Virginia Blog Carnival

I submitted last Sunday's post to the Virginia Blog Carnival. Welcome to the Virginian, esteemed visitors. (I notice that this week's host, River City Rapids, uses the same Blogger Template that I use). Here I generally talk about Virginia history and internet arts and culture; looking back it seems like my main interests (aside from Virginiana) are the wikipedia and google print. Oh yeah, Virginia's easy-to-scam antique license plates also earned a couple of posts.

The Culture of Narcissism

This fairly lengthy article is look back at a 1979 book by Christopher Lasch called The Culture of Narcissism. Lasch was a conservative critic of what he saw as over-protective, over-medicating, over-indulgent, over-therapeutic parents. Some of the themes addressed in the book and the article are current hot-button issues-- day care vs. stay at home moms; the decline of the family unit; ritalin/hyperactivity vs. discipline. A lot of the trends Lasch saw in 1979 have become mainstream, and many (e.g. TV and grade inflation and parent-child relations) have become worse.

The article's author, one Christine Rosen, adds a few non-Laschian ideas to the mix; my favorite was the idea that today's self-contained, theatre and TV-lined mega-mansions insulate families from communities and discourage real-world involvement. This is a very interesting read, even if you don't agree with everything the writer and reviewer have to say. You don't have to be a conservative or liberal or a blogger or a luddite to worry about these things.

At its heart, the article reminded me of a few paragraphs of one of my all-time favorite essays, Neil Stephenson's 1999 "In the Beginning Was the Command Line," which is nominally about computer operating systems but it actually about metaphors. Because it is tough to link to the exact part I'm thinking of, I will quote it here:

"Anyone who grows up watching TV, never sees any religion or philosophy, is raised in an atmosphere of moral relativism, learns about civics from watching bimbo eruptions on network TV news, and attends a university where postmodernists vie to outdo each other in demolishing traditional notions of truth and quality, is going to come out into the world as one pretty feckless* human being. And--again--perhaps the goal of all this is to make us feckless so we won't nuke each other.

On the other hand, if you are raised within some specific culture, you end up with a basic set of tools that you can use to think about and understand the world. You might use those tools to reject the culture you were raised in, but at least you've got some tools.

In this country, the people who run things--who populate major law firms and corporate boards--understand all of this at some level. They pay lip service to multiculturalism and diversity and non-judgmentalness, but they don't raise their own children that way. I have highly educated, technically sophisticated friends who have moved to small towns in Iowa to live and raise their children, and there are Hasidic Jewish enclaves in New York where large numbers of kids are being brought up according to traditional beliefs. Any suburban community might be thought of as a place where people who hold certain (mostly implicit) beliefs go to live among others who think the same way.

And not only do these people feel some responsibility to their own children, but to the country as a whole. Some of the upper class are vile and cynical, of course, but many spend at least part of their time fretting about what direction the country is going in, and what responsibilities they have."

Here is a link to the entire Stephenson essay; here is a link to the subpart that contains the quote above. You can even buy the essay from amazon, although it is freely available on the web.

** Oxford American Dictionary: "unthinking and irresponsible"

The Valley of the Shadow

The Valley of the Shadow is an extremely detailed look at Franklin County, Pennsylvania, and Augusta County Virginia, from 1859 through 1870. The site was created by UVa.'s Virginia Center for Digital History. Here is a direct link to the users guide.

The level of detail is incredible. Here's how Augusta County voted in the 1860 presidential election. You can search the census and tax records. There are incredibly detailed statistics on slavery, free blacks, and links between electoral statistics and slaveholding. Here, for example, is a list of Augusta County industries using enslaved labor. The war years are well documented, as you would expect. The postwar years are another revelation; you can read about the Freedman's Bureau office in Staunton, and you can actually search their records. (Not all of the links were working this morning; I tried to get a telegram from this page and the link failed.)

You could learn more in twenty minutes on that site than you could reading a wheelbarrow load of books.

