Reading

I've been under the weather with a mostly annoying bug since Thursday, in which time I've polished off Muhammed Yunus' "Banker to the Poor", the first third of John Norwich's "History of Byzantium" and over 1,000 pages of its second installment.

A weird juxtaposition, that: Microloans in Bangladesh (and elsewhere) vs. the undulations of Imperial fortunes in the Mediterranean. But for the gulf in time and culture, both certainly put the lie to the political coprolite known as supply-side economics. The most fatal mistake the Byzantine Empire made was to switch from freeholders to mercenaries in its armies (thereby dooming the small freeholders to the depredations of the aristocracy). Similarly, the economies of scale (with their feudal bureaucracies) create the economic gated communities that deprive hundreds of millions (if not billions) of people of their basic needs.

The consequences of Byzantium's economic apartheid are of course well-documented. The consequences of our own will, sooner or later, be at our doorstep. If not in outright revolution, then in the form of a super-virus incubated in the squalor which our addiction to cheap gew-gaws has created.

But reading of the rise and fall of ancient empires brings to mind something my boss said several weeks ago after returning from one of those "executive retreat" junkets. Most of my firm's branches are in the U.S., but that fact apparently didn't dampen the opinion--the consensus, to hear by boss talk--that America has lost its place as the "thought leader" of the world.

In that light, it's hard not to consider this morning's headline-skim a harbinger, rather than anecdotal. For instance, there's Ireland--backed by the EU--trying to prevent further devastation from ghost nets. Then there's the--again--European efforts to offset deforestation. And to what pressing issues pray tell, are our far-thinking leaders turning their attention? Legalizing concealed carry in national parks. I soooo wish that I could say that I'm making that up.

Maybe it's just that I've spent two days immersed in the tragi-comedy that is history. But if that's any sampling of our relative priorities, the American "empire" is doomed--with neither the Huns or Seljuks to blame.

Prom Queens and Presidents

I'm currently indulging in John Julius Norwich's "The Middle Sea", which is a history of the Mediterranean area from prehistory into WWI. I like Norwich--have to restrain myself from spending a not-inconsiderable sum on his three-volume History of Byzantium, actually--because he (and/or his editors) have this uncanny sense of how much detail to offer. I also admire his ability to struggle away from the classic disease of historians--namely to become serial biographers. Too often the true movers and shakers are treated like the chorus of classical Greek tragedy while the attention is lavished on the more dashing/romantic/outrageous characters who--in the parlance of our mainstream media--make for good press. Not to mention a certain retrospective (and unilaterally inaccurate) cult of personality. Which is never a good thing, whether in history or in present life.

As we swing into the last year of a U.S. Presidential election-cycle, I find myself cringing at what can only be termed "tribalism" in politics. Honestly, there's no better word for it. Mind you, I detested pep rallies in high school. And party politics are, at their roots, a pointless waving of the colors by a numbers-drunk, but otherwise passive crowd in the bleachers. Thus we send sports teams to the field, soldiers to mutilation and death and defilement of their basic humanity. And also, of course, our political "gladiators" to the arena. There is absolutely no difference between the three in terms of crowd dynamics.

It can be said of politicians more so than our other tribal champions that they--to ape Hamlet--did make love to this employment. Yet, I do wonder what it says about us that we must have our champions at all, and more so to demand that they be the vessels of every several hope we have, not to mention that they be anathema to the vices that we find most noxious. What is wrong with us that we cannot be our own champions, our own liberators?

Perhaps it's because I'm a loner by nature, but I think that we can leave at least a third (and I'm being conservative with that guesstimate) of the problems of the human race at the feet of pure tribalism, which in itself implies hero-worship: For all tribes must have their chieftains, no? To what end the Ponzi scheme of power? Sadly--to my mind--evolution (biological and especially social) does not appear to select for loners in our species. Perhaps in a more loner-friendly environment, ideas would (for once) have to stand on their own merits, rather than boiling down to popularity contests. That certainly wouldn't be the worst thing to happen to this species or what passes for civilization.

