Obsidian Wings

Summer's end book round-up

by Doctor Science

Between preparing for, going to, and recovering from Worldcon, it's been a while since I wrote about what I've been reading. This round-up covers several weeks, and includes novels by Genevieve Cogman, Laura Anne Gilman, Jo Walton, N.K. Jemisin, and Mary Robinette Kowal. huh. I didn't plan to read only books by woman, it just happened.

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The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman. In this variation on the Supernatural Librarians trope, the Library is connected to alternate worlds with varying degrees of "order" and "chaos", magic and science. It's an amusing romp with horror elements, and everyone in the Science household is looking forward to the next one -- already published in the UK, it's coming out in the US in September. I've been assured by a friend of the author that the heroine won't get Anita Blake Disease and waste my time and hers see-sawing between Possible Romantic Interests #1 and #2. I have some hopes of a threesome in their future, in fact.

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Silver on the Road by Laura Anne Gilman. I liked it! A very different kind of Western, with magic (/horror) that's not quite overt, in a setting that's just a little offset from our world. Mr Dr and I are both looking forward to the next installment.

The only thing I was dissatisfied with: not enough specific names of animals and plants! I wanted to know what *kind* of blue flowers, what *kind* of birds. I'm not sure how aware a girl raised in a small town on the plains would be of such things, of how much diversity there is in the natural world. Possibly I'm projecting. Ooo, but now I've found the bibliography, I'll have LOTS of fun with this!

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The Philosopher Kings and Necessity are numbers 2 and 3 in Jo Walton's "Thessaly" series: in which the goddess Athene gathers people from many time periods to create a society based on Plato's Republic. I'm also dipping into Crooked Timber's seminar on the series -- which they did based on the first two books only, for no reason I understand. I mean, why not wait for the conclusion?

As for the series as a whole: it's a thought experiment about a thought experiment, taking on Plato and Sokrates in the cheekiest manner possible. I don't exactly *believe* in it, because the experiment is far too successful, and a number of things are *much* easier than they'd be in reality. The first thing that struck me is that both Plato and Walton underestimate the energy, time, and dangers of human reproduction. Without spoilers, I'll say that the unconsidered trouble with the Festivals of Hera is that they won't *work*: only about 1/4 of the eligible women will be fertile at any given time, and the chance of conception in a single fertile period is at best 25% (humans are actually very infertile, compared to other mammals). And then, with the technology described at least 1 out of a hundred births would kill the mother, while the infant death rate would be at best 1 out of 10. All this in a society with a very imperfect grasp of the germ theory of disease, as witness Sokrates and Crocus' discussion of the importance (or otherwise) of plumbing repair.

The problem "Necessity" has, as a book and a series finale, is that a lot of it has to be about Gods, and my suspension of disbelief gets a really hard workout. This is partly due to the fact that the personalities of the Gods don't match my takes on them: I think Apollo is actually more of a Divine Nerd Boy, not to mention that--like his sister-- he's Mostly Gay. And I think of Athena as less distant toward humans in general, not just to her crushes. But the idea of [rot-13 spoilers] Mrhf npghnyyl orvat gur rphzravpny Fhcerzr Orvat -- no, I just can't do it.

Anyway, I have many more Thoughts about the trilogy, which I should probably write up at some point. The fact that it *does* make me think and want to argue with it is the biggest sign of its success, because that's what philosophy is *supposed* to do. I'm not sure I'll nominate it for a Hugo next year, but I'm not sure I won't, either.

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I read N.K. Jemisin's The Obelisk Gate while I was at Worldcon. I found it even more moving than her now Hugo-winning The Fifth Season, possibly because less happened externally, more inside people's heads. Showing how Our Multi-Named Heroine came to her "Orogene Lives Matter" moment was very powerful for me. I didn't find it preachy or pasted-on, but resonant: this is how it would feel, this is how it does feel.

As for the world-building, things now seem to be coming down a bit heavier on the Magic side of the Magic-Science spectrum. That's partly because of Jemisin's choice of words, but also that the Psi Powers that got tossed around so freely in the 50s-70s now look so much more magic-y and less science-y than they did then.

