Speedkill

Hey look, it’s March and I haven’t posted anything on here since December. Granted, that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.

So I was thinking earlier about how little effect Mere Christianity had on me. I wrote two posts about it over four (!) years ago. I didn’t trash it entirely, but neither did it impress me much. Which causes me some confusion when people mention about important it was to them, whether they’re Christian or not. Did I just read it too late? The amount of mental energy I had to expend to find the flaws in its arguments was pretty minimal. It’s not like I’ve never been affected by arguments for God/religion; the prime mover argument was the entire reason I was a deist throughout high school. In any case, I’m perplexed and I probably always will be.

I find it an amusing exercise to go back and read some of my old posts on here. The Mere Christianity posts are a good example. The post about Expelled and its comment thread is also entertaining (I’m too lazy to go find links). Occasionally it feels like someone else entirely wrote them (the MC posts more than the Expelled one). I read through the arguments and find them to be clever and powerful; well, no shit, why else would I have written them? It’s a weird sort of narcissism and navel-gazing.

I’m almost entirely unable to read Piece of Mind anymore. Excluding the occasions when Steve pops in, it’s a painful exercise in condescension and faux self-reflection. The bumbling, innocent manner in which its done no longer softens it enough. You can read the first paragraph of a post and know exactly where he’s going. I’m pretty sure repeating yourself without your readers noticing is one of the key skills necessary for long-term blogging. I never developed it. Either Mark’s losing his skill for it or I’m becoming more sensitive to wasting my own time.

Of course, I shouldn’t bash anyone’s writing. Half the posts on here are a mess of soft language and qualifications for every statement. The number of times “seems” appeared on this blog is appalling. And of course, this section is another result of that phenomenon; I like Mark and don’t want to bash him personally, so I’ll follow up my criticism with some self-deprecation.

Since I don’t have cable anymore I don’t subject myself to TV news much, but I had a chance to watch Fox News a bit this week (hooray for motel rooms). I’d rather watch Fox than the other networks because it’s more interesting. CNN is the normal sort of brain-dead and Fox is the interesting sort. MSNBC is just annoying. Anyway, they were talking about the “deeming” gambit House Democrats were floating, where they would vote on a package of health care fixes and at the same time deem the Senate version of HCR to be passed. The report implied this was unconstitutional, which is plainly ridiculous, and showed a Democrat saying it would help some members who didn’t want to vote on the Senate bill. Then Brit Hume gave his opinion that it was nonsensical that it would help anyone, since they’re essentially still voting for the Senate bill and everyone would know that. At this point you have to wonder why Hume is getting paid for that sort of analysis. It’s immediately obvious without any foreknowledge of the idea that the point is to allow some House Democrats to say “I have this objection to the Senate bill, so I voted for a bill with a fix for that objection.” The point is not to hide a vote on the Senate bill, but to allow members to defend themselves against certain objections to the bill. Now, this is still stupid politics. Your average college Republican can come up with the attack ads: “Democrats think you’re so stupid that they could hide their vote on the Senate bill from you by voting on a bill that says it is passed, rather than on the actual bill.” You’d think people would demand Fox at least provide competent conservative analysis, but apparently not.

There’s a meme from a couple of popular bloggers where they list the ten most influential books for them. I’ll go with five, since I’m pretty young and books (as opposed to blogs and magazines) have had a lesser impact on my thinking:

5. 1984 by George Orwell – This is the first work of fiction that actually impacted me. Every novel I’d read up to that point, even the ones I liked, had nothing like the emotional impact of this one. The implicit goal of all my fiction reading has been to find other books that have the power that the end of 1984 does. I’ve only found two: The Road and Spin.
4. 9/11 by Noam Chomsky. Do liberals always have a Chomsky phase? This was the first “book” of Chomsky’s I read and his arguments had the curious effect of inspiring a completely different way of looking at things while not quite seeming correct. It took a few years to work through that, but I feel like I’m better for it.
3. Dying to Win by Robert Pape. This turned around what I thought about terrorism and provided a window into how powerful political science can actually be.
2. The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman. Books really didn’t have that much influence on my religious views. This Talk Origins article had more influence on me than any book on this list. But this book was still a big deal. The clear and concise way they go through and show the problems with the stories in the Old Testament is incredible. It moves you beyond skepticism about what’s in the Bible to be able to say “this is what doesn’t make sense and here’s why.” It makes the fuzzier New Testament criticism a disappointment in comparison.
1. What Liberal Media by Eric Alterman – The first political book I ever read and the beginning of my interest in partisan politics. The book isn’t the greatest in the world but if I hadn’t read it who knows what I would think about politics right now.

