No Matter Which Hobbit It Is, It's Still Tolkien's Hobbit

A little more than a week ago, I read the Huffington Post article, "Dislike Peter Jackson's The Hobbit? Then You Don't Know Tolkien" by Seth Abramson. I agree with Abramson, but I also don't think he fully appreciates the history behind The Hobbit, as we know it today. If he did, I don't think he'd have as much trouble with the Tolkien philistine critics out there.

It took Abramson's article for me to reach this conclusion. Like him and many others out there, I think Peter Jackson could have cut a bit and emphasized different aspects of the film to make a more enjoyable viewing experience. I won't get too deep into the actual film or its narrative, though. I had fun watching it and don't have strong enough feelings to criticize the film itself.

I won't get all that deep into the technological aspects of the frame speed, 3D vs 2D or anything like that. I saw the 24 frames per second (fps) in 3D version. It looked fine with only one or two things that took me out of the action and drama but nothing that stands out too much. I haven't seen any of it in 48 fps. I'm curious to do so some day, though, just to see what all the fuss is about.

Something else has struck my interest more than these two aspects: the arguments over Jackson's loyalty to the original books. Many people have criticized him for stretching it out to three films when the source material is one book (a lot of that argument seems to revolve around Jackson and/or the film company being greedy and cynical). They also argue that The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, was a simple, fun adventure romp, not some kind of epic quest to save the world. Where would the material come from to fill all that extra time?

Abramson and others, on the other hand, point out that these critics who just want a simple adventure romp have it wrong. They fail to know or understand that Tolkien left behind plenty of source material in the appendices at the end of The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. I read the appendices once, maybe twice, and some other pieces of work that had tons of information about larger events and people that happened concurrently and led up to The War of the Ring.

In my view, both sides of have it right. I see only one part where both sides are wrong: saying that the other side is wrong, they don't understand and that there is a right or wrong answer. I take this approach because at one time or another, Tolkien had imagined The Hobbit in so many different ways on his own, as a standalone story, as something of a prelude to The Lord of the Rings and as probably everything else inbetween.

Tolkien originally came up with The Hobbit as a way to entertain his children or his children or grandchildren (I think he notes this point as in introduction to an edition of The Hobbit, or There and Back Again). Even the first edition published didn't have the One Ring in it. It was just a magical ring of invisibility. Also, Gollum willingly bet it in the game of riddles.

I haven't read the older editions. I don't have any further details of changes from earlier editions to more current ones. Nonetheless, it still stands: the earlier editions of The Hobbit, or There and Back Again was a standalone, not a planned prequel to the Lord of the Rings.

Later, down the road, though, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again did become a prequel. Tolkien kept updating new editions as they got released to make the stories consistent. As mentioned before, he also wrote material that he put in the appendices at the end of The Return of the King.

Tokien had also written a story called "The Quest of Erebor". Based on the link, Tolkien originally wanted to include it in the appendices of The Return of the King. He ended up not putting it in, though, to save space. This story fills the gaps in how Gandalf and Thorin put together their scheme, why they included Bilbo and other such topics not addressed in The Hobbit, or There and Back Again.

Peter Jackson just conflates all these different sources into a series of movies. The people criticizing Jackson for creating new plot points or anything like that just to fill time don't have the most solid ground to stand on. From my understanding, Jackson does do it a little by giving the orcs in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey a motivation rather than just random encounters met by the dwarves. I haven't read The Hobbit, or There and Back Again in awhile, but my instincts tell me that characters with motivations lead to a more absorbing story rather than not.

Abramson makes a valid point that these "haters" probably don't know Tolkien. I think he misses the point, though, that the movie the "haters" wanted would have been just as valid of a movie of The Hobbit: There and Back Again as the one Peter Jackson has and will make. Simply put: every version that a faction argues is the real version is a real version. Tolkien wrote most, if not all, the source material that Jackson is pulling from.

I, personally, enjoy that an argument such as this one can be made. Part of me wishes that the copyright had expired and anyone who wants could take and retool the story without needing any special rights or permissions. Tolkien had done a fun job of creating something of an artificial verbal history of Middle Earth as he had come up with new stories and worked to make them all consistent with each other, altering and developing the canon to make it richer each and every time.

Will the stories of Middle Earth become legend and myth for future civilizations as our current one falls or fades away? Will Middle Earth be like the myths we tell of Greek gods and goddesses, Persian gods and goddesses, Gilgamesh and Enkidu and all the rest of the stories that we have from our ancient history? I wish I had a time machine or the ability to observe some future time to see if this potentiality becomes actuality.

Just imagine the stories that would come about through errors in translation! Imagine all the different stories that could be developed for futue generations through the innovations of non-Tolkien writers! It would make an interesting sight to see, that's for sure.

LINKS OF NOTE:

• "Dislike Peter Jackson's The Hobbit? Then You Don't Know Tolkien"
• Seth Abramson
• Tolkien
• Peter Jackson
• From Forbes: "Why Are So Many People Against The Hobbit Being Shown in 48 FPS?
• The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
• The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
• The War of the Ring
• The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
• One Ring
• Gollum
• "The Quest of Erebor"
• Gandalf
• Thorin Oakenshield II
• Bilbo
• The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
• Middle Earth

Unofficially Scraping the Surface of Making Financial Tools and Concepts More Practical

A blog trying to explore creativity, community and stuff like that, like this one, has a place for tips on making sense of finance and organizing stuff. I came to the realization that a creative person could use these types of skills when I read an Asimov's Science Fiction column by Robert Silverberg a long, long time ago.

Silverberg's argument boils down to: "Creative people will likely not become rich, comfortable and ready for retirement solely from writing or whatever they create. Even creative people, unless they have some kind of fortunate windfall, will need to invest wisely to reach independent wealth and a comfortable retirement."

I won't give out stock tips or get too deep into investment stuff. I have reached an awkward stage in my life/career. I feel comfortable enough with my knowledge and instincts to follow my own advice. I may even offer my thoughts to friends and family, leaving it to them whether they find my advice sound or not.

At the same time, I have enough professional qualifications that weak social contacts might view my ruminations as qualified advice. Some people might view my 10 years working in the insurance industry and light experience evaluating risk as certification for being considered an investment professional. I don't offer that kind of advice and don't want the responsibility that comes along with it.

I have no problem giving advice on saving time, reducing stress and possibly even protecting personal finances against sudden physical and health-related losses. This blog entry or future entries are not any kind of marketing pitch, though. At most, I hope someone might take my ruminations, investigate and research them a little more then come up with useful conclusions of their own.

And if I present some tips to set up some practical organization principles and tactics, I hope people will take them to heart. They could make more sense of financial or health information. At the very least, they might address some issue in the future more efficiently than if I didn't mention some stuff I might mention.

All in all, this entry has become more of an abstracted, unclear rumination to say that I may want to bring up topics on how to handle the financial realm. Lots of people find financial stuff impractical, once you get deeper into it. I hope, every once in while, to shine some practical light on these topics.

Guess the only way I'll find out if I'm any good at doing so is by going ahead and writing about it. Please join me in some future entries to see if I'm any good at writing about these topics.

