) belonged to several religions in his lifetime, and was instrumental in incorporating many of these ideas into Christianity.
181: Aquinas Christianized Aristotle the same way that Augustine Christianized Plato.
242:

“Our legs can age and become weak, the back can become bowed and our teeth can fall out—but two and two will go on being four as long as there is reason left in us.”

327: Kant made a distinction between “the thing itself” and “the thing for me” = “das Ding an sich” things as they appear to us.
382: Kierkegaard recognized three “stages” of life: the aesthetic stage, the ethical stage, and the religious stage. People might live at one stage all their life.
384: One of many references to Ibsen’s story Peer Gynt.
420: Using the peppered moth canard as an example of Darwinian Evolution. One of the Icons of Evolution strikes again!
426: I’m curious which translation of FAUST (1808) this is.
427:

“Sarte made an important observation when he said that existential questions cannot be answered once and for all. A philosophical question is by definition something that each generation, each individual even, must ask over and over again.”

THE MATRIX AND PHILOSOPHY

Welcome To The Desert Of The Real (2002)

Ed. by William Irwin

Paperback

Open Court, Chicago, Illinois

2003-06-27 to 2003-07-01

I was reluctant to buy this, until it was recommended, because I figured it would be one of those exploitive works, like The Physics of Star Trek. However, upon reading on the internet about the myriad obscure references in the movie, I figured I would need all the help I could get to understand them all.

Skepticism, Morality, and The Matrix by Gerald J. Erion and Barry Smith

20: Descartes writes, “Whether I am awake or asleep, two and three added together are five, and a square has no more than four sides” in Meditation.
20: While Descartes wrote about an evil demon, Peter Unger wrote about an evil scientist in Ignorance (1975).

There is no Spoon: A Buddhist Mirror by Michael Brannigan

105: Zen monk Takuan Soho (1573-1645) instructed Miyamoto Musashi and Yagyu Munemori. Wrote Mysterious Record of Immovable Wisdom (Fudochishinmyoroku).

Popping a Bitter Pill: Existential Authenticity in The Matrix and Nausea by Jennifer L. McMahon

170: Nausea by Jean-Paul Sarte is about an unassuming historian named Roquentin who suddenly finds reality disturbing.

The Matrix Simulation and the Postmodern Age by David Weberman

225 ftnt: The exact moment of the beginning of post-modernity according to David Harvey’s The Condition of Postmodernity was 3:32 p.m. CST on July 15^th, 1972 with the dynamiting of the modernist Pruitt-Igoe housing development in St. Louis, Missouri.

The Matrix: Or, The Two Sides of Perversion by Slavoj Žižek

240 ftnt: The Wachowski brothers cut some of the “clunky pseudo-intellectual” and “Eastern” lines, which can be found in the original script on the internet.
243: George Seaton’s movie 36 Hours involves an American officer who knows the plans for D-Day being taken to a fake American military hospital by the Germans in an attempt to extract what he knows. This plot was stolen in an episode of the TV series V!
243: Similarly, in the last two years of Lenin’s life, Stalin had a specially printed copy of Pravda given to him.
246: “the ruined Chicago landscape...” How does the author know it was Chicago?
256: Concentration camp survivors often mentioned “the One” who did not break down in the midst of the de-humanization. Sometimes the One would break down or be exposed as a fraud. Does it really matter if the One is a fraud if he inspires others?

THE EMPEROR AND THE WOLF

The Lives And Films Of Akira Kurosawa And Toshiro Mifune (2001)

Stuart Galbraith IV

Paperback

Faber and Faber, New York

2003-07-12 to 2003-07-22

17: The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1 September, 1923, Akira’s older brother Heigo forced him to look at the bodies.
35: Military censors would not allow the portrayal of people drinking during the daytime.
43: “Yoi, staato!” = “Ready, action!”
82: When Senkichi Taniguchi offered a role to Mifune in Snow Trail, his response (according to Taniguchi) was:

No. I am a man. I understand why actresses use their faces to get parts, but as a man I don’t like that at all. ...I want to be a cameraman. I don’t want to be an actor. I don’t want to have to rely on my face to make money. I wasn’t even supposed to be in the New Face class, but my friend told me not to quit if I ever wanted to be a cameraman.

128: Rashoman was set in the Eleventh Century.
135: After her breakthrough role in Rashoman, Machiko Kyo got leading roles in Ugetsu and Gate of Hell (Jigokumon, 1953).
150: Yazaemon Otani played Kojiro Sasaki in Inagaki’s Kojiro trilogy (1950-1951), where Mifune played Musashi Miyamoto in the final movie!
151: Kurosawa wrote, Vendetta for a Samurai (or Samurai Araki—Duel at the Key-Maker’s Corner, 1952), staring Mifune, and directed by Kazuo Mori.
171: All of the Seven Samurai had traits based on real-life samurai, though not the one’s depicted in the incident. For example, Kambei was based on Isanomukami Koizumi.
235: Kurosawa was unique in using real swords, whose weight added realism in how the actors walked.
254: Hidden Fortress was set in the Sixteenth Century.
300: Yojimbo set in 1860.
361: High and Low lead to an increase in the rate of kidnappings.
373: Red Beard set in Nineteenth Century Edo.
389: Samurai Assassin set in 1860 and was based on a real-life event.
392: While in the U.S., Mifune joked, “Also, while I’m here, I am buying a tape recorder and a camera to help restore the balance of trade.”
427: Mifune played Admiral Yamamoto several times. In 1995, on the 50^th anniversary of Japan’s defeat, an alternate historical novel, Deep Blue Fleet, involves Yamamoto avoiding the plane crash, captures Hawaii, granting it independence from the U.S., blowing up the Panama Canal, then leading Japan’s fight against Hitler. The 8-volume novel sold 3 million copies.
500: Mifune could not afford to star in movies in the U.S., because of the high tax rate.
545: Ran is loosely based on and alternative take of Motanari Mori, the Sixteenth Century warlord whose 3 sons were considered the pillars of virtue.
628: Madadayo comes from children’s game where the response to Mo ii kai (“are you ready”) is Mada da yo (“not yet”).
646: Koji Yakusho (star of Shall We Dance) plays samurai Koheita Mochizuki, posing as a drunken magistrate in Dora-Heita (1999).

THE MYTHMAKER

Paul And The Invention Of Christianity (1986)

Hyam Maccoby

Hardcover

Barnes & Noble Books, New York

2003-08-10 to 2003-08-24

6: Despite what is commonly believed, modern scholarship has shown that the Pharisees were a moderate and progressive order, held in high regard in their time.
12: Marcion, who lived about a hundred years after Paul, considered the Jewish scriptures, including the Old Testament, as the work of the Devil.
30: Two different versions of the incident where Jesus is interrogated about which Commandment he considers the greatest shows an anti-Pharisee spin. Mark 12:28-34 is a friendly exchange, where Matthew 22:43-40 removes the pleasantries.
44: The lack of parables (a hallmark of Pharisee tradition) from the Gospel of John, indicates subtle revisionism in down-playing Jesus’ Jewish heritage.
46: Four thousand Jews were crucified in a tax revolt against the Romans during the childhood of Jesus.
85: Several problems can be found with the story of Saul’s conversion to Paul on the road to Damascus. Saul would not have had the authority he claimed.
163: Paul declares himself a Roman Citizen (Acts 22:25-29). If this was true, did he use church offerings to bribe his way to citizenship?
175: There is no continuity between the original followers of Jesus (“Nazarenes”) and those who later called themselves “Christians” in Antioch.
180: Two ancient writings cast Paul in a bad light: The Pseudo-Clementine writings, and The Arabic manuscript discovered by Shlomo Pines.
185: The Gnostic myth is based on the idea that the world is in the grip of evil, and only a visitor from the world of Light can impart secret knowledge (gnosis) to allow a privileged few to escape. This is obviously one of the major concepts behind The Matrix.
188: The Gnostics wrote about non-Jewish Biblical characters such as Seth, Enoch (taken alive into heaven), and Melchizedek (priest of the Most High).
188: Paul claims that the Torah was not given directly by God, but through angels (Galations 3:19-20).
191: The Gnostics despised the body, as opposed to the spirit (pneuma, “pneumatic” = spiritual being)
193: Some believed that because they were saved, anything they did was correct by definition, so their behavior actually became worse, not better.
198: Paul reluctantly allows marriage as a concession (I Corinthians 7:1-11)
206: Julius Wellhausen famously said, “Jesus was not a Christian.”

