Dissolution and Condemnation

I finished the next two books in the War of the Spider Queen series. As far as I can remember, this is the first series I've read with multiple authors. It can be a bit jarring to go from one book to the next. Each separate author has so far done a good job, but there tends to be a slight feel of discontinuity between books.

Dissolution is written by Thomas M. Reid. Overall, his writing style is much better than Richard Lee Byers', author of the first book, with one glaring exception. Plotting, awesome. Description, very good. Characterization? Eh... That was one place where Byers excelled: creating vivid characters. In Reid's book they feel flatter and less interesting; the vibrancy is gone. Still, the skillful plotting and writing nearly makes up the difference.

Here we find our dark elf "heroes" on a journey to neighboring Ched Nesad, another drow city, to find out if Lolth has singled out Menzoberranzan or if she's abandoned all of her drow children. It's something of a pity that the city is destroyed by the end of the book, as I found the description quite interesting. Giant spiders, the size of mansions or larger, created a web in this large cavern, and some magical process was used to strengthen and harden the web so it could be walked on and built upon. Buildings there look like egg-sacs attached to the webbing. Not surprisingly, the lowest levels of the web house the poorest residents, and the nobles all reside in the highest tiers. Or, well, they did. Turns out that people who live on hardened webbing shouldn't throw stone-burning chemicals.

As far as the plot of the series goes, the important detail is that not only has Lolth abandoned all drow, she has also abandoned other races who worship her. So our anti-heroes now need to find out why. Their attempt to find a way to do so leads into the third book.


Condemnation, by Richard Baker.
Baker is good both at plotting and at characterization, though he didn't quite keep Pharaun's flavor the same as when Byers first established it (Byers' character was the better version, imo). My biggest complaint about Baker is that there are several places where he completely glosses over battle scene because the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Sometimes I agreed with this and didn't object overly much, but there was at least one situation where I was not convinced this was the case. I started to wonder if he was just incompetent at describing battle scenes, but those he did include were fairly well done. I think the omission would bother me less if there were a few sentences indicating roughly how things went. Blow-by-blow would probably be overkill. It just annoyed me when he just jumped to the next scene. It felt very much like a made-for-tv thing, where the commercials would fit into those gaps.

I won't go into too much detail about what they learn, save to say that it's a bad idea to bring a priest of a rival god into your goddess's inner sanctum. Admittedly, they had no way to get to said sanctum without help from the priest, but it was still a bad idea.

We also meet a scion of Elistraee in this book, who tries unsuccessfully to convert Halisstra (rescued from Ched Nasad in the second book) and pays a high price for it. Elistraee is a daughter of Lolth and tends to be the goddess of choice for non-evil drow. Or, well, did prior to this series. My impression is that either this series or its successor (Lady Penitent) will change that in a big way.


I now have the last three books in the series, but haven't started on them. I'm rather curious to see how it goes. Reviews of the fourth book on Amazon variously claim it to be the best or the worst book of the series. * shrugs * Likewise, several reviews say the series was good until the fourth book and then went downhill while others claim it keeps getting better until the end. I'll state an opinion when I've read them. :-)

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Dissolution

Wow, long time without posting. Basically, taking over as DM used up most of my creative energy that had been going into this blog. However, my scenario should end this week, and Fibonacci's begin, and I have nearly all the details worked out. A few still need polishing. I'll probably post something on that once I get back into the habit of posting. This post, though, is about a book I just finished reading. It's called Dissolution, and is set in the drow city of Menzoberranzan. I wanted to refamiliarize myself with the drow mindset, as in Fibonacci's next campaign I'm playing a drow assassin. She is not a typical drow, in that she's good-aligned, but she's also not going to be a whiny, angsty "can't we all just get along" drow. She's part of a merchant family dealing in poisons. They travel around the Underdark, and act as a sort of underground railroad for drow misfits. They would like to make drow society more cohesive, and less chaotic (meaning they don't serve Lolth), but mostly do what they can for drow who don't fit into the extant society. Anyway, that has nothing to do with the book other than my motivation for reading it.

The book is not perfect. There were places where I wanted to slap the author for sloppy writing and general pretentiousness. Nonetheless, the book is quite enjoyable for its characters and plot. We have Pharaun, a wizard outcast from his family but now tolerated for his high position in the wizards' school. He's something of a fop. Imagine James Bond as a drow wizard with little concern for bystanders. Then there's Ryld. He's a commoner who's risen about as high as a commoner can in drow society: he trains the city's males as fighters. He could be guard-captain of a noble house, but, as he points out, this would put him under the thumb of a matron mother and her retinue. Then we have Quenthel and Gromph. Quenthel is the high priestess in Menzoberranzan and Gromph is the high wizard. They're also siblings, and Gromph is plotting to kill his sister. This is not particularly noteworthy, other than the rank, as drow take "sibling rivalry" to the extreme; Pharaun's sister is also plotting to kill him, for instance. A few others become prominent later in the book, but it looks like they won't be truly major players until the second book of the series.

The cornerstone of the plot is that the priestesses of Lolth in Menzoberranzan have lost contact with their goddess, and no one knows why. As soon as some of the drow malcontents realize this, they set about taking advantage of the situation. Pharaun and Ryld are called in to track the malcontents, knowing only that they've disappeared. Gromph decides it would be a good time to try and kill Quenthel, since her powers will be diminished. Without giving too much away, all this eventually leads to a slave uprising in the city itself. All the goblins, bugbears, orcs, kobolds, and other "lower races" decide it would be a good time to rise up against their oppressors. There's more to it, but that would be giving away too much.

Now, I'd read some Forgotten Realms books before, but this is the first I've read since actually playing D&D. Certain details about the combat made more sense. I would find myself thinking things like "Nope, rolled too low," or "Must have made a saving throw." This didn't fit everywhere, as there were weapons being broken and heads being chopped off and knees being shattered, which is more specificity than usually allowed by game mechanics, but I was amused by the places where I could see it as fitting perfectly within game mechanics. I was even more amused when the book ended with a group of five drow being sent on a quest to find out what was going on with Lolth. Five adventurers, eh? Two priestesses, one wizard, and two fighters (one of whom may be a rogue; he only made three appearances, so it's hard to say).

