The Kennedy Assassination...

November 22nd is the anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  I was in Mrs. Boyd’s 4th grade class when our Principal shared the news that day.  I recall distinctly thinking, “What is going to happen, now?”

The day of the week in 1963 was a Friday.  Jackie devoted herself to orchastrating the funernal – she was 33 years old at the time.

My parents wanted me to stay in and watch the funeral.  I did, but was happy to get outside to play when I was permitted.  I remember we were playing outside climbing trees when a friend came outside and said, “Someone has shot Oswald.”

We replied “no, you dumb ass, Oswald shot, Kennedy!”  We were profane in the 4th grade.  Little did we know, how crazy things were.  I think the killing of Oswald, did much to promote the conspiracy theories advanced afterward.

Deaths of parents can be profound (I have not had one yet), but the death of JFK was the death of the future and hope.  It still saddens me greatly.  I hope our country never goes through anything like it again.

I recently finished the biography An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917 -1963 by Robert Dallek.  I would highly recommend it to those who haven’t read it.

Hey, you bloggers, have memories, thoughts, conspiracy theories, hopes, on this subject?

iggydonnelly

[Via http://iggydonnelly.wordpress.com]

Book review

Another re-read. Another worthwhile re-read. I really only meant to look at it again because I’m discussing Kehlmann’s Ruhm, and wanted to check how Mitchell had put his novel of separate stories together, in comparison with Kehlmann. And once again, having started there was no way I was going to put it down; and once again the futuristic section in the middle slowed me right down.

Mitchell starts with the journal of a 19th century lawyer aboard a ship in the South Pacific, moves forward in time to letters from a young Brit who finds work as amanuensis to an ageing composer in Belgium between the two wars, then a thriller style tale set in California in the Seventies, a first person narrative of a vanity publisher who suddenly and fatefully lands a bestseller, an interview with a freed replicant slave in the near future and then a central piece where civilisation as we know it has come to an end. Then the second half of the first six tales is narrated in reverse order so that the end is the journal of the lawyer. The central section is exhausting as Mitchell has invented a dialect that is not easy to read, but nevertheless I’m deeply impressed by Mitchell’s ventriloquism, how he manages to create very different, utterly convincing voices and how he creates the suspense that pushes the narrative forward even though the breaks between the separate stories might bring you up short. I also have great respect for the device of each narrative appearing in the next one, which gives a stringency and structure to the whole, and provides a reward for reading the tales in the order they are printed. These are all elements that are missing from Kehlmann’s ‘novel in nine stories’: the arc and running structural thread is just not there, and a few repeated motifs don’t turn it into a novel.

Book Review: When He Was Bad by Shelly Laurenston and Cynthia Eden

• Title: When He Was Bad
• Author: Shelly Laurenston and Cynthia Eden
• Type: Paranormal shifter anthology
• Genre: Pack and Pride series short novel + long novella with vamp and shifter
• Sub-genre: humorous and suspense
• My Grade: B+ (4.2*)
• Rating: PG-13 to NC-17
• Where Available: Wherever books are sold
• FTC Disclosure: book purchased at online bookstore

Well, When He Was Bad my re-read book this month.  I just couldn’t seem to get interested in anything lately, so I grabbed this off my keeper shelf and enjoyed it again.  No, it isn’t my favorite, but I actually enjoyed it more on this read through than I did the first time since I had started Ms Eden’s Hotter After Midnight and become reacquainted with Nils van Holtz, alpha of the van Holtz wolves,  in Ms Laurenston’s The Main Squeeze.  Van Holtz first showed up first in Go Fetch! with his wife Irene Conridge.  The first story in When He Was Bad goes back in time to when Van and Irene first got together in the early 1980’s.

Miss Congeniality is the ironic title given to the story of Niles van Holtz and Irene Conridge.  It takes place in the 1980’s – when a color screen for a PC was a huge leap forward in technology.  The van Holtz pack is the richest pack in the US, thanks to their hugely successful chain of high end steakhouses,  hand along with the Smith and Mangus packs, the most influential. Irene Conridge is a professor at a small but elite college in the northwest.  She went there at the age of 18 with 3 PhD’s and a chip on her shoulder that’s still there.  An only child who was so extraordinary she addressed the UN when she was only 10 years old and was once taken into custody by the authorities who feared an enemy nation might grab her (It ended badly when she blew up a goodly portion the military installation and several blocks in a nearby city – they let her go.)  Niles see her when she arrives on campus at the age of 18 to his 21 and he assumes she’s “fresh meat’ for his conquest list.  Instead, Dr. Conridge is a new faculty member.  He’s had a thing for her and her seamed stockings ever since.  Thanks to generous donations of the van Holtz family to the school, Irene tries to be pleasant – or as pleasant as her very limited social skills permit – she doesn’t kill him.  Hey, among shifters that’s almost love!

