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A word ending in "-mancy" will refer to some kind of divination. So is there such a thing as ornithomancy, divination by birds? Indeed. And it was probably inevitable that at least one method included therein would involve cutting the bird open. But most don't, and I'd guess the best methods don't. If there's a chance of a bird telling you something you want to know about the future, it will be in the guise of informing you about the present. And this will be through the bird's behavior. 

Elegy

In the last couple of days I've noticed two dead animals (mammals) by the side of the road. One was a rabbit and the other was a squirrel. The rabbit was an especially sad sight because it was barely larger than a mouse, so it must have been a kit.

I note this not to be morbid, but as a kind of companion to other observations. You often see animals running across the street in a city. Cats seem to be very adept at it. But there's no guarantee of safety with this action. As is often the case. Drivers can do you in without--in most cases--intending to or even knowing you're there.

Future not what it used to be

The following is an excerpt from Bernard Wolfe's afterword to his own story suite "Monitored Dreams and Strategic Cremations", from Again, Dangerous Visions (1972).

Science has been from the beginning what it most spectacularly is now, the handmaiden of capitalism. SF has all along been the handmaiden to, as well as the parasite on, science. This is a treason to the profession of writing, which in its serious forms can be a handmaiden of nothing but disdain for, and assault upon, that-which-is. 

They will, of course, improve their dream monitoring in order to make their cremations more strategic. With the technical assistance of the for-anybody's-hire scientists. And the gleeful sidelines cheers of their sf votaries.

If you detect pretension, you're not wrong. If you've seen Richard Linklater's Slacker you may remember the old anarchist who insists that he was fighting Franco in the civil war when really he visited Spain once, in the fifties. That's how Wolfe tends to come off. 

But consider Silicon Valley and AI accelerationism. The congressional moratorium on states regulating AI is plainly unconstitutional, for all anyone lets that stop them. But it's the kind of thing that organized science and technology demands. You might think of it as the aggressive counterpart to defensive COVID panic, which was equally based on scientism.

Where both science and science fiction have gone wrong is in imposing an eschatology on both the social and natural world. An inexorable progress, resisted only by fools. But it's incumbent on us to ask, "Whose progress? Whose goal? And why should it be inevitable?"

Summer pushes us into the deep end

I trust that when I post on the trusty blog again in a couple of days I'll have something more interesting to say than "It's hot." But for now, it's very, very hot. Hit 100F today, in fact.

One thing that changes for me when the mercury goes way up is the way I drink water. For much of the year I'll pour a glass of water and just let it sit for a while, because drinking it right away isn't necessary. Might even be painful in the winter. But on really hot days I'll probably down it right away.

Varying dimensions of mind

À propos of nothing I figured I'd share my impressions of the four shows that have aired under the title The Twilight Zone. Here goes.

The first (1959-64): This is the one that really makes it. If it hadn't been a success it's unlikely they would have tried to revive it at all, or turn it into a movie. Rod Serling was a great writer for the medium, as well as being a special presence as narrator, despite not being trained as an actor. The writer part also applies to Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont. The change to hourlong episodes in the fourth season was a bad move, with the exception of a few episodes. Still, that just proves that Serling had hit upon the right form to begin with.

The second (1985-89): Shakier. Like its predecessor, it had a heavyweight writing staff, led by Harlan Ellison. And some of the stories are very effective. Often seemed to think it was deeper than it actually was, although you could argue that too much ambition is better than not enough. Kind of wild that the Dead did the opening theme song.

The third (2002-03): Aired on UPN with Star Trek: Enterprise as its lead-in. One good thing it did was bring back the onscreen narrator, the position now being filled by Forrest Whitaker. Unfortunately, most of the stories were--what's the word?--bad. Good actors tended to be stranded. 

The fourth (2019-20): Created and narrated by Jordan Peele, it first showed on Netflix. Being a streaming show instead of a broadcast show meant they could throw in a lot of swears. It also meant they could pursue a narrower audience. Unfortunately--there's that word again--this meant in practice focusing on Resistance liberals and preaching to the choir. Which I guess is at least a new way to be bad.

So perhaps I'm biased but Serling's original seems to be the one to really hit it out of the park. I'd also note that the two better series--from the 50s and 80s--adapted short stories from print, while the next two didn't. Sometimes "original" ideas aren't.

Words to live by

 

It's a kind of retrofuturism. An image that calls up what they once thought the future would be like. 

When I was a kid anything science fictional or future-oriented was likely to be packaged with some kind of font that evoked a rounded-off square: no sharp points, but no actual circles either. The one on the right, now called Data 70, was especially popular. I think it got its futuristic image sometime in the sixties.

These were products of their time, and it seems especially of the daisy wheel printers used back then. The advent of the personal computer made it seem kind of old fashioned, although the prompts on the screens of early PCs and Macs weren't all that far off.

All the steps

Step 1: Put food in the oven.

Step 2: Close the oven door.

Step 3: Wait 30-40 minutes.

Step 4: Wonder why you still don't smell any food.

Step 5: Realize that it helps when you turn the heat on.

This is one of those things that's unbelievably aggravating in the moment but gets funny when you have a couple hours' distance.

Curveball

People can surprise you. Take Marjorie Taylor Greene. I never really got the liberal panic over her, but I didn't expect anything from her either. She'd spend one term in the house, maybe two, and spend all that time being ignorant and exhibitionistic. Then she'd get a commentator job at Fox or OAN or something like that, trading on her forgettable time in Washington.

Now she's doing as much as anyone in Congress to avert World War III. Not all by herself, but more than most, and very clearheaded about what's wrong with our foreign policy. Of course Congress has been abdicating its job on that front for so long that Presidents tend to get what they want by default. That deference started a long time before Trump, but it may not be sustainable anymore.