SAVAGE BEAUTY

The Life Of Edna St. Vincent Millay (2001)

Nancy Milford

Hardcover

Random House, New York

2003-08-12 to 2003-08-21

82: Her first big hit poem, Renascence

All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains in a wood;
I turned and looked the other way,
And saw three islands in a bay.

153: Floyd Dell was an editor of the radical magazine The Masses, which was indicted by the government under the Espionage Act, passed in June 1912.
165: Description of the trial beginning April 15, 1918. The charge: conspiracy to obstruct recruiting or enlistment.
175 and (xiii): Walter Adolphe Roberts published much of her work, but not the sonnet containing the lines:

Whether or not we find what we are seeking
Is idle, biologically speaking.

197: Edna suffers a botched abortion.
297: Like much of the literati, Edna protests the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti
349: Terms of endearment: Sniggybus, Skiddlepins, Scramoodles, Freckles
457: Many of the Pacifists from the first World War support war against the Nazis. Edna published Make Bright the Arrows within weeks of Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s apologist The Wave of the Future. Lindbergh decries a lack of moral fiber:

I do not believe we need to be defended against a mechanized German army invading our shores, as much as against the type of decay, weakness, and blindness into which all the ‘Democracies’ have fallen since the last war... There is no fighting the wave of the future.

469: Edna is asked to write a poem so the world never forgets The Murder of Lidice, which the Nazis proclaimed, “was now forever erased from the map and the memory of the world.”
493: The Cult of the Occult was a satire of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.
In her final years, she took massive amounts of morphine.

BLACK HAWK DOWN

A Story Of Modern War (1999)

Mark Bowden

Maps by Matthew Ericson

Hardcover

Atlantic Monthly Press, New York

2003-08-24 to 2003-08-31

Mostly, I wanted to read this to see what how Ridley Scott’s excellent movie differed from reality.
15: Eversmann never saw Blackburn fall from the helicopter, as depicted in the movie. The largest departure from the book is that Eversmann and the rest of Chalk 4 left on the Humvee column (see page 236).
21: General Garrison sent out three helicopter missions daily so the Somalis would never know which missions were “real.”
35: While inside a building, Howe’s Delta team was mistakenly shot at by Rangers outside.
36: Johnny Stebbins is the true name of the coffee-addicted, chain-smoking paper-pusher whose first real combat was on that day.
46: Several instances of using flashbang grenades to disperse civilians.
49: Staff Sgt Jeff Bray and Sgt Dan Schilling were Air Force Command Control Technicians (CCT) who specialized in air/ground communication.
51: Several SEALs were in the Humvee column.
60: The Delta operators did indeed hunt game on occasion as “realistic training.”
62: Ranger saying:

“When the going gets tough, the tough go cyclic.”

71: General Mohamed Farrah Aidid and the Habr Gidr clan may have believed UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali was working against them in favor of the Darod clan.
74: The Habr Gidr clan was angered at Americans for destroying a conclave in a helicopter attack with 16 TOW missiles and miniguns.
75: Simply the downwash from daily helicopter missions caused significant damage to the flimsy Somali housing. The Somalis felt harassed.
77-78: A QRF Black Hawk had been shot down a week before and the Somali mobs had mutilated the bodies of the crew chiefs.
99: The Delta team and Rangers were waiting for a signal from each other, until the CCT Schilling got tired of waiting and ran back and forth between them.
102: Chief Warrant Officer Mike Durant was flying counterclockwise orbits, but his seat was on the right side, limiting his view.
107: Durant did in fact try to return to base after his tail rotor was hit.
110: Fundamentalists, who had brought down Soviet helicopters in Afghanistan, were smuggled through Sudan to give guidance to Aidid’s men. They used several tactics such as changing the RPG timing to explode in midair, aiming for the tail rotors, and digging holes to shoot vertically.
115: After and RPG threw him from his Humvee, Private Adalberto Rodriguez was run over by an Army truck.
159: Sizemore cut off his cast to join the rescue mission, unlike the movie where he only threatened to cut it off.
201: It took a while for the CSAR team to find survivor second crew chief Ray Dowdy.
202: Air Force parajumper Tim Wilkinson quoted from The Jerk (shown in the movie version):

“They hate the cans! Stay away from the cans!”

211: 8 of 11 Rangers in Lt. Larry Perino’s Chalk One were hit.
213: Perino assists Sgt. First Class Kurt Schmid with Cpl. Jamie Smith’s femoral artery.
216: Specialist Lance Twombly was ordered by Sgt. Alan Barton to place a marker in the middle of the street. In the movie, the Eversmann/Perino character heroically places the strobe near Somali forces. In reality, the Rangers tended to mark only their own positions.
217: One of many instances of killing women and children, who were active as spotters or combatants.

Captain Coultrop nodded his approval. She did, and the D-boy shot her down on the street.

221: Pvt. Carlos Rodriguez was also shot in the pelvis. He was successfully treated.
222: Medic Wilkinson ran across the field of fire three times.

“Man, God really does love medics.”

229: Despite his clearly nonsurvivable injury, Delta MSgt. Tim “Griz” Martin remained conscious and strong for hours. His body was not quite as destroyed as portrayed in the movie.
229: Pvt. Kowalski who had an unexploded RPG inside him, still had vital signs.
231: Black Hawk Super Six Six dropped off critical supplies, but took major damage. It was clear that no Black Hawk could land near the Alamo. This was not shown in the movie.
233: Sgt. First Class Paul Howe had ideas for better consolidating their position, but was not heeded.
240: Captain Mike Steele decides against moving his men.
253: Canteens were filled from a drum of water.
275: Lamb had a piece of shrapnel between the frontal lobes of his brain. His pinky had nearly come off. He stuck it back on, wrapped it in duct tape, and continued working the radio.
279: Sgt. John “Mace” Macejunas led a team on foot to destroy Super Six Four. The Deltas never linked up with the Alamo position, as depicted in the movie.
307: Mace did go back out into the field to find American bodies, by pretending to be a journalist.

HOW WE BELIEVE

The Search For God In An Age Of Science (2000)

Michael Shermer

Library Binding

Owl Books, New York

2003-09-02 to 2003-09-07

Preface: Dr. Laura Schlessinger became a member of the Skeptic’s board of directors after criticizing false memory syndrome. She wanted to resign her position after the controversial issue “The God Question.”
17: April 8, 1966 Time Magazine cover story: IS GOD DEAD?
Shermer makes the Creationist quote-miner’s day with the following:

Even scientism, in some extreme circles, turn into a type of secular faith where all things come to those who believe.
In fact, science is a type of myth, if we think of myths as stories about ourselves and our origins (and not in the pejorative sense of myths as things “untrue”).

88: Edward Gibbon wrote in his 1781 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:

“The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.”

88: In Robert Browning’s Pippa Passes:

“God’s in His Heaven—All’s right with the world.”