Irene’s roommate and best friend Jackie drags her from the party and gets her to agree to destroy her latest research before it can fall into the wrong hands.  Nervous and a little edgy, she hears a sound and goes after what she thinks is an intruder with   Irene agrees and drives out to a remote area to dump the small amount of material – which actually acts like a super fertilizer on plants.  From nowhere a hyena leaps at her.  Then lions appear and finally wolves.  Irene had been holding her own with 1 hyena,but lions???  She ends up using her supercharged version of a taser to kill the attacking hyena when the wolves appear.  Then the lead wolf shifts into a naked Niles van Holst and Irene allows the pain to send her into a blessed oblivion.

Niles hauls Irene back to the van Holst mansion and she has to stay there for several days while he tries to work out some kind of agreement with the hyena clan and lion pride to keep her alive once she leaves van Holst territory.  Irene has known about shifters for many years because her long time friend, roommate and fellow prodigy Jackie is a jackle.  Niles has run into intransigence with his fellow shifters and Irene’s life ends up hinging on his marking her as his mate.  Lions and hyenas don’t do that, but they know that wolves mate for life.  Niles just doesn’t believe it.  He thinks it’s all some story parents tell.  Once he bites Irene though he learns it isn’t.  suddenly, he’s lost all interest in the available she-wolves, even the lionesses do nothing for him.  In a panic, he shows up at Irene’s and demands a kiss.  Of course it doesn’t END there.

How does a womanizing wolf and genius with boundary issues connect?  Very well in bed, but with difficulty out of it.  She’s never learned to play, he just ignores her and manages her – but doesn’t control her.  Irene has to learn to be human and how to play.  Her whole life has been about the intellectual expectations that others have of her.  Everything she is, her entire self image is centered on her amazing intelligence.  Niles teaches her about the rest of life.  He’s determined, conniving, cunning and over-sexed – just what Irene needs to make her forget.  But someone is trying to find her recent research.  She held back just a little of the lethal material, but no one knows, right?  The FBI is following her – but so is someone else.

The story is classic Laurenston.  An intelligent, self-sufficient, independent, emotionally closed off female and a womanizing, vain, self-centered, alpha shifter male.  The sparks fly as Irene slowly finds out how much pleasure can be had from being ‘normal’ and Nils comes to terms with the reality of the mate bond, getting his mate to adjust to it, and the fact he must become the pack alpha, like it or not.  He deliberately drives her crazy by leaving his photo all over her office, drives away any other man, and teaches her how to enjoy life instead of just work, how to be ‘normal’, or as normal as possible, while respecting her intellectual gifts.  By itself, Miss Congeniality is a solid B+ (4.3*)

*********************************************************************************

The second long novella/short novel in this anthology is Wicked Ways by Cynthia Eden.  She and Ms Laurenston often appear in the same anthologies.  Both write paranormal, but Ms Eden writes stories that are more paranormal romantic suspense.  Wicked Ways is set in the same ‘world’ as Hotter After Midnight, but here the location is a small town in Louisiana.  Miranda Chase tries online dating and handsome Paul ends up in her house – when he bares his fangs and goes for her throat.  Her neighbor is there and rips him away.  Paul, a sadistic vampire, calls Cain ’shifter’ like a curse.  Cain calls Paul a ‘parasite’.  In the ensuing melee, the two supernaturals damage each other and Miranda calls the police.

There have been a series of murders across state line.  All the women were, all had tried online dating, and all met with a man named Paul.  And all had there throats cut – possibly to hide the fang marks.  Her house a wreck and a crime scene, Cain takes her in for the night.  He’d love to do more, but she’s human and she’s in denial about what happened, refusing to believe there’s such a thing as vampires, despite what she saw, heard, and felt.  Cain forces her to realize there are by showing her the puncture wounds in her neck.  Miranda finds herself  learning a lot more than she’s comfortable knowing – Cain isn’t human, he’s “retired” from the FBI, and the psychotic vamp will keep killing if she doesn’t help them nail his hide.  Rather than go into hiding and let Paul move on to another victim, she decides to work with Cain and the FBI to try and catch him.  Her Spanish is rusty, but when the agent Santiago calls Cain ‘gato grande’ even she knows that means ‘big cat’.  She also learns there are a whole lot of other supposedly mythic creatures out there, like demons, djinn, and werewolves – who are usually psychotic.

