Well, I was going to write about this book, but it's been summarized much more capably than I could here. Not that I read this blog, just found it when searching on the title to confirm the spelling of William Langewiesche's name. I should investigate this blog a bit... Anyway, I'll forgo my own description of it. Suffice to say, I enjoyed it, and it left a big impression on me: Africa is a hard, troublesome, difficult place.
But I can talk about my experiences around reading the book. I'd seen it in the living room, and picked it up and put it in my bag when we were packing to take Nick to Philadelphia. Even at the time I knew I probably wouldn't have time or inclination to read it while we were there, but I did read it after we returned. And...
It wasn't until page 150 that I realized that I'd read it before.
At that point my memories came back. I'd enjoyed the book— his writing, his observances, his attitude— a lot. My impressions on rereading it were substantially the same as when I'd read it the first time, ten years earlier. But I hadn't noticed.
I was rather taken aback, and sat in wonderment as this all sank in. Years ago, in my twenties, I'd recognize within half a page that I'd read something before. Granted, I hadn't read quite so much at that point in my life. But the contrast between then and now bothered me. How could I read so far into the book and not realize that it wasn't the first time I'd read it? Is this what aging does?
Now, this post isn't really about aging and what it does, but about my distressing tendency to notice events and relate them to aging. It may be that the book just hadn't made much of an impression on me up to that point (this is where he describes the family with the 5-year-old boy taking a car trip into the desert, getting lost, and dying, slowly, of thirst). So, maybe I was just not engaged enough with the book until that point for it to make enough impression on me to remember it ten years later. And then, part of me responds "yes, but that wouldn't have made a difference when I was 25." So I argue with myself about whether something is or is not a sign of aging, and whether it really matters all that much. It's a bit troubling, and part of it is wondering to what extent I will inherit my father's proclivity to worry about himself, his anxiety about losing his mental abilities— and, well, his actual loss of mental acuity.
Sheesh. I'm 51. There is something about turning 50 that makes it no longer possible to ignore the fact that you're aging, which I had managed to do during my 40's. But I'm not old. Am I?
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Also read recently
I'll write notes on these eventually, some I read almost a month ago.
Read:
"Kill All Your Darlings"— Luc Sante
"His Master's Voice"— Stanislaw Lem
"Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone"— Mark Zwonitzer with Charles Hirshenberg
"The Gatekeepers"—Jacques Steinberg
"Sahara Unveiled: A Journey Across the Desert"— William Langewiesche
Reading:
"The Philosophical Baby"— Alison Gopnik
"Outliers"— Malcolm Gladwell
"Irrational Exuberance (2nd Ed.)"— Robert J. Shiller
Jonathan Lethem
Recently read one of his books, checked it out from the local library— "The wall of the sky, the wall of the eye," a collection of short stories. Usual Lethem; I don't know anyone who does quite what he does. The things he writes tend to be near-parodies of genre fiction, with some often counter-factual twist. Yet they actually work in their genre&mdash "Gun, with occasional music" is a very readable detective novel that just happens to feature a kangaroo. Thinking about it more, 'genre fiction' isn't quite the right term, it's a little too pejorative. Perhaps 'styled fiction', something that has a recognizable flow and mood, better suits what I'm trying to say. The things he writes are recognizably similar to other novels and stories you've read, and allude to their conventions, yet they're sui generis. These short stories are a good introduction to his work.
I'll describe some I especially liked. "The Happy Man" is a story of a man who literally dies and goes to hell, returning for brief, unpredictable, and not particularly welcome visits with his family. Together with with his son he discovers the source of his childhood daemons, and eases his hell just a little bit. "The Hardened Criminals" is about a prison literally built of men turned to concrete, whose brains live on as robotic automatons inside their heads. "Light and the Sufferer" is about a man's failed attempt to save his brother from himself, accompanied by one of the speechless dog-like aliens that are drawn to the self-destructive. There's nothing breezy about these tales, no elbow in the ribs or knowing wink, they're serious, hard-hitting fare.
It's not always this intense. "Five Fucks" is about two people who can't keep apart to save themselves— or the world, which changes around them each time they sleep together. He takes the whole notion of a "doomed relationship" and sends it careening into space. This story succeeds on several levels; humorous, profound, quirky, and sad all in a jumble. He doesn't force the humor, it just flows from the situation, and he's happy to let it just slide by, only nodding at it from time to time in his choice of words or phrase or image. (I was especially tickled by the statue in the town that the Mayor ends up standing under before the world turns again).
As it turns out Mr. Lethem has a piece in this week's New Yorker, and is also interviewed in an article in last week's Time. He seems to have crossed over the line and made it into the public eye, which should be good for his book sales, and maybe for him. His popular books have a little less of the dark edge and more humor, but that's ok. I just hope he keeps writing cool stuff, looking for and finding that edge.