There are two things about the world-building that make me scratch my head. One is saying "Father Earth" instead of the usual "Mother Earth" -- and then not talking about who the Mother might be instead.

There's also the question of whether the "Stillness" continent is big enough to be a Pangaea-type supercontinent. Looking at maps of possible future supercontinents, I can see that the Stillness -- which is about 5000-mi wide at the equator, but stretches pole-to-pole (10K-12K miles or more) might have the same area as Novopangaea or Amasia, but rotated 90°. That implies 250M- years-worth of plate tectonics has happened on fast-forward, which would work in a hand-wavey kind of way. This IS "rock opera", after all.

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Ghost Talkers by Mary Robinette Kowal. If magic/psychic powers are used in WWI, does that become horror? A lot of the prose is light and even a little silly, but the topic is so dark the mix doesn't quite work, for me. And I can't figure out if the implied Qbpgbe Jub pebffbire vf whfg n fvyyvarff: Yrguoevqtr-Fgrjneg pbhyq whfg or n fvyyl, ohg gura Gbz-Onxre-Qbpgbe fubjf hc. Ohg jul qbrf gur ivyynva rfpncr sebz uvz fb rnfvyl? (ah - I am told similar cameos show up in most of Kowal's longer works.)

Similarly, gur oneenpxf rkcybfvba vf fhccbfrq gb sybbq gur Fcvevg Pbecf, birejuryzvat gurz fb gurl pna'g qrny jvgu tubfgf sebz gur bapbzvat onggyr. Ohg gur fgbel ortvaf nsgre gur Pbecf unf qrnyg jvgu gur svefg qnl bs gur Onggyr bs gur Fbzzr, jura 20,000 Oevgvfu fbyqvref jrer xvyyrq ba n fvatyr qnl. Vs gurl pna pbcr jvgu gung naq abg pbyyncfr ragveryl, ubj pna n fvatyr rkcybfvba or na rssrpgvir QQBF nggnpx?

More importantly, I'd expect some of them to be realizing by July 1916 what a catastrophe the War is, and that the Germans might not be the real enemy compared to the commanders and politicians on all sides. WWI was a many-sided tragedy, and it's not clear that 'doing a better job' would have done any actual good.

Overall, it's amusing enough -- but I won't be seeking out the sequel unless the first penguins off the ice flow tell me it's much more serious about one of the most horrible and pointless disasters in human history.

Seeking a better word for privilege

by Doctor Science

Last week the elder Child of Science and I were at Worldcon, about which I will have lots more to say later. Anyway, while I was there I had a very good conversation with a gracious gentleman of the Old School of SFF Fandom (Print Fanzine Division). One of his points of dismay with Fandom These Days is that many people (such as myself) don't use our legal names, so he doesn't know where we live or "where we come from", socially as well as literally.

Now, this attitude is what we call "privilege", these days: not noticing that things that aren't difficult or a problem for you may be not at all easy for other people. The communities I "grew up in", fannishly speaking, were majority female and heavily queer (LGBTA+ of all stripes). Such people cannot assume that using their legal names and revealing their physical locations is innocuous.

This is not just because of the Internet, either. When I got my first phone, back in the 1970s, I had to decide how to have my name listed in the telephone book (unlisted costs more). Being a single woman, I naturally listed myself in the form "Doe J", not "Doe Jane", to reduce the chance I'd get harassing phone calls or active stalking. That was what we all did: the expectation that you could be publicly known by your first name was a "privilege" reserved for men, or for women under cover of men -- "Doe John & Jane".

Now I've decided that I really hate calling an expectation of safety and respect "privilege", and I can see why it gets some people's back up. "Privilege" often sounds like the opposite of "right", as in "Having a phone while you're a teenager is a privilege, not a right." Yet the core part of "having privilege" is "being able to count on being treated with basic respect" -- such as not being harassed or stalked in public spaces. These things *should* be rights, given to all people as a matter of course, not "privileges" awarded to a few.

Is there another word than "privilege" to use, then, to describe things some people experience as rights and which ought to be rights, but which aren't in practice always easily available to other people? To say to someone, "No, you can't just judge by your own experience, it isn't universal -- but it should be."

Poverty and Privilege by British painter Heywood Hardy (1842). That's exactly how "privilege" sounds: snooty, elevated, and condescending even when good-hearted.