The business-section book title you'll never see

"Dominatrix, CEO"

See, I'm a control-freak, and I'm stuck with a couple of less-than-compatible (meaning with me) software developers on "my" project. One is a prima-donna cowboy code-slinger with a nasty passive-aggressive streak. He works remotely, too--somebody stop my feet from dancing. [sour look] The other is amiable enough, but soooo Not About that whole taking responsibility thing. Worse, he's still too green in our outfit to know what he's talking about sometimes. (Not that that stops him, mind you...)

The mature internalization of this whole situation would be to chalk my current frustrations up to karma payback for the similar aggravation I've caused my past supervisors.

Yeeeeah, like I'm gonna be mature: C'mon, this is office politics we're talking about. FSM forfend! This calls for the refined brutalities of the Cubicle Warrior-culture: Make me nag for status? Ha! Here's a conference call invitation on your calendar. And we're gonna enter your deliverables into Microsoft Project and set you up for the water-torture of reminder email! How's THAT gonna feel?!

But, seriously, I'm quite soberly reconsidering my resolve not to become a manager that I wouldn't want to work for. The fact that I am even reconsidering that disturbs me. Fortunately, my twisted sense of humor arrives to rescue me from undue soul-searching.

Understand that I detest office politics because they're basically high school all over again--except that in adult life the consequences are much further-reaching. But...what if I were to view things through an entirely different lens? Instead of seeing the feudal power-struggles as locker-door clique turf-wars, how about viewing the dynamics as dominance and submission, albeit without the rubber and leather trappings? You must admit that the view is far less dreary than warmed-over adolescence. Although it does carry the downside of the "Eeeeeeeewww!" factor--possibly even to the point of wanting to put out your inner eye with a white-hot poker and/or boil your brain in bleach. I take no responsibility for that, however: You change the lens at your own risk. Personally, I find the view through the high-school lens far more disturbing.

Which, after thinking about it for all of sixty seconds (if that), made me realize that the standards of business writing have indeed dropped so low that one could perhaps bang out a management book on that theme. "Leadership Secrets of the Marquis de Sade," anyone? (In which case, I totally call dibs on the idea!)

Now, if you'll excuse me, The Cowboy hasn't accepted his meeting invitation, so it's time to break out (and break in) the flogger... Metaphorically speaking. Unfortunately.

Dancing the lighter sidestep

There's still so d--ned much outrage to go around. But I seem to be OD'ing on Crook and Liars lately. Plus, I'm re-acquainting myself just now with Supertramp's "Crime of the Century", forewarned from memory to skip past the faux psychosis of "Asylum" like I always do with "Mother" on The Police's "Synchronicity". And with a sunny--but not too warm--summer Sunday and a 70s rock soundtrack, I'm afraid that I have to work at outrage.

Two bright spots in the week's news, too: Warner's sabre-rattling at the White House and the fact that the waste/fraud whistleblower scandals caught the attention of Forbes. Normally, I'd expect the boot-licking business media to ignore anything that they can't spin to the credit of Republicans. Maybe Forbes and Fortune are trying to distinguish themselves from the Wall Street Journal, now that Agent Murdoch is busily re-wiring it for his Matrix. Who knows? I'm just tickled to see inconvenient realities like this rubbed into the faces of MBA PHBs still moronic enough to think that the Bush Regime is "pro-business" for anyone other than Haliburton, Blackwater, and Big Oil. (Ha! Swallowed the red pill by accident, did we? Welcome to the Reality-based Community. Don't take the bullets personally; The Matrix is out to get everyone.)

Oops, this post was supposed to be "lighter", wasn't it? Bad blogger!