Anyway, it isn't necessary to play D&D to appreciate this book, but it certainly gives some insight into the structure. If you want a story about scheming backstabbers whose sense of loyalty lasts until they see an advantage in betrayal, this is an enjoyable book. I'm hoping the next ones in the series will be as well. Oddly, all the books in this series seem to be by different authors. This one was by Richard Lee Byers. When he isn't being overly pretentious, he has a decent writing style, and he is very good at writing memorable characters.

Oh yes. One other detail that I found rather interesting. Drow "friendships" are more matters of convenience and familiarity than anything else. There is a place in the book where one friend betrays another, but the more I think about it, the more I think that a set of good characters would have wound up doing the exact same thing. The biggest difference is that the good character would have said "sorry," first, or, possibly, there would have been some conferring and they would have mutually decided that doing things that way would give them the best chance of saving the city. However, since there was a betrayal involved with these characters, it will be interesting to see if it changes the overall dynamic of character interaction in the next book.

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Mistborn

Hmmm... I never bothered to post a Happy New Year. Oh well. Consider this a belated one.

Between reading and cleaning and helping with things, I've had less interest in blogging lately. I suspect part of it is that I've finally come out of a cycle of depression and would rather be doing things than writing about them (unless the doing is also the writing).

Anyway, reading Mistborn took up a large chunk of that time. Here's the whole trilogy in one package. Depending on local discounts, this is probably cheaper than buying each book separately. Either way, they're well worth the price. I finished the first book and I'm about halfway through the second.

Mistborn is an incredibly intricate and well-plotted story. It asks the question, what happens if the prophesied hero fails? We find a society with an immortal, godlike "Lord Ruler." The common people are treated worse than slaves. The uncommon people tend to be hunted down and/or strictly controlled. The world is mostly brown due to ashfalls and the ash seems to be so pervasive that the sun always appears to be red.

Enter Kelsier and his merry band of misfits. They manage to do mostly as they like, despite being uncommon, and have decided that, for the ultimate heist, they're going to go after the Lord Ruler's stash of atium (an incredibly valuable metal, used by allomancers to see possible futures). Anything else I might say on that would quickly turn into a spoiler.

However, I do want to mention that magic system in Mistborn. It's fascinating, and unique. Some people have the ability to "burn" metals. Specific metals connect to specific powers. Someone who can burn only one metal (and hence having only one power) is a Misting. Someone who can burn them all is a Mistborn. So far as anyone knows, there is no in-between ... but a lot of "common knowledge" about Mistborns has turned out to be false. At the beginning of Mistborn, there were 10 known metals. Kelsier discovered a missing eleventh, and later we find that there are still others unknown, except perhaps to the Lord Ruler and his cronies. From a bit of scouting, it looks like there will be 16 total by the end (4 groups of 4), but they haven't all been found yet by the middle of the second book.

The other thing about the second book [SPOILER] is that Sanderson actually takes a realistic look at what would happen after the evil tyrant has been deposed. It is messy. Everyone who had power under the tyrant is vying to keep it/get it back. The few idealists are fighting a losing battle against indifference and fear. Even if the Lord Ruler was evil, things were stable under his rule, and some people would prefer stability to freedom. I have a feeling that Sanderson was influenced by the fall of the USSR in this. ^!^

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The Gathering Storm

I consider this book one of my Christmas presents, though my mom actually gave it to me just before Thanksgiving. I didn't actually start reading it until Christmas Eve, so I'm tying it to a tradition we used to follow of opening one present on Christmas Eve, and the rest on Christmas morning. I knew that if I started reading it while the semester was still on, I wouldn't get my papers written or my students' homework graded.

I wasn't sure what to expect. Hopefully everyone knows that after Robert Jordan's passing, Brandon Sanderson took over the Wheel of Time series. It was originally slated to be one book. Sanderson wound up breaking it into three, and Gathering Storm is the first installment. I'd read Sanderson's book Elantris, and enjoyed it, but that was his own world; here, he had to take over the reigns of someone else's world. I was quite impressed with his handling of it. It wasn't perfect, but that's not really a surprise. I have a few specific nitpicks with handling of some characters, but nothing worth pointing out here. Sanderson has the WoT world down pat, and also most of the characters. That's quite an achievement for a series that was already eleven books long.

The style, of course, is not the same as Jordan's. Sanderson is much more prone to explain the things a character does, rather than leave the reader to guess what's going on. This is both a plus and a minus. I miss Jordan's subtlety, but at the same time, it was often frustrating when he was too subtle. I think Sanderson, himself a WoT fan before being recruited, felt some of the same frustration, and decided that he would make things clearer. It's also nice to see some long-running threads resolve themselves, and to see hints to how some of the others may resolve.

I'll mention one of those hints. I don't consider it a spoiler, exactly, as I'm mostly speculating from what was given in the book. However, it might imply a spoiler or two, so you've been warned.

Lews Therin comes out with a hint as to what went wrong when he and the hundred companions sealed the Bore. In order to seal it, they had to touch the Dark One directly with their power, and this is what tainted saidin. Also, we see an unexpected character wield the "True Power" (the Dark One's power), accidentally. How this is possible is not explained, unless it has something to do with the former taint on saidin. Still, since the "True Power" comes directly from the Dark One, it can't become any more corrupt by touching the Dark One directly, and if it can be wielded by someone trying to seal the Bore, then maybe there's a way to seal it without tainting any other forms of power. However, this solution does not really fit with the way the book ends, so it may be completely wrong.

One minor complaint about the ending: I think the sentiments were good, but I think Jordan would have done a better job getting them written down without coming across as ridiculously maudlin or sentimental. It's a place where his subtlety was needed. Still, I don't think anyone but Jordan himself could have done a better job than Sanderson on the book as a whole, and it's a bloody relief to know that the rest of the books are on their way, with no illness to make the wait time drag on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on...

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XDM

Fibonacci loaned me his copy of XDM: Extreme Dungeon Mastery, as it's likely that I'll be DM for the next adventure. "Likely" because another player had asked for it, but he's the one currently out of commission due to Life Circumstances. Back to the book. The story is that the Hickmans had shopped the idea around but couldn't find any publishers who wanted to take it on, then at some point they met up with Howard Tayler of Schlock Mercenary fame, and he suggested they do a self-publish module. Now, the book isn't bad, but it really could have used some professional editing. Among the more glaring mistakes are spelling errors that any decent word processor should have caught.