The Hits (and Misses) Just Keep on Coming

by wj

(I was tempted to use "You Can't Make This Stuff Up." But it's been used....)

Here's a headline from City Pages (a weekly news magazine in Minneapolis/St Paul): Republican Party of Minnesota forgot to put Donald Trump on Minnesota ballot. Yep, you read that right. The Minnesota Secretary of State's office put the sample ballot for November up on their web site. It included not just the Democrats, Libertarians and Greens, but 5 even smaller parties -- example: the Legal Marijuana Now Party and the American Delta Party. What it didn't include was the Republicans. Apparently, in spite of being managed by the world's greatest manager, nobody got the necessary paperwork filed -- perhaps, in part, because they hadn't even done all the selections required by the paperwork.

Fortunately, the actual filing deadline isn't until Monday. At the moment, the Minnesota Republican Party is scrambling to get the necessary alternate electors selected and their names in. Of course, it isn't clear that the state GOP can, legally, just name the alternates, rather than actually electing them as it did the electors. Look for legal actions over that.

Fun question: who ends up placing second, if there is no Republican candidate on the ballot? The Socialist Workers Party, perhaps? This is, after all, Minnesota.

Timor mortis conturbat me - Weekend Open Thread

by wj

Earlier this week, my wife's BFF passed away. (They've been friends for 3 decades plus. Since long before "BFF" appeared in the language.) He was only a few weeks older than she is, and it's been traumatic. Giving rise to these musings.

For most of us, the first time we lose someone we know is when our grandparents die -- maybe when we are children; maybe when we are in our 20s. But it isn't generally traumatic. After all, they are ancient, and have been ancient all of our lives.

When, 2-3 decades later, our parents go, it shakes our world. But largely because they are our parents. Other people that age, even favorite aunts and uncles, don't have the same effect on us.

But what really rocks our world is when our contemporaries start to die.** Suddenly, death isn't something that happens to "old people", it's something that we can see happening to us. Or maybe it's that suddenly, we realize that we are now "old people". But in any case, things are never the same for us again.

I wonder if this may not be the biggest way in which those of us who were born since World War II, at least in the relatively wealthy West, differ from all of our ancestors. If you were born much before that, dying happened all around you, all the time. High levels of infant and child mortality meant that you saw some of your friends (not to mention siblings) die while you were all still children. You knew, deep down and personal, that you were not invulnerable and immortal. And, at the same time, contemporaries dying, while it saddened you, did not have the same traumatic effect that it does for us today. It was just part of life.

How has that difference from our ancestors' experience impacted other aspects of our world-view? And our lives? And how does it contribute to the mutual incomprehension with which we, and those who grow up in gang-infested inner cities, view each other?

** This may be why those who have been in military combat, or have had close friends in the military who died in battle, have noticably different outlooks on life (in my experience, anyway). Even when our childhoods were otherwise identical. Because they got this realization of personal mortality substantially younger than it hit the rest of us.

We are all Andrew Breitbarts now

by Ugh

The ongoing dumpster fire of sh1t dark fascist comedy (with a heart) that is 2016 Republican Presidential Nominee Donald Trump (emphasis added) continues beyond all expectations.  It really is quite something, he says.  At this rate I half expect Trump, upon the advice of new campaign "chief executive" Stephen CBannon (replacing, uh, Donald Trump?) of the Wonderful World of Breitbart "News", to charge across the stage at the first Presidential debate and eat Hillary Clinton's face in a Lecter-esque flakka-infused rage that he will later attempt to pass off as sarcasm and then double down as getting in touch with his inner-chimp and part of his continued performance art fight against political correctness.  

Meanwhile, the media continues in its stupor to somehow manage to portray Paul Ryan and Mike Pence as "moderate" and "sane" GOPers, which is the one silver lining of Trump, I suppose, for the GOP in now that their 2020 nominee can campaign on a 0% top federal income tax rate, repealing social security and providing that US citizens to be deported for "extremist views" will receive some sort of due process before they are shipped overseas (to where?) will be declared a "serious policy wonk" by media acclimation.  