127: Pope John Paul II acquitted Galileo’s 1633 heresy in April 1993. He accepted evolution in October 1996 in an address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
136:

Most scientists would join the Pope in voicing their concerns for the decay of knowledge and truth standards, and the attacks from postmodern deconstructionists who claim that science is nothing more than a socially constructed myth.

151: Joseph Campbell describes functions of myths in Myths to Live By (1972)

Mystical
Explanatory
Normative
Guidance

165: Books on reciprocal altruism:

Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior (1998) by Elliott Sober and David Sloane Wilson
Adaptation and Natural Selection (1966) by George Williams
The Biology of Moral Systems (1987) by Richard Alexander

173: Louis Farrakhan talks to Ted Koppel about UFOs on 15 October, 1996 Nightline. Shermer interprets this is a modern day Ghost Dance.
193: Romans celebrated their Millennium in 248 A.D.

VOODOO SCIENCE

The Road From Foolishness To Fraud (2000)

Robert L. Park

Hardcover

Oxford University Press, Oxford

2003-09-12 to 2003-09-19

9: Definitions

pathological science: where scientists fool themselves about “revolutionary” results
junk science: deliberately designed to fool juries and lawmakers
pseudoscience: UFOs, magnets, etc. where practitioners may truly believe
voodoo science: collective of these three types

15: Thursday 23 March, 1989: Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons announce Cold Fusion.
16: Just after midnight, the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska.
30: The raw data from the Transcendental Meditation experiment in DC shows that the murder rate actually rose!
42: A prominent ESP researcher threw out results from certain people who he suspected were choosing wrongly—on purpose!
57: The standard homeopathy joke concerns the patient who died of an overdose after taking ordinary water by mistake.
58: Senator Royal Copeland of New York gave homeopathy exemption from the FDA in 1938. Consequently, while Nicorette had to complete clinical trials, the homeopathic equivalent, CigArrest, did not. 64: Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa created the Office of Alternative Medicine within the National Institute of Health.
75: Just before launch, technicians discovered a problem with the tape recorder of Sputnik II. They requested a delay, but Kruschev refused. Consequently, the Soviets did not discover the Van Allen radiation belts.
148: During a scare over microwaves, it was discovered that the Soviets were beaming microwaves at the American Embassy on Tchaikovsky Street in Moscow. Paul Brodeur wrote that they were intended to affect the brains of the Americans. We now know that they were for powering listening devices.
182: Andrei Sakharov spoke at an award ceremony for Edward Teller’s contribution to SDI. After Sakharov warned that Teller’s support of SDI was a “grave error,” master of ceremonies William F. Buckley Jr. said Sakharov was “A nice man, but clearly out of touch with reality.” Teller hides behind government secrecy, “If you only knew what I know.”
184: The X-Ray laser intended for SDI was really a myth.
190: France invested $200 million in aerial mineral detection called l’avion renifleur, which turned out to be a hoax. The embarrassed government attempted to keep the whole affair secret.

THE MEANING OF IT ALL

Thoughts Of A Citizen Scientist (1963)

Richard P. Feynman

Hardcover

Helix Books, Reading, Massachusetts

Read entirely on 2003-09-19

Based on three talks in April 1963 at the University of Washington (Seattle) as part of John Danz Lecture Series.
65 - 66: If two presidential candidates were asked on, say, the Farm Question, and one immediately had an answer, but the second merely gave principles on how he would study it, voters would probably favor the former.
97: A health food salesman tells his customers about how the Federal Pure Food and Drug Act regulates labels on bottles. Then he tries to sell bottles of his product saying that he was in too much of a hurry to put the labels on, so they could just buy it and put the labels on themselves.
112 b: He gets sick of hearing media reports critical of the problems with the Ranger space program. Even by failing, we learn something.
116: On spelling:

Now let me get to a lower level still in this question. And that is, all the time you hear the question, “why can’t Johnny read?” And the answer is, because of the spelling. The Phoenicians, 2000, more, 3000, 4000 years ago, somewhere around there, were able to figure out from their language a scheme of describing the sounds with symbols. It was very simple. Each sound had a corresponding symbol, and each symbol, a corresponding sound. So that when you could see what the symbols’ sounds were, you could see what the words were supposed to sound like. It’s a marvelous invention. And in the period of time things have happened, and things have gotten out of whack in the English language. Why can’t we change spelling? Who should do it if not the professors of English? If the professors of English will complain to me that the students who come to the universities, after all those years of study, still cannot spell “friend,” I say to them that something’s the matter with the way you spell friend.

117:

Did you know that they can write any language with an alphabet so that you can read how it sounds in any other language when you hear it? That’s really something. So they ought to be able to do it in English alone.

QED

The Strange Theory Of Light And Matter (1985)

Richard P. Feynman

Hardcover

Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey

2003-09-19 to 2003-09-20

Based on three talks which were the first Alex G. Mautner Memorial Lectures at UCLA, given in 1983.
Basically, he discusses quantum electrical dynamics, which involves drawing lots of little arrows and creating vector summations that correspond to macroscopic optical events like reflection and refraction. Also lots of discussion of diffraction gratings and the ubiquitous Feynman diagrams.
89: Light can travel faster that c over very short distances.

but there is also an amplitude for light to go faster (or slower) than the conventional speed of light. You found out that in the last lecture that light doesn’t go only in straight lines; now, you find out that it doesn’t go only at the speed of light!

Maybe I’ll have to take back what I’ve said about Hawking Radiation.
118 caption: When an electron emits or absorbs a photon, coupling or junction number (j).

As of 1983, the theoretical number was 1.00115965246 with an uncertainty of about 20 in last 2 digits; the experimental number was 1.00115965221, with uncertainty of about 4 in the last digit. This accuracy is equivalent to measuring the distance from Los Angeles to New York, a distance of over 3,000 miles, to within the width of a human hair.

129 - 130: Searching for a theoretical value of e.

Every once in a while, someone notices that a certain combination of pi’s and e’s (the base of the natural logarithms), and 2’s and 5’s produces the mysterious coupling constant, but it is a fact that you would be surprised how many numbers you can make out of pi’s and e’s and so on.

134:

For the d quark the amplitude to couple with a photon is –1/3, and for the u quark it is +2/3. (Had Benjamin Franklin known about quarks, he might have at least made the charge of an electron –3!)

139–140: Beta decay, when a neutron disintegrates in to a proton, changes the “flavor” of one quark from d to u. This is the type of radiation that has people worried about nuclear reactors.

CODE OF THE SAMURAI

**A Modern Translation Of The Bushido Shoshinsu (1999)**

Taira Shigesuke (1639 – 1730)

Translated by Thomas Cleary

Illustrated by Oscar Ratti

Hardcover

Tuttle Publishing, Boston

Cleary makes me furious by translating “samurai” as “knight”! It is folly to equate Japanese and European concepts in such a way! Does he expect that his readers are too stupid to learn one foreign word? And who hasn’t heard of the word samurai?
20:

The process of cultivating the practice of doing right begins with fear of being disrespected by those close to you, starting with your family and servants, then advances to refraining from doing wrong and deliberately doing right from fear of incurring the shame of being censured and ridicules by society at large. If you do this, it will naturally become habitual, so eventually you develop a mentality that prefers to follow what is right and disdains to do wrong.

Nevertheless, his whole rationale for doing right is fear of being embarrassed!
26:

Whenever you sleep, don’t point your feet in the direction of your employer. Where you set up straw bundles for archery practice, don’t let the arrows land in the vicinity of your employer, and when you set your spear and sword on their racks, don’t point the tips toward him.