The good: In the main, XDM is a fun, light-hearted look at what makes for a good RPG. It's full of random footnotes, most of which are there for humor value, and awesome anecdotes. Mostly, the advice to DM's is helpful, though sometimes presented in such an over-the-top manner that it's hard to figure out what the advice is. The artwork, of course, is entertaining, but that's no surprise considering the artist.

The bad: The merchandising jokes got old fast, so old that it was hard to think of them as anything but advertisements. The sections on atmosphere and random tricks felt like an interruption, and would have been better put in an appendix. Worse, some of the card tricks were so poorly described that it's unlikely anyone without prior experience or an outside source of information could figure them out. They needed to do a novice test: pick someone who's never done any card tricks, give them the instructions, and see if said instructions are actually usable. That the authors came across as ridiculously egotistical makes this all the more glaring (the egoism was, I think, intended to be humorous; I got tired of it). Finally, typos, typos, typos, typos, typos.

The questionable: Is the simplified XD-20 game better than the games that require extensive purchasing of extra manuals? Er... not necessarily. Simpler, yes, and easier for a player to get started on, but it's rather handy to have a world already built to use. Otherwise, the DM has to come up with everything, and that can be a bit of a pain. With a framework in place, it's a lot easier to get things going. In the campaign I'm attempting to build, I'm perfectly happy to be able to just take stuff off the shelf from the D&D books without needing to modify/simplify it. I've got enough work trying to get a believable town constructed without also having to construct the world that contains it. Fine, you can insert any material you like into the XDM system, but if that system is your starting point, you're not going to have any such material to use.

So, overall... worth reading, some useful advice, but annoying in many aspects.

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Carol Fenster's 1000 GF Recipes

I got this cookbook a while back (and it will probably be the last cookbook I buy for a while), and finally tried out a recipe from it on Monday. She uses a sorghum-based flour blend, probably as a compromise between the crumbliness of rice-based mixes and the sometimes overpowering flavor of bean-based mixes. I don't know for sure if it was the recipe or not, but the cupcakes I made were a bit crumblier than any I've made using Bette Hagman's flour mixes. It could also be because I used a mix of dutched and undutched cocoa, and she comments in the intro that it matters which you use. I may have to experiment to find out if she's right. ^/^ It's possible that it matter more with her flour mix than with others, for whatever reason.

As for the book itself, it is very thorough, with a good introduction, and some surprising extras. It actually contains a "southwestern spice mix" that is very similar to the taco spice mix that I came up with on my own. I may compare and see which I like better. This is the first GF book I've come across that does contain such spice-mixes, so that's a plus, though it doesn't contain very many of them.

I have one big complaint about the layout of the book. At the beginning, there's a table of contents with page numbers to take you to the different sections of the book (pies, cakes, pastas, etc.), which is fine. Then you turn to one of those pages, and there's a list of the recipes contained in that section, which is also fine, except that list does not give you the page numbers. You either have to thumb through the section or go to the index. I have a feeling that I'm going to be writing the page numbers in on sections that I wind up using a lot.

I'd also prefer that each and every cookbook was spiral-bound, or some equivalent thereof, but it seems that very few publishers understand this very basic principle. Still, in a cookbook this thick, the spiral binding would be especially appreciated.

The one recipe I tried was "Mini Mexican Chocolate Cupcakes" (page 535-536). I have to admit that I tweaked it a little. I mean, 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon? In a recipe that makes 24 cupcakes? I upped it to 2 teaspoons. I also just used the cocoa I had on hand, while she specifically calls for undutched cocoa. I played around with her frosting recipe, but didn't make it as written as I do not have a double boiler. Regardless, the cupcakes turned out to be quite tasty, if a bit crumbly.

So far, I'd recommend this cookbook, 1,000 Gluten-Free Recipes by Carol Fenster, but I may add more as I try more of the recipes. I am very interested to try out her flour blend in converting non-GF recipes myself. Up to this point, my favorite blend to use for that has been Bette Hagman's Featherlight Rice Mix, and sometimes her 4-flour bean mix (made with WHITE bean flour, NEVER EVER EVER Garfava), but it's always interesting to play around with a new mix.

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Peirce and Pragmatism

A while back, I picked up a book called Pragmatism: A Reader, edited by Louis Menand. It was a name I'd encountered before, but I wasn't sure what it actually signified in philosophy. I've made it through the introduction and the first two selections so far, but the short version of pragmatism is that human beings think in particular ways, and we need to take that into account when we examine beliefs. There's more to it than that, but that's a decent starting point, and seems to be Peirce's main point in the essay, "The Fixation of Belief".

After reading the article, I'm a bit surprised it never came up in Epistemology. Admittedly, we only had a semester to cover several hundred years of thought, but we never even mentioned the pragmatists. Still, I'd encountered Peirce's name before. At least one of the philosophers at ISU, McCurdy, is quite into Peirce, and has enthused many of the philosophy students about him as well. To be honest, most of what I heard secondhand turned me off, but the firsthand encounter with the article was more than enough to counter that. The "whole thing is well worth reading, but I wanted to post a few sections that I particularly liked. This first one is how Peirce phrases the assumption required to engage meaningfully in science:

Its fundamental hypothesis, restated in more familiar language, is this: There are Real things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinions about them; those Reals affect our senses according to regular laws, and, though our sensations are as different as are our relations to the objects, yet, by taking advantage of the laws of perception, we can ascertain by reasoning how things really and truly are; and any man, if he have sufficient experience and he reason enough about it, will be led to the one True conclusion. The new conception here involved is that of Reality. It may be asked how I know that there are any Reals. If this hypothesis is the sole support of my method of inquiry, my method of inquiry must not be used to support my hypothesis. The reply is this: 1. If investigation cannot be regarded as proving that there are Real things, it at least does not lead to a contrary conclusion; but the method and the conception on which it is based remain ever in harmony. No doubts of the method, therefore, necessarily arise from its practice, as is the case with all the others. 2. The feeling which gives rise to any method of fixing belief is a dissatisfaction at two repugnant propositions. But here already is a vague concession that there is some one thing which a proposition should represent. Nobody, therefore, can really doubt that there are Reals, for, if he did, doubt would not be a source of dissatisfaction. The hypothesis, therefore, is one which every mind admits. So that the social impulse does not cause men to doubt it. 3. Everybody uses the scientific method about a great many things, and only ceases to use it when he does not know how to apply it. 4. Experience of the method has not led us to doubt it, but, on the contrary, scientific investigation has had the most wonderful triumphs in the way of settling opinion. These afford the explanation of my not doubting the method or the hypothesis which it supposes; and not having any doubt, nor believing that anybody else whom I could influence has, it would be the merest babble for me to say more about it. If there be anybody with a living doubt upon the subject, let him consider it.