Actually, this--meaning www.blackle.com--isn't "lighter" at all. But, then, that's entirely the point. I've already forgotten where I found out about Blackle, but the basic idea is that every time you want to make a regular Google search, you can save electricity because it doesn't cost your monitor as much energy to render black pixels as it does white. Google's Advanced Search feature isn't included in Blackle, but I don't even use that ten percent of the time. Blackle certainly won't save the world, but it doesn't hurt, so why not switch your browser's home page?

I'd say that I finished reading "Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day", except that it was more of an intensive skim for a book review needed to fill empty newsletter space. Only four more benighted issues before I hand the wretched thing off to someone who will actually relish the job--and who is guaranteed to add sorely-needed style. At the same time, I also give up maintaining the (largely redundant) website, packing it off to someone else who ~thinks~ he's going to enjoy it. That'll last for about a month. So I'll have the additional joy of watching the nitpicker become the nitpicked. He and I are both prima donnas, no question, but I'm Patton to his Montgomery. And that'll be plenty obvious after Jan. 1st, mark my words.

Speaking of books, it's a given that I won't have time to snarf the last half of Harry Potter VII before vacation, but I'm not sure I want its bulk tagging along, even for the sweet sake of whiling away two trans-Atlantic flights.

But the afternoon is starting to slink off, and I still need to go into work by way of remote access. And "Crime of the Century" has given up its seat for "Breakfast in America", which is as good a cue as any to get on with the business that pays for "the jumbo across the water"...

A hodge-podge...even for this blog

This version of classical Rome ("Rome Reborn") seems far, far too surgically sterile, but makes the ancient city seem more tangible than anything short of an extensive museum exhibit (such as the Pompeii/Herculaneum one that Dearest and I saw in Quebec two summers ago).

During yesterday's "book bender," I couldn't resist adding "Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day" to the stack. I was so stoked that John Julius Norwich has another sweeping history (the kind he does best), this one on the Mediterranean. I typically revel in rediscovering his "Venice: a History" every few years, but haven't been able--shockingly--to justify the expenditure for all three volumes of his "Byzantium".

A friend sent me this link, "Women in Art", which is an animation of a different sort. I had a laugh at how many I recognized via costume research. There is also much to chuckle about in how men want to perceive women. Do they mentally airbrush us in real life? I can't help but wonder. There's more than a little irony in the fact that the friend who sent it to me has such an incredibly keen eye for beauty, except where he himself is concerned.

And, sort of on the same theme of beauty and perception, I darned near Snoopy-danced in my chair when I learned that the thought-provoking "Evolution" ad that Olgivy and Mather did for Dove won a Grand Prix.

Reading

A little bit of serendipity in my reading life: I snarfed the new translation of Elie Weisel's "Night" within a few hours of picking it up. And days later, another testament from that era is unveiled for the world at large: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070604/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_holocaust_diary. The relapsed English major who lives inside me was spinning a few alliterative comments ("courage and cravenness", "humanity and horror"), but, on second thought, that would be like pasting rhinestones on a priceless work of art. Rutka and Elie do quite well without my embellishment.

Speaking of books, I stayed up until nearly two in the morning a couple weeks back to polish off "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell". I'd been gape-jawed enthralled with Strange at the Battle of Waterloo, and the Venetian meeting of Strange and Drawlight was nearly as powerful. The denouement was quite well-done, with everything coming together to its bittersweet ending. Yet, oddly, the sense that the story is truly "over" is missing. Mind you, there's not much wiggle-room for a sequel; still, "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell" had the feel of being merely a chapter in a larger book not yet finished. Apart from too much ink given to the incredibly tedious gentleman with the thistle-down hair, it's a glorious read. If I hadn't been running short on lucidity at that hour, I probably would have sniffled a few times at the victory of love over pettiness and ego.

And, lastly, a link to an LA Times article about a (re-)re-discovered manuscript of Archimedes. Science nearly stifled by religion and chicanery...until science comes to its rescue: How apt. And, by the bye, if the git who forged the paintings that covered part of the text is still alive, I'll pay to be first in line to smack the effin' twit into his/her next incarnation. Moron.)

