Dune by Frank Herbert

My rating: 6 of 5 stars

Brian Herbert, on Dune.

Dune is a modern-day conglomeration of familiar myths, a tale in which great sandworms guard a precious treasure of melange, the geriatric spice that represents, among other things, the finite resource of oil. The planet Arrakis features immense, ferocious worms that are like dragons of lore, with “great teeth” and a “bellows breath of cinnamon.”

It’s hard to find something to say about Dune that hasn’t already been said. It raised for the bar for the entire genre of science fiction. It won both the Hugo and Nebula awards. It combined elements of ecology, politics, philosophy, history, evolution, religion, psychology, adventure, revenge, and more. It’s fantastically layered, lending itself to many different interpretations and explanations. It gave us a world complex enough, with a history rich enough to support 15 sequels, a movie, and 2 TV mini-series.

It can be a slow read at times, demanding close attention from the reader. Herbert introduces a dizzying array of characters, concepts, terms, languages, histories, and peoples. You are, in essence, dropped into a story already in progress and trusted to keep up as events unfold. But, in spite of its occasional flaws, it’s a worthwhile read. From start to finish, the book rewards the reader with an all-engaging universe.

If you have already read Dune, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, you should probably give it a try. It’s a true classic of the genre for many very good reasons.

Glory Season by David Brin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: Loads of Fun

The best science fiction is, at its heart, speculative fiction. These books start with a single big idea—a single question—and develop it. The great books take that idea and develop it superbly. Glory Season is a great book. It starts with a single idea: what if humans could clone themselves when times are good and revert to sexual reproduction when times are bad and genetic diversity is at a premium?

David Brin explains how his idea developed, from that single root.

The idea of cloning has been explored widely in fiction, but always in terms of medical technology involving complex machinery, a dilettante obsession for the very rich. This may serve a pampered, self-obsessed class for a while, but it’s hardly a process any species could rely on over the long haul, through bad times as well as good. Not a way of life, machine-assisted cloning is the biosocial counterpart of a hobby.

What if, instead, self-cloning were just another of the many startling capabilities of the human womb? An interesting premise. But then, only female humans have wombs, so a contemplation of cloning became a novel about drastically altered relations between the sexes. Most aspects to the society of planet Stratos arose out of this one idea.

David Brin relentlessly develops this big idea, to see exactly where it takes him. He follows it through the sciences, to see where it takes him: biology, sociology, psychology, and more. By pursuing this idea so relentlessly, he constructs a society that is very alien to our own (uncomfortably so, in cases) but yet is still very recognizable.

Glory Season is a tale of a largely static society, where women hold the upper hand. Men are kept around primarily for their ability to “spark” clone births. It’s a society largely dominated by extended clans of female clones. It’s a society where being unique is very uncomfortable and where “var” is a derisive slur.

But David Brin didn’t allow these big, well developed ideas to get in the way of telling a story. Glory Season is an adventure tale, a coming of age tale, and a tale of radicals seeking to remake society. It was both thought provoking and thoroughly entertaining. I highly recommend it.

I took my camera out and started snapping some photos. “No pictures!” I was politely, but firmly, admonished by a pretty young flight attendant. Though still sitting on the tarmac in Beijing, I figured it would be best to follow DPRK rules as being inside the Air Koryo plane already made me feel like I was under the watchful eye of the Dear Leader.\

You could easily tell who the North Korean citizens were. Each had a pin on his or her shirt, right over the heart, featuring either the beaming smile of Kim Il Sung, the Great Leader and Eternal President of Korea—the only official head of state who is dead—or a more innocuous pin with the North Korean flag on it.

Interesting. I’m looking forward to part 2.

Visit This Link →

In a spate of recent cases across the country, American citizens have been confined in local jails after federal immigration agents, acting on flawed information from Department of Homeland Security databases, instructed the police to hold them for investigation and possible deportation.

Americans said their vehement protests that they were citizens went unheard by local police and jailers for days, with no communication with federal immigration agents to clarify the situation.

Visit This Link →

There was a reason for that. Daniel Craig talked about it, in a recent interview.

It seems that the script is sometimes an after-thought on huge productions.

‘Yes and you swear that you’ll never get involved with shit like that, and it happens. On “Quantum”, we were fucked. We had the bare bones of a script and then there was a writers’ strike and there was nothing we could do. We couldn’t employ a writer to finish it. I say to myself, “Never again”, but who knows? There was me trying to rewrite scenes – and a writer I am not.’