I'll describe some I especially liked. "The Happy Man" is a story of a man who literally dies and goes to hell, returning for brief, unpredictable, and not particularly welcome visits with his family. Together with with his son he discovers the source of his childhood daemons, and eases his hell just a little bit. "The Hardened Criminals" is about a prison literally built of men turned to concrete, whose brains live on as robotic automatons inside their heads. "Light and the Sufferer" is about a man's failed attempt to save his brother from himself, accompanied by one of the speechless dog-like aliens that are drawn to the self-destructive. There's nothing breezy about these tales, no elbow in the ribs or knowing wink, they're serious, hard-hitting fare.
It's not always this intense. "Five Fucks" is about two people who can't keep apart to save themselves— or the world, which changes around them each time they sleep together. He takes the whole notion of a "doomed relationship" and sends it careening into space. This story succeeds on several levels; humorous, profound, quirky, and sad all in a jumble. He doesn't force the humor, it just flows from the situation, and he's happy to let it just slide by, only nodding at it from time to time in his choice of words or phrase or image. (I was especially tickled by the statue in the town that the Mayor ends up standing under before the world turns again).
As it turns out Mr. Lethem has a piece in this week's New Yorker, and is also interviewed in an article in last week's Time. He seems to have crossed over the line and made it into the public eye, which should be good for his book sales, and maybe for him. His popular books have a little less of the dark edge and more humor, but that's ok. I just hope he keeps writing cool stuff, looking for and finding that edge.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Obama's address to congress on health care
Just watched Obama's address, thanks to the wonders of YouTube. It's available at WhiteHouse.gov, along with a transcript.
Most of it ran as these things usually do. Lots of interruptions for applause, with various members or factions making a show of standing and applauding or sitting and looking stoic, depending on the side they're taking. I find this posturing to be a bit wearying... As his speech progressed he moved from descriptions of what he wanted reform to achieve, to what particular proposals he favored, to a description of the partisan bickering and fear-mongering, to a rousing call to action and American ideals. It had a good overall flow and structure. I was rather interested that he chose to call out and address some of the lies (his word) promulgated by opponents of his proposals. His directness, I think, reveals his frustration with the level of debate and the kind of politics being waged. And his final call to action and appeal to ideals and morality during the last ten minutes of his speech was quite strong. It's an appeal that I'm pretty amenable to, of course, but I think you can't deny that he performed very well. So in the end I felt it was pretty watchable.
A few days ago I watched his address to schoolchildren, also on YouTube. With both speeches I felt he needed to be a bit more camera-savvy. Reagan always knew to address the camera (he was a professional pitchman after all). Obama looks left and right at the audience, and clearly connects with them, but rarely, if ever, looks directly at the camera. As a result the feeling is that you're observing him talk to others, rather than listening to him talk to you. It's clear he has the charisma— his resolve and passion was quite in evidence with this speech— but he needs to figure out how to deploy it a bit better through the media.
Since I don't watch TV new or talking head shows, and get only a very biased view via reddit and web news aggregator headlines, I don't really know how this played out. Fox "News" probably didn't play it live at all, and I doubt there was much analysis on any program of what he said, as opposed to descriptions of how various factions received him, and talking heads trying to spin it this way or that. My sense is that it didn't move the national conversation quite as much as he needs to. It did seem to energize his base a bit, which I think he needs. Energized me to write this, anyway, though of course that's not saying much!
I don't know enough to assess the financial impact of what he proposes. What is clear is that he's trying to do this the right way, with the expenses budgeted and paid for, rather than through keeping it off books or pushing costs off into the nebulous future as we've done with the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. I'm not sure he's going to be able to save as much by reforming the system as he hopes— the folks extracting profits out of the current system are going to hold onto them as tightly as they can. Also, I suspect that much of the "waste" comes from the complexity of the billing and paperwork, which isn't going to go away if we continue to have multiple insurance policies with varying level of coverage and forms of payment as we do now. I suspect a lot of push towards higher costs comes from defensive tests and incentives (or lack of disincentives) for doctors to perform, and clients to request, procedures that aren't strongly indicated. Overly-aggressive end-of-life treatment clearly contributes its share of unnecessary cost, too, but that's a societal issue that's not easily addressed. High pharmaceutical prices due to non-competitive restrictions on bargaining are also a problem; he might be able to do something about this, though again big pharma is going to fight this with everything they've got. So these seem like large contributions to the problem of escalating health care costs that I don't see being addressed. But I really don't know how much of the overall cost is due to these features of our system, and how much is due to "waste and abuse" (or less prejudicially, how the system is gamed) by the people participating in the system— for example, when healthy people opt out of the system and rely on emergency room service, throwing costs onto others, or when insurers cherry-pick who they insure. I wonder if anyone really knows. I should explore the web a bit more, I'm sure there's data somewhere that would inform these kinds of speculations.