Pedigreed sitting ducks

Eric Ambler, a British author of thrillers and screenplays, was well-known for The Mask of Dimitrios, which I haven't read but probably will in the foreseeable future. He is not as well known for Send No More Roses, published in the US as The Siege of the Villa Lipp. That's probably because it's not one of his books adapted into a film or miniseries. One line from it is on his Wikiquote page, however: "What use is an honest lawyer when what you need is a dishonest one?" This is eerily similar to that line about Saul Goodman, "You don't want a criminal lawyer... you want a 'criminal' lawyer."

Anyway, Send No More Roses, or whatever you want to call it, is great. The narrator, Paul Firman, is a great rogue. Frits Krom, a man staying in his house with two younger colleagues, is a social scientist who believes Firman is one of the world's great unpunished criminals. Krom is very much an irritating fool, an Ahab who couldn't beat the Whale in a game of checkers. But he's not Firman's biggest problem. No, that would be Mat Williamson, a sometime business partner who finds it convenient to end his association with Firman in a very permanent way. Things get tense, but they never stop being funny. Ambler was 68 when he published it and I think it was his second-to-last. In top form, though.

Final blogger's note: Yes, this post should have gone up last night. I mostly had it written in my head, and only after going to bed did I realize I hadn't set it down on paper. Or whatever.

Avatar

If you're a politician, does it sound productive to constantly pepper your constituents with robocalls? I guess they should do some kind of outreach, but I have my doubts about this one. 

To be clear, yes, my Representative in the US House does this. And I'm never in the mood to listen to the whole message, so I pretty quickly erase it. And I'm a guy with a landline. Imagine all the youngsters and not-so-youngsters who are getting all those calls on their cell phones. Yeah, I don't think you're making any friends that way.

Empty booth

The title of the video above was sufficiently provocative that I was interested in hearing what Beato was talking about and listened to the whole thing. Death of memorable songs? Yes and no. He's identified part of the problem, at least.

Since he's a proudly whitehaired man in his sixties, it may need pointing out that Beato is not saying that there are no good musicians anymore. Far from it. And he's not saying that there are no good songs being written anymore. Rather that there's a near total break between what's interesting and what's popular. I wouldn't disagree.

My explanation for what happened might be a little different. Despite all the payola and hype, there used to be DJs who operated with a certain amount of freedom. And listeners trusted them enough to open themselves up to unfamiliar music. Britain's John Peel was the best known, but there were lower key exemplars here in the US. It wasn't a perfect system, but it had enough give so that there were pleasant surprises.

What went wrong didn't all go wrong at once. MTV was a double-edged sword. While it also introduced some unfamiliar artists, it effectively created a national playlist, taking oxygen from the locals. The 1996 Communications act was a disaster, opening the door to monopolies in radio who had zero interest in anything being unpredictable. Eventually DJs got sidelined where they existed at all. And now radio has been supplanted by Spotify. As Spotify is algorithm-driven, it basically guarantees that what you hear in the future will be an imitation of what you listened to in the recent past.

So what's needed to make good new songs popular again. Thinking humans in a position where they can recommend things again. Whatever genius figures out how to do that will have performed a great service.

Part of the deal

If you or I or any other human had a lower lip full of warts that would be considered a medical problem. We'd almost certainly want to get rid of it.

The Jamaican Fruit Bat, by contrast, has them as a matter of course. Many leaf nosed bats do. It's sometimes said to be a defense against toxins in the skins of amphibians they eat. Possibly, but the Jamaican is mostly frugivorous, so wouldn't really encounter that problem. But still, these are an adaptation to something, with origins coming from within the body. So they're not really warts, which are caused by viruses.

Must be said that the Jamaican Fruit Bat is also quite fetching, especially the babies.

HONK!

Mention Mother Goose and a lot of people will picture a plump middle aged woman with glasses and a bonnet, who may or may not have a pet goose. Then again, Mother Goose has been depicted as a goose herself, or at least an anthropomorphic one. There's a fairly marked difference there.

But where does the character come from? There are a few different schools of thought on that. Likely it's not a straightforward story. Charles Perrault, a French author who brought us Sleeping Beauty and Little Red Riding Hood, among others, seems to have had something to do with it. The character was then revised in both the US and the UK. And has proven quite flexible.

Grey cells

Playwright Matthew Gasda presents an interesting analysis of student literacy and lack thereof in the AI era. It's at the very least worth taking seriously in conjunction with other informed views.

If it's true that you can't expect kids raised with iPads and smartphones to make a sustained argument in print, or to follow one for that matter, then these devices should have never been introduced. I mean, now you tell us.

But then there's also the matter of education being a formality that everyone has to go through, which was supposed to be a step towards greater democracy but which hasn't turned to be that. As Gasda writes, "Because the American education system from kindergarten through graduate school has become about securing diplomas and employment, long-form writing has been transformed from a core demonstration of learning to an impediment."

That tendency precedes our current technological environment, although the phones aggravate the problem. With the disappearance of industrial and agricultural jobs, the emphasis has been on getting everyone through college, with a professional job presumed to be at the other end. In effect it's meant that jobs that don't require much in the way of thinking nonetheless can only be gotten by people with educational attainment. But if the demand is that all kids be book smart, then the easiest way is to define book smarts down.

His advice to treat children like they have a soul is a good and necessary one, of course. I don't expect to see it applied at large scale.

Art at home

 

Marcel Rieder's career as an artist started in the late nineteenth century but extended well into the twentieth, as he died during World War II. He'd have been among the first generation of painters to see the lightbulb come into common use. His usage of electric lighting was canny, as in "Kitchen Interior" above. These are shaded lights, bringing out color, leaving a healthy amount of ambient shadow. Not overpowering. To that he adds a lyric sense of what the domestic world is like in the evening and at night.