Quote for the Day 7/29/08

I know that Barack Obama is a near-perfect political package. I'm still not sure, though, what's in it.

- Richard Cohen, left-wing columnist, Washington Post

Novak 7/28/08

These are professional pundits who usually say things that are significant. Robert Novak’s policy is to have something nobody knows in each column. In his memoir at the left he writes of the 50 years he’s covered the news in Washington.

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McCain Is Closer Than He Should Be

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Summary: Obama’s campaign has been brilliant while McCain’s has been lackluster. Yet Obama is only a few points ahead. Despite the electioneering aspects of Obama’s campaign, the substantive aspects hinder him. Can McCain back into the general election the way he backed into the Republican nomination?

Quote:

The toughest interrogation of Obama came from CBS anchor Katie Couric in Jordan last Tuesday. She asked four times whether the troop surge he had opposed was instrumental in reducing violence in Iraq. Obama answered straight from talking points by citing "the great effort of our young men and women in uniform." That sounded like the old politics. He would have sounded more like a new politician if he had simply said, "Yes, the strategy did work." That would have infuriated antiwar activists but not enough for them to drop Obama.

My Views: Obama doesn’t bug me so much as the obvious media bias. This also occurred in the Clinton campaigns. While the press did give him a hard time, too, that was not in 1992 or 1996. In the run-up to the elections, they always seem to give the Democrat candidates an easy ride.

None of this can explain why Republicans have such a hard time getting their act together.

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Here’s Novak’s essay.

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Disclaimer: The book pictured is Novak's memoir. This gives you a picture of the book, of him, and an idea of what it costs. The fact that I will be compensated if you click on the link and buy the book turns this post into a semi-advertisement. I only will link to Amazon.com for books I actually liked.

Chess Viewer Done

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1632 The Book

A couple of days ago, I posted about recent books I've been reading. The 1632 series is particularly interesting. This exerpt is from Chapter 5. This is when the 20th. Century Americans first find out where they really are - and when!

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The hidalgo did not stay in the carriage for long. Two minutes, perhaps. Rebecca was not certain. Several of his men came up the carriage. There was a rapid exchange of words. Rebecca could not understand much of it, partly because of the accent and partly because they were using terms unfamiliar to her. Odd, that. Rebecca had been born and raised in London. She had thought herself familiar with every flavor of the English language.

But she understood the gist of their discussion. And that, too, she found peculiar. The hidalgo and his men seemed puzzled, as if they were disoriented by their location. They were also confused, apparently, as to what course of action to pursue.

Strange, strange. Again, fear began to creep into Rebecca's heart. The hidalgo's men, for all that they clearly respected him and sought leadership, were not addressing him as a nobleman. That meant, despite his courtesy of manner, that he must be a leader of mercenaries. A bastard son of some petty baron, perhaps, from one of England's provinces. That would explain the accent.

Rebecca shrank back in her seat. Mercenaries were vicious, everyone knew it. Criminals in all but name. Especially here, in the Holy Roman Empire, which had been given over to the flames of war.

Her eyes flitted to her father. But there was no comfort to be found there. Her father was fighting for his life. The Moorish physician was holding him up and giving him some small tablets from the vial he had taken out of his box. Rebecca did not even think of protesting the treatment. The black doctor exuded an aura of competence and certainty.

The hidalgo came back to the carriage. Timidly, Rebecca turned her head toward him. Relief. There was still nothing in his eyes but friendliness. That, and—

She found herself swallowing. She recognized that look. She had seen it before, in Amsterdam, from some of the more confident young men in the Jewish quarter. Admiration; appraisal. Desire, even, veiled under courtesy.

But, after a moment, she decided there was no trace of lust. At least, she thought not. Lust was not something Rebecca was really familiar with, except the flowery version of it which she had found in some of her father's books. The romances which she tucked into great tomes of theology, reading in the library of their house in Amsterdam, so that her father might not notice her unseemly interest.