This last paragraph is a summary of the nonscientific means that people often use to hold or justify their beliefs.

On the contrary, each has some peculiar convenience of its own. The a priori method is distinguished for its comfortable conclusions. It is the nature of the process to adopt whatever belief we are inclined to, and there are certain flatteries to the vanity of man which we all believe by nature, until we are awakened from our pleasing dream by rough facts. The method of authority will always govern the mass of mankind; and those who wield the various forms of organized force in the state will never be convinced that dangerous reasoning ought not to be suppressed in some way. If liberty of speech is to be untrammeled from the grosser forms of constraint, then uniformity of opinion will be secured by a moral terrorism to which the respectability of society will give its thorough approval. Following the method of authority is the path of peace. Certain non-conformities are permitted; certain others (considered unsafe) are forbidden. These are different in different countries and in different ages; but, wherever you are, let it be known that you seriously hold a tabooed belief, and you may be perfectly sure of being treated with a cruelty less brutal but more refined than hunting you like a wolf. Thus, the greatest intellectual benefactors of mankind have never dared, and dare not now, to utter the whole of their thought; and thus a shade of prima facie doubt is cast upon every proposition which is considered essential to the security of society. Singularly enough, the persecution does not all come from without; but a man torments himself and is oftentimes most distressed at finding himself believing propositions which he has been brought up to regard with aversion. The peaceful and sympathetic man will, therefore, find it hard to resist the temptation to submit his opinions to authority. But most of all I admire the method of tenacity for its strength, simplicity, and directness. Men who pursue it are distinguished for their decision of character, which becomes very easy with such a mental rule. They do not waste time in trying to make up their minds what they want, but, fastening like lightning upon whatever alternative comes first, they hold to it to the end, whatever happens, without an instant's irresolution. This is one of the splendid qualities which generally accompany brilliant, unlasting success. It is impossible not to envy the man who can dismiss reason, although we know how it must turn out at last.

I can definitely recommend Peirce to anyone with an interest in this area. Hopefully the rest of the book will be just as good.

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Merleau-Ponty and Post-Modernism

I finished reading the required chapters in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception last night. For the most part, I was impressed. This is the first time I've ever encountered a non-taiji player describing something like the bodily sensations that I notice in push-hands, the way the body can move before conscious thought sets in. I felt like 90% of what Merleau-Ponty was saying made perfect sense and was exactly the way I myself experienced things like the body and time.

But one thing troubles me. I can see little pointers scattered through the text that almost certainly paved the way for the post-modern movement. I have no problem with the idea that nothing can be known with absolute certainty, but post-modernism generally doesn't tack on those last three words. It tends towards an absolute relativism that I find to be at odds with the phenomenological reduction. Rather than putting the world in brackets, and not worrying about what the phenomena can or can't tell us about that [world], post-modernists seem to bury the world entirely. Essentially, there are no facts, and all viewpoints are equally valid. Pelletti commented that it was pointless to argue with real postmodernists, as they have no interest in coming to any sort of common truth; instead, it becomes nothing more than a game of manipulation and power.

He also gave a rather extreme example of a French post-modern philosopher (can't remember the name, but I think he was at Harvard) who scoffed at the idea that King Tut might have died of smallpox. Since smallpox wasn't discovered (read: created/invented) until the 1800's, it was completely impossible that King Tut could have died of it! Now, with the qualification that no one in King Tut's day would have known about smallpox, and therefore experientially he could not have died of smallpox, I can say, fine. But lacking that qualification...

Essentially (according to the pomos), there are no facts or truths. There are only ideas that have won some sort of ideological battle, and so are currently accepted. So ... if it was not accepted that rattlesnakes had deadly venom, would no one die of rattlesnake bites? If it was not accepted that people don't fall through solid material, would no one be able to walk down the street without sinking into the earth? Going by the post-modern perspective, these would both seem to be the case. It also becomes clear why this viewpoint is attractive to nutjobs of all stripes. If a non-philosopher justifies some bizarre idea by an appeal to post-modernism, I'd estimate that there's a 99.99999% chance that said person is a crackpot. This estimate is probably low.

Back to Merleau Ponty, I'm hoping to read the rest of the book after finals are done, and then I might have more to say specifically about his ideas.

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The Stranger

We actually didn't quite make it to Albert Camus' The Stranger in Existentialism this semester. Levenson wound up making it an optional read, though he spent the last ten minutes or so of the last class discussing some of its themes. It's...a strangely compelling, yet disturbing, read. Meursault is the main character, and he is pathologically without attachment. Whatever comes his way, he accepts, and accepts without examination or thought, or even much resembling a reaction. In the middle, this leads him to kill a man.

There can be pathological detachment as well as pathological attachment. The latter is more common, so most people need to learn some distance. Meursault, though, is too detached. What came to mind when I was trying to think what bothered me about his character was a taiji reference. The goal is to relax the body, but not have it be limp: alert relaxation, we often call it. The muscles are relaxed but there is still life in them, and they can respond. Meursault only ever yields; throughout most of the book he never actually responds. "Yield and neutralize" is a decent summary of all you need to know for push-hands, but if all you ever do is yield, you eventually are pushed further and further back until your root breaks. This is a surprisingly apt description for all that happens to Meursault.