26: Story of Kani Saizo receiving a gift of quail while napping. Upon realizing the quail had been caught by the falcon of Lord Masanori, he got up, and put on formal clothes to receive it, and admonished his servant.
36: The chapter on relatives points out that if your brother is the head of the household, then his son must be treated as an heir, not as your nephew.
72: Do not wear a jacket and suit with your overlord’s crest because that is how the overlord’s family dresses. You should wear a jacket with your own crest. Also, when clothes are worn out, the overlord’s crests should be cut out and incinerated so as not to soil them.

REPUBLIC

Plato

Translated from the Greek by Robin Waterfield

Hardcover

Barnes & Noble Books, New York

2003-09-20 to 2003-09-26

xi b: The title Republic is a bad translation of the Greek polieia = ‘political system’ which is usually translated as the Latin res publica = ‘political business’.
First of all, I think it is always bad for one person to put their words into another person’s mouth. Is Plato really competent to speak for Socrates?
27: Begins with a dialog between Thrasymachus and Socrates:

‘So you see, Socrates, immorality—if practised on a large enough scale—has more power, license, and authority than morality. And as I said at the beginning, morality is really the advantage of the stronger party, while immorality is profitable and advantageous to oneself.’

37: Is this the famous quote about good = knowledge and evil = ignorance?

‘Well, here’s the question I was getting at just now; I think it’s the logical next one for our investigation. When morality is compared with immorality, what do we learn about morality? I mean, the suggestion was made that immorality is more powerful and more effective than morality; but the fact that we’ve now established that morality is a good state and in knowledge will make it easy to prove, I think, that it’s also more effective than immorality, given that immorality is ignorance, as everyone knows by now. However, I don’t want our investigation to be couched in such abstract terms, Thrasymachus, but rather as follows: would you agree that it is wrong for a community to undertake the domination of other communities, to deprive other communities of their freedom, and to keep a number of other communities subservient to itself?’

73: Socrates argues that children should only be exposed to certain G-rated stories. He doesn’t even think they should be told about Homer’s battles between gods, because kids do not know when they are allegorical. His long list of bad values that need to be censored from Homer will not leave much left!
79: His conclusions that gods do not lie or change their character is based on the premise that the gods are perfect. But he never considered that they don’t exist at all.
173 & 175: He proposes a system where seemingly random arranged pairings through religion and rites will mask a subtle eugenics. If the people are bred for intelligence, eventually they would probably figure it out!
175: When men and women get past the age of procreation, they will be able to have intercourse with anyone they want. However, if a child is conceived, it should be aborted.
211: Philosophers on philosophers:

‘Anyway, there’s no need for us to have a whole array of the philosopher’s characteristics line up all over again. I’m sure you remember how we found that philosophers naturally have courage, broadness of vision, quickness of learning, and a good memory.’

240: The famous “Allegory of the Cave”.
What is the point of having a dialog if the second character only says “quite right” and “absolutely” all the time.
296 - 297: They find all kinds of problems with democracy:

‘You’re not forced to hold political office in this kind of community,’ I said, ‘even if you’d be good at it; you’re not forced to be a subject either, unless you want to. You don’t have to go to war when there’s a war on, or to keep the peace when everyone else is, if peace isn’t to your liking. Then again, even if you’re legally forbidden to play a part in governmental or judicial procedures, you can still do both, if you feel like it. Isn’t this an extraordinarily pleasant way to spend one’s life, in the short term?’

338:

‘So suppose you wanted to put it the other way round and state how far a king is from a dictator in terms of the truth of pleasure, the completed multiplication would show that his life is 729 times more pleasant than a dictator’s. And a dictator is that much more wretched than a king.’

371: A near-death experience describes the afterlife. This description likely influenced Dante. Of course, one might think the fact that people described such afterlives in ancient times gives credence to religion.
It’s interesting how Plato contends that a person must do one thing, and one thing only, while Eastern philosophers (such as Miyamoto Musashi) often argue that a person needs to be well-rounded. It’s sort of a cop-out because the Philosophers in his Utopia get to do lots of things, including lead. I suppose a cobbler vision of a perfect Republic has the cobblers in charge.

WALDEN TWO (1948)

B. F. Skinner

Paperback

The MacMillian Company, New York

2003-09-27 to 2003-09-28

Professor Burris: Narrator
Rogers: Former student.
Barbara Macklin: Rogers’ fiancée
Steve Jamnik: Rogers’ army buddy.
Mary Grove: Jamnik’s girl.
T. E. Frazier: Former acquaintance of Burris, founding member of Walden Two.
Professor Castle
14: Some Utopians in literature:

REPUBLIC by Plato
Utopia (1516) by Sir Thomas More
The New Atlantis (1626) by Francis Bacon
Looking Backward: 2000 – 1887 (1888) by Edward Bellamy
Shangri-La

20: Sheep keep the lawn mowed. At one time, they were surrounded by an electric fence, but that was substituted by a piece of string. Nevertheless, even sheep who came after the electric fence do not approach the string.
52: Different credit value are assigned to different kinds of work, as in Looking Backward: 2000 – 1887 (1888) by Edward Bellamy.
Children are raised collectively.
108: To teach children self-control, they must keep lollipops hanging around their necks. This is the same principle where they could drink cocoa with less and less sugar.
160: News From Nowhere, or, An Epoch of Rest Being Some Chapters From a Utopian Romance (1892) by William Morris
169: Personal competition is discouraged.
171: Expressions of personal gratitude are prohibited by the Code.
193: Erewhon (1871) by Samuel Butler (title is “nowhere” backwards).
235: Management is concealed and the Managers are more likely to be considered servants than masters. Just because that’s how you want people to view them does not mean that people will view them that way! Certain archetypes (such as the deference to authority) are very strong.
235: Any sense of history is discouraged. This is the feature with which I have the biggest problem!
237 - 239: Along the same lines, they don’t teach world history, although people may read as much history as they like. Again, just because you personally don’t see any need for it, does not mean others will not.
239:

“I can’t believe you’re serious,” said Castle. “Are you saying that you gain no perspective—I mean, no detached opinion—from a sense of history?”

“I mean that and nothing more. Nothing confuses our evaluation of the present more than a sense of history—unless it’s a sense of destiny. You Hitlers are the men who use history to real advantage. It’s exactly what they need. It obfuscates every attempt to get a clear appreciation of the present.

“Race, family, ancestor worship—these are the handmaidens of history, and we should have learned to beware of them by now. What we give our young people in Walden Two is a grasp of the current forces which a culture must deal with. None of your myths, none of your heroes—no history, no destiny—simply the Now! The present is the thing. It’s the only thing we can deal with, anyway, in a scientific way. But we’ve got a long way from the dictator. Have I satisfied you that I have no personal ambitions, Mr. Castle?”

I must admit, this is the most provocative piece of Walden Two. Would people be willing to live without history and without heroes? While it is tempting to think that the world would be a better place without racial and ethnic distinctions, to completely ignore where we come from is dangerous.
261: Jesus as an early discoverer of positive reinforcement. Loving your enemies gives you peace of mind and will eventually allow you to control the stronger man.
275: Differences between Communist Russia and Walden Two:

A decline in the experimental spirit.
Russia is overpropagandized which overrides data.
The use of heroes.
Russia is based on power, the people have to want to behave for mutual good.

286: While Rogers is not planning to stay, Steve and Mary are eager to join in and get married. I suspect they are so excited because it would be a mixed marriage, which would be discouraged anywhere else in society.
300:

“What is love,” he said, with a shrug, “except another name for the use of positive reinforcement?”

“Or vice versa,” I said.