But really, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, et. al. need to have Trump hung around their necks and go down with the ship instead of somehow existing in a kind of political Schrödinger's Cat state of supporting the nominee while also condemning him.  He's your party's nominee Paul!  Own him!  It's the GOP's base!

And I'm sure that by 2020 various GOPers will have convinced themselves and many of their voters that Trump was actually the Democrat's nominee in 2016, kind of like there having been no terrorist attacks committed by muslims in the United States before Obama became President or that George W. Bush "kept us safe!"  

Whee.

Olympics, I Wish I Knew How To Quit You

by liberal japonicus

Yeah, talking to you Rio Olympics. I was so totally disgusted by the stories, the graft, you know. But it comes on TV and WHAM, I'm watching Ai Fukuhara and Kazumi Ishikawa and Mima Ito against Aryan Germans named Shan and Han, and I'm screaming at the TV. 

So a thread for the Olympics. Two interesting articles to mull over

https://www.inverse.com/article/19649-2016-rio-olympics-table-tennis-ball-problems

Despite the growing pains, the switch to non-celluloid balls was practically a necessity because of the severe fire hazard posed by celluloid balls. “We can now have a large quantity of balls come by air quickly, and we couldn’t have done that before,” points out Brasfield; previously, containers of celluloid balls had to be delivered by hazmat trucks with flammable solid warnings plastered all over them.

and http://regressing.deadspin.com/this-is-why-there-are-so-many-ties-in-swimming-1785234795 (via a slart like on FB I think)

In a 50 meter Olympic pool, at the current men’s world record 50m pace, a thousandth-of-a-second constitutes 2.39 millimeters of travel. FINA pool dimension regulations allow a tolerance of 3 centimeters in each lane, more than ten times that amount. Could you time swimmers to a thousandth-of-a-second? Sure, but you couldn’t guarantee the winning swimmer didn’t have a thousandth-of-a-second-shorter course to swim.

have at it.

The ingredient in the special sauce?

by liberal japonicus

I started this because the other thread wascreaking under the weight of all the comments,, but two other posts have gone out since them. Oh well... However, I thought I go ahead and post this.

I found this vox piece to be very insightful, especially when juxtaposed with this one. Both are a bit of a long read, but I'll wait till you finish. join me below the fold when you do.

Pro-Life Science and Abortion

by Doctor Science

Shannon Dingle posted I'm Pro-Life and I'm Voting for Hillary, because she thinks "pro-life policies" should mean support for all kinds of children and parents, not just opposition to abortion.

It's a very thoughtful, nuanced post in general, but includes this statement:

I believe life begins scientifically at the moment of conception when new and unique DNA is created when the egg and sperm meet. Except in rare cases, like ectopic pregnancies and other circumstances in which the zygote can't become a fetus and then a born baby, life will continue from that point unless interrupted.

I've heard something very similar from many "pro-lifers", including some here. The problem with this paragraph is that it claims to be about "science", but is made up of errors or falsehoods.

1. "Scientifically" life does not begin, it is transmitted. There is no non-living link in human reproduction. The scientific answer to "When does life begin?" is "Three billion years ago."[1] For "When does human life begin?" the answer is "About 100,000 years ago."

2. Not all humans have new and unique DNA: identical twins are people, too. The process of splitting one zygote into twins is not instantaneous, and frequently the identical embryos recombine to form a single individual. At what point do you say "there are two human lives here"? If they recombine (or one absorbs the other) after that point, has there been a death? (I wrote about this point and the next 4 years ago, in A single cell is not a person: the problem of twins, but because I am basing my opinions on science, they've changed a bit since then.)

3. Conversely, some individual humans are chimeras: they contain two different sets of "new and unique DNA", when two distinct embryos (in your thinking, two distinct human lives) have merged in utero. If you start with 2 human lives and end up with one individual, does this mean that one of those human lives ended? Which one?

4. The statement that life will continue from the point of conception to birth "except in rare cases" is false. On the contrary, it's been estimated that only 30% of human conceptions progress to live birth. About 25-30% never make it to implantation (which is the start of pregnancy), another 30% die during the first week or so, 10-15% are recognized as miscarriages, and 1% are stillbirths.

