perfidy

The NY Times has an article about the new vogue for audiobooks, at least among denizens of greater New York City. I shouldn't be so glib: it is true that as the number of Americans who read books regularly declines, the number who listen to them has been rising.

The Times takes note of the discussion simmering between authors and "readers" (for what else can we call people who regularly listen to the printed word in leiu of reading it but "readers," any note of condescention detected being not entirely accidental?) as to what types of books are most appropriate for listening, and what kind of prose works best (they note that D.H. Lawrence makes for particularly dull listening). People listen to books while commuting, while exercising, and while walking the dog, though one user testifies that short stories work best for dog-walking since there's less to miss - a spectacularly stupid thing to say. A good short story packs an entire universe into five hundred words, meaning that if you look up to pull your dog off the mailman's leg, you've arguably missed more than if Dean Koontz were squirting his gore-soaked hackery straight into your ear. But I digress.

Although I have enjoyed a book on tape (namely Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded, August 27, 1883 by Simon Winchester, read by the author), I just don't know if reading aloud is always the best way to absorb a book. In high school my advanced English class read aloud each day, and it quickly became apparent which authors were bearable aloud and which were not. Hemingway: yes. Tolstoy: not so much.

I think the main concern is that many writers don't write with auditory concerns in mind. That is, some authors write to be heard, and some authors write to be read. The latter write so that readers can roll the succession of words around their mind, savoring the singular texture and shape of each phrase with little regard for how difficult it might be to say. Take the foregoing sentence: if I were writing that to read out loud, I would never have used "savoring the singular texture," which sounds a little fey and precious but feels in the mind-- to me at least-- pleasingly crinkly. I tend to craft sentences so they have rhythm, a flow of tension and release on which I can hang the exact words I need to use. Unfortunately, that means out loud I read like a moron. It's that way for many authors. I could listen to Donald Hall's poetry all day long but I think I'd rather sit down with Pynchon, thank you very much. Unlike me, both Hall and Pynchon are major contemporary writers, but only one of them works aloud.

Many readers mentally sound out what their eye scans as they read it. Personally, I'm one of those readers and I write for them. It's much easier to think how "coruscating" sounds than to actually stumble over it with your tongue, and if I want that ocean to be "coruscating" rather than "glinting" "glimmering" "shimmering" or "shining," then that is what I will write. And when the book on tape comes out, that coruscating ocean will sound positively idiotic. Writing for reading aloud requires exactly the same attention to precise shading that writing for reading quietly does, but the rules are different and largely incompatible. A speechwriter isn't necessarily a novelist. I'm not going to denigrate people for absorbing books by whatever means they can, but I am going to stand athwart history with a dictionary and a reading lamp, shouting "shut up!!"

John Cole has been in a fine lather recently over the whole Koran-flushing thing. Start here and scroll down. It seems the military now affirms the toilet incident (which means nothing aside from making Michelle Malkin, Hugh Hewitt, and Bush's spokespeople out to be liars- or at least knee-jerk apologists- in their own right) and ups the ante with stories of far darker abuses. I agree with his posts on this matter 100%, which is pretty good for a yunzer and Steeler fan; it's not that I want accusations of Koran-flushing and detainee murder to be true. No. No, no no. What I want is for the truth to come out as to whether (and how often) prisoners in American custody die mysteriously, so that it can stop, and the only way for that to happen is to get the truth about what's happening. Mutilated bodies on ice and artillery corporals making dogpiles of naked prisoners for shits and giggles is not what the US of A is about, period. No matter whether each separate incident is indeed an isolated occurrence or (as it increasingly appears) part of a concerted move toward grisly "interrogation" techniques, that stuff has to end.

And why haven't I already put Cole on the blogroll?

[wik] I should be clear. Newsweek don't get a free pass for rushing to press with a poorly sourced story. Neither do they get a free pass for focusing on an incident so minor when dead bodies on ice turn up in detainee camps. What they do get is a modicum of understanding; was it ever so unbelievable that someone at Gitmo flushed a Koran (or pages from one) down the hopper considering the darker stories that seep out from ongoing investigations into military detention and interrogation techniques? That is all.

I was just downstairs on a smoke break, and noted that the powerball lottery is up to 180 meeelion dollars. Of course, you’re more likely to be struck by lightning something on the order of 175 consecutive times than to win that money, but its fun to think about what you would do with a windfall of that magnitude. A quick check of the website reveals that the cash payout value is just over a hundred million. Take off a third for taxes, and that would leave you with somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy million dollars. That’s not chump change.

What would I do?