LINKS OF INTEREST:

• Asimov's Science Fiction
  
  
• Robert Silverberg

Doctor Who: Saying Farewell to Old Friends, Picking Up New Exciting Mysteries & Letting Shady, Silent Enemies Fester

The last Doctor Who Christmas special, The Snowmen, has excited me enough about Doctor Who and TV/movies that I need to blog about it. I haven't been jazzed up about either for a long time.

A quick log of my last entries about TV/movies:

• April 8, 2011: Copy & pasted from an e-mail to the Wife just before Doctor Who Series 6 some random musings about Series 5 and anticipation for Series 6
  
  
• December 18, 2010: A review of Inception, emphasizing that it was just OK. It didn't push itself like I had hoped a movie set in a dream would have
  
  
• April 18, 2010: Spoiler-free review of the first two episode pre-screening of Doctor Who Series 5, The Eleventh Hour and The Beast Below at the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (C2E2)
  

Doctor Who, BBC and Steven Moffat, despite his views of the female sex grating on my nerves regularly, have done a bang up job of making a TV plot line compelling again. I haven't been this sucked in and emotionally invested since a few isolated episodes of Series 6.

TV shows like

• Fringe
  
  
• Person of Interest
  
  
• Burn Notice
  
  
• White Collar
  
  
• Eureka
  
  
• Warehouse 13
  
  
• Leverage
  
  
• and a bunch of comedies

have kept me entertained. I'll even throw in most of the Doctor Who Series 6 into this category. All these shows kept bringing me back.

I didn't feel anxious about waiting so long (sometimes as little as a week) to see the next episode, though. I generally only got excited if the following episode was on TiVo or maybe for a single next episode. Not really for an extended amount of suspenseful time, though.

**** SPOILER ALERT: DON'T READ IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED THE EPISODE (OR EVEN FROM SERIES 4 TO CURRENT) ****

But Doctor Who: The Snowmen has sucked me back into the bittersweet, agonizing joy of fandom. After the second appearance and death of the Doctor's enigmatic new companion, I again feel the sudden desire for more of what Steve Moffatt does so well at the end of

• Cold Blood
  
  
• The Pandorica Opens
  
  
• The Big Bang
  
  
• The Impossible Astronaut
  
  
• The Almost People
  
  
• A Good Man Goes to War
  
  
• The Wedding of River Song
  
  
• Let's Kill Hitler
  
  
• Even Forest of the Dead

We're given a small compelling piece of emotionally-charged information/plot then pretty much told, now you get to wait awhile to learn more.

• Cold Blood: Not the best of episodes, overall, but Rory dies, gets sucked into the Time Field, erasing him from time. On top of that, despite how hard the Doctor tries, Rory's fiancee, Amy, can't remember Rory. How does the Doctor handle that kind of guilt?
  
  
• The Pandorica Opens: After being teased the whole season about the Pandorica opening, we learn what the Pandorica is, but then. . .Rory is resurrected as an Auton and kills Amy. The Doctor is put into the Pandorica. The camera zooms back from the Universe, showing all the stars extinguishing. How does the Doctor fix the erasing of EVERYTHING? How can the show even continue?
  
  
• The Big Bang: The Universe gets rebooted, but we don't know who blew up the TARDIS. We have an inkling that it has something to do with the Silence that's been mentioned all season. What is the Silence and who wants to blow up the TARDIS? We have no idea and have to wait months, MONTHS to learn more.
  
  
• The Impossible Astronaut: We see the Doctor killed by someone or something in an astronaut suit. He knows who it is. We can only wonder who it is until the end of the season. The who was actually predictable, but like at the end of The Pandorica Opens, we ask how the hell does that whole thing get resolved? And on top of that, we have a face to the Silents, but how and why are they or have blown up the TARDIS?
  
  
• The Almost People: A bleh conclusion to a bleh two-parter (exception of fun of seeing the Doctor and his ganger have fun together). However, we learn that since the beginning of Series 6, the Amy we've been watching has been a Ganger (even though it's been her real consciousness the whole time). The real Amy has been in the custody of the lady who has been popping up for a few seconds here and there then disappearing. And guess what. . .Amy's about to go into labor! Probably would have been horrible to have to wait a week, but I'll admit it: we were able to watch A Good Man Goes to War immediately afterward. I don't know if I would have been able to wait a week to watch the Battle of Demon's Run.
  
  
• A Good Man Goes to War and Let's Kill Hitler: We have part of the origin story of River Song, but the Silence kidnap her. The Doctor promises that she'll be safe and he'll find her. The origin story of River/Melody resolves quite satisfactorily in the madcap romp of Let's Kill Hitler.
  
  Nonetheless, we're left with some pretty annoying questions: How is the Doctor going to get out of being killed? How is the Silence going to blow up the TARDIS? Who is the leader of the Silence? How will the Doctor defeat the Silence? Sure, the Silence don't like the Doctor, but how did they get the knowledge and power to blow up the TARDIS when the Daleks, the Cybermen, etc. who have had plenty of reasons to blow up the TARDIS haven't done it?
  
  The best Daleks and Cybermen can do is put the Doctor into the Pandorica. He still gets out of it (yeah, he rebooted the Universe after it extinguished, but if it weren't for the Pandorica. . .the Silence would've won). How could anyone get so worked up to extinguish the universe and what is their escape plan (the Daleks had one)? If they don't have one, what has gotten them so worked up? And seriously. . .who is Prisoner Zero and could it have all that foreknowledge about all this stuff?
  
  What's kind of annoying. . .even now, after a series and a half and a few years, we still have all these questions! Seriously, though, I've made my peace that a few of them won't be answered. Steve Moffat seems to be the master of creating compelling world-building concepts then leaving them as non-sequiturs (for instance, what's up with the Papal Mainframe?).
  
  
• Forest of the Dead: The question that this episode leaves us hanging with that has been mostly answered in hindsight: who is River Song? Is she just a red herring, but she knows the Doctor's real name! She has to be important. . .and we've gotten a satisfactory amount of information about River since then. As of now, we still don't really know how she learns the Doctor's name. We have a suspicion: it happens on the Fields of Trenzalore where the "First Question" will be asked. We're assuming River will ask the Doctor his real name. Since the whole "First Question" arc is so connected to the Silence arc, though, I'm yawning.
  
  
• The Wedding of River Song: We learn about the "First Question" and the Fields of Trenzalore. It's something that the Silence want to prevent. At the end of the episode, we learn the "First Question" is WHO is the Doctor. Actually pretty anti-climactic, since the Silence plot arc has gotten old without any satisfying answers.
  
  Also, do we, the audience, want to know who the Doctor really is? Part of the show's fun is that the true identity of the Doctor is shrouded in mystery. The archetype of an alien traveling through space and time, fighting the forces of evil and calamity that he stumbles upon feels like enough. . .and plus he has fun doing it. Give him some kind of grand motivation, it feels like the magic could be sucked out of the show.
  
  Still. . .what are the Fields of Trenzalore? Why would the Doctor go (like Lake Silencio?) other than it's a fixed point in time. . .what a flimsy, uncompelling plot device to provide motivation for a character to go somewhere)? How does the motivation to go there, ask the First Question and answer the First Question develop?
  
  If it's River Song that asks it and is answered, why wouldn't the Silence have tried to prevent River from existing in the first place? Rather, they just participate in the events that caused her to exist in the first place to ask the First Question? Maybe that's why they blew up the TARDIS to extinguish the universe? It also seems like blowing up the TARDIS is what may have motivated the TARDIS to land in Amy Pond's back yard and bring about the existence of River Song. Is it just a predestination paradox?
  