She felt a flash of pain, remembering that library. She had loved that room. Loved its quiet, its repose. Loved the books lining every wall. Her father's mind lived in the past, and tended to be disdainful of the present. But for one modern device her father had nothing but praise—the printing press. "For that alone," he was wont to say, "God will forgive the Germans their many crimes."

And now here they were, in the land of the Germans. Adrift in time of war, seeking shelter in the eye of the storm. Or so, at least, they had hoped. She would never see that library again, and for a moment Rebecca Abrabanel grieved the loss. Her childhood was gone with it, and her girlhood too. She was twenty-three years old. Whether she wanted them or not, the duties of a grown woman had fallen upon her shoulders.

She straightened those shoulders, then, summoning determination and courage. The motion drew the hidalgo's eyes. The admiration lurking within those blue orbs brightened. Rebecca didn't know whether to cringe or smile.

As it happened, she smiled. And did not, somehow, find that unthinking reaction strange.

The hidalgo spoke. His words came clipped, full of peculiar contractions and idioms. Automatically, Rebecca translated into her own formal English.

"With your permission, ma'am, we need to use your carriage. We have injured people we must get to proper medical treatment."

"And quickly," muttered the Moor, still crouched on the floor next to her father. "I've given him some—" aspiring? Rebecca did not understand the word.

The hidalgo's eyes moved to the chests and crates piled on the other side of the carriage's interior. "We'll have to remove those, to make room."

Rebecca started. Her father's books! And the silver hidden within!

She stared at the hidalgo. As he recognized her fear, she thought to see a flash of anger. But if so, it was gone in an instant.

The hidalgo's large hand tightened on the carriage door. His right hand, she noted idly. One of the knuckles was split, scabbed over with blood. An injury from the battle?

But it was his face that she was concerned with. The hidalgo looked away for a moment, scanning the distance. His jaws seemed to tighten. Then, with a faint sigh, he turned back to her.

"Listen to me, lady." Pause. "What is your name?"

"Rebecca—" She hesitated. "Abrabanel." She held her breath. Of all the great family names of Sepharad, Abrabanel was the most famous. Notorious.

But the name, apparently, meant nothing to the hidalgo. He simply nodded, and said: "Pleased to meet you. My name is Mike Stearns."

Mike? Then: Oh. It's those bizarre contractions again. Michael.

The hidalgo flashed a smile. Then, as quickly as it came, the smile vanished. His face became stern and solemn.

"Listen to me, Rebecca Abrabanel. I do not know what this place is, or where we are. But I do not care." Fiercely: "Not one damn bit. As far as I am concerned, we are still in West Virginia."

Rebecca's mind groped at the name. West—what?

The hidalgo did not notice her confusion. His eyes had left her for a moment. Again, he was scanning the countryside around them. His look was fierce. Fierce.

Growling, now, almost snarling: "You—and your father—are under the protection of the people of West Virginia." His eyes moved to his men, clustered nearby. They were watching him, listening to him. The hidalgo's jaw tightened. "Specifically," he stated, "you are under the protection of the United Mine Workers of America."

Rebecca saw the hidalgo's men lift their shoulders, swelling their own determination and courage. Their sleek, delicate-looking weapons gleamed in the sunlight. "Damn straight!" barked one of the younger men. He cast his own hawk glare at the countryside.

Rebecca was heartened by that reaction, but her confusion deepened. America? Her jaw grew slack. There are almost no English in America. True, that little wretched colony of theirs is called Virginia, if I remember correctly. But America is—

Hope flared. Spanish, of course. But Sephardim are there too. Since the Dutch took Brazil, eight years ago, America has been a refuge. My father told me there is even a synagogue in Recife.

Rebecca stared at the hidalgo. Was he a hidalgo? She was completely adrift, now. Her mind groped for reason and logic.

Her confusion must have been apparent. The hidalgo—Michael, think of him as Michael—chuckled. "Rebecca, I am just as puzzled as you seem to be."