It turns out that a large percentage of human zygotes are not capable of developing to the point of birth because they don't have a "clean" set of chromosomes. This is extremely surprising, and so far unexplained--though obviously a hot topic for research. It's surprising because in other well-studied mammals (mice, for instance), 90% or more of zygotes are good to go. It's also surprising because conception and early embryo formation are "mission-critical" for living creatures. Natural selection will act most strongly, random mutations won't be tolerated, and we expect the biochemistry to be very conservative and slow to change.

And yet, human reproduction seems to be *incredibly* buggy, much more so than for chimpanzees. My evolutionary-biologist instincts suspect this didn't evolve via natural selection, but is a mistake solidified by inbreeding during a severe population bottleneck at some point well before the evolution of Homo sapiens: from 200,000 years ago back to maybe 1.5 million y.a.

Regardless of cause, right now the reality is that most human zygotes cannot lead to a live birth. They're all human and alive, but only a minority of them are capable of becoming a human person. Most are not "babies", even potentially.

5. Saying "life will continue from that point unless interrupted". No, without the active support of a human uterus the death rate for human embryos is 100%. An embryo's life doesn't just "continue", it needs ongoing contributions from the mother to stay alive.

Even on the biological level, these contributions aren't automatic. It's becoming clear that the uterus isn't just an accepting and supportive environment for embryos, it's a testing ground. The uterus chooses (there's that word again!) which embryos are worth growing, and aborts the rest. That's why so many human embryos die in the first week or so after implantation: some are too buggy to make it any further and die on their own, but others are killed by the lining of the uterus.

It's been plausibly suggested that this is why humans menstruate--unlike the other great apes and almost all other mammals, which thriftily re-absorb the uterine lining instead. Costly, messy menstruation is worth it for humans, to clean out defective embryos that have embedded themselves in the uterine lining. It's the natural equivalent of a post-miscarriage D&C each cycle.

Science-based arguments can be made for putting "the start of respectable[2] human life" at a number of different times during development: conception, heartbeat, movement or "quickening" (traditional), brain formation, brain development, birth (another traditional point), etc. Some of these arguments may well be stronger than the ones for conception. And that's aside from the point that Christians should really be talking about immortal souls, not biological lives, and are using "when life begins" as a kind of rhetorical stalking-horse for "ensoulment", which is clearly not a scientific term.

The current "pro-life" movement doesn't date respectable human life from conception because that's scientifically irreproachable (it's not). They *chose* that point for non-scientific reasons, then picked the science to support it. It's dishonest, and follows a tradition of ignorance and bullshiting in the movement. I'm using "bullshit" in philosopher Harry Frankfurt's sense, to mean that they're not consciously lying, they just don't care about the truth.

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[1] I first heard (read) this formulation in the 1980s, in a report about a scientist testifying at a Congressional hearing. I can't find the reference, though.

[2] I'm using "respectable" to mean "worthy of respect similar to that toward a person". Because I can.

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Coatlicue, an Aztec goddess combining aspects of fertility and death. This statue is in Mexico City.

It's strikingly difficult to find a Goddess of Miscarriage in any culture. I can't believe that women didn't pray to *someone* in their religious pantheons: prayer for solace after a miscarriage, prayer to avert another one, and prayer to have one, when a woman was pregnant and didn't want to be. I'm betting that lack of evidence here is because written records come from men, and miscarriage rituals fell behind a heavy veil of Women's Mysteries. Coatlicue is just one possible nominee.

Your Tacitly Corrupt Open Thread

by Ugh

Corruption is the new black!  

Is it corrupt to profit from your public office if all the profit comes after you held the office?  In my professional circles, you can go work for the government for a few years and then leave and go make a bunch of $$ working for an accounting or law firm in the specific sub-discipline you worked in at the government.  It is generally understood that you are forgiven for any sins you may have committed against the private sector during your public service, but I sometimes wonder if things are being held back or positions are not taken that might benefit the public for fear of harming future employment prospects.

Also, apparently the 2016 Olympics of Doom Opening Ceremony is, what, today?  I think maybe it should take a decade off.  When does Usain Bolt run the 100M final? This is still amazing.  I hope he's clean.

Any good new music out there?  Books?

Golf sucks without Tiger.  Go Nats, but bring on the NFL!