Is it just me, or is it hot in here?

People don't like change. But without it, Brian Fagan demonstrates in his conveniently forgotten "The Long Summer: How Climate Change Civilization" that you wouldn't be sitting at a computer reading this right now. In fact you might still well be sitting around a fire chipping stone tools cursing that you have to go out into the snow tomorrow to kill a mammoth. Again. Using science and sociology, Fagan points out in his third best seller that the earth has been getting warmer for the past 5,000 years and it isn't because of all the coal China is burning. In fact, the earth has been variously an iceball and a tropical swamp without any help from us. Quite the opposite. In this convincing and entertaining read, we learn that human development and domination of the earth has only been possible due to the natural changes in climate over our recent evolution. Without the natural warming of the earth we wouldn't have left Africa, collected crops and animals in the Middle East, and then spread out across the globe. For those of you who can't get enough of Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse) this work seals the deal on how fate, and not necessarily our large craniums, has put us on the top of the food chain. This work is pre-global warming hype and should be on the list of anyone who's gone to the trouble of turning off the lights or buying a hybrid. It challenges what the media and scientists are saying and provides a solid position for anyone wanting to make their own informed decision on where we fit in a warming planet, and just how much it may have helped us along.

Stephenson, the father of Cyberpunk

Oh Lord, I have committed the cardinal sin of bloggers. I have left my blog for months without posting squat! Forgive me, for I have been adulterously posting on other blogs (work ones, no less!).

But now, I have returned to thee, O blog of my heart. I present...Snow Crash! This classic sci fi novel was written in 1992, but reads as if it had been written tomorrow. Stephenson has an incredible, Orwellian gift for accurately describing the future of technology. He covers nanotechnology, biotechnology, computer viruses, and the metaverse (he coined the word) with startling plausibility, and somehow manages to roll this all seamelessly into a smart, sexy cyberpunk story that rolls along at breakneck speed. His social commentary is somehow as spot on as his technological augury; you'll cry rather than laugh when you read about an america patchworked with corporate-franchise city states, and the hilariously commercialized jails.

But all this is merely the bones of a great story. I was totally sold already, but became a Stephenson junkie when he somehow managed to roll in a layer of Sumerian history and linguistics. The story hinges on Chomsky's idea of deep grammar, and goes one step further to imply what might happen when that deep grammer were accessed after language imprinting had occurred.

I think that this book is what sparked my deep interest in linguistics (I first read it several years ago) and Stephenson is obviously drawing on ideas about bicameral brain theory and deep grammar, with some biblical and protohistoric language theory thrown in. His scope, and his mastery of divergent disciplines, is amazing.

In short, Stephenson writes as if he knew the inside of my head. Every word in this book was fascinating, and the story never flagged. He is a true futurist, and I think that instead of Gibson, we should be touting Stephenson as the father of cyberpunk (he's much more readable). Audrey, you have to read this book. I will come and make you sorry if you don't.

Shakespeare made shit up

Well, duh. But really, he made up an astounding number of words and phrases! He lived in a time where language was flexing to accomodate the influences of merging dialects, and the populace had no expectation of a set syntax or vocabulary. Simply, the average audience member was prepared for verbal innovation due to the incredible linguistic commingling underway in 17thC london.

But Chaucer...now Chaucer had it good. He could choose between clawed and clew, ached and oke, climbed and clomb, and he variously used hi, hem and her to denote they, them and their. The English of the time had not yet settled into even a simple set of plurals, and gender was still applied slipshod across the land according to local dialect. Chaucer, a relatively cosmopolitan man, simply chose his verbiage according to scanning expediency. Lucky sod.

But all this is leading to my minor obsession; the greater and lesser vowel shifts that swept across the english language and changed vowel pronunciation forever. For example, the Domesday book is pronounced doomsday not because of some apocolyptic association with the census, but because "Dome" (for domestic census) was actually pronounced "doom" back in the day. Why did we lower the vowel sound? Nobody knows, and it happened to all vowels across the board. I'm fascinated by this, and if I have one complaint about Bill Bryson's fantastic book, "Mother Tongue", it's just that it can't unravel this particular knot for me. i guess i'll keep reading.

Twilight

Twilight is the best book I have read in years. I absolutely loved loved loved it, and even better, it has a sequel that's just as good. Stephenie Meyer has written a gripping vampire romance that catches 18 year old Bella on the cusp of adulthood. Bella moves from sunny Phoenix, where she lived with her mom, to the perpetually rainy town of Forks, WA. On the surface, it's just another teen vampire romance; girl goes to new school, meets uncannily pale boy and strange family, falls in love, gets into mortal peril, and is rescued by vampire using his supernatural powers. But oh, it's so much more than that.

Something about the writing in this book just grabbed me and sucked me in emotionally. It helps that Bella is cool, but not too cool; her actions and reactions are absolutely believable, and her incredulity when faced with Edward's nature is perfectly balanced by her I-dont-care-I-love-you teen attitude. This is a book that never even strays into discussing the physical side of teen love, but nevertheless gives you goosebumps as you read about Edward and Bella's first (and supremely dangerous) touch and kiss. The dismal, overcast atmosphere of Forks and environs comes through loud and clear, and it picks up the bittersweet, haunting tone of the writing.

