New gloves / mitts

Following the wild excitement of my New Boots, I bought some new gloves. These are likely to end up as cycling-around-town-in-the-cold gloves (well, mitts) and what I really wanted was a thicker pair of fleece gloves, but so it goes.

From Cotswold, £60. Sadly they had no pure-fleece gloves on offer.

Rather similar to my existing down pair, but I'll try to reserve those for the mountains so they don't get ground down.

Book review: the Magician's Nephew

This is the prequel to Narnia; its origin story. The writing style is very much in line with TLTW&TW. As I noted there, the junction isn't entirely smooth; Narnia is conjured into existence but where Jadis-aka-the-Witch goes at the end is unclear; how she ends up with say a castle, or even why she wants one just for herself ditto, other than of-course-she-has-a-castle. Although naturally the story is all from the viewpoint of those opposed to her.

In his treatment of the uncle, and the cabbie, CSL would appear to be teaching us to have faith in ordinary as opposed to educated people, at least when those people can "be themselves" out of the narrow confines of the modern world. I'm somewhat doubtful this is a good idea; but then I'm one of the educated folk so I would say that.

But did I like it? Did I enjoy reading it? Yes, even though I can remember much of the storyline.

Book review: the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

I've just - perhaps unwisely - re-read my review of the Voyage of the Dawn Treader which reminds me of "pale" thoughts from there. So: it is a charming book, well suited to children, but the style of the telling lacks a little the way that the Hobbit, say, doesn't.

A good bit: Edmund getting trapped by the magic Turkish delight.

In a number of slight ways, that are not too desperately intrusive, the book doesn't quite fit together, or with the prequel, the Magician's Nephew. Most obviously Cair Paravel has no obvious reason for already existing, in this book; or when combined with tMN's, it isn't clear where the kings and queens have gone. Aslan is effectively all-powerful, and so has no real need of the childrens' help; except perhaps for the commented-upon "he is often away" so maybe he is not so much using their help as teaching them how to be kings and queens; an allegory then of free will. Neatly leaving the witch's spell as the problem of evil.

Refs

* The book was written for Lucy, the daughter of Owen Saving the Appearances Barfield.

* The White Witch as Tragic Figure.

* The Silver Chair.

Book review: the Mote in God's Eye

This is wham-bam-thankyou-ma'am classic space-opera style SciFi. Ignoring the unsparkling prose and some minor quibbles, it is one of the classics of the genre and mostly survives this my first re-reading since my youth.

The characters are all stereotypes and the social setting about as advanced as in Asimov's "Foundation" series (though there's a plausible excuse for that: society has collapsed, and rebuilt itself). The spaceships are run like WWII battleships, or possibly more like Napoleonic era ships.

But no-one who cares about that kind of thing should be reading this kind of book in the first place; space-opera SciFi is the place for ideas, not subtle characterisation, and this does have a nice setup and nice aliens.

But having said that, let's play the fun game of what's wrong with the ideas.

The first and usual, but excusable, one is that the motley crowd of characters gets rushed off to the job, instead of people sitting down carefully and working out what to do. Secondly, I think it is odd how little attempt at stealth they make, and how quick they are to engage with the aliens. Thirdly, there's their lack of caution, and the improbable competence / intelligence of the aliens, but I'm descending into trivia now; let me claw my way back into the light.

I think it unlikely that a solar-system wide civilisation would collapse all together at once; the advantage of being un-collapsed when everyone else has reverted to barbarism is too high, people would scheme to be in that position. More likely would be waves or patterns of collapse.

I think the sketched alien civilisation is too "flat": having individual Masters as the top level, and nothing beneath it, would be unlikely to work. Coalitions would be necessary, but then the alien shock at people who both look up and down would make no sense.

Refs

* The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye.

Book review: Children of Earth and Sky

Children of Earth and Sky is a historical fantasy novel by Guy Gavriel Kay, also author of the Stoats of al-Rassan. This one is much in the same mould, except he has switched from Spain to Venice, the Adriatic, and lands East. Like tSoaR places and peoples are semi-disguised (the city of Dubrova is an analogue of Dubrovnik) in a way that might be irritating if I cared, but I don't.

The story is decent and pleasantly told and I think lacks the poison in tSoaR.

On reflection I think it is a bit weird that sea-faring people chose to go to Constantinople on foot, just in order to allow the books story-lines to intersect.

The main... problem, perhaps I might put it, is that despite the author's attempts to be gritty, or provide realistic colour, it all comes out a bit pallid; perhaps because all the nice people get nice endings.

The novel emphasises - for storyline purposes - the way the Ottomans rigidly enforce obedience by drastic punishment: death, torture, mutilation. This has some advantages in enforcing honesty. But it is a very centralised system with disadvantages: if you've fucked up somehow and can only forsee a terrible death if you return, you're no longer motivated to return. This isn't explored.

Old B+W speakers

Many years ago - perhaps dating back to 1991 - we bought some B+W DM570 speakers (S/N), because in those days that was how you listened to music. And over the years we had a variety of Amps, Tuners (even Mfd+J's lovingly-preserved valve-based system) and CDs. 

But time passes, and for about the past decade they've been unused.

Recently, D decided to go Retro, and so we delivered him the speakers. Wired in and powered up they sound perfect; no trace of aging; good. They are pretty good visually too, with only a little scuffing.

Nowadays, I never listen to music of an evening. I have a playlist for "daytime at work" (here) and one for "erging" (here) and that's it. There is a poem I remember from school, or rather a fragment thereof, something like "sound to cover the broken bone, the sunken ship" and I think about that sometimes.

Post-election thoughts, 2024

I see that in 2015 I wrote up my post election thoughts. Now it is 2024, and another election has happened, with a Labour landslide. In 2015 I voted Green, "as I always do". I'm pretty sure I did the same in 2017 and 2019 too. But this time I could not bring myself to; their policies were too obviously stupid; a doomed hand towards the LibDems seemed the best I could offer; I seriously considered abstaining.

Let me expand on that a little; I've intended to write this down properly for a while, and this is an excuse to write it improperly, informally. Increasingly I see govt as a band of incompetents at best. I say "at best" because their policies seem increasing stupid, and only their incompetence sees those policies from being fully and disastrously implemented. The only thing that keeps society getting increasingly well off is science and tech, which continues to progress, and when the govt doesn't fuck it up by over-regulation, manages to deliver improvements to prosperity. The USAnian system of divided govt, by putting barriers in the way of govt actually doing anything, seems more and more sensible; and there seems to be some hope of the Supremes reining in the much-abused Executive Authority somewhat.

I would recommend https://ukfoundations.co/; this shows part of what I mean: in that the analysis isn't party-political; the problem they diagnose is just schlerosis.

Overall, the problem is that all the parties are too interventionist; none represent Classical Liberalism aka Free Market Democracy aka bring back Thatcher all is forgiven. Note: while the pols get the proximate blame, because it is they who are the clowns doing and saying stupid things, the electorate are ultimately responsible: the pols after all are merely responding to Darwinian selection pressure.

Looking back at the disastrously stupid Tory govt of the past few years makes the Tory 2015 election choices seem even more stupid: throwing the referendum bone to UKIP to buy a little more temporary power and preserve the party unity for a little longer.

Refs

* Brexit, again (2018).