  That's when I decided to stop thinking about it all back then. I realized Steve Moffat wouldn't answer even 10% to 25% of the questions I could think of. Even worse: Doctor Who would just beg more questions. I figured even if the show goes get weighed down with too any tedious unanswered questions, I would continue watching to see the train wreck occur and the fans let out collective yells of rage (Facing the ceiling, arms raised, "Moffat!!!!!!!!").

After the disappointment of Series 6, again feeling the aggravation and appreciation of suspense provides a breath of fresh air. Watching Series 6 after Series 5 felt like watching The Hobbit after The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit and Series 6 provided an enjoyable OK time with some high points, but nowhere near what had come before. I wanted more after Series 6, but I could wait.

I could say something similar about the first half of Series 7. However, it feels like both a breath of fresh air and the last gasps for air (for the Ponds), despite no strong push on larger plot points that the viewer knows of. For larger plot arcs, we

• See people asking the First Question (but the First Question gets asked a lot -- even before Series 5 when this whole arc started)
  
  
• Hear about history recording the Doctor's "death" then his existence getting expunged from all records
  
  
• Reminded about the theme of the Doctor's enemies escalating their aggression because of the Doctor being viewed as a major threat to their race and existence

Each standalone episode has its own enjoyable dramatic tension but doesn't pull the viewer onto the next episode. Likability of characters and quality writing keeps the viewer coming back. I didn't feel as much aggravation week to week, but I couldn't wait to see the next episode.

Unless you actively avoid spoilers, Amy and Rory exiting is predictable. Weeping Angels involved, Amy and Rory would be zapped around in such a way that a fixed point in time would be created and couldn't be changed. I hadn't figured out the exact execution, but the general idea was apparent. Albeit, knowledge of their departure drives the season, both in appreciation while they're still around and for the chance to say goodbye.

For Dinosaurs on a Spaceship and The Power of Three, the three stars shine. They work together as a great team.

For Rory and Amy, Asylum of the Daleks feels like a throw away. Their motivations for their separating feels lame and not true to the characters. Only Rory acting like an ass feels right, claiming he loved Amy more. That works just because otherwise, Rory is too perfect. Not worth throwing away well-written characters a whole episode just to prove someone's human, though.

The teamwork with the Doctor didn't come out so much in A Town Called Mercy and The Angels Take Manahattan, but those episodes accomplished their goals well. Mercy reminds us again about the Doctor's dark side and history and how much he needs others in his life.

The Angels Take Manahattan shows the lengths of Rory and Amy's love. We also see how significant Amy has become to the Doctor. It harkens back to the strange mother/son-father/daughter relationship they have in the first half of Series 5. They end up playing such big roles in influencing each other's personality development. Amy even gets to show the brains and empathy to save the day in The Beast Below and Victory of the Daleks. I missed that Amy.

Not since Series 5 did we see how important they felt their relationship was. OK, maybe the ends of The God Complex and The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe (which, per IMDB, is the first episode of Series 7) illustrate the importance of their relationships. Even then, they were just bare glimpses. Seeing Rory and Amy save the day and Amy make a decision despite the Doctor feels inspired.

The first part of Series 7 does well not to focus on the Silence plot arc. It provides a reprieve. The arc has worn thin by too many loose ends either answered too slowly or not at all.

The first part of Series 7 is the farewell song for Rory and Amy. The show did good on that note. We had fun romps, character development, learned The Power of Three and, finally, a farewell we didn't want to see but had to come and be seen.

We love Amy and Rory, but their story has played out. Their characters have gotten a little thin. Amy only shows the characteristics that make her a good character when Rory isn't around. Rory shows his best characteristics when Amy becomes the maiden in distress.

The first part of Series 7 does a great job of mending those shortcomings. It also crowns off with their independent, consistent final decisions mostly made together.

Amy and Rory could have kept on with the Doctor. Nonetheless, the show has had difficulties making them significant characters in Series 6. They come off more as plot devices. I can see their characters getting even thinner without adding much to overall plot arcs. I would rather they exit at their height instead wearing out their welcome as characters.

Then comes The Snowmen. It feels like the premiere of a Series 8: new companion, new title sequence and even a whole new console room.

Albeit, the title sequence and console room both feel like homages to Classic Who. I'm not too surprised, considering the 50th anniversary is coming up. I think the BBC wants to make a big deal out of it. But the Doctor even has a new outfit (keep in mind that bow ties are still cool).

We have a new mystery: Who exactly is Clara Oswin Oswald? Turns out that they didn't just use Jenna Louise-Coleman as a cameo character in Asylum of the Daleks.

That wouldn't have been anything new. Freema Agyeman played Martha Jones's cousin at Canary Wharf in Army of Ghosts. Karen Gillan played some kind of cultist in The Fires of Pompeii.

Sure, the character in Asylum of the Daleks has a similar name to that of the expected new companion. This is Doctor Whoo and Steve Moffat, though. No point in investing any further thought or energy into trying to figure out a non-sequitur detail.

As it turns out, though, the Oswin Oswald from The Asylum of the Daleks has something to do with Clara Oswin Oswald of The Snowmen and Clara (presumably Oswin Oswald) that appears at the end of The Snowmen.

The Doctor has suspicions she is the "same" character throughout the episode, but he doesn't confirm it until the end of the episode. Clara pulls him out of his shell throughout, but the end clinched it. He has proof she is the same, but how can it be? Doesn't she die twice in two different places, two different times? She also doesn't recognize him when she is a Dalek or as a barmaid/governess.

There's a lot of mystery here. The Doctor feels as excited as we do about it. I bet it will also tie in with the Silence, probably similarly how Amy Pond and her family does, but it doesn't have to. A charm of Clara's mystery and arc is that, as of now, it stands on its own.

Even if Steven Moffat writes woman in a not so praiseworthy way, he has shown he can intertwine characters into the story. They're not just tagging along for the journey and representing thee audience need for explanation. They're integral to the story, and not in a way that's incidental like Rose (anyone could have yanked open a panel in the TARDIS), Martha (anyone could've believed in the Doctor that much) or Donna (anyone could have absorbed regeneration energy and gain the consciousness of a Time Lord).

The great part of the mystery of Clara is, right now, she stands on her own (also helps that she is capable and has a strong personality). Doctor Who isn't so focused on the Silence fighting the Doctor at the moment with the occasional filler episode.

Right now, we have a great question that the Silence and Amy Pond had helped lay out: Who is Clara and what role does she have to play in the grand scheme of things? The Silence cause the need for Amy Pond by blowing up the TARDIS. The Doctor explains to her that he took her in the TARDIS because she is an enigma that he needed to figure out.

We have a framework for reacting to Clara Oswin Oswald. She's a mystery that has a part to play in solving some challenge in the future. What is that challenge? How will she resolve that challenge? Those questions will plague us, but they're kind of formulaic right now.

Where does Clara come from? Why are there multiple versions of her in the multiverse? Obviously she's smart, has plenty of personality and spunk and fun. In ways, she's a challenge to the Doctor and can resolve matters much like Amy Pond at the beginning of Series 5. Such potential for a companion, and even just a woman standing on her own showing up the Doctor, feels good and provides promise.