Young Virginians and History

Here's a good article about sub-par performance by Virginia children on History Standards of Learning tests. (Reference the previous post for my personal shortcomings). I came across this story on the excellent Bacon's Rebellion blog.

South Boston

I was in South Boston yesterday and noticed this highway marker on 501 just north of 58. I certainly didn't know that Cornwallis ever came that far west, but my Revolutionary War knowledge is pretty thin. Oddly enough, that marker wasn't the only Revolutionary War related marker in South Boston-- this one commemorates a "folly" (presumably an odd house) of one of Washington's Valley Forge quartermasters who later became a deputy clerk of Halifax County. Finally, very close to the Green's Folly marker is this one, commemmorating the South Boston resident who moved to Springfield Illinois and performed Lincoln's wedding to Mary Todd. Virginia: mother, quartermaster and marrier of Presidents.

Two New Shakespeare Books

Two new Shakespeare books are reviewed in yesterday's New York Times Book Review. John Simon wrote the review, which, like many good reviews, obviates the need to read the books. I read Will in the World last year; it was an excellent treatment of Shakespeare and his times and it just came out in paperback.

Virginia Politics

Until the last post on Peter Vieth's letter to the editor, I have stayed away from the Governor's race on this blog and I will probably continue to do so. There are plenty of perfectly good Virginia political blogs and I don't really want to add to the fray. (If you want my "Virginia politics" links, post in the forum and I'll send them to you.) Also, ever since I have been alive (and I've lived in Virginia since I was a year old), I have never observed a true sense of or an appreciation for this Commonwealth's history or traditions in any of Virginia's political leaders of any persuasion. Sure, there is some some citation of Senator Byrd's "pay as you go;" and there are occasionally empty, parrot-like name-checks-with -quotes of Jefferson, Washington, Madison and Patrick Henry, but overall I have never gotten the sense that any of Virginia's leaders of the last 40 years have really been interested in or instructed by the history of the Commonwealth. I guess you have to give the voters what they want, but it seems to me like Virginia's politicians are avoiding a hell of a good birthright.

A Good Letter to the Editor

Friend of the Virginian and this blog's first and only contributor (here's the post) Peter Vieth wrote a high-quality letter to the editor in today's Roanoke Times. Thanks to the Times' 1997-era website, you to scroll down-- its the third letter, entitled "Kilgore Casts Aspersions on Entire Defense Bar." The letter is concise and well written and correct in my view. I have never defended a non-vehiclar "criminal," and I haven't ever done a significant amount of criminal defense; so I'm not a criminal defense lawyer-- but I still think Peter is right on the money.

Google Sued for Google Print

Five "major publishers" have now (stupidly in my opinion) filed a class action suit for copyright infringement against Google Print in Manhattan. This is the second suit against Google Print; the Author's Guild sued last month. I think Google Print could be one of the best things ever to happen to book publishers; the books on it, scanned from college libraries, are searchable, but not easily readable. I think Google Print would actually sell books. Here is a reprint of an op-ed piece by Google's CEO that makes this argument-- it was in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, and seems to have been a preemptive PR strike against the oncoming suit.

Wikipedia Founder Admits Serious Quality Problems

This is a good piece from the UK tech site The Register in which Jimmy Wales, the founder of the Wikipedia, admits that there is plenty of garbage in the user-made encyclopedia. Apparently (and, I guess, predictably) the entries about controversial figures (e.g. Bill Gates, Jane Fonda) have degenerated into unreadable political slugfests. The article, unfortunately, does not suggest any solutions. For solutions (and other good ideas, and some garbage too) check this Slashdot thread.

I took at look at the Bill Gates article (linked above) after finishing this post-- it seems fairly concise and reasonable as of this writing (although it did not choose flattering pictures). It looks like wikipedia is taking action; the entry has a special note that says "This topic is considered a necessary subject on Wikipedia, and there is a high-priority on its being cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality." The Jane Fonda entry has the same warning and seems to be a reasonable account.