On the anonymity of leaders: It’s ironic that most people have probably never heard of Skinner, yet the Right likes to demonize him (and Dewey) as the founders of our secular society and demolishers of absolute morality.

WAGING MODERN WAR

Bosnia, Kosovo, And The Future Of Combat (2001)

General Wesley K. Clark U.S. Army (Retired)

PublicAffairs, New York

2003-10-26 to 2003-11-06

62: Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle represented Bosnians.
93: Milosevic intercepts a private memorandum from Clark to General Shinseki.
On two occasions, Clark was “caught” giving advice to the Secretary of Defense. Is this why some former coworkers question his honesty?
He admits manipulating hard-line Serbs. By humiliating them, their opponents did better in elections.
196: On the first night of bombing, three MiGs were shot down, including one downed by a Dutch F-16.
198: A new federal law delayed deployment of Apache helicopters.
209: Two more MiGs are shot down by a U.S. F-15C using beyond-visual-range missiles.
214: A U.S. missile ends up in Bulgaria. On a Saturday night, news that an F-117 was shot down. When the pilot was retrieved, he asked that his name not be released.
229: Three American servicemen are captured by the Serbs.
255: Two accidental bombings of civilians.
255 & earlier: The French veto certain targets. This is the biggest criticism many members of the military have with this book. Nevertheless, Clark did a good job managing so many points of view.
263 - 264: He planted a story about targeting a Serb TV transmitter. The Serbs then ordered all international journalists to report to the Serb TV building.
266: Stuck President Milosevic’s command bunker, under his house at 15 Uzicka Street in Belgrade.
267: Summary after four weeks; one aircraft lost, no pilots lost, and no bombing pause, yet they could not stop the ethnic cleansing and petroleum was being imported legally.
273:

“Wes, at the White House meeting today there was a lot of discussion about your press conference,” Shelton began. “The Secretary of Defense asked me to give you some verbatim guidance, so here it is: ‘Get your f——g face off the TV. No more briefings, period. That’s it.’ I just wanted to give it to you like he said it. Do you have any questions?”

274: More setbacks including the loss of a Marine Harrier over the Adriatic (due to mechanical problems) and an F-16 in combat over Serbia.
281: Two Apaches were lost due to training, one incident killing both crewmen, yet they still had not been allowed to deploy in combat.
296: A cluster bomb “functioned” at too high an altitude, missing the target and resulting in civilian casualties. Of 1,500 cluster bombs, this was only the second malfunction. Yes, but what was the rate of bomblet failure, leaving unexploded ordinance?
335: Helping the KLA keep the top of Mount Pastrik. No mention of the accidental killing of KLA forces there, which I remember being reported at the time.
369: The French offer to put airborne troops in Pristina Airport.
370: In negotiations, the Pentagon drops provision of return of Albanian prisoners.
371: Mike Jackson and Clark don’t take the French up on their airport offer.
380: Problems with deploying NATO forces to Pristina Airport. Among other things, they wanted a well-defined mission to avoid an unnecessary firefight after the war was essentially over.
390: The Russians divert forces from Bosnia to Pristina Airport, all the while insisting that it was an “unfortunate” mistake. Concerned that this would result in partition.
399: NATO commanders’ orders are subject to “red-carding”, where nations temporarily withdraw their own forces from certain actions.
412: The Russians begin ceding control of Pristina Airport. However, some Eastern European officers suspect that because NATO was not willing to intervene, that Russia would be more likely to renew war in Chechnya.
418:

Moreover, a ground invasion was avoided, no airmen died, the precious Danube bridges in Belgrade were not struck, the war did not spread into the surrounding states, and the financial costs were surprisingly little.

I recall at the time that the destruction of some bridges on the Danube delayed considerable commerce.
423:

Using military force effectively requires departing from the political dynamic and following the so-called “Principles of War” identified by post-Napoleonic military writers a century and a half ago. Every military officer learns them in early training. Most of us spend a lifetime understanding how to apply them.

As formulated in modern American studies, the Principles of War are defined to include having a clear objective and relying on unity of command to focus all efforts toward this aim. Plans and operations should be simple in conception, massing forces at the most critical points, relying on economy of force in the peripheral areas, and achieving surprise over the enemy. Forces must attend to their security. Decisive results are obtained from offensive action and maneuver.

432: By 1972, the Thanh Hoa bridge over the Red River near Hanoi had been subject to 700 strikes, but had not been destroyed. Eight American fighters had been lost. But the first laser-guided bomb strike took it out.

THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS (2000)

Arthur C. Clarke

Stephen Baxter

Hardcover

TOR Books, New York

2003-10-28 to 2003-10-29

13: The International Space Station was not completed due to the crash of a Space Shuttle in 2010.
A large trans-Neptunian object (called Wormwood) will impact the Earth in 500 years.
53: The Russian word for “Wormwood” is “Chernobyl”.
57: Henrik Ibsen:

One should never put on one’s best trousers to go out to battle for freedom and truth.

Hiram Patterson is an industrialist with two sons, Bobby and David (who did not know of each others existence until recently).
The invention of the WormCam allows view of other times and places via wormholes. Privacy is immediately lost.
101: Photos have not been admissible in court since 2010.
Edward Gibbon (1737 – 1894):

History. . . is indeed little more than a chronicle of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.

FBI Special Agent Mavens confronts Hiram about WormCam.
212: Chapter 21 “Behold The Man” describes the 12,000 Days Project, which follows the life of Jesus.
220: His actual death was unviewable because all the available wormholes have been used, presumably by WormCams from future people.
259: Chapter 26 involves traveling along a line of mitochondrial DNA though a succession of grandmothers, all the way back to Africa.
285: The obligatory mention of Omega Point, invented by Teilhard de Chardin, which is sort of how the book ends.
291: Chapter 28 “The Age of Sisyphus”: traveling along DNA through the entire history of life, including several Pre-Cambrian Ice-Ages; and then to the point where intelligent beings buried thermophiles (our ancestors) in preparation for a cometary impact. Here’s where it gets wacky.

PUNK’S WAR (2001)

Ward Carroll

Paperback

A Signet Book, New York

2003-11-08 to 2003-11-09

Punk: F-14 pilot. Has to decide whether to remain a Naval Aviator, or to move on to airlines.
Spud: Punk’s RIO.
Commander “Soup” Campbell: Squadron commander who taught at Top Gun (“The School”) and flew with the Blue Angels (“The Team”). Succeeds despite severe mistakes, including being captured by Iraq.
Einstein: Soup’s green RIO.
Jordan: Punk’s stateside girlfriend who tires of waiting for him.
The Pats: Androgynous intelligence officers for the squadron.
25: Motto of the intel geeks:

In God we trust, all others we monitor.

258: With the addition of the LANTIRN pod, the F-14 actually became the preferred Navy strike fighter over the F-18 Hornet.
274: Recollection of Admiral Stockdale upon descending into North Vietnam:

I am leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus.

When hostilities build up in Iraq, Punk is sent to joint mission planning. The pilots wonder whether they will continue their fruitless No-Fly Zone monitoring, or whether they will be able to conduct Punk’s War.

THE SANDMAN (1988)

Neil Gaiman

Hardcover Trade Paperbacks

DC Comics

Re-read 2003

COMMUNICATION WITH EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE

(CETI, 1973)

Edited by Carl Sagan

Paperback

The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts

2003-11-18 to 2003-12-01

These are the proceedings from a multidisciplinary conference held in Soviet Armenia in 1971.
4 - 5: Sagan:

The word CETI which has been devised for this meeting is I think appropriate in three different respects. First, it is an acronym for Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Second, it is the Latin genitive for whale, which is of some interest to this discussion; the cetaceans are undoubtedly another intelligent species inhabiting our planet, and it has been argued that if we cannot communicate with them we should not be able to communicate with extraterrestrial civilizations. And finally, one of the two stars which was first examined by Frank Drake in Project Ozma, the first experimental undertaking along those lines, was Tau Ceti.