I hope that Moffat and other writers don't let her fall from this grace. Yes, complex characters need shortcomings, but Series 6 Amy Pond felt lazily written and too much of a stereotype most times. Karen Gillan and Amy Pond had chances to shine, but overall, her character went downhill until Series 7, Episode 2.

I look forward anxiously to discovering the enigma of Clara Oswin Oswald and getting to know her, in a way I haven't for a TV show in a long while. I love seeing the Doctor coming out of his funk to pursue this mystery. After nearly 50 years since creation of the show, the Doctor is almost part of the family, especially with his modernization and showing more humanity, positive and negative.

We'll get our answers, eventually. Nonetheless, I hope the execution of the show and Clara's continues as good as they have in Asylum of the Daleks and The Snowmen. I expect to keep watching, either which way, but I have missed this mix of suspense. I want it to continue, as much I hate it.

LINKS OF NOTE:

• Doctor Who
  
  
• The Snowmen
  
  
• April 8, 2011 Blog Entry - Pre-Series 6 Ruminations
  
  
• Series 6
  
  
• Series 5
  
  
• December 18, 2010 Blog Entry - Inception
  
  
• Inception
  
  
• April 18, 2010 - Review first two episodes of Series 5
  
  
• The Eleventh Hour
  
  
• The Beast Below
  
  
• Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (C2E2)
  
  
• Steven Moffat
  
  
• Fringe
  
  
• Person of Interest
  
  
• Burn Notice
  
  
• White Collar
  
  
• Eureka
  
  
• Warehouse 13
  
  
• Leverage
  
  
• Cold Blood
  
  
• The Pandorica Opens
  
  
• The Big Bang
  
  
• The Impossible Astronaut
  
  
• The Almost People
  
  
• A Good Man Goes to War
  
  
• The Wedding of River Song
  
  
• Let's Kill Hitler
  
  
• Forest of the Dead
  
  
• Rory Williams
  
  
• Time Field
  
  
• Doctor
  
  
• Amy
  
  
• Pandorica
  
  
• Auton Rory
  
  
• Big Bang Two
  
  
• TARDIS
  
  
• the Silence
  
  
• the Silents
  
  
• Eleventh Doctor (Ganger)
  
  
• Gangers
  
  
• Madame Kovarian
  
  
• 
  Battle of Demon's Run
  
  
• River Song
  
  
• Daleks
  
  
• Cybermen
  
  
• Papal Mainframe
  
  
• Fields of Trenzalore
  
  
• "First Question"
  
  
• Lake Silencio
  
  
• fixed point in time
  
  
• predestination paradox
  
  
• Weeping Angels
  
  
• Series 7
  
  
• Dinosaurs on a Spaceship
  
  
• The Power of Three
  
  
• Asylum of the Daleks
  
  
• A Town Called Mercy
  
  
• The Angels Take Manahattan
  
  
• The God Complex
  
  
• The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe
  
  
• Clara Oswald
  
  
• new title sequence
  
  
• Jenna Louise-Coleman
  
  
• Freema Agyeman
  
  
• Martha Jones
  
  
• Martha's cousin
  
  
• Canary Wharf
  
  
• Army of Ghosts
  
  
• Karen Gillan
  
  
• The Fires of Pompeii
  
  
• Clara
  
  
• Oswin Oswald
  
  
• Rose Tyler
  
  
• Donna
  

Celebrities, Artists, Narcissists and the Illusion of Significance and Meaning

A few months ago on the New York Times Website, I found an essay about people telling each other about how busy they are and complaining about being busy all the time. It concludes that people engage in this behavior because it provides the illusion that they’re significant and their life has meaning. After all, if you’re so busy with commitments, you’re doing something important.

I’ve bought into this argument. I try not to complain about being busy and telling people I’m so busy when people ask me how I’ve been doing.

Having bought into so much, I’ve even bisociated this compulsion of busyness with narcissistic celebrities and artists, the ones that always want attention and have to be in the spotlight. . .but may not always have anything to show for it. Their crazy PR campaign may even have an element of an art piece.

Writers and artists capture meaning and stories in their works. Some of those works even capture enough attention to become part of tradition and cultural heritage. Art and stories become an attempt to contribute efforts into something permanent or to make that something permanent. It voices a desire for immortality and to influence the future.

I know that urge influences my desire to write and empowered career decisions I’d like to make in the future. Contributing to the transient and everyday doesn’t satisfy me. As Henry David Thoreau influenced me with a book after more than a century, I’d like to do the same for a young, impressionable mind. Even touching minds with an older person open to thoughts and experience would be cool.

I had told myself when I talked about my work and projects with people that I was simply sharing, working though a road block or even looking to see if others might have insight that I don’t. After all, that WAS what I was doing.

People would most of the time just ask why I don’t sit down and get it done. Definitely a two pronged analysis can be made:

1. I want to look important and significant by complaining about my work
2. People get annoyed by empty words and would rather see action and results

My explanations here definitely sound narcissistic, but I don’t think most people would see me this way. At least that’s the impression that people give me. A lot of these premises and conclusions come from overthinking more than anything. At least, I hope it’s more overthinking rather than narcissism.

Combine the elements mentioned in that opinion piece about busyness providing illusion of significance and meaning with the desire to contribute to the permanence of heritage and tradition through my writing. My sense of significance and meaning has a level of illusion to it until the future, possibly after my lifetime. Imagine people who either don’t have any material to present, still working hard on presenting said material or present material or lots of material that gets exposed to critics. Maintaining motivation with no or negative results can get discouraging and impact confidence or self-esteem.

In this case, an illusion can provide more benefits than negative. I have mentioned in the past that people often live with an illusion of inflated worth and meaning. The busyness linguistic illusion probably works into that. As does probably getting yourself seen, seen with adulated people, letting other people know about your big (maybe even highly pretentious) projects, coming off as a style maven, a trend setter, going to the big social events and all types of things.

These things may have a loose connection to permanence (you have to know people, after all). We have to ask ourselves, though, how much are people in the spotlight trying to maintain an illusion of significance and meaning? If an artist or celebrity didn’t have that outlet, what would happen? Does an artist or celebrity really just want a taste of that significance and meaning, or do they want to make it happen?

I like to think that they want to make it happen. I don’t think it’s that horrible that they want the illusion until it really happens. Sometimes people have to fake it until they make it.

Everyone, though, should get a chance to drink from that goblet of meaning and significance. There’s a reason why celebrities and attention-seeking artists get viewed as narcissists. . ..


LINKS OF NOTE: The ‘Busy’ Trap – New York Times, bisociation, Henry David Thoreau

Gratitude & Consideration: Improving Self Esteem & Society

A couple months ago at a college alumni function I learned a lesson that has improved my quality of life. It involved accepting responsibility for being a cool and good person. Someone else who went to school after me said that people told them that I was someone worth knowing. Always trying to come off as humble, I said something about not understanding how I developed a reputation that survived me, I'm not anyone special that has done anything significant.

An old friend didn't let me finish my sentence. They scolded me that I am worth knowing and that I should accept those types of compliments. The function ended soon after, but my friend's advice has stuck with me.

Maybe accepting compliments wouldn't hurt. After all, we give ourselves the worst criticism. Psychologically healthier people out there generate an illusion of inflated abilities, skills, experience and state of being. A lot of psychological studies make this argument.