Time Magazine Top 100 Novels Since 1923

Here's the link. "Best of" lists are always interesting. I can't really figure out why the two Time book critics started with 1923 (its the year after Ulysses came out), but this seems like a creditable list. Interestingly (for book critics) these guys are not "literature snobs"-- sci-fi (Neuromancer and Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash) and even comics (Watchmen) are represented. Personally, I've read 47 of the books and I think their judgment is pretty good. Every book has a link to its original Time magazine review-- EDIT-- unfortunately you need to be a Time subscriber to read the entire reviews-- too bad.

Interruption Science

This is a piece from the Sunday NYT magazine on "life hacking," which is a geek term for personal efficiency improvement. A more eloqent definition from Cory Doctorow: "[L]ife-hackers, academic and amateur, [..]approach the ever-increasing craziness of high-tech life and its many interruptions as an engineering problem to be solved." Computers and the internet are great things, but they have made life more fragmented and interrupted. Life hackers apply efficency analysis to just about anything in life; from watching TV to being productive in college.

Here is a recent Baltimore Sun article with links to the leading life-hacking sites.

The Culture of Celebrity

This is a very good piece by Edward Epstein on American's "Celebrity Culture," subtitled "Let us Now Praise Famous Airheads." After addressing this topic the article meanders into what it means to be a "public intellectual" and what it takes to be a "famous writer," comparing today's fame requirements unfavorably with those of the past. The article was adapted from a lecture given at a seminar on "Celebrity Culture" held at the University of Virginia Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture in April of this year.

August 9 1947 New Yorker p. 63

How great is this? (You can click on the picture for a larger view).

Will Google Kill News Media?

A number of the tech-related posts on this blog have discussed intellectual property rights. Can Google scan the entire Harvard Library? Should the writers of the books in the Harvard Library sue Google to stop them? How about the New Yorker contributors; should they sue over the new DVD edition?

Here is an article about a short speculative fiction film, set in 2011, in which Google (combined by then with Amazon to form Googlezon) puts the New York Times out of business. By then, says the film, Googlzon's "fact-stripping robots" will rearrange news stories gathered by its search bots according to its users' tastes." In a last grasp at relevance, the NYT sues Googlezon for copyright violation-- and loses.

Seems possible to me. If you have 8 minutes, watch the film as well. It is made in flash and is a nice piece of minimalist, effective filmmaking.

Complete New Yorker II

I know this is probably more interesting to me than it is to you, but this article from the Boston Globe raises an interesting question-- did the long dead person who sold the New Yorker an article, story or cartoon in the 1920s or 30 also sell the New Yorker's future owner the right to reprint the work again, in the future? Apparently the law on this issue is not settled, and National Geographic has withdrawn its "complete" edition because of these "rights" issues. I'm just glad that I got my copy in hand before the legal hammer comes down.

Yellow Dog by Martin Amis

I just finished Martin Amis' Yellow Dog, a satiric novel about the "obscenification of everyday life" in the twenty-first century. The first two thirds of it are brilliant. One of the protagonists is a skinhead journalist with a handcuff nosering who makes up stories (and even hires washed-up pro athletes to act them out) for a pornographic tabloid with an all-unemployed male demographic. Another protagonist is the novelist son of a notorious gangster who is savagely beaten in a bar. A third protagonist is the King of England, whose daughter, Princess Victoria, is videotaped in her bathroom. Needless to say, the tabloid journalist takes special notice of the videotape when it is released. Towards the end, the book takes an unexpected turn into the pornography industry; and the entire novel is interlaced with an account of a plane crash.

Structually, the novel is a wreck. Nonetheless the book is worth reading, because even though it is a satire, most of it has the potential to come true. Tabloids currently pay for stories and are heavily fictionalized. British tabloids already have nude photos. Men, particularly young ones, are encouraged to act like animals, to read and watch porn, and to dress like children. It won't take much of a leap to get down to the level described in the book. In a parallel development, the beaten novelist sustains a head injury that makes him more like the goons who beat him and the readers of the tabloids-- a violent, retrograde animalistic figure; Amis says "His condition felt like the twenty-first century: it was something you wanted to wake up from."