Jeff Blogging, Religion, The media

That time of year:

10. Isis – Wavering Radiant. There’s not a whole to say about this one. Isis are good. They have to make a pretty bad album for me not to really like it. This is no Panopticon or Oceanic, but it’s slightly better than In the Absence of Truth. Best song: Ghost Key.

9. Porcupine Tree – The Incident. PT albums are automatically on my top ten lists, the only question is where. The double album idea isn’t a great one; there’s good material on both discs and the first is a coherent whole, but too much of that whole is uninspired. This is really disappointing, as they’ve backed off the heaviness of FOABP and mixed in some older PT sounds. Quality-wise, there’s maybe a top five album between the two discs, even if it wouldn’t be that coherent, but like I said, there’s too much less than interesting material. Best song: Time Flies.

8. Andrew Bird – Noble Beast. This album is missing some of the catchiness of his last two, which were leaner and more accessible, but it’s still a solid album. There’s a lot more layering and depth to the songs which makes up for the lack of hooks. It’s a slightly different direction for him, so it’ll be interesting to see where he goes from here. Best song: Anonanimal.

7. Russian Circles – Geneva. That was quick. Station came out last year and was good, if underwhelming. It’s hard to live up to something like Enter. Maybe it’s the added distance between that release and this one, but Geneva is a lot stronger than Station. Best song: Geneva.

6. Mastodon – Crack the Skye. Mastodon have never quite clicked for me. Their past few albums have been good, but not quite great. This one is great. It’s proggier than their past albums and has a ton of great riffs and melodies. Best song: Oblivion

5. Mono – Hymn To The Immortal Wind. Mono are not the most original post-rock band. Half the time, they seem to be channeling Mogwai. This doesn’t mean they’re bad, but they’re not typically a candidate for a top ten list. This one seems different to me. There’s less of the wall of distortion that Mogwai uses on occasion and more, almost Explosions in the Sky-esque sounds. Not that they sound like them. It’s hard to explain. It’s just a damned good album. Best song: Ashes in the Snow.

4. OSI – Blood. OSI still haven’t topped their debut, but this is a good attempt. Their last album, by no means bad, was more focused on the electronic aspects of their sound. This one is a little more in the direction of their debut. Plus, you can’t go wrong with Gavin Harrison on drums. Best song: The Escape Artist.

3. Riverside – Anno Domini High Definition. Five songs filled with up tempo prog metal wackiness. It is glorious. It’s always tempting to hope they go back to the sound of their first album, but full-on prog metal suits them and this album is a nice change of pace after the relatively laid back Rapid Eye Movement. Best song: Egoist Hedonist.

2. Amorphis – Skyforger. I sort of forgot Amorphis existed. I thought they’d broken up. I’ve never been their biggest fan, but they’ve produced some enjoyable music. This one I really love, though. It’s the same enjoyment I get out of Nevermore. Are they doing something completely different, something groundbreaking? No. Hell, Majestic Beast is an all out Opeth ripoff. It’s just a great metal album. Best song: Sky is Mine.

1. Katatonia – Night Is The New Day. This was the least anticipated album from one of what I consider my favorite bands. For whatever reason, The Great Cold Distance morphed in my mind into pure dreck, a colossal disappointment after a string of just fantastic albums. After the first listen, I was ready to consign NitND to the same unappreciated corner of my music collection. But then I got hooked on The Longest Year. Then Onward into Battle. Then The Promise of Deceit. I went back to TGCD and found that it wasn’t as bad as I thought, though it still doesn’t compare to Viva Emptiness. Or this. I’ve been listening to it almost nonstop for weeks. I think it’s better than Viva Emptiness and maybe Last Fair Deal Gone Down. And those are two of my favorite albums ever. It’s dark and depressing metal and it’s stellar. I only wish I could say the same about the video for Day and Then The Shade, which apparently is about a goth girl who lost her contact lens in the forest and starts bleeding and vomiting upwards. I hope Lasse Hoile goes blind. Best song: The Longest Year.