I, on the other hand, have always had more of a negative or sober assessment of myself and situation. Having this old friend tell me I should accept compliments got me thinking that maybe I had an overly negative view of myself rather than realistic. What would it hurt to accept compliments indiscriminately for a bit?

A couple weeks later, I accompanied the wife to Lakes of a Fire (a local Burning Man-style event or more descriptively, an art, radical expression, trade/bartering and fire dancing event).

I went with her last year to Lakes of Fire for the first time. I had an OK time, something new but nothing that got me super excited or anything. It had nothing to do with the people or the event. I just had other things on my mind and hadn't gotten into the right mindset.

Accepting compliments elevated my experience this year. I said thank you and you’re welcome whenever I received and gave compliments or favors. Even once when someone complimented me on being awesome, I simply said “I know.” Yeah, kind of conceited, but we had a good laugh. Switching things up has its place.

I have more or less maintained this trait of gratitude and consideration, depending on the social milieu that I find myself in. I’ve also continued feeling a high subjective state of well being and having great interactions with people.

My theory goes along the lines that gratitude and consideration serves us more than just good manners and etiquette. For the subjective self, accepting compliments gets you to start believing them and even to engage in positive self talk that bolsters your elevated self esteem.

Self affirmations sound lame and even insincere, but having a stable self esteem goes a long way to improving quality of life for you and those around you. Fake it until you make it (or start believing it), they say. Just don’t let it go to your head so much that you start hurting other people.

I think the next part of my hypothesis touches on not hurting people. Both too much conceit and too much self abnegation in reaction to a compliment casts doubt on the complimentor. Showing too much conceit tells the complimentor they’ve misjudged someone’s sense of reality. Too much self abnegation tells the complimentor they’ve misjudged their own sense of reality.

People like to share concepts of reality and narratives, as long as their own reality checking facility doesn’t cast too much doubt. That kind of doubt causes a lot of cognitive dissonance and requires work to reconcile.

Someone else inducing that kind of dissonance and doubt with their own self appraisal makes it even worse. They’re supposed to know themselves better than an outside complimentor would know them. They have just distanced themselves from the complimentor.

More knowledge and familiarity means higher levels intimacy and comfort. Impractically negating established intimacy or advances of intimacy (lack of time, other commitments being practical reasons) becomes a slap in the face. It rejects the worth of knowing and getting to know the complimentor. As accepting compliments adds to positive self talk, rejection can contribute to negative self talk.

Accepting a compliment provides a compliment, both of judgment and the ability to build intimacy or camaraderie. Rejecting a compliment, however, can give insult. It casts doubt on a person’s judgment and their ability to build intimacy and camaraderie.

The original complimentor than accepts an unsaid compliment by saying “You’re welcome” and accepting gratitude. They have acknowledged being told they have a good sense of reality and judge of character. Their narrative has received affirmation and have made connection with another human, two of the most joyful experiences we can have.

People do everyone a favor by accepting compliments. They contribute to everyone’s self esteem and subjective well being by encouraging positive self talk all around.

Without a good practical reason to decline a compliment, accept them to better yourself and to improve the state of society. I guarantee that you’ll grab more joy from life. Just try it. You’ll see. I did.


LINKS OF NOTE: A lot of psychological studies argue positive illusions leads to better mental health, Lakes of a Fire, Burning Man

Tips for Developing Story from Nothing

I gave the following tips to a friend for starting development on a story from nothing:

1. Try to relax for idea generation and let the ideas bubble up
2. Put yourself in a different environment for idea generation, make yourself uncomfortable and accept the anxiety. Make the anxiety part of you as natural part of the process (getting up in the morning and working first thing helps me – have to push past drowsiness, but I think my mind also comes up with connections and ideas I wouldn’t come up with when fully awake)
3. All ideas are valid for this part of the process. It’s not time for critical thinking. You can get critical later
4. Look at it like a school assignment or a job:
   
   1. give yourself a deadline
   2. give yourself a quota of how many ideas you need to come up with
   3. Allot a certain amount of time that you need to work on it and WORK ON IT
5. Don’t censor yourself: think it, write it down on your brainstorming sheet or word processor

Right now, it’s about quantity, not quality. Just get any idea down on paper or the computer screen. You can make it better later. What’s the saying out there? 10%-20% is the writing, 80%-90% is revising. And to become professional, there’s probably some amount that goes into networking and marketing.

On the Isaac Asimov and Doctor Who Heritage in the Science Fiction Tradition

The trend over the last decade in science fiction movies for a focus on action and violence with pretty visuals has gotten me thinking about my own tastes. The latest example of the testosterone-drenched, American-mannered shoot first, ask questions later direction of Marvel's The Avengers has piqued my interest on this topic. i won't get into it about that movie; don't want to spoil and it didn't grab me in any stupendous way.

As an amateur writer, I like to think of science fiction and its trends as a tradition. Producers, consumers and critics of science fiction inherit a heritage and can contribute to it. As with any living tradition, science fiction receives all types of interpretations and has accumulated multiple branches of tradition based on tastes and preferences.

I like o think my tastes and preferences take me down the tradition of Doctor Who and Isaac Asimov. A quote from Asimov's Foundation series sums it up best:

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

I forget the exact context of the quote, but I think characters recite it multiple times. Throughout at least the original Foundation trilogy, the main characters solve problems with their minds and often through social manipulation. Rarely did they resort to violence of their own. Kinda sounds like cheating, but you work with what's available.

I had a long gap of not reading Asimov before giving the Foundation series a chance. Even then I only read a couple books from The Galactic Empire series, I, Robot and Robot Dreams. I haven't read the latter two in a long while, but I recollect a lot of ruminating and solving problems with the mind, not through violence or direct confrontation. Challenges presented as insurmountable by violence or direct confrontation kinda makes intellect and the indirect approach the only resort.

The Doctor in Doctor Who might as well follow this dictum from the Foundation series. After nearly fifty years of writers and a character with multiple personalities (not at once) because of regeneration, the Doctor and show has plenty of inconsistencies. Nonetheless, the Doctor generally uses violence as a last resort (even though the latest regeneration resorts to it more often with Daleks).

* * * START SPOILER ALERT - EXAMPLE OF DOCTOR'S LIMITS FOR VIOLENCE * * *

Even when comfortable with violence, The Doctor has his limits. His people, the Time Lords, sends him to destroy the Daleks at the time of their creation. They are calculated to exterminate the universe. The Doctor pauses, second guesses the course of action then chooses an alternate path because he didn't want to commit genocide. After all, who wants to commit that kind of irony.

* * * END SPOILER ALERT * * *

To me, violence and direct confrontation gets old and boring. As Irene Adler in the latest BBC show, Sherlock says a couple times, "Brainy is the new sexy."

I also like to think that real intelligence works as a deterrent to violence. Getting injured or killed with other options available just doesn't feel like a good idea. Intelligence in my mind often leads to coming up with options and possibilities. I like to think discouraging violence is a great idea because preventing injuries and killing seems like a great idea, too. And encouraging intelligence, in my mind, makes for a good way to deter violence, and I like how Isaac Asimov and Doctor Who promote intelligence and argue that violence pretty much promotes incompetence and lack of intelligence.