• I’d buy a Hummer, because I’m going camping this weekend. (Personalized plate: NLB4ZOD)
• I’d stop at the sporting goods store, and get one of those nifty tents that set itself up if you just ask it nicely. And while I’m there, I’d get one of those Rambo survival knives, just because the cost would only be .000071% of my net worth.
• Once I’m back from camping, I’d get myself a nice Macintosh computer, because compatibility with the computers at work is not exactly an issue anymore. While I’m at the Apple store, I’d get me a powerbook, an iPod, and whatever other iGadgets catch my eye.
• Since iPods hold 10,000 songs, and the average CD has what, 13 songs? I’d need to buy 769 and a quarter CDs.
• I would go to Japan and buy a samurai sword. The kind that takes a wizened Japanese craftsman ten years to fold umpty-thousand times to create the perfect blade. Then, I’d go to the local mall and buy a cheap stamped aluminum rip-off from the Chesapeake Blade and Tzotchke Company. I’d take the hilt and accouterments of the cheapo replica and put them on the real sword, and hang it on the wall. When some asshole sees it, and says, “You won a 180 million dollars and all you could think to do is buy that piece of crap, you nouveau riche idiot?” I could cut his head off with no effort whatsoever.
• I hate squirrels, so I would purchase a Barrett M82 .50 sniper rifle.
• I’d need more cars. So, I’d buy a black 1950 Mercury convertible coupe (plate: BLUES), a 1969 Camaro in dark green with a white racing stripe (plate: BTCHN), and a 1955 Hudson limo.
• I’d pay off all my family’s bills – mortgage, car payments, credit cards and utilities for a year. Some friends would get this treatment, too.
• I'd go to the art galleries downtown, pick out the ugliest crap modern art, buy it, take it home and build a bonfire out of it.
• I’d set up a trust fund to pay for the education of all the children in my family, and provide scholarships for lazy, underachieving white kids. (There would be substantial overlap between these two categories.)
• Beneath a modest mansion modeled after Stan Hywet and Abbotsford House, I would construct the Ministry bunker and catastratorium.
• For elegant dining and formal occasions, I would get a BMW 760i. Twelve cylinders of ultimate driving pleasure. (plate: BOBSGEO) And an Acura NSX, just because. (Plate: WKNPNUB)
• World Tour!
• I’d buy all the books I want. That’s a lot of books. Maybe I’d even buy that book I never heard of that NDR read.

All of that might come to ten million dollars. I’m sure I could live quite comfortably on the interest off of another ten million. What would I do with the remaining $50 million? That’s a no brainer:

I’d buy my own spaceship company.

Here's an interesting one: former Steely Dan and Doobie Brothers guitarist Jeff Baxter has become a high powered defense consultant. From Wizbang.

Normblog excerpts an article in the Wall Street Journal (for suscribers only) by Fouad Ajami:

To venture into the Arab world, as I did recently over four weeks in Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan and Iraq, is to travel into Bush Country...

The weight of American power, historically on the side of the dominant order, now drives this new quest among the Arabs. For decades, the intellectual classes in the Arab world bemoaned the indifference of American power to the cause of their liberty. Now a conservative American president had come bearing the gift of Wilsonian redemption.

Check it out.

Researchers believe they have found the Queen Anne's Revenge, the wreck of the ship belonging to Edward Teach (AKA Blackbeard) off North Carolina. The ship is believed to have sunk in 1718, and is being raised piece by piece to confirm its identity.

And another thing. Let this be a warning to the Ministry's enemies and ill-wishers. That illiterate SOB Teach was a real pain in the keister. He and his band of looting maniacs failed to recognize a good thing when they had it, got greedy, and forced us to take desparate measures. A good piece of work, taking that slave ship. But everything after that was a total cock-up. Never send an illiterate mercenary to do a thinking man's job, is what I say. Do you know why The QAR ran aground that night in 1718 in waters that Teach had sailed many times before? Could it have had something to do with the ship drafting rather lower than usual? After all we happen to know there was ten feet of water in the hold thanks to a butt-head sabotaged while the crew was watering and provisioning in Falmouth. Could it have had something to do with a broken keel and disastrously weakened backstays on the mainmast that somehow gave way? And could the last thing that welching two-timer of a "pirate" have seen when he was run down and cornered like a dog in Okracoke been the director of our Bermuda branch office grinning down the barrels of a brace of pistols?

We're not saying.

To the researchers of the future: Good luck finding Jimmy Hoffa.