Perhaps the strangest thing about this book is how much I wanted to keep reading it, to find out what happened next. The next strangest thing is the effect the ending had on me. I don't want to spoil it, but what should by all rights have been a depressing, demoralizing ending is instead empowering and freeing, and I'm not quite sure I understand why just yet. Perhaps it's because Meursault finally responds to his situation rather than just passively accepting it. I'm not entirely certain.

I am certain that the Matthew Ward translation is excellent. It does not feel like a translation at all. The prose is brilliantly crisp.

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Rawls and Nozick

I was busy writing my paper for political philosophy, and didn't even notice that I never posted anything here. Before I get back to that paper (as all I've got now is a rough draft), I figured I'd mention the topic a bit here. Rawls and Nozick are our last two philosophers for political philosophy. Rawls is, arguably, the most significant political theorist of the 20^th century. He developed an entirely novel social contract theory, based not on presuppositions about how the State of Nature would or would not have looked, but based on what he terms the Veil of Ignorance. Nozick was a colleague of Rawls with very different political views. His response to Rawls seems to be inadequate, but there's a bit of a complication. Rawls published his book first. Nozick published a response. When Rawls' book was translated into German, he updated it to account for Nozick's criticisms, but the updated version was not published in English for many more years. So it's possible that Nozick's criticisms were adequate to the original version of Rawls' ideas, and Rawls simply fleshed them out/adapted them in reponse. As Pelletti said, to do it completely right, we'd need to read the first edition of Rawls, then read Nozick, then read the final edition of Rawls, but we just didn't have the time in that class.

Rawls works from what he calls the "original position," where a group of people have come together to come up with the founding principles of their society under a "veil of ignorance," whereby they know none of their own particular attributes. They know that they are people, that they have characteristics, that they have a notion of 'The Good' (someone explain to me why this translates as "a plan for their life," as I don't get it), and they know that to realize their plan they will need access to at least some resources. They also have access to all general knowledge, including historical information, but they don't know their own place in history nor their own geographical location.

I was skeptical of Rawls' conclusions at first, but I think that he's right that people would seek a system where, no matter who they wound up being, they would have a shot at carrying out their life's plan. So they would seek to "maximize the minimum," i.e. make sure that the people who were worst off in the system were as well off as possible. Rawls works out three principles (with two of them grouped together) to describe how this might be done:

1. Liberty Principle: Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.
2. Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged to that they are both:
(a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged. Difference Principle
(b) attached to offices and posistions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity. Fairness of Opportunity Principle

~Rawls, Theory of Justice, 266

Now, Rawls wants to exclude probability calculations altogether, but I think there is one probability calculation that would have to be made in his original position. These people have access to all historical data, so they would know that the vast, vast majority of people throughout history have been the "least advantaged," the poor, the serfs, the slaves, etc. Not knowing who they were, they would know that there was a very large chance that they were in one of these disadvantaged classes. They would also know that, even if they happened to be in one of the advantaged classes, there would still be a chance of falling down into the disadvantaged class. Thus I think it likely that, were Rawls principles presented, people who really thought about them in the original position would accept them. They seem to give the disadvantaged classes the best chance for a decent life.

Nozick takes an entirely different tack in Anarchy, State, and Utopia. He wants to argue for a "night-watch state," where the only function of the government is to protect property rights. He goes through some rather impassioned rhetoric of the "taxation is theft" variety, but never actually explains why property rights are to be held sacrosanct rather than some other set of rights. It didn't help his case that he utilized Locke's theory of property, which Locke grounded in biblical assumptions about the world. Yes, people use Locke without accepting that grounding, but then it's unclear that Locke's idea is grounded at all. But even if we assume that a coherent theory of property acquisition can be worked out, it's clear that modern society does not meet Nozick's criteria for a "fair property distribution." Nozick's suggestion of some sort of recompense to those whose property was taken unfairly seems unworkable, too, since (a) we don't know about all the unfairness that went on; (b) we don't know how much would have worked out differently had the unfairness not occurred; (c) it's likely that many of the victims are dead, so we'd be compensating their descendants; and (d) it's not clear that taking recompense from people whose own property acquisition was fair (but the property was previously obtained unfairly) would actually be just.

But on to Nozick's criticisms of Rawls. Nozick assumes that there is such a thing as a "correct" property distribution (one that has come about through fair acquisition), and then concludes that since the original position is extremely unlikely to produce that distribution, the original position must not itself be fair. He also tries to argue that the difference principle might be used in questionable ways, and that it is an end-state distribution; however, the questionable uses would be taken care of by the Liberty Principle (which Rawls considers to be the first and most important consideration), and while the difference principle puts a constraint on the "end-state distribution", it itself is not an end-state distribution, any more than Nozick's constraint of "fair acquisition" on the end-state makes his view an end-state distribution. Essentially, Nozick misses that liberty comes first in Rawls' view, and then, if there are things that the liberty principle doesn't settle, the difference principle can be applied.

I will admit that as Rawls describes it, his principles come across as a bit too cold and calculating. I think that's more a problem with his writing style than with the ideas themselves. For instance, Nozick criticizes Rawls' contention that, in a family, members should act to improve the lot of the family member who is worst off, and as Rawls words it, the example does fall flat. However, Nozick's idea is even worse, as it would seem to indicate that family members had no obligation whatsoever to their fellow who was worse off. Perhaps "maximizing" the position of the one who's worst off might be too stringent a condition (among other things, how would you know when there was no more room for improvement?), but ignoring your own brother/sister/cousin because you have a right to your own property is surely worse. And I think, in practice, Rawls' ideas would lead not so much to concern about "maximizing" the minimum, but more in the direction of "making the minimum not an entirely awful place to be." Perhaps with a few generations of that attitude, we would manage to maximize the minimum, but even improving the minimum would be a worthy goal.

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Wheel of Time: Keeps on Rolling

Brandon Sanderson recently announced that "the" last book of the Wheel of Time will, in fact, be three books. That... feels about right to me, to settle most of the major outstanding plotlines. I wonder if Robert Jordan, had he lived, could really have gotten the whole thing into just one final book...? Hard to say. I also find Sanderson's semi-apologetic attitude amusing. I've been waiting for "the next book", whatever it might be, since I was in my teens. I've learned patience. ^/^

I should add that I'm perfectly happy to have more books set in a world that I so enjoy visiting. I was a bit disappointed when the announcement first came that there would be only one more book.