LINKS OF NOTE: Doctor Who, Isaac Asimov, Foundation series, The Galactic Empire series, I, Robot, Robot Dreams, regeneration, Daleks, the Time Lords, Irene Adler, Sherlock

Herbert's Dune and Patience: Do Adolescents Have More?

I have faint remembrances of aphorisms about differences between adolescence and adulthood. A theme sticks out to me: adolescents are less patient than adults. This theme probably has some truth to it, but I’m starting to think it’s not all true. Maybe the adolescent impatience of action comes from patient yet stubborn academic curiosity. Maybe it comes part and parcel with human nature and instinct.

A fellow writer and I had a passing conversation on the topic. They mentioned how they read Frank Herbert’s epic Dune at the young age of 12 or something like that. I had read the original Dune series something like seven or eight years ago (at around age 26 or 27).

We had very different reactions to it. They loved the book and couldn’t stop praising it, like many people I’ve met throughout life. Me, I found it compelling thematically but frustrating and a slow read. It also had a bunch of loose ends that Herbert or his son, Brian Herbert, and Kevin J Anderson really never addressed in later books (unless they did in prequels).

My friend and I also had this difference: they only read Dune while I read the whole Dune series. Except for God Emperor of Dune and the last two written by Herbert’s son and Anderson, I thought the writing only got better. It became more concise, clearer and did more showing than telling.

I put God Emperor of Dune in a complete category of its own. It had its own bits of drama, but it’s more of a psychedelic treatise dialogue about social philosophy. Reading it makes the rest of the series resonate. Yet it’s dense and a chore to get through, much like one of Plato’s dialogues. . .or maybe an answer to some of the dialogues.

Dune inspired my writer friend to love science fiction and to one day want to write science fiction works of their own. I understand it. Isaac Asimov gave me the same inspiration. In my teenage years, I only read a couple of Asimov’s works and didn’t really grasp the social philosophy thrown in there. I hadn’t even read his more philosophical work until I was older.

Asimov may not have written the vast epic world building political tracts that Herbert did, and I’m really happy about that. Nonetheless, Asimov imparted a sense of expansive human nature and the possibilities of the natural world. He challenged his humans with the totalitarian genius of robots and even struck fear into his humans by giving his robots creativity and the ability to dream (probably one of the tragic and shortest stories of Asimov’s, “Robot Dreams”).

Near the end of his writing career, Asimov seemed to breach into the same world building vastness of Herbert, just not as hard and dense. I wish Asimov had written more in this vast direction. Even though softer science fiction, Asimov started presenting some interesting ideas.

Frank Herbert wrote hard science fiction and he did it dense. He explained practically everything. The drama and topics didn’t necessarily all grow out of provable science. The whole Dune series had a lot of psychedelia to it and had some interesting theories of human potential. If possible, we have a long way to go to get there.

The aspects of ecology, extensiveness of history and play with politics between royal families and mercantilism feel based in social reality. Putting the interpretation that spice in Dune is comparable to oil in today’s world doesn’t feel like too much of a stretch. Sure, people can’t eat oil, it doesn’t turn their eyes blue and it doesn’t provide the ability of prescience, but petroleum holds a lot of sway over the world and its nations.

In fact, I found all the dense detail Herbert put into Dune the difficult part. The plot wouldn’t go anywhere for pages. The book would go on and on explaining the thoughts of a character, the basis for a royal family’s actions, the existence of a ritual in a culture or go on and on about how a person with prescience experiences the galaxy.

My problem, I think, originates from the fact that I’m a fairly well read person, have read a lot of history and social philosophy, read a fair amount of psychedelia, kept up with politics and anthropology and have an OK grasp of science fiction. Back in the early to mid ‘90s, I even patronized a Bulletin Board System that was very Dune themed. The system operator went by Maud Dib and called something Kwisatz Haderach (but I forget what).

A lot of academia I studied in college had influenced Dune. On the flipside, Dune influenced much of the pseudo-intellectual works I researched in high school. Dune has become a point on the intellectual heritage I have followed. By the time I had read it, I had become familiar with a lot of the ideas around it. By the time I reached Dune, I had something of a skeptical “seen that, done that” attitude.

Only the cynicism of the characters struck me as new, and they just depressed and confused me. I’m an idealistic guy who has a hard time understanding why people can’t realize that if we just get along and do lots of research, we can make the world an awesome place. Why haven’t we done it already?

Otherwise, I got impatient and bored with the exposition. Just get to the plot, show me what’s happening and I can probably figure out the motivations and rules behind things as they develop.

I can also imagine Herbert having a checklist of things that he wanted to have happen in the book, but he would come up with a new idea that he’d throw in, but he had to integrate that new idea and come up with a reason why that idea had been there in the first place.

After reading his Wikipedia entry and learning that Dune started as two serials in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, this feeling makes a little more sense. Even though rewritten for the novel form, Dune still has a few vestiges of “Just in case you forgot this important fact. . ..”

I can see possibly having had a different experience reading Dune as an adolescent. Maybe I would have some familiarity with it, having been exposed to works influenced by the novel. A lot of the stuff pre-dating Dune, however, I would know nothing about.

In my adolescence, I had tons of time and had a hunger for knowledge and novelty. Dune’s vast world of knowledge could have fed me. At worst, it would have inspired me like Henry David Thoreau’s Walden and Cape Cod. In full disclosure, I didn’t finish reading either of those works in my adolescence.

Those two books played a big inspiration for me wanting to be a writer. I could sense the ambition behind them and felt they had a lot of understanding behind them that I just didn’t get. If I just plowed through them, maybe I could reach that understanding, too. I haven’t gotten there with the likes of Thoreau or Ralph Waldo Emerson, though. Somehow they’ve actually become even more opaque as I’ve gotten older.

I don’t know what has changed since I was an adolescent. I’m not saying losing that kind of patience is bad, even though I miss having it. Does that stubborn patience to explore things that make no sense to us come as a human characteristic that dies as we grow older? Or, like my writer friend said in our conversation, do we just not have the time as adults to follow through on this curiosity? Are we so busy working and trying to accomplish things that we don’t have the patience we had once?

I feel like I get a grip on that curiosity and patience again here and there but really only once in awhile. Per the advice of a past college professor, I’ve taken up writing a half hour in the morning on my project. That’s when I think I stumble into that state of mind.

In the past, I could get very frustrated and angry about questions that would arise while writing. Nowadays, though, I’m amazed at how much I’ve written and how much more research I have to do for more understanding. Instead of focusing on not having it done, though, I feel joy that I’ve found a path in the woods that will eventually lead me somewhere.

Who knows? Maybe I’m finding that patience again.


LINKS OF NOTE: Frank Herbert, Dune, Dune series, Brian Herbert, Kevin J Anderson, God Emperor of Dune, Plato, Isaac Asimov, “Robot Dreams”, spice, prescience, Bulletin Board System, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Henry David Thoreau’s, Walden, Cape Cod, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Speculation or Reasonably Logical Connection?

Considering my bad time management and difficulty prioritizing over the last year or so, I think I've made some good progress on my bachelor's project. I've done more research than needed for the level of academic rigor required. With some good advice from a past teacher, I’ve started an early morning writing habit. Work is getting done.

Before this point, I had focused on developing my thoughts and molding the source material into usable form. Trouble now arises when I try to fill conceptual empty spaces between facts and coherent, cohesive conclusions. Each time I make this kind of attempt, I ask whether the new premise comes from utter speculation or whether I've made a reasonably, logical connection.

