Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Stephenson, Neal, The Diamond Age Or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer
[cross-posted on Albion’s Seedlings]
[Spoiler Alert!]
With the recent announcement of a new science fiction TV series based on author screenplays from this ten year old book, it seems like a good time to take a second look at Stephenson’s vision of the next century. Diamond Age contained the first use of the term “Anglosphere,” a neologism which Jim Bennett put to more specific use in 2000.
Milton, G., Samurai William: The Adventurer Who Unlocked Japan
[cross-posted on Albion’s Seedlings]
Some thirty years ago, beach readers basting themselves in the sun were reading the fictional adventures of an English sailor, a navigator or “pilot”, cast ashore after a Dutch shipwreck off Japan in the early 17th century. John Blackthorne was the ultimate “fish out of water,” making his way in an alien violent land through physical strength, mental acuity and prodigious love-making, rising finally after various reversals of fortune to become the trusted confidant and friend of the military supremo of the time — the Shogun
Like many fans of James Clavell’s Asian novels, I enjoyed the story for what it was … laced with the critical potboiler elements of exotic settings, sex and violence (followed closely by clothes and food) … a great yarn … an uninspiring 1980 TV mini-series — but I thought no more about it until I glanced recently at the cover of a paperback version of Milton’s Samurai William in a bookstore. Hmm. That tale looks familiar.
It turns out that Clavell’s fish-out-of-water story was based broadly on actual events. Englishman William Adams was a crewman on a small fleet of Dutch ships attempting to open trade with the Far East by passing through the Cape Horn and sailing across the Pacific. Adams and a handful of starved, sickened survivors of the single Dutch vessel to make it to Japan were curiosities at first to the reigning shogun (Tokugawa Ieyasu). They were saved from crucifixion on a whim, despite the best efforts of the Jesuits to see that Adams and his crew met an immediate and very bad end. Adams was tossed into a Japanese prison after his first interview with the Shogun.
But the shogun quickly realized that the anjin or pilot was an unusually intelligent, skilled, and self-possessed man. Though not formally educated, his technical and geographic knowledge was substantial. And his ability with languages was to become a key factor in the subsequent history of Japan. For William Adams, English Protestant pilot, formerly of Limehouse in London’s docklands, was to become the European translator for the most powerful man in Japan.
Steyn, Mark. America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It
[cross-posted at Albion’s Seedlings]
Mark Steyn requires little or no introduction to blogosphere readers of the center-right. His impact as a commentator over the last few years is outsized if for no other reason than volume — he creates a constant stream of articles, columns, essays, books, TV and radio appearances. It’s a rare month when one of his wittier quotes doesn’t create a flurry of blog linking. He brings his sense of humour to the subject of national security and the culture wars, and from what little I’ve seen of his “live” performances on radio and TV, it’s clear that he can think effectively on his feet. Most of us enjoy seeing the “moonbats” of modern life get their comeuppance. Mark Steyn has become a dependable and unapologetic source for such bon mots and stinging sarcasm from the Right. A guilty pleasure.
What really sets him apart, however, from more staid and plodding media pundits, is his willingness to confront the bromides of political correctness directly, and bring real literary skills to bear on summarizing current events. The result has been a stream of compact and compelling 500 word columns for newspapers around the world … leavened occasionally with erudite magazine articles and obituaries on figures from the art world. It wouldn’t be a stretch to place Mark Steyn alongside Victor David Hanson as one of the leading columnists of our time, making the case vigourously for the legitimacy, survival, and prosperity of Western civilization.
With American Alone, Steyn breaks out of the short form and assembles the facts from the early years of the 21st century into a “big picture” argument … about the state of the world and the circumstances of America. Does he translate well to the bigger canvas?
Annihilation from Within
AfW is eminently worth reading and relatively likely to do some actual good in the world. But you haven’t grazed in here to read a blanket endorsement, and I’d be no blogger if I didn’t contend (with all-but-nonexistent credibility) with some portion of Iklé’s thesis; so for a thoroughgoingly unqualified critique, complete with annoyingly personal speculation and fuzzy intuition-laden commentary, read on!
(~2,700 words; approximate reading time 7-14 minutes, not counting lots of links.)
Bell, Jim, Postcards From Mars: The First Photographer on the Red Planet
When I was a kid, growing up in a military family, the Apollo program was an impossibly glamourous and distant showcase of talent, excitement, and adventure. It was inspiration for much newspaper reading, discussions with my Dad, and avid TV watching whenever the pair of Canadian networks deigned to broadcast the grainy black-and-white images of liftoffs and moon landings. The cosmology inserts in National Geographic were also rare oases of rich visual evidence of what we knew about the world above our atmosphere. NASA was Oz. Information was sparse.
My twenty-five year detour into the social sciences and medicine, away from the space program, was brought to a gradual end by the advent of the broadband Internet. Nowadays, amateur space exploration enthusiasts have a waterfall of sources of information and visual inspiration, including live Internet feeds of NASA TV. Once again my Dad and I could share information, ideas, and now URLs. We can perch as a virtual peanut gallery, getting up in the wee hours of the night, if we’re so inclined, to watch the tense faces in Houston or the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, or peer at high-contrast postage-stamp-sized video from the International Space Station with Lego men in bulky suits wielding strange tools. Or even watch the space station zip across the sky at dawn or sunset. Our cup runneth over. We can be party to industry gossip. Follow every high and low. Every failure, catastrophe, funding fiasco, amazing discovery, and triumph of the “rocket scientists” can be shared in the video clips and press releases and space commentary sites available in a web browser.
For the last three years, one of the enduring small pleasures of life has been following the progress of the two Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. The story of their construction and testing and successful deployment has been well documented in PBS specials but still, a television screen and a computer monitor can only convey a certain amount. Bigger than a bread box. Smaller than a house. Yes, yes. As big as a stadium. About the size of a blueberry. Colour: tan … or tannish. Detail: mmm … rocky, sandy, desert-like maybe. A sand dune of some size or other. Lots of geeky people of all ages and persuasions clearly very excited about something.
Last April, during a visit to San Francisco, I took the opportunity to catch a limited release IMAX film called Roving Mars. Wow. Suddenly the panoramas of Mars, and the size, shape and detail of the rovers became vivid and crisp, with a resolution that overwhelmed the eye and brain. Much of reason for the excitement experienced by the science teams finally made it from screen to audience.
Now, three years into what was supposed to be 90 day missions for the two Mars rovers, we finally have a coffee table book that takes full advantage of the human eye to convey the very alien, yet powerfully compelling, landscape of Mars. Postcards from Mars is written by the lead scientist on the twin colour panorama cameras used by the rovers to capture high-resolution images on the Red Planet. He has selected the photographs, supervised their colour-processing, and written a companion text which describes not only what was seen on Mars by the rovers over the last three years, but how the scientists constructed the cameras and developed methods to convey accurate colour so we can see Mars as if we stood with them.