Mile Zero

Oct 30, 2005

West-to-east jetlag is one of my favorite travel bonuses, because I am not a morning person. Now after traveling from, say, France back to Virginia, all of a sudden I'm waking up at five a.m. and feeling great. Everyone comments on how refreshed I am! How productive! Of course, since I don't sleep much, this takes only about a day to wear off. But that one day is a glorious, golden moment for all mankind, particularly those portions at -5GMT.

It's surprising that I still managed to be so cheerful, since my flight was delayed and luggage didn't arrive until 1:30 in the morning. The luggage was shipped to my apartment, which was convenient (although disorienting), but I still spent more time than usual hanging around JFK airport. I occupied myself trying to figure out the reasoning behind the generous pornography section of the magazine racks. In Paris I could attribute the high proportion of skin mags at the airport to the general sexual atmosphere of France, but in the more prim and prudish USA it took me by surprise. It seems like a fundamentally stupid place to buy porn (as if there's an intelligent, insightful place), much less have a whole section devoted to it. Do people actually buy explicit material just before climbing onto a cramped plane where they'll be in close company with all ages, genders, and creeds?

Well, maybe they do. Like the redneck standing in the Men's Health section of the newstand, surreptitiously grabbing Barely Legal when he thinks no-one's looking and folding it inside a copy of Outside Magazine. I'm willing to give him the benefit of a doubt, but I can't imagine he's reading that for the articles.

Enough about domestic disparities, man! what about France itself? Well, it's a very nice country--beautiful and varied and not too big--but probably not my kind of place. The food is unbelievable, and the desserts are mind-boggling. I had an ice cream cone in Paris that I may never forget, and a pseudo-Mexican caramel dessert in Lyon that should be illegal. The traditional French food was excellent, as were some of its dodgier outliers--like steak frites. Those are long hamburger sandwiches available from street vendors with french fries and ketchup on top. It's like a whole combo meal in an easily portable package.

France is also a country on a schedule that's alien to Americans. Shops close early, or late, seemingly at random, and Mondays are for some reason oddly quiet. There is probably an excellent cultural reason for this, but I'll admit my ignorance right up front. It gave me trouble.

There is probably also an excellent cultural reason for the massive proliferation of real estate and analysis laboratories, and I'd love for someone to explain it to me, especially the latter. Every few blocks in the larger cities, there's an office marked "Medical Analysis Laboratory," which lends the country a clinical flavor not unlike an episode of CSI. One is forced to wonder if the French are, in fact, a nation of criminal pathologists, solving crimes left and right when they're not playing the real estate market for massive profit. Sorry: when you don't really know anything about a country, you tend to make up these little stories to keep yourself amused. I'm not really so much of a gringo.

Anyway, the major spoils of the trip are: a number of photographs, the highlights of which may be posted; some sketches, which may also be displayed if I can find a handy scanner; and a pair of the Big Ben DS headsets, already under dissection for use with Electroplankton. A good time was had by all, and it's great to be back. Thanks, France!

04:43 x Thomas x /culture/europe/france x link x 1 comment

Oct 28, 2005

The Night Flier

One of my better posters, I think. Especially since it's put together in Powerpoint.

The show begins at 7pm tonight. Stacy's is at 709 W. Broad St., Falls Church, VA.

15:24 x Thomas x /music/performance/gigs x link x 1 comment

Oct 21, 2005

First Rule of Trustworthiness for Obscure Organizations

"Every organization has crazy people working for it. A legitimate, trustworthy organization will not put the crazy people out front, in a position to deal with the public."

This message brought to you by the Epoch Times and Falun Dafa "Party to End the Party" event this Sunday. I'm trying to figure out how to write it up now, hopefully it can be sold to someone or provide an interesting read here, but needless to say I'm deeply ambivalent about the whole thing. A lot of it had that LaRouche/anti-semite vibe that sends chills up my spine.

11:41 x Thomas x /journalism/investigation x link x 1 comment

Oct 20, 2005

Guns, Gangs, and Greed: Gaming's Hip-hop Diversity Gap

I've already gotten one letter from a reader over at The Escapist, so I guess it makes sense to open a discussion thread after all. Please feel free to use this space for comments. I'll try to check in, but since I'm in France the chances of any real meaningful discussion are, after all, pretty small. Keep it clean though, kids.

If you're visiting from The Escapist, you might want to take the time to look through the Gaming category, where (among other items) you'll find my belated series on integrating Electroplankton into a live music context, as well as thoughts for Corvus's Round Table and some other random reviews and perspectives. I happen to think my writing outside of the the video game context is also pretty keen, but it can cover a pretty broad range sometimes.