I left it too long between the essay-chapters of "Why I am not a Christian," so I'm missing some of the full effect. I personally think that Russell uses an ever-so-slightly oversized hammer on religion, even making allowances for the historical context. I'm not sure whether Marx and Engels could have more deeply despised the poison-laced Ovaltine the bourgeoisie claim as "morals" than Russell. Yet, surprisingly, the "Nice People" chapter wasn't nearly vicious enough--not for me, at least. I like Bertrand Russell because he is spot-on in calling out Fascism and Communism as competing religions, not outgrowths--and especially not the "logical" conclusions--of atheism itself. Once the Church is dismantled as an obstruction to the revolution, the wrecking crews can't seem to resist building a similar structure on the site, can they? The state is merely swapped in for God, its bureaucracy for the priesthood, and its perpetrators for prophets. Perhaps Russell speculates on the "why" of this elsewhere. Sadly, I haven't encountered this yet (and I'm almost finished with the book). Perhaps between different covers...

That's all the book-related goodness I have at my to pass along just now. Further reading will have to wait until after this coming weekend, when people with DNA similar to mine will be congregating some three hours away. I have promised to be among their number, and will be hosting a few fellow pilgrims besides.

Those who dwell on the past are doomed to repeat it

I ran across this piece a couple days back, but did not have enough (contiguous) free time to read, much less pass on until now. The first third was promising, but the harping on the Civil War theme grew tiresome, and not simply because I find the mythos of the Old South itself tiresome.

Understand that I find the carnage obscene in any context, be it book market or opium den. Nevertheless, that the bomber and his handlers targeted what remains of cultural literacy in Iraq salts the already-open wound. But Dickey's musings on history miss the larger, more enduring parallels between occupied Iraq and the Reconstruction-era South.

Parallel #1 is the fact that when the vanquished cannot lash out at the victor, s/he makes someone else pay for the humiliation of defeat. Lynchings and car bombs both stem from treating the vendettas of our forebears as heirlooms, rather than the soul-twisting curses that they are.

Parallel #2 is that too often, and for too many people, every effort to reconstruct the past is an attack on the future. There is no happenstance in that the sellers and buyers of books were targeted. Neither is there any coincidence to the fact that the assaults on education (in the guise of creationism, abstinence-training, and--soon, no doubt--the introduction of "critical thinking" on the "theory" of global warming) often come from the South (Kansas, Dover, PA, and the recently slapped-down shenanigans in Ohio notwithstanding).

Of course, I'm treating Dickey harshly, simply because anyone who can remember the Civil War first-hand is long dead, and it's well past time to bury that grievance alongside them. I really should rejoice that a Southerner would put that weary legacy to rare good use--a Yankee couldn't pull that off. If he succeeds in the small miracle of kindling a kindred spirit among a population not quite famous for empathizing with brown-skinned folks, then I applaud him as a bridge-builder for humanity.

Yet I can't help but cringe whenever anyone raises the faded tatters of the Confederate banner. We can't encourage the Iraqis to put centuries of infighting behind them when we suckle yet another generation on such poison here in America.

I can quit anytime I want...

New book!

Never mind that I haven't finished the one I picked up for vacation (Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norrell by Suzanna Clark). I thought that it was interesting that Joel Spolsky (co-founder of Fog Creek Software, and my dream boss before he got a little too full of himself) was running with some fast company when Jessica Livingston interviewed him for Founders at Work. There he's rubbing shoulders with the founders and early employees of Apple, Adobe, Lotus, TiVo, etc. (And, as it coincidentally turns out, Blogger.com) So I ordered it.

I've been on the corporate leash long enough that I'm feeling the itch to start something of my own, even if it's merely dipping my toe back into the shallow end of consulting. I don't plan taking any coursework this summer, so I'm angling to line something up for that time-frame. Worse come to worst, I plod away on one of my own projects. Something that directly benefits ME (for a change), in any case...

But in the meantime, yay for new books! ;-)