It seems that Craig’s next Bond movie, Skyfall, has a proper script. Perhaps I’ll allow myself to hope that it’s good.

Visit This Link →

This past election when Dina Galassini emailed some friends urging them to join her in opposing a ballot initiative proposing $30 million in bonds for the town of Fountain Hills, Ariz., she thought she was doing what Americans have done throughout our nation’s history—speaking out on matters of public concern. Instead, she received a letter from a town clerk strongly urging her to “cease any campaign related activities.” It turns out she failed to fill out the paperwork required by Arizona’s campaign finance laws and therefore didn’t have the government’s permission to speak.

Under Arizona law, as in most states, anytime two or more people work together to support or oppose a ballot issue, they become a “political committee.” Even before they speak, they must register with the state, and then they must track every penny they spend, and if spending more than a small amount, fill out complicated reports detailing every move.

Worse yet, these laws do nothing to help educate voters. They’re worthless, they’re unconstitutional, and they’re keeping citizens from becoming involved in politics.

I honestly don’t understand why “progressives” think that these laws are such a great idea. Why is it okay for me to be involved in politics by myself but not okay for me and 10 or 100 or 1,000 or even 10,000 people to pool our time, resources, energy, and money together, to promote or oppose an idea?

Visit This Link →

To hear some folks tell it, budget cuts in Virginia over the past three to four years have been so savage it’s a miracle there’s any state government left. We long ago cut out all the fat and hacked through the muscle; now we’re sawing deep into bone. Localities are scared stiff that the state will stiff them come January. And it’s only going to get worse. Gov. Bob McDonnell has had state agencies prepare plans cutting 2 percent, 4 percent, and 6 percent from their budgets. The stories have grown numbingly familiar.

Still: The general fund has grown roughly $1 billion from last fiscal year to this one. That represents about a 6 percent hike. So why is the governor asking agencies to plan for cuts?

… For example: From fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2012, general-fund outlays for the Department of Medical Assistance Services (that’s the one responsible for administering Medicaid and the state’s Children’s Health Insurance Program) have grown 35 percent. General-fund revenue hasn’t grown anything like that, so the difference has to come from the pockets of other programs.

Huh. Maybe we really should talk about reforming Medicaid.

Visit This Link →

Education used to make up a bigger share of state spending. When the association first began compiling the report in 1987, elementary and secondary education made up the biggest share of state spending, and higher education the second-biggest share. Medicaid surpassed higher education as the second-biggest state program in 1990, and in 2003 it became largest state program for the first time. Since then it has vied with schools for the biggest share of state spending, but for the past three years it has been in the lead, with an increasing margin.

Maybe it’s time to consider reforming Medicaid? Before it eats up state budgets completely? And maybe we could do it without demonizing the one party that’s willing to talk about it? (Hello, Congressman Paul Ryan.)

Visit This Link →

The bill barred insurers or employers from forcing patients to use mail-order plans for prescription drugs, except for plans negotiated by unions. Instead, consumers would be guaranteed the choice of having their prescriptions filled either through mail-order or at the local drugstore, without any added copayments or fees.

So, at a time when health plans are under tremendous pressure to cut premiums (or at least to raise them as little as possible), the Governor is going to raise health plans’ costs? Not exactly.

But the governor signed both bills late Monday on the condition that the Legislature would retroactively amend them to require retail pharmacies to accept the same reimbursement rates for drugs as mail-order pharmacies.

Oh, okay. The Governor is going to force small mom-and-pop stores to lose money on every prescription that they fill. Yeah, that’s going to work out well. <sarcasm />

There’s absolutely no good way to fulfill this requirement without raising somebody’s costs. The patient’s preference for locally filled prescriptions is more expensive. By rights, patients should pay for that preference. Instead, the Governor is looking to make someone else pay instead. That’s always a bad idea and this is going to end up back-firing.

Visit This Link →

We all have lots and lots of stuff. We like to think that it’s valuable because we’ll use it one day. It’s not. It’s worthless.

What I didn’t understand was that the value of some new acquisition wasn’t the difference between its retail price and what I paid for it. It was the value I derived from it. Stuff is an extremely illiquid asset. Unless you have some plan for selling that valuable thing you got so cheaply, what difference does it make what it’s “worth?” The only way you’re ever going to extract any value from it is to use it. And if you don’t have any immediate use for it, you probably never will.

Companies that sell stuff have spent huge sums training us to think stuff is still valuable. But it would be closer to the truth to treat stuff as worthless.

After reading this, I’m ready to go through the house and to start tossing “stuff”.

Visit This Link →