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No Exit

Apparently we weren't responsible for it until next week, but I got Sartre's play No Exit read this afternoon anyway. The full text is available online if you don't mind giving scribd some basic information (fyi: I haven't had any junk mail from them; just one, solitary, registration confirmation message).

It's...strange. If you've ever heard the phrase, "Hell is other people," well, it comes from this play. These three people find themselves in a place which they know is hell, yet it's nothing like the sort of hell people usually imagine. It's a room, furnished in what the characters all agree is hideous fashion. These three people are to spend eternity stuck in this unchanging room with only each other for comfort. There's a door leading to the outer corridor, but, as soon as it opens, they all feel a strong dread of actually leaving the room, even though in the moment before they were all desperate to get away from one another.

It's...interesting, in a macabre sort of way. I don't think I'd say that I liked it, but I found it fascinating and worth reading, so I can't say that I disliked it, either.

Levenson has an interesting idea about Sartre, and all of the 20th century existentialists, actually. He said that they were all wounded, in such a way that they could never completely appreciate what he calls "the Good", yet the wound was such that they were better able to perceive the path to "the Good". I'm still pondering this, but I think there may be some truth to it (though I would use different terminology; "the Good" is how Plato's ideal is usually translated).

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Lucky Find (and Unlucky Breaks)

In IF yesterday, I wandered over to the used bookstore that's more-or-less across the street from Barnes and Noble. I stumbled across an edition of the Tao te Ching that includes the full Chinese character text (or, well, one of them; differing versions exist) as well as lists of meanings for each character. I haven't had much of a chance to play with it yet, but it looks to be a good resource. The reviews at Amazon are mostly favorable, with a few decrying the very idea of providing a list for ignorant fools to create their own translations (at least, that's the impression I got from them). But that's not the point. I think just about anyone interested in the Tao Te Ching (Dao De Jing) has multiple traslations, and a resource for comparing them to see where and, potentially, why they differ is quite useful. I do wish that the transliterations were pinyin rather than Wade Giles, but there is another place that also lists pinyin.

As for the unlucky breaks... shortly before I got to taiji yesterday, Don slipped on some frost or ice and hurt his knee. He decided to go through with lessons, but just watch for the most part (though he did do some of the warm-ups from a bench). It was a good session, not least because I finally remembered to bring him a translation that my Chinese instructor had done of a poem on a taiji camp shirt (I'll probably post the gist of it at some point). We also worked on breathing. In most martial arts, there is a very definite emphasis on exhaling into a punch or a kick, etc. Cheng Man Ch'ing, however, advocated the opposite. For a long time, Don has been teaching the more traditional breathing, but a recent online conversation with Bill Phillips and some playing around we've been doing with the idea of filling with energy has him reconsidering it. So we tried it that way.

One interesting thing. I'd noted last fall that there were places that my breathing seemed to have switched from what I thought it was "supposed" to be. I let it alone and just watched it, because I remembered that there had been confusion about Cheng Man Ch'ing's actual breathing instructions. Turns out that I had naturally swapped over to the "inhale into the push" mode, at least in some places. In other places, I'm having to work at it and concentrate on it, but it feels better that way. Also, Don said that it put a roundness into my form that he'd been trying to figure out how to instill in me.

At Bataan's camp a few summers ago, I remember being confused when he characterized the inhale as "yang". I disagreed, but as I thought about it, I decided that he was referring to the process of the inhale, while I had been thinking about the beginning of the inhale. At the beginning of the inhale, the body is yin (emptied of air), then during the inhale it becomes more yang (filling with air) until it is full yin yang at the end of the inhale and the beginning of the exhale. Then the exhale starts yang but becomes yin as the body empties itself of air. By inhaling into a posture, the body is at its maximum yang point as the push/punch/etc. is completed. Exhaling into the posture empties the body, making it progressively more yin. In more practical terms, by inhaling, the body maintains its roundness and suppleness even as it's expelling energy. Exhaling, though, tends to result in the roundness collapsing, making you more vulnerable.

Don seems to think this applies only to the form and not to push-hands... I'm not so certain yet. However, due to his knee, we didn't get to play at push-hands any yesterday (and I was the only one who made it up to class). I suspect that the knee was worse than he was letting on, as he shooed me away early. I haven't heard yet how bad it was, but he was hoping he hadn't torn a ligament. Watching him yesterday, I concluded that he's at least as stubborn as I am. I wouldn't have been offended if he'd simply apologized and cancelled class to have someone look at his knee, but he struggled through most of it. The fact that he did decide to call it quits early means it has to have been bothering him pretty badly.

AM EDIT: Fixed a rather obvious typo above. Look for the strikeout.

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John Stuart Mill - On Liberty

I haven't read the whole book yet, but I can certainly recommend the second chapter, which is his discussion of freedom of thought and ideas. I like it well enough that I could practically blockquote the whole thing (and taking smaller quotes got my quoteslist up to 999), but I'll content myself with three paragraphs, and I'd highly recommend the whole thing to everyone. This is probably the most cogent defense of free speech and press that I've ever read. (excerpts below the fold due to length)

When we consider either the history of opinion, or the ordinary conduct of human life, to what is it to be ascribed that the one and the other are no worse than they are? Not certainly to the inherent force of the human understanding; for, on any matter not self-evident, there are ninety-nine persons totally incapable of judging of it, for one who is capable; and the capacity of the hundredth person is only comparative; for the majority of the eminent men of every past generation held many opinions now known to be erroneous, and did or approved numerous things which no one will now justify. Why is it, then, that there is on the whole a preponderance among mankind of rational opinions and rational conduct? If there really is this preponderance--which there must be, unless human affairs are, and have always been, in an almost desperate state--it is owing to a quality of the human mind, the source of everything respectable in man, either as an intellectual or as a moral being, namely, that his errors are corrigible. He is capable of rectifying his mistakes by discussion and experience. Not by experience alone. There must be discussion, to show how experience is to be interpreted. Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument: but facts and arguments, to produce any effect on the mind, must be brought before it. Very few facts are able to tell their own story, without comments to bring out their meaning. The whole strength and value, then, of human judgment, depending on the one property, that it can be set right when it is wrong, reliance can be placed on it only when the means of setting it right are kept constantly at hand. In the case of any person whose judgment is really deserving of confidence, how has it become so? Because he has kept his mind open to criticism of his opinions and conduct. Because it has been his practice to listen to all that could be said against him; to profit by as much of it as was just, and expound to himself, and upon occasion to others, the fallacy of what was fallacious. Because he has felt, that the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner. The steady habit of correcting and completing his own opinion by collating it with those of others, so far from causing doubt and hesitation in carrying it into practice, is the only stable foundation for a just reliance on it: for, being cognizant of all that can, at least obviously, be said against him, and having taken up his position against all gainsayers knowing that he has sought for objections and difficulties, instead of avoiding them, and has shut out no light which can be thrown upon the subject from any quarter--he has a right to think his judgment better than that of any person, or any multitude, who have not gone through a similar process.