I don't know of any hard and fast rule for making this determination. In the past, I would research my ass off to find answers. I would follow three directions for my research:

1. Primary and secondary sources directly addressing the historical events and people
2. Materials regarding the phenomena at hand (ie utopianism)
3. From Wikipedia to anywhere on the Internet to the physical library, whatever topic came to mind:
   
   • Social psychology
   • Cognitive science
   • Social/moral/political philosophy
   • Sociology
   • Anthropology
   • Economics
   • Cultural studies
   • Religion
   • Spirituality
   • Literary criticism
   • Literary theory
   • and the list goes on and on ad infinitum

I got some mileage through this approach. However, it got exhausting and results entered diminishing returns, probably about a year ago.

At the point of diminishing returns, I get less out of research the more work I put into it. It takes time to develop ideas and grind out demonstrable work, even if just brainstorming or drafting. Just sitting down at my creative desk with pen and paper at this point would more than likely just frustrate and throw me into a dead end.

At my day job, I have a good opportunity to let my brain free reign to ruminate and develop ideas to say sane. Otherwise I'd just focus on angsty, personal unproductive thoughts.

Brainstorming ideas is fun. My brain, at least, has an excellent talent for it. A lot of great results come from my brainstorming, and much of it has potential, too. These prospects get even better when they have a sound basis.

The problem arrives at this point:

• Are the ideas I'm coming up with pure speculation or a reasonably logical connection?
• Am I pulling an idea out of my ass that just sounds good or would be fun to write about?
• Does my idea have grounding in history and theory, or am I just enamored with a theory that I want to force onto history?
• Am I just using the first idea that comes to mind, or do I have an idea that will stand some test of academic rigor?
• How do you test the academic rigor of these kinds of ideas?

For now, I'm testing these types of ideas by asking

1. Is the idea simple and elegant, does it beg the minimum number of questions compared to other ideas and
   
2. Does the idea lend coherence and cohesiveness to the larger argument and project?

This approach serves my purposes for now. Is it something that can serve your purpose or do have your own approach?

A Researcher's Tribute to the Internet

The growth and development of the Internet and mobile technology has become invaluable for my bachelors project. Online books, some for free on Google Books or for low cost through Amazon, has increased efficiency when it all comes to time, energy and money.

• Google Books archiving old books and magazines
• Academic and industry journals, like JSTOR, making articles available for low-cost purchase as PDFs
• At least the Massachusetts Historical Society providing me with a PDF copy of a historical document for less than plane tickets, room and board

It has all given me access to information so much easier than before. Who knows if I would have found between a quarter to half this invaluable information without the Internet in its current incarnation.

Maybe I could have reached my current point today without the Internet, but I doubt it. I had done a share of Internet research before getting out of college, but I didn’t get far at all. Dead end after dead end sending me in endless circles.

Yahoo!, Metacrawler and the other search tools didn’t cut it. Had they not developed the search algorithms well enough to fit my needs? Had they not developed the subject hierarchies well enough to intuitively lead me where I needed to go? Had the Internet simply failed to reach the critical mass for the information I needed to get posted? Heck, maybe I just didn’t have the base knowledge to ask the right questions.

Who knows how all these factors have mixed and influenced each other? I’d like to think that I could have reached this point on my own without the help of the Internet. I’m hard put to say that would be the case, though. The progress I’ve made acquiring source material in just the last year or so tells me that the Internet contributes a lot to my current accomplishments.

With all this in mind, I’d like to thank the Internet and the people who work hard to create, post and otherwise provide content. If I had reached these heights in some other way, it would take a lot more time and/or money. Thank you for making acquiring this information possible and doing it efficiently. I may not have gotten here without your help. Thank you.


LINKS OF NOTE: Google Books, Amazon

Will Never Look at Bananas in a Supermarket the Same Way Again

Last year, a few friends, my wife and I spent March 16 to March 27 in Costa Rica as first time visitors. More specifically, we stayed on the Caribbean Atlantic Coast resort town of Puerto Viejo de Talamanca and frequented the close by area. We had a lot of fun with the touristy stuff, from partying in Puerto Viejo to snorkeling, hiking to a waterfall and so much more.

After all is said and done, though, the not so obvious environmental and social irresponsibility of international banana conglomerates will stay with me the most. Everyone in our little travel group all agreed that we couldn't look at a banana in the supermarket the same way again.

I can’t claim naïveté to this type of issue. Intellectually, I know the food industry, world-wide, doesn't have a very good history of caring about the small farmer, the community where they grow food or how they affect the world while getting food to the supermarket shelf. Corporations' main goal is to increase profits for themselves and their shareholders in an amoral fashion, non-shareholders and non-humans be damned.

Exposure to confirming concrete experience makes intellectual fact all the more real, including:

• Seeing vast banana plantations
• Hearing from a resident of Costa Rican (albeit an immigrant in the tourist industry) about how mass production of bananas affects the people and environment
• Hearing about the "packaging" of bananas once they hit the supermarket shelf

Probably the most instructive example of this American detachment from the corporate supermarket sourcing of our food comes from Jon Stewart on the Daily Show making fun of skinned bananas wrapped in plastic wrap at the supermarket. Imagine my surprise when our tour guide notified us this plastic-wrapped banana is organic and better for the environment while the banana in its own skin is very likely not!

Bananas are one of Costa Rica's major sources of income, tourism being the biggest and coffee competing with bananas. Unlike coffee, though, the banana industry started in the hands of a United States businessman and stayed in control of the US. Minor Keith, while building the first railroad from the US to Central America/Costa Rica, planted bananas alongside the tracks to provide his workers with an easy source for food. Introducing the bananas to the US, he also found a welcoming market for the tropical fruit.

Fast forward to the present, it's a long way from Costa Rica to the US. Our flight from Chicago to San Jose, Costa Rica, with a quick layover in Miami took a total of five hours. Add onto that time (or extrapolation of time taken to ship non-humans and non-pets), the time it takes to ship bananas from major shipping warehouses or population centers like Chicago, New York, LA, Boston or some small town supermarket.

Most foods, if not properly prepped or treated, will not last the trip, especially not bananas. If anything, lower temperatures will cause too many of them to ripen too quickly. Not enough profit for no frills shipment. Just look at what happens when you put bananas into the refrigerator or freezer.

Form of shipment that exerts least amount of cognitive load is to spray the bananas with pesticides and preservatives, pick and load them earliest possible chance then ship them up to the US quick as possible. Most people, if not all, understand that transporting bananas all that distance doesn't help with the rapid climate change issue we hear about everyday.

Most efficient way to ship organic bananas and not grate on consumer patience is to skin them then vacuum seal them into a tight plastic wrapping. Vacuum seal preserves the profit margin from the elements. Removing the natural skin before wrapping in plastic makes for a better looking product and reduces how much unwrapping the consumer has to do to protect profit margin from consumer irritation and desire for aesthetic pleasure. Who thought plastic vacuum sealing a piece of natural fruit would be the way to go?