Worried about getting lost on the beltway? Don't trust new-fangled GPS receivers? Well, just get one of those useless AOL cds, some lego bricks, and a couple mirrors; and you can build your own sextant, and navigate by the stars. This looks like a pretty cool little project, and one I will certainly undertake in a couple years when my boy is old enough to appreciate it.

Hat tip: James Rummel of Hell in a Handbasket.

Down to your right (no, your other right), you'll note that several new sites have been added to the list of places you might enjoy knowing about.

Well, you would have noted if you happened to have memorized the Ministry Legion of Merit as it stood yesterday, and were able to perform a quick alphabetic matrix subtraction in your head.

Since not everyone has those skills, the new additions are also listed directly below. Each of these sites is characterized as much by being well-written as by its heterotopicality. In random order:

Velociworld
Fine, Why Fine?
TigerHawk
Garfield Ridge

Thank you for your cooperation.

Thanks to Murdoc, who laughed at our pain during our recent geek deathmatch, we now know that we are not in fact the uber-geeks we hubristicly imagined ourselves to be:

Two Deranged Mongoloid @#!?%wit British Dorks Immolate Themselves in Mock Lightsabre Duel Using Flourescent Light Bulbs and Gasoline

For once, the category used here is almost literally true. If either of these lackwits expires due to injuries sustained in their brief yet glorious attempt to be just like Anakin Skywalker in Episode III, they will certainly be on the short list for a Darwin Award.

[wik] And they got it on tape!

The groovy economist over at the Idea Shop has an interesting post on why tax policy, well, sucks:

There’s a lot of evidence that people aren’t always rational, and suffer from a range of cognitive biases. But thanks to arbitrage, rational people stand to profit when irrational people let prices and wages stray from efficient levels. That’s what justifies the economist’s assumption of rationality—a small number of rational profit-seekers keep markets rational as a whole even when many participants aren’t.

Unfortunately, tax policy has no such mechanism. Tax policymakers suffer the same cognitive biases as everyone else, but the "market" for tax policy—made up of legislators, voters and lobbyists—is much less self-correcting. In traditional markets, bad business practices get pushed out by competition, and bad pricing decisions get corrected through arbitrage. But in tax policy, inefficient tax laws can survive on the books for generations.

Another related aspect of this problem is the asymmetry of the opposing sides. Those in favor of ‘bad’ tax policy (special interests, social engineers, tax accountants and other vermin) are concentrated and focused on their evil work. It is their job to impose these policies on the rest of us, and they have considerable time, skill and resources to devote to that job. Contrariwise, those who favor a simple, transparent, neutral and non-confiscatory tax code (the rest of us) all have day jobs. As attractive as a rational tax code is, and no matter how much we might benefit from such a thing, there are many things that compete for mindshare. For me, the perfectly reasonable and rational tax code is competing with any number of other policy issues, job, time with family, beer and Civ III. The opponents are distracted and diffuse, and so we get the tax code we deserve.

This puts me in mind of something else, too. Different arenas have different time scales. The response time in markets can often be nearly instantaneous. New information immediately affects the price of stocks. In the soi-disant Information Technology Industry (one out of three ain’t bad) the turnover in new software, techniques and indeed people is, shall we say, brisk. In science, things are slower. New paradigms are adopted (so they say) about as quickly as the old generation of distinguished scientists can retire. But the response time of political systems can stretch to centuries.

I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, bureaucratic inefficiency and glacial response times is bad. The tentative nature and sloth-like vigor of the intelligence reform effort over the nearly five fricken years since 9/11 is a poster child for government incapacity and lack of adaptability. My security questionnaire still had questions about commies on it, for chrissakes.

All of that is unquestionably bad. But, but, what if government weren’t slow? Imagine a government that could reach decisions quickly; create plans and implement them in days; use innovative technologies and management tools to deal with problems in real time. Scared yet? It is well that government’s vast power is balanced by its diffidence and incompetence. In Frank Herbert’s second best novel, he introduces the Bureau of Sabotage. BuSab exists to slow down, interfere with, and screw with the heads of all other government agencies. It is the ultimate citizen advocate, because it stops the government from doing things. In the story, BuSab had its origin in an earlier government that was efficient and fast moving, as well as tyrannical and oppressive. The early BuSab operatives used any means necessary to slow down the operations of this government, and sowed enough chaos that it was able to evolve into a more reasonable and sane government.

Not to be all defeatist, but I think that part of the price of a reasonable government is bad, or at least out-dated policy. Not that we shouldn’t try to reform and improve, but a government that was rapidly responsive to our every need and want would be far, far worse.