France is great. The food's wonderful, the people are perfectly willing to work around my bastardization of their language, and I finally found a charger for my PocketPC (HP loves their proprietary connectors) so I'll be able to do some serious writing. Maybe I'll post some travel notes after all.

13:27 x Thomas x /gaming/society/class_and_race x link x 1 comment

Oct 12, 2005

Book Review: The End of Faith, by Sam Harris

If I didn't know any better, I'd say The End of Faith was a bad joke. This is the bestselling advocacy for atheism and screed against the evils of religion? The world's freethinkers deserve better than Harris. His basic thesis is that we can no longer accept fanaticism--and Harris defines all religion as fanaticism or enabling to fanaticism--because of the destructive potential technology has given us. That's all well and good. I think we can all agree that we're not terribly keen on nuclear annhilation or biological warfare, and there's an argument to be made about the conflict between science and those who would scorn it while they harness its destructive potential. Harris, however, is not the person to make that argument.

First of all, The End of Faith is riddled with logical errors and inconsistencies. For example, the author seems to think that it's very important to open with a commentary on beliefs, and how they define a world around us that is subjective. "No human being has ever experienced an objective world, or even a world at all" he writes, and implicitly endorses the "brain in a jar" thinking that every basic philosophy freshman briefly entertains. He also includes the dubious notation that there "seems to be a body of data attesting to the reality of psychic phenomena," even though in later chapters he relies heavily on the progress of science, objectivity, and Enlightenment thought. It's just very strange, and it makes his argument seem nonsensical at best. Similar logical faults, the kind that should have been caught by even the clumsiest editor (or indeed, the aforementioned freshman in philosophy), are entirely too common.

Second, Harris seems to take leave of his senses entirely halfway through The End of Faith and launches into a rabid, neoconservative anti-Islam crusade. Perhaps understandably, he seems to have taken September 11th as an example of religious extremism gone horribly awry. However, the hyperbole here comes off as hysterical, in a chapter titled "The Problem with Islam." "We are at war with Islam," he states, shortly after castigating the War on Terror as being a meaningless conflict against a large idea (another one of those pesky logical inconsistencies). He spends several pages pulling out violent and deadly quotes from the Koran, which is tedious and mean-spirited. It's also not a terribly convincing argument. Anyone can cherrypick scripture to suit their needs. Only because Harris explicitly defines religious moderates as enablers of fundamentalism can he even make the argument.

Look, I'm no fan of militant Islam--or militant anything, really (although in a bizarre detour, Harris also tries to prove the supreme immorality of pacifism). And religious moderates who make excuses for fundamentalists also bother me. But the insistence that they must all be converted to atheism or militarily destroyed just doesn't sit well with me as a rational option. For example, note Harris's strange justification of terror: having redefined all ethics as the awareness of the pain of others, he imagines a "torture pill" that would inflict pain while simultaneously blocking the external reaction of the subject. Even as a thought exercise and a loophole, it doesn't make any sense. Obviously, wouldn't the person applying the pill have to be conscious that it would cause discomfort? Unless it kills the subject (thus rendering it useless), wouldn't their subsequent confession break the ethical barrier? Harris doesn't even touch on the accuracy of the information from this torture. And he's the rational one?

Add in the elevation of Eastern mysticism, and what you have is a severely schizophrenic work. Harris wholeheartedly endorses Eastern philosophies as gentler, less violent, and more self-aware than those bad ol' Western religions. Nowhere in Taoism or Buddhism, he states, could we find anything as horrific as the Koran or the Bible. Allow me to say this as someone who has studied Chinese history, religion, and literature: balderdash. The argument is just pure orientalism, on par with The Last Samurai and businessmen praising The Art of War. Just as with his treatment of the Koran, Harris is cherry-picking in order to make a point. I personally doubt that those who died to build the Great Wall, who were killed in Qin Shi Huang's wars of conquest, who had their feet bound to fit a feminine ideal, or who joined in the codes of Kamikaze and Bushido, would agree with Harris's idolatry of the East.

Perhaps he has answers for these criticisms. But since the book is only 200-odd pages of actual text, followed by another couple hundred pages of endnotes, I can't honestly be bothered to read through his research material after such a nonsensical slog. It feels like padding for a weak argument. It feels juvenile.

The picture is simply more complex than The End of Faith is willing to admit. It pains me to see such a disjointed text representing atheism, and it pains me even more because the subject matter showed such promise. I'm always interested in advancing rationalism and fighting religious extremism--but I don't want Sam Harris on my side. If he's looking for fanatics, all he needs to do is glance into the closest reflective surface.

16:39 x Thomas x /culture/religion/books x link x 1 comment