The entire 500 plus pages keeps you trembling on the precipice of first love; I really felt like it was me falling in love for the first time, and that's such an amazing feeling. Somewhere just past the midpoint, Twilight switches its focus from romance to thriller/adventure, and this is where the time spent on developing the characters really pays off. The hunt at the end is certainly well written and executed, but it's impact is made far greater because of the supremely involving (and semi-tragic) love story.

Definitely, absolutely read this book. I could not put it down (even when Rob begged, badgered, and eventually got mad) and when I had binge read its sequel, New Moon, I went out and bought both books and started reading them again. Go NOW and reserve it at the library.

Hangin' with Hilary Du(h)ff (actually a rant)

C'mon little girls, Hilary Duff is here (courtesy of Scholastic Books) to teach you all about being a ho! Although the book talks the talk about how smart/hardworking/morally upstanding Hilary is, it wrecks the whole thing by splashing pix of a scantily clad Hilary on almost every page. And O MY GOD this book is PINK!! There's a whole lot o' pinkness going on here girls, and if you want to be just like Hilary (which is the subtext of this whole book) then you should get your mom to drive you to the mall right now so that you can buy some pink belly tops and chaps (oops, that was Christina Aguilera).

Now, I wouldn't be so adamantly opposed to this book if it were published and marketed as the drivel that it is. However, the publisher is Scholastic. Hmmm...Scholastic...makes you think of education, right? Learning, freedom to make choices and be who you want, freedom from stereotypes of hot pink big breasted prepubescent skankiness...hmm. Not quite what we have here, folks. Score one for false advertising.

And worst, the way most little girls will access this book is through School Book Fairs. that's right, some dipshit elementary school librarian is going to sell out her school to Scholastic so that she can get a few extra bucks for *real* books for her library. Let's analyse this transaction. Teacher invites the devil (Scholastic) into school...parents give kids money because after all, the books are from *scholastic*, and must promote learning...little girls buy ho-in-training manuals so that they can become an army of skanks...teacher gets maybe $100 dollars from fair, which will purchase maybe 10 books, max...kids refuse to read good literature because they are happy with the trash taht they bought. Who benefits here? That's right! The Devil! The moral? I hate biographies. If I have to suffer, so do you.

note: picture from amazon is not quite as per our cover. Our cover has more boob.

I'm a Baaaaad librarian

So today i had a Celebrate Chinese New Year program that was extra celebratory. We had a fairly civilized storytime, but then (o stupid me) I ended with a craft involving glitter. Several kinds of glitter, in almost unlimited quantities. The kids painted a chinese character (love, prosperity, etc) onto stiff paper with watery glue, then shook glitter over the picture on top of a pan to make a glitter character.

This all went very well until we had a shortage of pans. What, no pan? No problem! This here carpet will do just dandy, thanks. So that's why this afternoon the Head of Children's Services (that's me) was on my hands and knees with a dustbuster that I had to bring from home, vacuuming up glitter because it was being tracked all over the city complex. Yep, that's why I get paid the big bucks. But secretly, it was worth it to see the look on the city clerks' faces when they came in for their meeting immediately after our program, and had to dodge mountains of leftover glitter and gluey children. HA!

The Omnivore's Dilemma

The title of this book was so good, I just used it as my caption. The Omnivore's Dilemma is by Michael Pollan, a Berkeley prof who tends to write books about the intersections of social structrues and biology. In this book, he takes a look at how food is produced for the fast food market, the organic agribusiness industry, and the sustainable eating community. His final chapter follows his quest to hunt and forage for his very own meal.

An interesting read, Pollan includes the usual horror stories about the disgusting treatment of animals in feedlots and industrial chicken houses, and he chronicles the terrible environmental (and epidemiological) effects that these processes are having on our world. He also explores the lesser known ubiquity of corn in our processed and mass market food, and explains some of the economic and digestive pitfalls of relying so heavily on one food source for calories.

The most interesting part of this book is Pollan's exploration of the organic industry. And yes, it is an industry. Granted it started with some fucking dirty California hippies selling mustard greens and spring mix by the side of the road; but success will make a whore of anyone, and those same hippies are now presiding over businesses that have grown large enough to demand ethical compromises such as forcing land, long-distance food distribution chains, etc. It turns out that organic food, when trucked from florida to Vancouver, is really not so environmentally friendly after all. Also, the regulations that that the US (and Canadian) government imposes on the food industry are meant to encourage large companies and big business, where the bottom line is key. Needless to say, this does not encourage farmers to live by the spirit, rather than the letter, of organic regs. Organic, yes. Sustainable, no.

I was also very interested in the discussion about sustainable food chains. Buy locally, without shipping food vast distances. Stay away from monoculture crops. The featured farm (in Virginia, dammit) rotated crops and animals across fields to allow animals to live as natural a life as possible, while making the most of their fertilizing, pesticidal, and aerating capacities. When necessary, a small input of chemical fertilizer or nutrients was added, but only in order to reduce the overall external input into a mostly closed system. It sounded like a beautifully balanced system; definitely worth a read.

It actually impressed me so much that I have signed our house up for organics delivery from a local company that buys locally when possible. I may also plant things this summer that will be nice to eat rather than nice to look at. After reading this book, I could care less about organic content; it's the sustainability of supporting a local food chain that i'm after. I strongly believe that one day we will not be able to truck food thousands of miles; in the meantime, we would be smart to support and protect local farming practices. One day we'll need them.