5: Chapters are broken down into terms from the Drake Equation:

N = R_*f_pn_ef₁f_if_CL

19: Thomas Gold: Mercury is caught in a solar resonance so that it turns 1.5 times per orbit.
23: Gold: Venus appears to have started with a retrograde spin, but was slowed down by tidal friction. It is in a resonance with Earth, in the 5^th possible mode.
30: Sagan speculates that the Earth of 4 billion years ago was near the freezing point of water. However, ammonia would have been a liquid.
66: Sagan:

Philip Morrison has stressed that the discovery of life on Mars would convert the origin of life from a miracle to a statistic.

88: Richard Lee points out that an intelligent animal would have to have an adequate blood supply to the brain, which disqualifies the giraffe.
91: Lee:

Here we come to the heart of the matter: Human intelligence reduced to its essentials is synonymous with human language. Intelligence is improved communication, the transmission of more complex information from one individual to another.

122 - 123: Gold supposes an outlandish concept of ant-like beings that communicate with electrical contacts, which could lead to a collective intelligence.
125: Marvin Minsky:

On the question of extraterrestrial intelligence, I think that, at least from what we know about intelligence now, there are certain aspects of intelligence that would be necessary even if one disagreed about details. The ability to use knowledge is important in intelligence. It is probably very important to be able to get knowledge and transmit it. It is not very important to be able to generate it. The ability to create new ideas is very unimportant if you are in a culture. None of us generates very many ideas, or at least we don’t recognize our debt—that with each word in a language we learn comes from out culture. It is probably easier to communicate with a Jovian scientist that with an American human teenager.

152: Books by Anatole Rapaport on nonzero game theory:

Two-Person Game Theory
Prisoners’ Dilemma
The Big Two

156: G. Stent:

But with the rise of civilization, as has been outlined for us by Lee and Flannery, and particularly with the appearance of the first economic surplus, it became possible to sublimate this will to power to higher spheres beyond the concern for daily survival, beyond the strife for the next meal. Eventually there appeared an extreme form of the sublimated will to power, which had come to be almost completely divorced from economic activity, a psychotype which some German philosophers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have referred to as Faustian man. Faustian man is the embodiment of the extreme will to power. His view of the world is one of constant struggle. And since he sees in struggle the very essence of his existence, Faustian man is never satisfied. Ironically he is that ideal type whom the economists of the nineteenth century had in mind with their idea of the economic man. And Faustian man became the mainspring of progress. That is, being never satisfied, he was always struggling, always pushing ahead, always trying to gain greater dominion over nature, even if his own personal situation was, in fact, economically secure.

175 t: S. Von Hoerner: Colonizing other planets to limit the population would not be very effective. If there are 30,000 inhabitable planets within 50 parsec = 150 light year radius, and we start with one today and increase with 2% a year, it would only take 500 years for them all to be as densely populated as the Earth is now.
175 b: 10% of all human effort goes into weapons. The accumulated destructive power amounts to 10 tons of TNT per person, resembling a ball of dynamite 2 meters in diameter.
176: Genetic degradation takes place because medicine eliminates natural selection while mutations still go on.
186: R. G. Podolny suggests that a UFO incident from a monastery clerk in Northern Russia on August 15, 1663 might have been an interplanetary probe.
257 & 261: Tables of local astronomical objects examined for CETI.
289: B. M. Oliver: If we search one million start in 30 years, then we can only devote 1000 seconds per star.
304: Gold:

I am reminded of a quotation from the House of Commons some years ago: “Why should I do this for posterity? What has posterity done for me?”

THE PUZZLE PALACE

A Report On America’s Most Secret Agency (1982)

James Bamford

Hardcover

Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston

2003-12-02 to 2003-12-19

9: Herbert O. Yardley set up America’s Black Chamber at 3 East 38 Street, New York. Post Office Box 354, Grand Central Station, New York was used for all correspondence.
12 - 13: On 5 March, 1921, American sub chaser 154 fired a warning shot at the Western Union cable ship Robert C. Clowry to prevent it from laying a cable and creating a communication monopoly between North and South America.
16 - 17: Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson ordered a stop to interception of messages with the famous quote:

gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.

19: The American Black Chamber (1931) by Yardley was an exposé.
24: The manuscript for his second book, Japanese Diplomatic Secrets, was impounded by the government, an practice unheard of before or since. It was not declassified until 1979.
25 - 26: The closest thing to an Official Secrets Act was H.R. 4220, of which a slightly changed version remains as Section 952 of Title 18 of the United States Code.
35: The Army and Navy then set up their own decryption efforts. In order to reduce duplication, the Navy would translate Japanese diplomatic intercepts originating on odd days and the Army would handle even days.
81 - 83: After two suspected homosexuals from the Agency defected to Moscow, a McCarthy-type purge forced dozens of employees to resign. When one agent was questioned, he openly admitted that he was gay and refused to resign. A compromise was reached so that if he informed his family (so that he would not be susceptible to blackmail), then he could keep his job. Remember this was the downfall of Alan Turing, who was considered a security risk even though his homosexuality was an open secret.
95: $110 million was wasted on aircraft black boxes. It was unrealistic to think that fighter pilots would wait to synchronize the systems in the midst of combat.
121: A photograph that ran in the New York Times Magazine showed the secret codeword DINAR. It cost $250,000 to replace the codeword.
124: In 1978 thirteen members of the military assigned to the NSA were subsequently not allowed in as civilians due to polygraph testing.
130 - 131: A scandal was uncovered in 1954 where Joseph Sidney Peterson, Jr. passed secrets to the Dutch government.
131 - 132: It was easy to find which documents were compromised because their rounded, American-type staples had been replaced with squared-off Dutch staples.
137: During the Cold War, several reconnaissance planes on NSA missions were secretly lost.
139: Shocked about the recent EC-130 incident, NSA employees William H. Martin and Bernon F. Mitchell inform Representative Wayne Hays about these secret operations.
140: Disenchanted with American values, Martin and Mitchell defect to the Soviet Union, where they believed they would be socially accepted. They revealed secrets on Soviet television.
149: After their very public defection, the NSA was pressured by HUAC to fire 26 employees for “indications of sexual deviation”.
150 - 152: Despite his meager Army salary, Jack Edward Dunlap began to spend lavishly. Nobody seemed to question where he got this money from. For years, he sold secrets to the Soviets. After a few attempts, Dunlap committed suicide.
153: Victor Norris Hamilton defected to Moscow and told his story on the front page of Izvestia.
165: Communication of the death of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was intercepted.
167: West Virginia has a 100 square mile National Radio Quiet Zone. Does this still exist?
179: Radio transcript of EC-130 being shot down by Soviets.
183 - 184: An East German writer once reported that 11 of the 17 member crew were caught on the outskirts of Yerevan, but their fate remains unknown.
184: In fact, there were at least 33 aircraft incidents since the early 1950s.
200: Before they became hostages themselves, the American Embassy staff in Iran negotiated the release of American intelligence workers at a listening post. The loss of the listening post after the Iranian Revolution was a significant setback.
201: In order to spy on Soviet missile tests, the U.S. teamed up with China to operate listening posts.
222 - 225: During the Six Day War, Israel “mistakenly” attacks the NSA radio intercept ship Liberty, killing 32 crew members and wounding 2/3 of the rest.
235: The loss of a second SIGINT ship; Pueblo was captured by North Korea.
242: Secretary of Defense James Forrestal tells members of the Senate Judiciary Committee about Operation Shamrock, which included the interception of domestic communications.
243 - 244: Due to his paranoia, Forrestal is admitted to Bethesda Naval Hospital and commits suicide. No mention of Israeli agents, as in THE DRAGONS OF EDEN (1977).
250: The FBI, Secret Service, and CIA add names to a watch list of political agitators to be survailed, including Jane Fonda, Joan Baez, Dr. Benjamin Spock, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Reverend Ralph Abernathy, Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, and Chicago Seven defendants Abbie Hoffman and David T. Dellinger.
285 - 286: On the Pentagon Papers:

“The security of the Nation is not at the ramparts alone. Security also lies in the values of our free institutions. A cantankerous press, an ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know.” With those eloquent words Judge Gurfein, on June 19, 1971, decided the historic case in favor of the Times, though continuing the restraining order to give the government time to appeal.