Off the cuff facts we heard from the Costa Rican resident in the tourist industry include the following:

• Native Ticos working at banana plantations picking the bananas make the equivalent of $1 to $2 an hour
• Banana industry and plantations monopolized by Chiquita and Dole
• These US-based corporations have no problem crop dusting the banana plantations with pesticides that are illegal in the US, which leak into sources of water and cause all types of health issues for the native population

As if paying native workers substandard wages and exposing them to harmful chemicals wasn't enough, the banana industry took land and repurposed it to something radically different, banana plantations. A particular case sticks in my mind: kilometers of space from a highway to the border of Panama in the southwestern area where we stayed to the border of Panama had started as a river valley where Ticos fished.

The pictures posted show the banana plantation in question from the highway all the way south to Panama.

These pictures don't do justice to the amount of land in question, similar to how no matter how much knowing injustice with intellect doesn't mean understanding. Pictures, themselves, just can't capture the fullness and depth of reality.

A map might provide a little more perspective to how many people were displaced by the market demand for bananas and the kind of drastic change to nature that greed and ignorance can cause:


View Larger Map

As much as I had intellectually known that big multinational corporations don't look out for the common good of communities where materials are sourced, this trip to Costa Rica struck the truth of the matter to my core. Worse than my darkest imagination, social and environmental injustice is real, and part of it is in Costa Rica.

I wish i had this raw perspective before going and hope other people have this real understanding without having to travel long distances. People should still travel to expand their perspective, understanding and resolve. The fact that this kind of expansion has to have negative connotations just makes me a sad.

This experience of mine in Costa Rica makes me proud to participate in a local, fair trade food co-op, Edible Alchemy. The 2-hour commute there and back feels minimal to bring further social and environmental justice to our world. It feels good to

• Keep money in the local economy
• Reduce pollution and the environmental impact of food reaching my belly
• Support community rather than dollar-to-dollar interactions, both between me and the co-op and other members and between the co-op and their food sources
• Encourage multi-culture agriculture practices rather than monoculture (our particular co-op switches up the produce and fruit that gets distributed based on what's available)
• Help reduce farmer industry dependence on government subsidies, thus minimizing artificial manipulations of markets that causes further dependence on government subsidies and tax payer dollars
• Encourage organic, low-impact agricultural methods reducing health and environmental impacts
• Reduce unjust attacks on small farmers by big corporations through patent law to destroy competition
• Reduce humanity's attempt to gain totalitarian control of biodiversity, which could risk the existence of life as we know it or even the chance of life surviving some type of natural disaster
• Increase social and environmental justice in foreign lands by encouraging fair trade during times of the year that Midwesterners can't get proper nutrition from local sources
• And amazing enough, saving on bulk items. Economy of scale doesn’t seem to benefit customers of Whole Foods and other commercial storefronts, but they do at Edible Alchemy

And that's all that I can think of right now! I bet there are plenty more benefits to myself and the world that I can't think of off the top of my head. I look forward to participating and seeing how much the world changes.

They have a saying in Costa Rica: Pura vida. It pretty much means, "It's cool. It's all good." Sadly the state of world agriculture markets suck. With co-ops like Edible Alchemy fighting the good fight, someday we'll be able to say the world agriculture markets are pura vida.


Links to Banana Sources that Help Me Feel Less Guilty:

• Equal Exhange
• EARTH University of Costa Rica

Links of Interest:

• Costa Rica
• Puerto Viejo de Talamanca
• Jon Stewart
• The Daily Show
• The Daily Show: Pantry of Shame
• Lonely Planet: “Banana Empire”
• Minor Keith
• San Jose, Costa Rica
• Ticos
• Chiquita
• Dole
• Panama
• Edible Alchemy
• Pura vida

The Wife's C2E2 Panel: The Geek Girl and the Artist

The wife has become something of a gender geek activist. She has witnessed and heard plenty of frustrations regarding the under representation of female voices in

• Sciences
• Tech industry
• Geek/nerd culture
• Entertainment

The above list is not all inclusive.

She has decided to dip her toe into the arena by putting together a panel at C2E2: The Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo, called The Geek Girl and the Artist.

A quote from the Facebook event page to whet your whistle:

Topics addressed by this panel will include (but not be limited to): how geek culture shaped the panelists interests/focuses as artists; how geek culture shaped their identities as women; how the panelists view gender norms as playing a part in geek culture and vice versa; how to take niche geek interests and use it to inform artistic expression and professional pursuits; what are negative/positive aspects the panelists have experienced within geek culture and how they relate to their identities as both women and artists/communicators.

Oh yeah, she was guest on Loot the Room podcast to promote the panel.

It should turn out be interesting!

LINKS OF INTEREST: C2E2: The Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo, The Geek Girl and the Artist, Facebook event page, Loot the Room Podcast

Ruminations on Sociability in Animals While at the Aquarium

I felt like a human this past Monday at the aquarium watching beluga whales. They had trainers interacting with them and all, but I still felt touched. So touched, in fact, that I came close to tears.

I tend to feel that way when characters in fiction or on TV and movies let their guard down with each other or by themselves. Maybe it comes from some voyeuristic tendency, as I don’t have this reaction interacting with other people in the moment. Maybe it has something to with the privacy created by people focusing totally on something other than me.

The whales and trainers got me going when the explanation of how the trainers win trust of the whales. Giving them fish and scratching their tongues, that’s all I remember from the list of things that the belugas like humans doing for them.

Trust built through bribery, trainers move onto teaching the belugas tricks and simple communication. I jest about bribery. The trainers and belugas reminded me a bit of building a relationship with a cat. More like I remembered someone telling me that cats have strong social tendencies, even though I often thought of cats as loners. Feral cats form colonies, though.

Not to sound like a crazy cat lady, but the wife and I have a great relationship with our cats. It has improved a lot since we had to chase the girl cat around a basement to stuff her in a crate and take her home. Now she sits next to me on a chair when I’m using the computer at the kitchen table. Now, seven or so years later, we have a family of four that loves spending lots of time together.

Per Wikipedia, belugas have strong social tendencies, too. Doesn’t come as a surprise considering their show. I didn’t know it at the time, though.

The trainers and belugas showed their great relationship. Trainers showed tons of warmth, generosity and sincerity. Belugas displayed tons of energy doing tricks and swimming around, only overtaken by their desire for food and affection. Their connection felt authentic, sincere, reciprocal, enthusiastic and warm.

Their interaction brought heart to the idea of a contract. We generally think of contracts as cold, boring pieces of paper that suck life out of people relating to each other. People and non-human entities make contracts to protect themselves from possible abuses or to make sure that one party does what the other wants them to do. Contracts focus on taking from the relationship what each party can get.

The belugas and trainers focused more on giving than taking. Maybe the whales didn’t so much. They REALLY liked getting fish and having their tongues rubbed, but they looked grateful and humbled by all the attention. Even as they looked impatient doing tricks, their irritation seemed not so much about getting food or a tickle. They wanted to engage the trainer and connect.

At the same time, the trainers looked a little bored when the belugas went off to do their tricks. They must have felt proud by the whales wowing the audience, but they looked bored and impatient to get back to connecting and interacting with the belugas.

The show returned life to contracts by focusing more on connecting through giving and taking rather than taking benefit from one or the other. Being social is fundamental for many animals, from humans to whales to cats, even to plenty of fish that come together to form schools.

Social instincts play such a central role, at least for me, that seeing it in action chokes me up a wee little bit. But I could just be sensitive.


LINKS OF INTEREST: beluga whales, Feral cats