Miranda is attracted to Cain and staying at his house proves to much temptation to them both.  Paul, however, is as drawn to Miranda as Cain expected.  Cain smells him – old blood – and goes into the woods near the house and lets his animal free – a big, black jaguar.  He hunts the vamp, but Paul is ready for him and shoots at him and heads for Miranda.  Paul didn’t use silver bullets, so even though the wound hurts, Cain isn’t that badly injured.  Then he goes after Paul, but the vamp does the unexpected and shoots Miranda knowing Cain will stay with her and not go after him.

Miranda decides she’ll continue to help hunt Paul.  She creates an online persona with a new name and location in hopes of drawing him out in Miami.  Meanwhile, Cain is visiting ‘feeding rooms’ where vamps find willing humans and no one has seen Paul.  Miranda and Cain go to Maimi and the very first club sees Miranda’s cover is blow by an Irish Vamp, Sullivan, who knows Cain and knows her real name.  But the trap for Paul becomes a trap for Miranda.

The story is well done, the hero’s angst minimal, and the hunt for Paul is exciting, the suspense plays out well.  The geography of the locations could have been better defined, as could the settings themselves, but other than that, it was well done.  On it’s own this is a solid B (4*).

Book Review bash

It is always a pleasure to see my postman struggle up the path with book parcels for me. An honour to be considered a reviewer of note, I read as soon as I can and write reviews that are not just happyclappy quickies but essays and distribute via blogs, forums and readers websites such as Compulsive Reader.

My reading genre is not quite the same as my science fiction writing genre. Consider my current batch of review books to read.

Mitzi Szereto: In Sleeping Beauty’s Bed – erotic take on traditional fairy tales.

Sam Stone: Futile Flame – erotic vampire sequel to her Killing Kiss brilliant book

Ben Larken: The Hollows – his Pit-Stop remains my favourite horror of all contempory fiction

David Greske: Blood River – hitchiking vampire beauty – looking forward immensely to reviewing this one

K.L. Nappier: Full Wolf Moon and Bitten – I know her books are extraordinarily well crafted.

Sam Smith: Towards the unMaking of Heaven – intelligently written science fiction.

How do I find time to read, review and write my own stuff? I don’t know! If you live in Chester you’ll see me reading on the bus, in cafes, waiting for my wife in shops, while walking. And scribbling notes. It is a time problem but also a privilege to have authors consider my opinions are worthy of their publishers spending the money to send me their oeuvre.

My wife also looks at that postman and then at me, prompting my speech: No, I haven’t spent our money on these!

A Golden Age - Tahmima Anam

I wouldn’t exactly use the work regret but lately I have been thinking it would be nice to be participating in a few less reading challenges. I can understand now the seasoned bloggers sentiment of cutting back, as tempting as it is right now when the delights on offer for next year are starting to be posted.

And then I pick up a book like A Golden Age which I would not have thought to read normally but chose for the Book Awards III and A Colourful reading challenge.

Dear Husband,
I lost our children today

Set during the Bangladeshi war of independance of 1971, this is a touching and educational story which gathers momentum throughout. By the end I couldn’t put it down.

Rehana has been widowed at a young age and has experienced plenty of personal heartbreak and struggle since. We join her with her two teenage children and friends at a party in their home in East Pakistan in 1971. It is the eve of the beginning of the struggle for independance from West Pakistan for the country that is to become Bangladesh.

Most of the story is about this struggle and the effects on Rehana, her children and their community. It is sensitively told from the point of view of Rehana and we understand the emotional toll as well as the constant physical threat for those choosing to resist the Pakistan army.

No, there had never been any other time; their lives were populated by Lenin and Castro and Mujib and Anwar Sadaat; there was only this time, this life, this fraught and crowded era, to which they were bound without choice, without knowledge, only their passions, their loves to lead and sustain them.

This is a story of war with it’s hope and inevitable sacrifice. Above all, it is a story of a mother’s love and what she will do to keep her children safe.

A Golden Age won the Commonwealth Writer’s prize for Overall best first book in 2008.  It would make a wonderful choice for the Women Unbound challenge, which I haven’t signed up for yet but probably won’t be able to resist.

Review: <i>Fellow Workers With God: Orthodox Thinking on Theosis</i> by Norman Russell

I would like to note that I participated in what was originally going to be a group book review of Owen the Ochlophobist’s, but which ultimately because a review symposium hosted by Unmercenary Readers. We all read Norman Russell’s Fellow Workers With God: Orthodox Thinking on Theosis, and the reviews are being posted this week. Mine is now up.

I had to get a bit tough with them; they tried to force me to use a pseudonym. I pointed out that article #8 of their own manifesto encourages, but expressly does not require, pseudonyms, but suggested “Vassilis Taraxopoios” if they had to use something (a literal translation of the meaning of “Richard Barrett” into Greek — “King Troublemaker”). They were somewhat abashed at having their own manifesto used against them and consequently left it up to me. I had always intended to run it under my own name, and said so. I will be curious to see if I am the only one who does so, and further curious to see if the exercise causes them to revise their manifesto.