Anyway, I liked the speech. It was passionate and direct. He's a very bright guy, Obama is, and curiously optimistic still despite the difficult slog over the summer. Let's hope he succeeds.
Most of it ran as these things usually do. Lots of interruptions for applause, with various members or factions making a show of standing and applauding or sitting and looking stoic, depending on the side they're taking. I find this posturing to be a bit wearying... As his speech progressed he moved from descriptions of what he wanted reform to achieve, to what particular proposals he favored, to a description of the partisan bickering and fear-mongering, to a rousing call to action and American ideals. It had a good overall flow and structure. I was rather interested that he chose to call out and address some of the lies (his word) promulgated by opponents of his proposals. His directness, I think, reveals his frustration with the level of debate and the kind of politics being waged. And his final call to action and appeal to ideals and morality during the last ten minutes of his speech was quite strong. It's an appeal that I'm pretty amenable to, of course, but I think you can't deny that he performed very well. So in the end I felt it was pretty watchable.
A few days ago I watched his address to schoolchildren, also on YouTube. With both speeches I felt he needed to be a bit more camera-savvy. Reagan always knew to address the camera (he was a professional pitchman after all). Obama looks left and right at the audience, and clearly connects with them, but rarely, if ever, looks directly at the camera. As a result the feeling is that you're observing him talk to others, rather than listening to him talk to you. It's clear he has the charisma— his resolve and passion was quite in evidence with this speech— but he needs to figure out how to deploy it a bit better through the media.
Since I don't watch TV new or talking head shows, and get only a very biased view via reddit and web news aggregator headlines, I don't really know how this played out. Fox "News" probably didn't play it live at all, and I doubt there was much analysis on any program of what he said, as opposed to descriptions of how various factions received him, and talking heads trying to spin it this way or that. My sense is that it didn't move the national conversation quite as much as he needs to. It did seem to energize his base a bit, which I think he needs. Energized me to write this, anyway, though of course that's not saying much!
I don't know enough to assess the financial impact of what he proposes. What is clear is that he's trying to do this the right way, with the expenses budgeted and paid for, rather than through keeping it off books or pushing costs off into the nebulous future as we've done with the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. I'm not sure he's going to be able to save as much by reforming the system as he hopes— the folks extracting profits out of the current system are going to hold onto them as tightly as they can. Also, I suspect that much of the "waste" comes from the complexity of the billing and paperwork, which isn't going to go away if we continue to have multiple insurance policies with varying level of coverage and forms of payment as we do now. I suspect a lot of push towards higher costs comes from defensive tests and incentives (or lack of disincentives) for doctors to perform, and clients to request, procedures that aren't strongly indicated. Overly-aggressive end-of-life treatment clearly contributes its share of unnecessary cost, too, but that's a societal issue that's not easily addressed. High pharmaceutical prices due to non-competitive restrictions on bargaining are also a problem; he might be able to do something about this, though again big pharma is going to fight this with everything they've got. So these seem like large contributions to the problem of escalating health care costs that I don't see being addressed. But I really don't know how much of the overall cost is due to these features of our system, and how much is due to "waste and abuse" (or less prejudicially, how the system is gamed) by the people participating in the system— for example, when healthy people opt out of the system and rely on emergency room service, throwing costs onto others, or when insurers cherry-pick who they insure. I wonder if anyone really knows. I should explore the web a bit more, I'm sure there's data somewhere that would inform these kinds of speculations.
Anyway, I liked the speech. It was passionate and direct. He's a very bright guy, Obama is, and curiously optimistic still despite the difficult slog over the summer. Let's hope he succeeds.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Setting things up
I tried to enhance this blog today. Took a lot of time. I feel a bit constrained by blogger's templates and widgets, I just need to learn more about them I guess. The flickr photo badge came from a generator tool on the flickr site. I learned that there was support for tags— um, they're called labels, and there's this handy box you can type them into, so I switched to use them. D'oh.
I spent some time writing my own flickr photo viewer, which lets you page through the images instead of seeing them all at once, but I need to get a bit further with it. Maybe I'll switch to that, I can provide a bit more info on the photos.
Sigh, wasn't the idea for me to get off the net a bit more?
I spent some time writing my own flickr photo viewer, which lets you page through the images instead of seeing them all at once, but I need to get a bit further with it. Maybe I'll switch to that, I can provide a bit more info on the photos.
Sigh, wasn't the idea for me to get off the net a bit more?
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Klein Bottle
This popped up again on reddit today, it's been around— the bottles, by Alan Bennett, date from 1995. They're on display online here. The actual bottles are at the Science Museum in London.
It would be fun to visit London again. I've only been once.
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