It is not too much to require that what the wisest of mankind, those who are best entitled to trust their own judgment, find necessary to warrant their relying on it, should be submitted to by that miscellaneous collection of a few wise and many foolish individuals, called the public. The most intolerant of churches, the Roman Catholic Church, even at the canonization of a saint, admits, and listens patiently to, a "devil's advocate." The holiest of men, it appears, cannot be admitted to posthumous honors, until all that the devil could say against him is known and weighed. If even the Newtonian philosophy were not permitted to be questioned, mankind could not feel as complete assurance of its truth as they now do. The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded. If the challenge is not accepted, or is accepted and the attempt fails, we are far enough from certainty still; but we have done the best that the existing state of human reason admits of; we have neglected nothing that could give the truth a chance of reaching us: if the lists are kept open, we may hope that if there be a better truth, it will be found when the human mind is capable of receiving it; and in the meantime we may rely on having attained such approach to truth, as is possible in our own day. This is the amount of certainty attainable by a fallible being, and this the sole way of attaining it.

Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free discussion, but object to their being "pushed to an extreme;" not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case. Strange that they should imagine that they are not assuming infallibility when they acknowledge that there should be free discussion on all subjects which can possibly be doubtful, but think that some particular principle or doctrine should be forbidden to be questioned because it is so certain, that is, because they are certain that it is certain. To call any proposition certain, while there is any one who would deny its certainty if permitted, but who is not permitted, is to assume that we ourselves, and those who agree with us, are the judges of certainty, and judges without hearing the other side.

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So this is why her books still sell...

Today's SkinHorse was almost certainly a blatant rip at the Anita Blake books (minor adult implications in the comic), and this comment explains a lot:

*snrk* Yeah, definitely a Hamilton reference there. We have a drinking game going around my book club. Every time she puts out a new book, we go in, open to a random chapter, and then take a number of drinks equal to the awkwardly described sex acts found therein.



Haven't made it out sober yet. :p

~Liquid Communism

This comment (and others) should be archived here.

I did finally wind up buying the last Anita Blake book when it came out in paperback, and it's been sitting gathering dust ever since. I just can't seem to find a sufficiently depraved mood to sit down and wade through it. A drinking game might make it more enjoyable ... except that I'd have to take up drinking, and I'm unlikely to find a sufficiently depraved mood for that, either.

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Heidegger: Being and Time

I was rather dreading starting to read this one, but I've made it through the introduction and I actually enjoyed it. I particularly like that the translation we're using makes comments about the way that certain phrases and terms were translated. The idea of the book seems to be to examine what it means "to be." That appeals to me, much like Quine's attempt to determine what "meaning" means appealed to me. I like to see people going at the very basic, fundamental concepts, and I'm particularly fond of it when they rip the foundations right from under them.

Full disclosure, Heidegger was a member of the Nazi party in Germany. I've encountered the view that this was a move of sheer expediency/safety on his part, and the view that he wholeheartedly embraced the party, plus several in-between views. I have no idea which is the case, and intend to take the work on its own merits, whatever they may be.

So far I haven't thought much about the work itself, but it got me thinking about space and being for a while, and I had this odd sort of "vision" ... If we think of all matter/energy/etc. as little vibrating strings (a la string theory), and consider that their forms might rise and fall and recombine somewhat at random, it seems like a stable form might arise, and not be broken back down. Then if a stable form capable of "nudging" the other wavelets into similar forms arose, we'd have an explosion of whatever that form was (say matter, for the sake of argument). Then matter would find stable forms, then stable forms capable of producing copies of themselves, etc. I found it a rather beautiful, enlightening image. Particularly when I tried to picture a human body as made up of all these vibrating wavelets.

Of course, a vision proves absolutely nothing, but I find it worth pondering.

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Dimension Mismatch Error(s)

Admittedly, I tend to overuse this phrase, but it's literally applicable in this instance:

Results 1 - 4 of about 2

It doesn't much matter what phrase I was searching for. I can see the point of Google rounding down the number of results when it's in the hundreds or higher, but this? I don't get it. Oh, but that just reminded me of a beautifully odd segement from my Existentialism class:

All respectable ants begin with the ant-hill, and they will probably end with it too, which does great credit to their constancy and their positive characters. But man is a fickle and disreputable creature and, perhaps like a chess player, is interested in the process of attaining his goal rather than the goal itself. And who knows, (nobody can say with certainty), perhaps man's sole purpose in this world consists in this uninterrupted process of attainment, or in other words in living, and not specifically in the goal, which of course must be something like twice two is four, that is, a formula; but after all, twice two is four is not life, genetlemen, but the beginning of death. At least man has always feared this 2 x 2 = 4 formula and I still fear it.

...

Twice two is four is, in my opinion, nothing but impudence. 'Two and two make four' is like a cocky young devil standing across your path with arms akimbo and a defiant air. I agree that two and two make four is an excellent thing; but to give everything its due, two and two make five is also a very fine thing.

~Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground pg 40-41

I fixed a few typos that were on the typed sheet Dr. Levenson handed out, and made it clear that there was a substantial amount of text where the ellipsis is. Somewhere between a third and a quarter of a page, anyway. It's a very odd bit of text. Levenson picked it as portraying existential dread and/or defiance. Btw, two and two don't always make four. Particularly if you put two electrons with two positrons. They make zero! 2 cups of water mixed with 2 cups of alcohol does not result in four cups of liquid. And in Z₃, 2 and 2 make 1. ^/^


ADDENDUM: I just found another one:

No Active Advisories (US Severe Weather)
Dense fog advisory in effect from 8 PM this evening to 11 am MST Saturday...