Nature is worth a set of equations

Nature is worth a set of equations; (Nov. 17, 2009)

 

I have been reading speeches and comments of Albert Einstein, the greatest theoretical physicist in the 20th century. Einstein is persuaded that mathematics, exclusively, can describe and represent nature’s phenomena; that all nature’s complexities can be comprehend and imagined as the simplest system in concepts and principles. The fundamental creative principle resides in mathematics and formulas have to be the simplest and most beautifully general. Mathematical concepts can be suggested by experience, the unique criteria of utilization of a mathematical construct.

I got into thinking. I read this dictum when I was graduating in physics and I have been appreciating this recurring philosophy ever since. The basic goal in theoretical physics for over a century was to discovering the all encompassing field of energy that can unite the varieties of fields that experiments have been popping out to describing particular phenomena in nature such as electrical and magnetic fields as well as all these “weak” and “stronger” fields of energy emanating from atoms, protons, and all the varieties of smaller elements.

I got into thinking. Up until the first quarter of the 20th century most experiments in natural sciences were done by varying one factor at a time; experiments never used more than one independent variable and more than one dependent variable (objective measuring variable or the data).  Even today, most engineers perform these kinds of totally inefficient and worthless experiments: no interactions among variables can be analyzed, the most important and fundamental intelligences in all kinds of sciences. These engineers have simply not been exposed to experimental designs in their required curriculum! 

Although the theory of probability was very advanced the field of practical statistical analysis of data was not yet developed; it was real pain and very time consuming doing all the computations by hand for slightly complex experimental designs. Sophisticated and specialized statistical packages constructs for different fields of research evolved after the mass number crunchers of computers were invented. 

            Consequently, early theoretical scientists refrained from complicating their constructs simply because they had to solve their exercises and compute them by hand in order to verify their contentious theories.  Thus, theoretical scientists knew that the experimental scientists could not practically deal with complex mathematical constructs and would refrain from undertaking complex experiments in order to confirm or refute any complex construct. The trend, paradigm, or philosophy for the theoretical scientists was to promoting the concept that theories should be the simplest with the least numbers of axioms (fundamental principles); they did their best to imagining one general causative factor that affected the behavior of natural phenomena or would be applicable to most natural phenomena. When Einstein mentioned that equations should be beautiful in their simplicity he had not in mind graphic design; he meant they should be simple for computations.

            This is no longer the case. Nature is complex; no matter how you control and restrict the scope of an  experiment in order to reducing the numbers of manipulated variables to a minimum there are always more than one causative factor that are interrelated and interacting to producing effects.

            Man is far more complex than nature to studying his behavior. Psychologists and sociologists have been using complex experimental designs for decades in order to study man’s behavior and his hundreds of physical and mental characteristics and variability. All kinds of mathematical constructs were developed to aid “human scientists” perform experiments commensurate in complexity with the subject matter. The dependent variables had no longer to be objectively measurable and many subjective criteria were adopted. Certainly, “human scientists” did not have to know the mathematical constructs that the statistical packages were using, just the premises that justified their appropriate use for their particular field. Anyway, these mathematical models were pretty straightforward and no sophisticated mathematical concepts were used: the human scientists should be able to understand the construct if they desired to go deeper into the program without continuing higher mathematical education.

            Nature is complex. Theoretical natural scientists should acknowledge that complexity; studying nature is worth a set of equations! Simple and beautiful general equations are out the window.  There are no excuses for engineers and natural scientists for not expanding their imagination and focusing their intuition on complex constructs that may account for many causative factors and analyzing simultaneously many variables for their interactions.

            There are no excuses that experimental designs are not set up to handle three independent variables (factors) and two dependent variables; the human brain is capable of visualizing the interactions of nine combinations of variables two at a time.  Certainly, scientists can throw in as many variables as they need and the powerful computers will crunch the numbers as easily and as quickly as simple designs; the problem is the interpretation part of the reams and reams of results; worst, how your audience is to comprehend your study. A set of coherent series of relatively complex experiments can be designed to answer most complex phenomena and yet be intelligibly interpreted.

It is time to account for all the possible causatives factors, especially those that are rare in probability of occurrence (at the very end tail of probability graphs) or for their imagined little contributing effects: it is those rare events that have surprised man with catastrophic consequences. If complex man was studied with simple sets of equations THEN nature is also worth sets of equations; be bold and make these equations as complex as you want; the computer would not care as long as you understand them for communication sake.