Biggest Disappointment:

Dredg – the Pariah, the Parrot, the Delusion. And now we come to my most anticipated album from one of my favorite bands. Catch Without Arms has grown into one of my favorite albums. This…well, this is terrible. Ok, maybe not terrible. I Don’t Know is one of the best songs they’ve ever written (and an agnostic anthem, no less!). Light Switch is damned catchy. Pariah isn’t bad (but something feels off about it) and neither is Cartoon Showroom. But this is a sprawling, 18 track album. There’s not enough solid material to keep it from collapsing onto itself. There’s so much mediocre material that it drowns out the bright spots. There’s only around 25 minutes of solid material (out of an hour); the rest is b-side material at best. I don’t understand it. It’s annoying as hell. And Saviour can go die in a fire. Best song: I Don’t Know.

Jeff Music

No doubt the three of you left reading this regularly have noticed that I’m not posting much anymore. For whatever reason, I don’t feel like writing about current events. I like writing (you can’t have over 2,000 posts and not), but I have no desire to say anything about the economy, health care, climate change, or even religion (which is sort of frightening). It’s not that I’m happy with things now that Obama is president; on the contrary, he’s been pretty terrible on the legal issues surrounding the war on terror and the health care bill will be a marginal improvement at best.

Anyway, the point is: this blog is effectively dead, but I still feel vaguely obligated to post to it semi-regularly and this is my attempt to end that. It’ll still be around (unless I become unable to pay for hosting) and it’ll reanimate itself now and again when I get pissed off or have something vaguely interesting to note. But for all intents and purposes, it has ceased to be. It’s an ex-blog.

Or maybe it’s just resting.

Jeff Blogging

If there’s one thing Alex Jones is good for, it’s entertainment. I haven’t heard a fluoride in the water rant like I did on the radio this weekend in forever. He also thinks we’re being sterilized by basically everything. It’s a wonder we have fallen into some sort of Children of Men-like apocalypse.

Jeff Silliness

Well, last week was fun, wasn’t it? Obama won a Nobel prize for no reason and conservatives went nuts. Which is entertaining and all, but then groups like the DNC and Media Matters attack them as unpatriotic and siding with terrorists. Which is absolutely vile and one of the reasons the last administration and its defenders were so odious.

By the way, what kind of joke was that? A Nobel Peace Prize? Are they high?

Then there’s this, another tactic I hated from the last administration (bear in mind that I’m not accusing Republicans of inventing it, just that I associate it with the Bush administration because that’s when I started paying attention). Picking out bits of larger legislation and accusing a person of being against something was a significant part of the anti-Kerry attacks in 2004. It wasn’t pretty then and it’s not pretty now.

Or I guess you can say that anyone who’s ever opposed an omnibus spending bill hates the military, schools, seniors, etc. How fun.

Jeff The Left

A health care bill banning rescission, disallowing coverage refusals due to pre-existing conditions, eliminating the wasteful Medicare Advantage program, and expanding coverage to 94% of the country seems like a step forward.

Then again, it’s a giveaway to teh evil corporations, so I’m clearly some sort of non-sentient shill. But the alternative is being complicit with murder, so hello persistent vegetative state.

Jeff Congress, The Left

How is this not awesome? Conservapedia has a Conservative Bible Project going. Because the people who do the NIV translation are a bunch of feminist liberals. Seriously. So they’re going to translate the KJV into more modern English.

For example, one of their suggestions from Mark is to replace Pharisees with “intellectuals” or “skeptical teachers.” One instance:

Jesus perceived immediately what the intellectual types were thinking, and he asked them, “Why are you so hostile to this?

If one of your goals is to enhance the intellectual force of the Bible, the phrase “intellectual types” isn’t helping.

(for reference, here’s what the NRSV translation is: “At once Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussing these questions among themselves; and he said to them, ‘Why do you raise such questions in your hearts?”)

This is also an obvious example of the flaws in what they’re doing (flaws? no way!). The fact is that Jesus’ conflict with the Pharisees is a conflict with a conservative religious establishment. The Pharisees are representatives of the ruling priests (from what I’ve read, anyway). Jesus’ is rebelling against a religious establishment, which is not a particularly conservative move. Characterizing the representatives of that establishment as “intellectuals,” which undoubtedly conjures up an image of anti-capitalist radicals in academia who want to destroy the very foundation of our country in their minds, is a bit misleading. Jesus is rebelling against tradition and is trying to shake the foundations of the contemporary religious establishment. You can make a better case that he’s analogous to their view of intellectuals. It would be stupid to do so, but less so than the Conservapedia alternative.