The brief moment of humor passed. Severity returned to his face. Michael leaned forward, placing both hands on the open window of the carriage. "Where are we, Rebecca? What place is this?"

Her eyes went past his shoulders. She could not see much, they were so wide. "I am not certain," she replied. "Thuringia, I think. Father said we had almost reached our destination."

Michael's brows furrowed. "Thuringia? Where is that?"

Rebecca understood. "Oh, of course. It's not well known. One of the smaller provinces of the Holy Roman Empire." His brows were deep, deep. "Germany," she added.

His eyes grew wide, almost bulged. "Germany?" Then, half-choked: "Germany?"

Michael turned his head, staring at the landscape. "Rebecca, I've lived in Germany. It's nothing like this." He hesitated. "Oh, I suppose the countryside's a bit the same. Except for being so—so raggedy-looking." He frowned, pointing a finger at the corpses still lying in the farmyard. "But there are no men like this in Germany."

Michael barked a sudden laugh. "God, the Polizei would round them up in a minute! Germans love their rules and regulations." Another barked laugh. "Alles in ordnung!"

Rebecca's own brows were furrowed. "Alles in ordnung?" What is he talking about? Germans are the most unruly and undisciplined people in Europe. Everybody knows it. That was true even before the war. Now—

She shuddered, remembering Magdeburg. That horror had taken place less than a week ago. Thirty thousand people, massacred. Some said it was forty thousand. The entire population of the city, except the young women taken by Tilly's army.

Michael's blue eyes were suddenly dark with suspicion. No, not suspicion. Surmise.

"Guess not, huh?" He shook his head, muttering. "Later," she thought he said. "Deal with it later, Mike. For now—"

There was a shout. Several. Michael pushed himself away from the carriage, looking toward the woods. Rebecca leaned forward, craning her neck.

Many more men were coming out of the woods. For an instant, Rebecca was paralyzed with fear. But seeing the odd costumes and weapons, she relaxed. More of Michael's men. More of these—Americans?

Then Rebecca saw the first women coming through the trees, their faces filled with worry and concern. Like a child, she burst into tears.

Michael. And women.

Safe. We are safe.

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This exerpt is from the CD that is contained in the Book 1634: The Baltic Wars. All material is © Eric Flynt. Consult the terms of the CD before republishing any part of this.

Books Read - 7/08

Here's three books I read in the last few weeks.



I’ve been reading the Harry Potter books for the second time. There’s a certain charm to them. It is an indefinable something that exists outside of the regular categories of character, plot, scene, etc. I find myself turning the pages, caught up in the HP universe despite the glaring problems with the plot.

Dumbledore, McGonagle, and the other grownups in these stories have to be the most stupid people! All of these things happening in their school and they seem to be clueless. Why would they leave these children to face these dangers while they sit back? There are excuses in some instances - Harry gets information that is unavailable to the grownups – but for the most part, the professors are in a far better position, at the start, to address the problems then the children are. And even in those cases where the kids possess info that the grownups don’t, then why don’t they share information? The grownups certainly have not acted in such a way as to invite the kids to enlist their aid in their various scrapes. And I’m looking at you, Dumbledore!

The author has to move the grownups to the background in order to have the kids do the action and so the reader overlooks the glaring problems with the plotting in order to enjoy the story. One thing is always happening after another; there’s always some immediate problem that the children must solve; so the pages keep turning.

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The other two books represent two different genres of historical novels.

The historical novel has been around since the beginning. One convention of this genre has been for the main characters to be fictional while real historical people were bit players.

The Shaara novels deliberately violate this rule. In fact, it smashes it to pieces. In his novels, historical people are not only main characters, they are the subject of the novels. For example, his Mexican War novel pictured in above is about Robert E. Lee and General Scott. If one could have done a reality show treatment of these two during that war, then this book is what it would look like.

The treatment is history plus. The history of the campaign plus their unrecorded - hence more detailed - actions, words, and thoughts. Since the unrecorded part is the author’s extrapolations from the historical record, this must be necessarily classed as fiction. Hence, it is a novel.