288: Nixon gathers “The Plumbers”, including gun-nut G. Gordon Liddy.
295:

Old NSA officials never die; they simply become consultants.

311: Churchill cooperates with the U.S. on intelligence. Mention of Bletchley Park, including a single mention of Alan Turing.
312: While decoding the Japanese Purple code, William F. Friedman experiences psychological problems. He was admitted to Walter Reed Hospital on January 5, 1941 after having a nervous breakdown. This comes up in CRYPTONOMICON (1999).
319: Egyptian leader Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser tries to evict the British from the Suez Canal.
354 - 355: Carl Nicolai invents the Phasorphone:

Nicolai had suddenly been assaulted with one of the oldest weapons in the nation’s national security arsenal: the Invention Secrecy Act. Passed in 1917 as a wartime measure to prevent the publication of inventions that might “be detrimental to the public safety or defense or might assist the enemy or endanger the successful prosecution of the war,” the measure ended with the conclusion of World War I. The act was resurrected in 1940 and was later extended until the end of the Second World War. Then, like the phoenix, it once again rose from the ashes with the passage of the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951, which mandated that secrecy orders be kept for periods of no more than one year unless renewed. There was a catch, however. The act also said that a secrecy order “in effect, or issued, during a national emergency declared by the President shall remain in effect for the duration of the national emergency and six months thereafter.” Because no one ever bothered to declare an end to President Truman’s 1951 emergency, the emergency remained in effect until September 1978.

378: A good summary:

The major problem with the two revolutions, the tremendous advances in the use of satellite and microwave technology and the enormous growth of SIGINT, is that they have left a void where there should have been a third revolution: the law. Three decades after its creation, the NSA is still without a formal, statutory charter, the first reform called for by the Church Committee. Instead, there is a super hush-hush surveillance court that is virtually impotent; the FISA, which has enough loopholes and exceptions to render it nearly useless; and an executive order that was designed more to protect the intelligence community from the citizens than citizens from the agencies. In addition, because it is an executive order, it can be changed any time at the whim of a President, without so much as a nod toward Congress.

THE BIG U (1984)

Neal Stephenson

Paperback

Perennial

2003-12-20 to 2003-12-24

Considering that Stephenson wishes he never wrote this novel, I won’t delve too deeply into it. Nevertheless, it has some redeeming qualities.
Set in American Megaversity, a massive structure composed of several towers.
Professor Redfield: Narrator. African American associate professor and faculty-in-residence. Recently obtained Ph.D. in Remote Sensing.
The Go Big Red Fan: Not a fan of “Big Red”, but a electric fan painted red. Owned by John Wesley Fenrick. His roommate, Ephrain Klein.
Sarah Jane Johnson: Student government president.
Hyacinth: Sarah’s roommate and a lesbian.
Casimir Radon: A scientist in love with Sarah.
Fred Fine: Leader of a role-playing society. Believes himself to be Klystron/Chris. When open war breaks out, he becomes the leader of the Grand Army of Shekondar the Fearsome.
Virgil
Septimius Severus Krupp: President of American Megaversity. Comes off as a gun-loving cowboy.
Bert Nix: An old, mentally unbalanced, and often drunk fixture of American Megaversity known for babbling. Later, it is revealed that he was a staff member of the original campus. The experience sent him over the edge.
7:

The Resident Assistant, or RA, was a reclusive Social Work major who, intuitively knowing she was never going to get a job, spent her time locked in her little room testing perfumes and watching MTV under a set of headphones. She could not possibly help.

48: Bert Nix writes a parody of The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats:

Tenuring and tenuring in the ivory tower!
The flagron cannot fill the flagoneers.
Krupp cuts a fart! The sphinxter cannot hold
Dear academe, our Lusitania, recoils.
The time-limned dons are noosed. With airy webs
The cerebrally infarcted brings me down.
The East affects conscription, while the curst
Are gulled with Fashionate Propensities.

80: Casimir describes Project Spike, named after his deceased kitten. He will seed rat poison near the Cafeteria with a beryllium isotope to see if any Carbon-14 shows up in Cafeteria food.
Steven Wilson: Killed by mutant rats in the sewer while playing one of Fred Fine’s live-action role playing games.
200: The Go Big Red Fan, known as the Little Wheel, speaks to Dex Fresser.
224:

Most people, upon listening to a string of nonsense, will tend to doubt their own sanity before they realize that the person who is jabbering at them is really the one with the damaged brain.

227:

The Geiger counter shouted. I looked at Casimir.

“Skip your next chest X-ray,” he said. “If this place is what it looks like, it’s just Iodine-131. Half-life of eight days. It’ll end up in your thyroid, which you don’t really need anyway.”

“I’m pretty fond of my thyroid,” said Hyacinth. “It made me big and strong.”

277: Sarah is reading The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976) by Julian Jaynes. Apparently, Stephenson mentions it in many of his novels.

FLIM-FLAM!

Psychics, ESP, Unicorns and other Delusions (1982, 5^th printing 1986)

James Randi (“The Amazing Randi”)

Introduction by Isaac Asimov

Paperback

Prometheus Books, Buffalo, N.Y.

2003-12-20 to 2003-12-24

16: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is hoodwinked by fairies in his book The Coming of the Fairies (1921)
21: Doyle was knighted, not for SHERLOCK HOLMES (1887), but for his writings as a historian defending the British Army in South Africa.
37 - 41: The Cottingly Fairies fiasco is a perfect illustration of the hallmarks of paranormal chicanery:

It is claimed that the subject does not seek money or fame, and thus no motive to deceive exists.

The subject (a child, peasant, or sweet little old lady) is said to be incapable of the techniques required; lack of sophistication precludes deception.

It is said that the subject has failed to pass tests designed to determine if the necessary skill is present.

Faults discovered in the story or performance tend to prove the phenomenon real, it is agreed, since a clever trickster would not make such basic errors.

If a phenomenon is consistent with previously reported ones, this is cited as strong evidence that it is genuine.

It is claimed that critics give poor or insufficient reasons for doubting reported paranormal events and are therefore not to be taken seriously.

Prominent personalities lend their support to the claims and are considered unassailable because of prestige, academic background, and so on.

Similarly, supposed experts are called in to verify the claims.

The findings of experts who are critical are minimized or ignored.

Those who allege paranormal events are equivocal and evasive, allowing investigators to assume facts and fill in details in support of their claims.

Conflicting versions or details of a paranormal event are ignored.

A subject’s ability to perform trickery is de-emphasized or ignored.

Any controls that seem scientific are used to provide authentication, whether applicable or not.

It is said that the subject cannot produce phenomena on command or on a regular basis, since such abilities are ephemeral and sporadic.

It is claimed that conditions that make deception possible are also those that allow the miracles to take place, and miracles are the more probable explanation.