There is probably a better novel to be made of these ideas, but this one is pretty good because its ideas are so vivid and so well imagined. Yellow Dog unravels in the last third and ventures into overkill when the novelist takes a trip to a pornography principate in California; and it treads heavily on some pretty seriously offensive taboos (incest in particular); but it is ultimately worth a read if you want to think about where Western culture is headed.

Rolling Stones in Charlottesville

Show start: 8:48pm

1. Start Me Up
2. It's Only Rock'n Roll
3. Shattered
4. Tumbling Dice
5. Rough Justice
6. Ruby Tuesday
7. Sweet Virginia !!!! with additional sing-along after the song had ended
8. All Down the Line !!
9. Night Time is the Right Time
--- band intros, thru Ronnie.
Time: 9:43pm
"We have to take a 10 minute break, according to the authorities". Band leaves the Stadium, they bring in bomb sniffing dogs, clear out the stage people entirely, and vacate everyone in the first third of the field and the seats at the ends of Mick's catwalks.
Time: 10:38pm
10. Miss You (to second stage)
11. Oh No, Not You Again
12. Get Off My Cloud
13. Honky Tonk Women (from second stage)
14. Sympathy
15. Paint It Black
16. Midnight Rambler!
17. Brown Sugar
18. Jumping Jack Flash
19. You Can't Always Get What You Want (encore)
20. Satisfaction (encore)

Show end: 11:48pm

Thanks to this site for the set list.

With respect to the bomb scare, I was going to write some kind of meditation on the Age of Uncertainty and Terror; etc., but now I think it was probably just some drunk jerks prank-calling 911. I do admire the band for coming back out and playing for another hour and a half; some of which was in the rain and some was out in the crowd (where the bomb dogs had not been). The Stones are consummate professionals-- the show was fantastic-- it could not have been any better. No expense was spared; from five-story high stage to video screens to lights to pyrotechnics.

Given the splintering and specialization of pop culture, there will never be another band that is this universally popular. They deserve every bit of their popularity.

The Green Valley Book Fair

I'm a big fan of used book stores. The Green Valley Book Fair is an enormous, temporary book sale held near Harrisonburg. This fall it will be open Oct 8-23. The Roanoke Times had a Sunday feature on the fair this week, which also threw in some Harrisonburg travel tips. (If the Roanoke Times search engine were not so poor I would link to it.) It looks like a great stop on the way to Charlotteviile.

The Complete New Yorker

One big reason for the scarcity of posts here recently is the Complete New Yorker, an 8 DVD (for use with a computer, not a DVD player) set containing every issue of the New Yorker from its inception in 1926 to February of this year. When I say "every issue," I mean every page of every issue, including ads, cartoons, even the back covers (the picture is the back cover of the December 4, 1926 issue). It retails for $100 but you can get it from Amazon for $61.00. I think the New Yorker is the best magazine in the world; every issue has something (usually several things) worth reading. I can't count the number of times I have picked up an old issue and found something I had missed when the issue was new. One side effect of this was an inability to throw old issues away. Once the DVD set came in, I was able to recycle the old issues tucked all over my house.

The set comes with a pretty nice software interface, reminiscent of itunes, that allows you to search every issue (even the ones not on the DVD currently in the computer drive). Here is a link to an excellent demo of the interface. Every article has a virtual index card with a bunch of keywords you can search. You can can also browse, by clicking on covers, or searching by author, date or title. The software is not perfect, but it is pretty good-- the amazon reviews do a good job of pointing out the shortcomings. (These "shortcomings" are nothing compared to the shortcomings of looking at microfilm, by the way.)

Dollar for dollar, I'd have to say that the Complete New Yorker is one of the best purchases I have ever made.

Brief op-ed on Racism at U.Va.

This is a pretty good piece on U.Va's reaction to some racist incidents. (At the recent Duke football game, I was offered a black ribbon to wear.) I know there are admissions consequences to ugliness like this, but overall I think the University is overreacting to idiots. Hopefully non-student idiots.