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The last book is the latest in the 1632 series. Imagine some catastrophic event that takes a small part of today’s America and transports it back in time. - Not just one person goes back in time but an entire community. This is the concept behind this series.

This is an example of another innovation in modern literature: the marriage of history and science fiction. We call it “alternative history”. There are a number of books in this genre. It is about 20 years old now.

These books all seem to have one style of writing. I call it the soap opera style. If you’ve seen shows on TV like “All My Children” then you know what I’m speaking of. There’s always several different stories going on at the same time. The scene splits from one story to another. The different stories and the different characters in them all may relate to one another at different distances. Some characters stay in their own story; some move into other’s stories. They all exist in the same story arc.

This format works for this genre because in these books the author has so many balls to juggle. To keep them all up in the air, he just cuts from one scene to the other.

Back to the book. The year the Americans go back to is 1632. As you can see from the book, two years have gone by. The Baltic Wars takes the main story forward. There are spinoffs. 1634: The Galileo Affair is the better book primarily since it doesn’t have the burden of carrying the series that The Baltic Wars has.

I like all three of these books.

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Disclaimer: The slide show gives you pictures of the books and an idea of what they cost. The fact that I will be compensated if you click on the link and buy a book turns this post into a semi-advertisement. I only will link to Amazon.com for books I actually liked.

Physicists Skeptical on Global Warming

Summary: A forum of the American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, no longer believes in the evidence supporting human-induced global warming.

Quote:

Monckton, who was the science advisor to Britain's Thatcher administration, says natural variability is the cause of most of the Earth's recent warming. "In the past 70 years the Sun was more active than at almost any other time in the past 11,400 years ... Mars, Jupiter, Neptune’s largest moon, and Pluto warmed at the same time as Earth."

My Views: Who is right? I must say that I really don’t know.

It makes sense that the Earth’s climate is primarily affected by the Sun. If not, then just how did those Ice Ages occur? And how about that global warming during the Age of the Dinosaurs? Before the issue of global warming appeared in the political arena about ten years ago, scientists were convinced that the Earth, within just the last 10% of it’s history, has had periods that were both much hotter and much colder than now.

On the other hand, one has to only drive around the Greater Atlanta area to see the vast impact that humanity has had on the environment. Few who have lived near big cities anywhere in the world are unfamiliar with air pollution. One wonders how this could not have an impact on the general atmospheric conditions of the planet.

There may be other factors, too. I saw a show on the Discovery Channel that said that the Earth’s magnetic field has been steadily weakening for thousands of years. This affects the amount of radiation from the Sun that is warded off.

The one thing that is clear: the political left has seized on this issue and have incorporated it as an ideological agenda item. They are not open to the issue’s nuances. Political correctness trumps science.

The rest of us should not overreact. Mark me down as undecided.

P.S. Just how does the good doctor know about the Sun’s activity in the last 11,400 years? And why that particular number: 11,400? Not 11,000 but 11,400 – odd cite that.

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Here is the story in Daily Tech.

Susan's Chess Viewer Almost Ready for Blogs

Gregory Alexander and Nikolai Pilafov have been working on a viewer that will allow people to display chess games together with annotations and variations. It is like ChessBase or Chess Assistant, only it works in Java on the net.

While it is now fully functional on Susan Polgar's Chess Discussion Forums, it is not ready yet for some blogs such as mine or even Susan's own. The problem is the width limits in blogspot's display templates. I suggested that the score sheet be displayed under the chess board instead of to the side.

Until Susan's team can perfect the tool, one workaround for blogspot folks like us is to set up a separate blog without layouts. Blogspot users can use the Simple II template. Then link to that blog like this.

This is a game between Judit Polgar (Susan's sister) and Vishy Arnand (the World Champ) in 1999. As you can see, this is an awsome tool for chess bloggers.

Better yet, chess bloggers can just link direct to Chess Discussion.