Unless the critics can explain away all the reported details, the residue is considered an irreducible basis for validation.

We are told that subjects do not do well when persons with “negative vibrations” are nearby.

It is claimed that when money is paid for the services of a psychic, or psychic powers are used to earn money, the powers are defeated. On the other hand—since parapsychologists like to have it both ways—money rewards, they also claim, tend to encourage performance.

It is argued that too many controls on an experiment cause negative results.

Any trickery detected by the investigators may be attributed to the subject’s desire to please, and therefore there is a compulsion to cheat.

42: Charles Berlitz, grandson of the famous language-book writer, writes about the Bermuda Triangle.
44: A map demonstrates that many of the cited incidents took place well outside the Bermuda Triangle.
58: Quote from Ben Frankin:

Quacks are the greatest liars in the world, except their patients.

93: A chapter on the Transcendental Meditation movement of Maharishi Maresh Yogi.
130: One of Randi’s major criticisms of Erich von Däniken’s “Chariots of the Gods” writings is that they are inherently racist. The ancient residents of Africa and the Americas must have had extraterrestrial aid in creating their wondrous ancient structures, but he offers no need for such creations in ancient Greece or Europe, because they would have the intelligence to accomplish such achievements.
Chapter 7 is on psychics and ESP.
Chapter 8 is on biorythms.
Chapter 9 is on psychic surgery.
196: Renowned physicist René Blondlot convinces colleagues of the existence of “N Rays”.
217: The word “nincompoop” is a corruption of the Latin non compos = “not of sound mind”.
246: Lamarr Keene confessed to the IRS in 1976 that he had bilked thousands of Florida residents out of their fortunes as a psychic medium. He writes about it in The Psychic Mafia.

THE SATANIC VERSES (1988)

Salman Rushdie

Hardcover

Viking, New York

2003-12-25 to 2003-12-31

According to Angela Gunn’s blog: http://www.agunn.com/other/essays/banned/banned-991007.html,

In the past ten years, nearly two dozen people (including translators, diplomats, and publishers, but not Mr. Rushdie) have died in defense of this book. Several bookstores in the US and the UK have been bombed. Over four dozen countries have banned or restricted the novel, and Mr. Rushdie... well, he’s still writing, but...

(See also IMAGINE THERE’S NO HEAVEN (1997))
The book opens with the two main characters, Gabreel and Saladin, falling unscathed from an airplane destroyed by terrorists.
Gabreel Farishta: After his parents died, he was taken in by Babasahed Mhatre. Became a Bollywood movie star. Before his transformation, he had notoriously bad breath.
Saladin Chamcha (a.k.a. Salahaddin Chamchawala): Emigrated from India to Great Britain. Temporarily transformed into a goat-like creature, and was taken in by the Sufyan family. His mother, known for her swank cocktail parties, choked on a fish and died. His family home lies on Cape Comorin, on the very tip of Asia, where three seas meet. I just saw a documentary about this place on TV.
Jumpy: Saladin’s leftist college buddy and martial arts instructor. After believing he is dead, he moves in with Saladin’s wife Pamela.
Sufyan family: Their bed & breakfast overcharges despondent immigrants but disregards occupancy laws.
Alleluia Cone: She climbed Everest.
54:

In Zeeny’s beaten-up Hindustan, a car built for a servant culture, the back seat better upholstered than the front, he felt the night closing in on him like a crowd.

75 - 77: On a cruise ship, American evangelist Eugene Dumsday lectures Saladin on the evils of Darwinism, such as drugs and pre-marital sexual relations. When natives of Cochin harbor offer to sell Dumsday drugs:

Saladin began, helplessly, to giggle. The incident struck him as Darwin’s revenge: if Dumsday held poor, Victorian, starchy Charles responsible for American drug culture, how delicious that he should himself be seen, across the globe, as representing the very ethic he battled so fervently against. Dumsday fixed him with a look of pained reproof. It was hard fate to be an American abroad, and not to suspect why you were so disliked.

Question: What is the opposite of faith?

Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself a kind of belief.

Doubt.

252 - 253: One of the not-so-subtle hints that Saladin’s adventures are a metaphor for immigrants in the U.K.:

Mishal Sufyan lost patience. ‘Jesus, Mum.’

‘Jesus?’

‘Dju think it’s temporary?’ Mishal, turning her back on scandalized Hind, inquired of Sufyan and Jumpy. ‘Some sort of possession thing – could we maybe get it you know exorcized?’ Omens, shinings, ghoulies, nightmares on Elm Street, stood excitedly in her eyes, and her father, as much as the VCR aficionado as any teenager, appeared to consider the possibility seriously. ‘In Der Steppenwolf,’ he began, but Jumpy wasn’t having any more of that. ‘The central requirement,’ he announced, ‘is to take an ideological view of the situation.’

That silenced everyone.

‘Objectively,’ he said, with a small self-deprecating smile, ‘what has happened here? A: Wrongful arrest, intimidation, violence. Two: Illegal detention, unknown medical experimentation in hospital,’ – murmurs of assent here, as memories of intra-vaginal inspections, Depo-Provera scandals, unauthorized post-partum sterilizations, and, further back, the knowledge of Third World drug-dumping arose in every person present to give substance to the speaker’s insinuations, – because what you believe depends on what you’ve seen, – not only what is visible, but what you are prepared to look in the face, – and anyhow, something had to explain horns and hoofs; in those policed medical wards, anything could happen – ‘And thirdly,’ Jumpy continued, ‘psychological breakdown, loss of sense of self, inability to cope. We’ve seen it all before.’

Only when Saladin Chamcha was alone in the attic room at the very end of his strength did he answer Sufyan’s rhetorical question. ‘I’m not your kind,’ he said distinctly into the night. ‘You’re not my people. I’ve spent half my life trying to get away from you.’

Mishal Sufyan: The underage daughter was discovered to be involved with Hanif Johnson, a lawyer working out of the Sufyan B&B.
256 - 257:

Had he not pursued his own idea of the good, sought to become that which he most admired, dedicated himself with a will bordering on obsession to the conquest of Englishness? Had he not worked hard, avoided trouble, striven to become new? Assiduity, fastidiousness, moderation, restraint, self-reliance, probity, family life: what did these add up to if not a moral code?

Hal Valance: Chamcha’s agent.
323: A character gives us a history of Biblical exegis on good vs. evil:

It isn’t until the Book of Chronicles, merely fourth century BC, that the word shaitan is used to mean a being, and not only an attribute of God.

Several plot paths that seem to have nothing to do with the main narrative are eventually explained: once the studios discovered that Gabreel was alive, they took advantage of the publicity of his mysterious return and forced him to appear in some movies:

A life of the prophet Mahommed, where names of people and places were changed. The title refers to words spoken by a young Prophet, allowing worship of pagan deities. Later, he claims that he was misled by evil djinn, claiming to be angels. His transcriber purposely starts mis-quoting the Prophet, merely to see if anyone notices. One of the Prophet’s young wives at first mocks his varying divine revelations, until she is rescued from the desert by a man, and would have been put to death without his re-interpretation of providence. In one segment, a brothel attracts clientèle by having the resident prostitutes role-play the wives of the prophet. This is probably what prompted the fatwah against Rushdie. Not only was it fiction, but it was fiction-within-fiction!
In a modern-day indian village, a mysterious girl named Ayesha Bibiji, whom many believe to be a reincarnated butterfly goddess, leads the villagers by foot on a pilgrimage to the sea that it might part for them to walk to Mecca. This tests the faith of the wealthy Mirza Saeed and his wife Mishal, who was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer.

353:

‘He was of the djinn, so he transgressed.’ – Quran 18:50, there it was plain as the day.

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