That’s not to say that verse is inconsistent with conservatism, just that using it to score conservative points obscures what Mark is describing. The world is too complicated to impose narrow ideological categorization on every event. Conservapedians, can’t handle that.

But we really already knew that, didn’t we?

Jeff Religion, Silliness, The Right

Apparently. Did you know this person at The Corner can’t read her own chart? It’s true. Just look at the giant bar in the middle (2008’s projected budget deficit) and try to square it with “[e]ach year under Obama is worse than any year under Bush.” I’m pretty sure Bush was president last year.

This also invalidates her second point, but less humorously so.

UPDATE: This is what I get for ignoring how easy that was. Dave points out in comments that the graph is mislabeled and 2009 is the big bar in the middle. Of course, you can still point out that FY2009 includes TARP and the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac subsidies, both of which were Bush policies and a substantial portion of the projected increase. Not to mention the general economic deterioration which is difficult to blame on anyone. But that still means I should pay more attention.

Jeff The Right

I wonder if replying to emails I get at work with a Snopes link would cause problems.

In other news, you should read this. Of course, I’ve never read any Ayn Rand, so maybe I should shut up. I’ve sort of half meant to read a book of hers, in the same way that I half consider reading a Twilight book: I would feel better about considering them dreck. Alas, I have better things to do.

Jeff Domestic Policy, The Right

Because I’ve been on a sci-fi/fantasy kick all summer and am bored, here’s a meme from Tor.com, via Good Math, Bad Math. The last three genre books purchased.

As it happens, I bought four at once just about a month ago and since I’ve only finished two of them, I’ll mention all four. That evens out to three, right?

1. The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi. I read Old Man’s War earlier this summer and thought it was decent entertainment. Mostly because his blog is so entertaining, I bought this, even though Old Man’s War wasn’t good enough for me to be really excited about a sequel. It’s military SF, standard colonization of space type stuff. Old people can sign up for service with the Colonial Defense Force and get their consciousness transferred to a new body. The CDF also engineers people specifically to be soldiers, using the consciousness of those who didn’t quite make it to the transfer part (hence the name “ghost brigades”). TGB follows one of those soldiers. It’s not as good as Old Man’s War, but it still qualifies as decent entertainment. The universe is explained a little more and some of it is interesting, but the book really drags. I liked the end, though. So it’s a book I’m not enthusiastic about, but it’s a quick, enjoyable read.
2. Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. I love this book. The planet is put inside a sort of cosmic sphere where time is massively slowed down. This leads to all manner of reactions, which are all fascinating. As are the characters. Wilson’s writing is superb and the answers to the mysteries of the “spin” are suitably mind-blowing. I’ve not read anything like this, but my exposure to genre sci-fi is relatively small. It’s easily on the list of my favorite books and makes a strong case for the top spot (it’ll have to fight 1984 for it). There’s apparently a sequel (called Axis), which I’m too scared to read, lest it sully my enjoyment of this book. I’ll get to it eventually.
3. Cosmonaut Keep by Ken MacLeod. Maybe it was because I had just finished Spin, but I only made it through a third of this. There are two main storylines, one of which is a near future that deals with first contact with an alien race and the other a far future that has space travel and castles. The near future one was vaguely interesting, though the name dropping of “legacy” software was grating for some reason (I know exactly what he’s talking about, so it’s not that I don’t understand it). The far future storyline/world was just really unappealing. It was also confusing, mostly because I didn’t care enough to pay attention after a certain point. The writing is decent enough and I suppose if you find the world engaging you’ll like it, but it apparently isn’t for me and I decided to not waste my time on it.
4. Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds. I’m not very far in this one (couple hundred pages), but it’s good so far. It’s more space opera and has an odd structure, with a few storylines that aren’t necessarily happening at the same time. It’s strange, but it’s working well enough. I haven’t really been pulled into it yet, but it’s engaging enough to keep me reading. Unlike Cosmonaut Keep.

Are these books “comfortable” together? Well, given that all but one is space opera, I’d have to say yes. I don’t know why I bought a bunch of space opera, but there you go.

Jeff Culture