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Thought for the Day

States clearly possess, or at least claim to possess,political power. The sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) made a similar point, if in more startling language: states possess a monopoly of legitimate violence. Within any state, violence or coercion is seen as primarily the state's business, either directly, through its agents—the police and law courts—or indirectly, through the permissions it gives citizens to be violent to each other on occasion: in self defence, for example. All legitimate violence or coercion is undertaken or supervised by the state.

~Jonathan Wolff
An Introduction to Political Philosophy, pg. 36

I'm taking Political and Social Philosophy this semester, and this is from one of the textbooks we'll be using. So far, it's quite interesting. Hopefully, the class itself will be at least as interesting.

ADDENDUM: This article at Positive Liberty goes well with this quote.

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The I-Ching

I've been curious about the I-Ching (yi jing in pinyin) for quite a while, but whenever I'd pick up a copy of it, I'd get the sense that now was not the time ... right up until I found Deng Ming Dao's Living I-Ching on my trip down to Salt Lake last summer. The title is usually translated as "The Book of Changes". "Ching" or "jing" generally means "classic text".

The idea behind the Changes is simple. All things in life are constantly changing. They change according to observable and predictable cycles. If we can figure out where in the cycle we are, we can be prepared for what's likely to come next. The Book of Changes attempts to organize the cycles of change. It is often used as a tool for divination. Use some random method (usually the casting of yarrow sticks or coins) to choose a hexagram. Rules will determine if any of the lines of the hexagram are about to change, and the changing lines will yield a second hexagram. The first is believed to be the situation as it is now; the second is the situation about to come into being.

While I do cast coins and look up the corresponding passages, I don't think of it as divination. It's more...inspiration. The imagery in the poems may take my thoughts in a different direction with regard to some problem or question. I have noticed that I'm more likely to consult it in times of stress, where I feel a bit out of control, and that fits recent research which suggests superstitious behaviors in part serve to re-establish a sense of control over an uncontrollable situation. For me, I recognize that I will find in the imagery something to soothe my mind, whether it represents an accurate forecast for the future or not.

As for Deng Ming Dao's version, I like that he includes the Chinese character with its partial* pronunciation and some of its meanings. I like that the beginning of the book discusses some of the history of the I-Ching, and the way it progresses through a cycle itself, just as the Changes do. I also like the discussions of each hexagram. He includes the poem, two of the interpretations, the readings for each changing line, and then goes into his own commentary. Interestingly, his commentary is always on a separate page from the "classic" material. I would consider this an excellent version for someone just getting started.

For the record, there is a part of me that takes the I-Ching more seriously than I've indicated here. According to Master Jou (my teacher's teacher), you can't master the Changes by casting coins or sticks: you've mastered them when you know which hexagram applies in a situation without any extraneous ritual. Whether that's truly possible or not, I don't know. I do know that I've had some eerily applicable readings, but I also know that, once I've primed myself with a question, I'm going to see an answer to it in what I read.

One final oddity: when I found the copy of the book in the bookstore and picked it up, it was warm in my hands. My hands almost tingled. I frowned at the book, put it back, and picked up another from the same shelf. No warmth or tingling. So I picked up the Living I-Ching again, and the warmth and tingling came back. I still get it if I hold the book for very long. Does it mean anything? It does to me, at least, but to anyone else, it probably indicates some sort of subconscious appeal of the book to me. However, it's not an appeal for any version of the I-Ching. I found an older translation in an antique store (Jung, or one of Jung's students, iirc), picked it up, and it was painful in my hands. *shrugs* I was actually thinking of buying it until I picked it up. Make what you will of that. I find it a curiosity worth exploring.

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Tao Te Ching, character by character

Okay, technically "dao de jing" is more accurate, but more people recognize the text under the old transliteration. Either way, I found a site that links to one version of the Chinese text and every character hyperlinks to its definition. The site is Zhongwen.com and the Dao de Jing is here. Oh, "zhongwen" is usually translated as "the Chinese language," though apparently "wen" technically refers only to the written component.

Before ever taking Chinese, I made an attempt to decipher some of the characters. I didn't get very far. The problem is that you need an understanding of the language structure to figure out a lot of the meanings. Even then, the Dao de Jing is a very old text, and character usage tends to change over time. Complicating matters, the original text contained no punctuation marks, so translators have to figure out where the breaks ought to go. Comma placement does matter, after all. There's even a book out. "Eats shoots and leaves" is quite different from "Eats, Shoots and Leaves".

Still, I quite enjoy going through the text character by character and comparing it with the various English translations I've got lying around. Though it's almost too easy at the site I just linked to. Last night, I began playing around with the Chinese dictionary that was an optional buy with my Chinese textbooks. It took me a while to work out how the thing works. The English side was easy enough, but looking up a Chinese character is tricky. Each character is made up of smaller units called "radicals". To start, you pick off the "first" radical (usually the leftmost one; possibly the upper leftmost one in a complicated character) and find it in a list ordered by the number of strokes in the character. That gives you a number, and when you go to that number in a second list, there's a list of characters that begin with that particular radical. From that list, you find the pinyin equivalent of the character. Then you go into the actual dictionary part and find the pinyin alphabetically, watching out for homophones. There you find potential English translations. It's a good idea to see if any of them contain the character you want plus the next character in the sentence, in case there's a compound word there where the separate meanings don't help you figure out the combined meaning.

While the process is complicated, it also makes the end result more memorable. It took more work to get there, so I have more of a chance, as well as more motivation, to try and remember it. Of course, I got stuck pretty quickly with Red Pine's version of the Chinese text. I suspect this is because he's using older versions of some of the characters, and I barely know enough to recognize some of the basic modern ones, let alone try to figure out what the older versions might have looked like. Still, it's enjoyable to be able to puzzle out bits and pieces of the text. It will take lots more practice and study before I can get much out of it without the help of existing translations, but it will be fun to try anyway.

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